Ho Chi Minh repeated much of the message that he had given at the Ninth Plenum a few days previously about the overall situation in Indochina and abroad. He reiterated the importance of a rapid seizure of power in order to greet the arriving Allied occupation forces in a strong position. The Japanese had to be dealt with, by persuasion if possible. But he warned the delegates that the French might launch a massive invasion of Vietnam with the support of the Allied powers, and he added that if that happened, it might be necessary to hold talks with the French on a compromise solution that would lead to total independence within five years.
After Ho Chi Minh finished talking, the delegates approved a list of “ten great policies” drafted by the Vietminh leadership and calling for the creation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam on the basis of democratic liberties and moderate policies designed to achieve economic and social justice. A five-man National Liberation Committee (uy ban giai phong dan toe), with Ho Chi Minh as chairman, was elected to lead the general insurrection and serve as a provisional government. After voting for a new national flag consisting of a gold star in a red field and a new national anthem, the congress adjourned. The following morning, Ho led delegates in a solemn ceremony held outside the communal hall on the banks of the nearby stream. The same day, an “appeal to the people” was issued. It said in part:
The decisive hour in the destiny of our people has struck. Let us stand up with all our strength to liberate ourselves!
Many oppressed peoples the world over are vying with one an-other in the march to win back their independence. We cannot allow ourselves to lag behind.
Forward! Forward! Under the banner of the Vietminh Front, move forward courageously!
The appeal was signed, for the last time, Nguyen Ai Quoc.64
PHOTO SECTION
A view of downtown Hanoi in the early twentieth century. In the background is the Municipal Theater, built by the French, which would eventually play a central role in the Vietnamese revolution.
Adjacent to the French sector of colonial Hanoi, with its European-style modern buildings, was the native city. Inhabited primarily by Chinese merchants and artisans, it retained its individual character under colonial rule, and continues to do so today.
A portrait taken of Ho Chi Minh’s father as a young man. Although he was trained as a Confucian scholar, Nguyen Sinh Sac’s modernist inclinations are apparent from his attire, as he wears the popular jacket popularized by his contemporary, the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen.
After Nguyen Sinh Sac married Hoang Thi Loan in 1883, his father-in-law built a small two-room house adjacent to his own family home in Hoang Tru hamlet and gave it to the new couple as a wedding present. Here Ho Chi Minh was born on May 2, 1890. Although neither of the original houses has survived, they were reconstructed in 1959, when Ho had become president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
In this room in the house of his father-in-law Hoang Duong, Nguyen Sinh Sac received instruction in the Confucian classics. The room also served as a reception area for members of the Hoang clan during New Year’s celebrations each year. After Duong’s death in 1883, Sac used the room to give lessons in the Confucian classics to neighborhood children.
When Nguyen Sinh Sac took his family to live in Hué in 1895, it was still the imperial city of Vietnam. The imperial palace and its surrounding buildings, as shown in this aerial photograph, were protected by a series of extensive battlements designed after the style of the seventeenth-century French architect Vauban.
A view of the small apartment where Nguyen Sinh Sac and his family lived while he prepared to take the civil service examinations. It was in this house, located near the western wall of the imperial city, that Ho Chi Minh’s mother died in 1901. It now contains a small museum.
The well-known scholar and revolutionary patriot Phan Boi Chau was a close acquaintance of Nguyen Sinh Sac and often visited Sac at his house in Kim Lien village. In the family room of the house, young Ho Chi Minh served tea or rice wine to his father and the illustrious visitor.
After his triumphant return home from Hué in 1901, Nguyen Sinh Sac received this house in Kim Lien from neighboring villagers who were proud of his scholarly achievements. The house was larger than the one in nearby Hoang Tru hamlet, with four rooms, one containing an altar for Sac’s deceased wife Hoang Thi Loan. Ho Chi Minh lived in this house for five years.
In the fall of 1907, Nguyen Sinh Sac enrolled his two sons in the National Academy (Quoc Hoc), a prestigious school for aspiring bureaucrats located in Hué. The school is still in operation. Shown here is the massive gate, built in the Chinese style, at the street entrance to the school.
In June 1911, Ho Chi Minh sailed from Nha Rong Dragon Pier on a French passenger ship, the Amiral Latouche—Treville. Located on the river just east of the central district of Saigon, the building had been constructed on the wharf in the late nineteenth century. Carvings of dragons on the roof gave the building its name. Today it houses the municipal branch of the Ho Chi Minh Museum.
The French steamship Amiral Latouche—Trtville measured 400 feet in length, weighed 600 tons, and was staffed by 72 officers and ordinary seamen. Ho, known as “Ba,” was hired in June 1911 as a kitchen helper, and sailed on the ship to Europe.
Shown here is a copy of the “demands of the Annamite people” that Ho Chi Minh, under the alias “Nguyen Ai Quoc,” presented to the victorious Allied leaders meeting at Versailles in the summer of 1919. Ho not only helped to draft the petition, but also delivered it in person to delegations attending the conference at Versailles and to the homes of influential French politicians.
A fellow classmate of Nguyen Sinh Sac at the Imperial Academy, Phan Chu Trinh took up the cause of reform, and was eventually exiled to France, where he became a leading figure in the Vietnamese community. During his stay in Paris, Ho Chi Minh collaborated closely with Trinh, but eventually they drifted apart.
At the Villa des Gobelins on this quiet residential street on the right bank of Paris, Ho Chi Minh settled with Phan Chu Trinh and a number of other patriotic Vietnamese émigrés. Here, Ho cultivated his revolutionary rhetoric and made his decision to join the new French Communist Party.
A view of the main conference hall in Tours, France, where the French Socialist Party held its momentous congress in December 1920. Ho Chi Minh is seated at the middle table, fourth from the top on the left.
Under the suspicious eyes of the French police, who followed his every move with careful attention, Ho Chi Minh announced his allegiance to the principles of Lenin’s new Communist International in this speech at the 1920 conference at Tours. To his immediate left is his patron Paul Vaillant-Couturier.
A view of Ho Chi Minh’s apartment on the Impasse Compoint in a working-class district in northern Paris. Evicted from the Villa des Gobelins because of his radical ideas, Ho rented a small flat here in the summer of 1921. His one-room apartment was on the second floor, above a small shop where he supported himself as a photo retoucher and painter of curios.
A cartoon by Ho Chi Minh which appeared in the journal Le Paria. In the illustration, the European declares: “Hurry up, Incognito! Show your loyalty, in the name of God.” Ho served as editor, graphic artist, and chief distributor for the magazine, which closed its doors after his departure for Moscow in the summer of 1923.
During his years in Paris, Ho Chi Minh was followed closely by agents of the Sûreté, who frequently took surreptitious photographs of him to try to ascertain his true identity. Here he is photographed near the fashionable Place de la Concorde. The photographer, a fellow Vