In the meantime, the minority ICP cadre Hoang Dinh Giong had been sent to China to dispatch a telegram demanding Ho’s release to Sun Ke, Sun Yat-sen’s son and currently president of the Legislative Yuan in Chongqing, on behalf of the Vietnamese branch of the International Anti-Aggression League. Sun had already spoken publicly in favor of the liberation of colonial territories in Asia after the end of the Pacific War, and would presumably be sympathetic to the message:
President Sun
Our representative Hu K’o Ming was arrested in Jingxi on his way to Chongqing to present a banner and pay respects to Generalissimo Chiang. We entreat you to cable the local authorities to release him immediately.
Sun Ke, who presumably had no idea who Hu K’o Ming was, forwarded the cable to Wu Tiecheng, general secretary of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee. On November 9, Wu cabled the provincial government in Guilin, as well as Zhang Fakui’s Fourth Military Command headquarters in Liuzhou, asking them to investigate the matter and, if appropriate, to order Ho’s release. Neither was able to act on the matter at that time, however, since Ho Chi Minh was still en route from Debao to Nanning and had not yet arrived in Liuzhou.13
While Party leaders inside Indochina were trying to obtain Ho Chi Minh’s release, they heard shocking news. Sometime during the winter of 1942–1943, a young member of the Party who had been sent to south China to locate Ho and report back to Party leaders on his condition arrived at Cao Bang with a report that Ho Chi Minh was dead. He had learned while in Liuzhou that Ho had died in prison. After sending off a message to alert the Central Committee at its headquarters near Hanoi, the Party leaders in the Viet Bac charged Pham Van Dong with the task of organizing a funeral ceremony.
A few weeks later, however, a magazine arrived from China. In the margin were written a handful of Chinese characters in a familiar script: “To my dear friends—good health and courage in your work. Be in good health.” A short verse was attached:
The clouds embrace the hills,
The hills clasp the clouds.
Like a mirror that nothing can dim,
the river drains its limpid waters.
On the crest of the Mountains of the Western Wind,
Solitary, I stroll, my heart moved.
Scanning the southern sky,
I think of my friends.
Overcome with joy, Party leaders summoned the cadre for an explanation. “I don’t understand myself,” he remarked. “The Chinese governor clearly told me that Uncle Ho was dead.” When the cadre was asked to recall the governor’s exact words, however, it suddenly became clear that he had misunderstood the Chinese words “okay, okay” (shile, shile), for “dead, dead” (sile, sile).14
At Liuzhou, Ho Chi Minh was detained in a military prison in the compound of the Political Department. By now—as he wrote in a poem at the time—he felt like a soccer ball, bouncing back and forth between Guilin and Liuzhou. During the last five months he had spent time in eighteen prisons in thirteen different districts in south China. Although Ho still chafed at being deprived of his freedom, as a political prisoner he was now given better treatment. The food was adequate, he was no longer shackled at night, and he was even permitted to read newspapers and books. Periodically he was allowed to leave his cell to stretch his limbs and relieve himself, and on one occasion he was even given a haircut and a hot bath. He was also in a better position to keep in touch with his colleagues back in Vietnam and inform them of his situation, so he frequently sent them copies of magazines and books with notes that had been written in disappearing ink composed of boiled rice foam in the margins. To his Chinese captors, he presented the image of an old scholar, courteous and quiet. To pass the time he translated Sun Yat-sen’s famous Three People’s Principles into Vietnamese.15
Sometime during the spring of 1943, General Zhang Fakui discovered the real identity of his troublesome prisoner, or at least confirmed that he was a Communist. Precisely how he learned is a matter of conjecture. Ho Chi Minh’s colleague Hoang Van Hoan claimed that Ho’s identity as a Comintern agent was revealed by Tran Bao, a longtime Vietnamese nationalist who resided in the area and hoped to have him executed. But General Liang Huasheng, then director of the Fourth Military Command Political Department, declared in an interview many years later that in his own conversations with Ho, he had become convinced of his prisoner’s Communist leanings and recommended that he be eliminated. According to Liang, however, his proposal was rejected by the central government in Chongqing, which, although now itself in possession of information on Ho’s actual political leanings, ordered that if possible he be “converted.”16
The central government’s decision on the matter may have initially been influenced by Zhou Enlai, who was still serving as head of the CCP liaison office in Chongqing. When Zhou became aware in the fall of 1942 that Ho Chi Minh had been arrested, he raised the issue with General Feng Yuxiang, the well-known Chinese warlord and one of Chiang Kai-shek’s leading rivals during the 1920s and 1930s. Feng, who had periodically flirted with the Communists but was now an influential member of the Nationalist government leadership, took up the case with the Soviet adviser in Chongqing and then spoke with Chiang Kai-shek’s vice president, Li Zongren. Together they approached Chiang and appealed for his release. By one Chinese account, Feng was forceful on Ho’s behalf, arguing that even if Ho Chi Minh was a member of the Vietnamese Communist movement, the point was irrelevant. After all, he argued, Communist representatives from other foreign countries, including the Soviet Union, were not being detained. The key point, Feng insisted, was that the Vietnamese people supported the Chinese war of resistance against Japan. If Ho Chi Minh was a friend, he should not be treated as a criminal. That would simply cause China to lose international support and sympathy and make a sham of China’s struggle against the Japanese. Li Zongren concurred with Feng’s assessment, suggesting that the central government turn the matter over to the Guangxi authorities to resolve. Chiang reluctantly agreed, and cabled the Fourth Military Command headquarters to order Ho’s release under surveillance while attempting to persuade him to cooperate with Chongqing’s goals.17
What effect this cable had on General Zhang Fakui in Liuzhou is uncertain. In interviews held in the United States long after the war, Zhang denied that his own actions in the matter had been motivated by orders from higher echelons. As he explained it, once he discovered that his prisoner was really Nguyen Ai Quoc, an influential member of the Vietnamese Communist movement, he ordered the new director of his Political Department, General Hou Zhiming, to lure him into cooperating with the Fourth Military War Zone with a view to obtaining his eventual release. In conversations with him, Zhang became aware of Ho’s considerable abilities and his fervent anti-French sentiments and was apparently convinced by Ho’s remark that although he was a member of the Indochinese Communist Party, his immediate objective was freedom and independence for his country. Ho apparently offered to provide Zhang with assistance in reorganizing the Vietnamese resistance movement in south China and guaranteed to his captor that a Communist society would not be established in Vietnam for at least fifty years.18
Zhang’s motives for deciding to liberate his prisoner were undoubtedly connected with his own long-term political objectives. A native of Guangdong and a veteran of the Northern Expedition in the mid-i920s, Zhang was a respected military commander who had held aloof from the political maneuverings of both Chiang Kai-shek and the CCP. He was hostile to both Japan and the French colonial regime in Indochina, and was probably sympathetic to the desire of the Vietnamese people for national independence. As commander of the Fourth Military War Zone in Liuzhou, he was responsible for preparing to launch an attack on Japanese forces in Indochina before the end of the war. It was towards that end that he had sought to organize Vietnamese nationalist forces in south China during the early 1940s and train them for future operations inside Indochina.
However, Zhang Fakui’s plan to organize Vietnamese nationalist elements into
an effective instrument had run into problems. Cooperation between nationalist groups and the ICP through the creation of the Vietnamese National Liberation Committee had come to an end by the end of 1941, when VNQDD leaders had discovered the true identity of their colleagues Pham Van Dong and Vo Nguyen Giap and evicted them from the organization. Shortly after, factionalism among leading nationalist figures such as Vu Hong Khanh, Nguyen Hai Than, and Nghiem Ke To led to the virtual collapse of the league. One of the Committee’s sponsors, Truong Boi Cong, was himself arrested by local authorities on the charge of corruption.
In the summer of 1942, Zhang Fakui decided to try again, directing nationalist leaders to form a new organization, this time without any Communist participation, to be called the Vietnamese Revolutionary League (Viet Nam Cach menh Dong minh Hoi), popularly called the Dong Minh Hoi. Zhang’s subordinate, General Hou Zhiming, was selected as Chinese adviser to the organization, which held its first meeting in Liuzhou in early October 1942. The Dong Minh Hoi, however, had no more success than its predecessor, as plans encouraged by General Zhang to convene a national congress in early September 1943 foundered on the factional disputes among the leading members.
It was in the hope that Ho Chi Minh could provide the spark to energize the struggling Vietnamese nationalist movement in south China that Zhang decided to restore him his freedom. On September 10, Ho was released from jail but with limited freedom of movement. A member of the Fourth Military Command’s Political Department at the time later recalled that one day that fall, the prisoner suddenly entered the department’s dining hall and sat down with Hou Zhiming and other Chinese officials. From that point on, the ex-prisoner, who was addressed by his acquaintances as “Uncle Ho” (Hu Lao Bo), was no longer kept under lock and key, but was permitted to circulate freely within the compound and even to take a walk outside the area.19
During that fall of 1943, Ho Chi Minh gradually began to immerse himself in local political activities. As a means of urging the Vietnamese nationalist groups to revitalize their efforts to create an effective organization, Zhang announced that he intended to take a direct interest in the Dong Minh Hoi and replaced Hou Zhiming with his deputy, General Xiao Wen, as its Chinese adviser. Xiao, a native of Guangdong whose father was an overseas Chinese, was himself reputed to be sympathetic to the Communists. To broaden the base of the organization, Zhang directed that all graduates of the Vietnamese training class at Liuzhou become members.
Ho Chi Minh now began to play an active role in the Dong Minh Hoi; in November, at the request of General Zhang, he was appointed its vice chairman. The appointment undoubtedly created some uneasiness for Nguyen Hai Than, then chairman of the organization and Ho’s bitter rival since their days in Canton during the 1920s. But Than was reluctant to anger his powerful sponsor and swallowed his uneasiness. In December, at a banquet hosted by General Hou Zhiming and attended by both Vietnamese, Nguyen Hai Than offered a toast: “Hou Zhiming, Ho Chi Minh, two comrades with a common commitment to enlightenment.” Without losing a step, Ho Chi Minh quickly responded: “You are a revolutionary, I am a revolutionary, we are all revolutionaries, we will certainly transform our destinies.”20
With Zhang’s encouragement, by the late fall Ho was actively involved in reorganizing the Dong Minh Hoi. He had now moved out of the compound of the Political Department and was permitted to live at the league’s headquarters. He gave regular lectures on local and national affairs to audiences throughout the city, as well as to the Vietnamese training class under the direction of the Fourth Military Command. He promised his rapt audiences that after the defeat of Japan, a united, peaceful, independent, and democratic Vietnam would certainly emerge in Southeast Asia. On one occasion, he lauded China as a great force for peace, and the elder brother of the Vietnamese people. He predicted that the Allies would complete their victory over Japan within a year or so, and China could then assist the Vietnamese to recover their complete independence by peaceful means and build a new society.21
Having grown increasingly dependent on Ho Chi Minh as his instrument to revitalize the Dong Minh Hoi, Zhang Fakui approached him about making a second attempt to convene a national congress. Ho agreed, and a preparatory conference was held in Liuzhou in late February 1944. At the conference, Ho suggested that the organization broaden its scope and include representatives from the Vietminh Front and its subsidiary mass organizations, as well as from other groups in Indochina identified with the antifascist cause. As for the fear that the alliance would be dominated by the ICP, he pointed out that of all the patties and organizations in the country, it was the Indochinese Communist Party that possessed the most influence and visibility. The Vietnamese people, he claimed, had nothing to fear from communism, which would gradually carry the idea of economic equality throughout the entire world, just as democracy had spread the concept of political equality throughout Europe after the French Revolution in 1789. The result would be a future state of great world unity. Ho added that in the past, all the Vietnamese political parries had been in competition. Now they would unify in order to struggle against oppression and achieve the sole objective that motivated them all—to liberate their country and their people. To do so would be to follow the general trend of humanity, since China with its three people’s principles, imperialist England, Communist Russia, and capitalist America were now allies opposing the common enemy. General Zhang agreed with these grand sentiments and invited Ho to go ahead with plans to convene a congress of the Dong Minh Hoi at the end of March.22
But Ho Chi Minh’s intention to include representatives of the Vietminh Front in the congress did not sit well with many of the non-Communist members of the Dong Minh Hoi, who were suspicious that Ho would try to dominate the meeting by padding it with his own followers. To allay their concerns, Ho suggested to Zhang that the meeting be simply labeled a conference of overseas representatives of the Dong Minh Hoi. Zhang concurred, and at a meeting of the organization’s executive committee it was agreed to include representatives of all major Vietnamese groups operating in south China. At a banquet held in mid-March, Zhang approved the plan, and those opposed to broad participation of all patriotic groups at the congress had no choice but to concede.
The conference of overseas representatives of the Dong Minh Hoi opened in Liuzhou on March 25, 1944. Fifteen delegates were in attendance, including representatives from the ICP, the VNQDD, and the strongly nationalist Dai Viet (Great Viet) party. Several delegates, including Pham Van Dong and Le Tong Son, attended in the name of the Vietminh or other organizations connected to the Party. Ho Chi Minh spoke at the conference, describing the current conditions inside Indochina and the activities of the Vietminh Front, and praising the close historical relationship between the Vietnamese and Chinese peoples. Zhang Fakui attended the opening and closing sessions and watched over the events like a mother hen to assure himself that the meeting succeeded. Before adjourning on the twenty-eighth, the congress passed two resolutions and elected a seven-member executive committee and a control commission. Ho Chi Minh was initially selected as an alternate member of the former, but soon became a full member. Zhang Fakui demonstrated his approval of the proceedings by providing the delegates with additional financial support.23
During the next several months, Ho Chi Minh threw himself into the effort to reenergize the Dong Minh Hoi and prepare for his own return to Vietnam. In July he traveled to Nanning to speak to a number of students who had been sent by his Vietminh colleagues to study at the training institute in south China. By now Zhang Fakui had decided that Ho Chi Minh was the best choice to lead the Vietnamese anti-Japanese resistance movement. He once said that while Ho was hardworking, the others were lazy and careless, and squabbled so much that they gave him a headache. In early August, despite complaints from non-Communists, he gave Ho Chi Minh total freedom of action and promised him that he would be able to return soon to Vietnam. In return, Ho drew up a plan of action to guide his activities on his return to his country. Among the eleme
nts in his plan were transmitting to the Vietnamese people the determination of China to promote the independence of their country, developing and promoting the Dong Minh Hoi, preparing conditions for the entry of the Chinese army into north Vietnam, and intensifying the struggle for national independence.
In promising to give his every effort to promote the growth of the Dong Minh Hoi, Ho listed those political parties and factions he hoped to attract to its banner: not only were the ICP and its various mass organizations included, but also the Party’s longtime rivals, the VNQDD and even the Constitutionalist Party, the members of which Party propagandists had long dismissed as reactionaries and puppets of the French. Ho promised to open up two guerrilla base areas just south of the frontier, and requested that General Zhang provide him with weapons and a sufficient amount of money to assist him in that purpose, as well as a personal letter of introduction to various patriotic organizations in Vietnam and a military map of the country. Zhang agreed to provide Ho with a passport for multiple entries into China, as well as a supply of medicine and funds for his own personal use, but he indicated that additional financial support for anti-Japanese activities inside Indochina would require further consideration.24
Before his departure from Liuzhou, Ho Chi Minh made a final visit to General Xiao Wen, Zhang’s adviser to the Dong Minh Hoi, who had been of considerable assistance to him in his final preparations for his return to Vietnam. “Ninety-nine percent of what I told you about Vietnam and the Vietnamese revolutionary movement is true,” he assured his Chinese host. “There is only one percent that I didn’t tell you.” He had earlier promised General Zhang that communism would not be realized in Vietnam for fifty years.25
Sometime in late August, in the company of eighteen recent Vietnamese graduates from Zhang Fakui’s training institute, Ho Chi Minh left Liuzhou and returned to Indochina by way of Longzhou and Jingxi. To reduce the likelihood that they would be accosted by local security authorities, they were all dressed in Kuomintang military uniforms. At the Frontier, they changed into native garb, but still encountered difficulties with border guards, and Ho had to appeal to local officials in Longzhou to intervene and allow them to continue. On arriving at the frontier town of Pingmeng, he had to remain for several days in a grass hut outside the town to recover his health and prepare security arrangements to escort him back to Pac Bo, where he finally arrived on September 20.26
Ho Chi Minh Page 38
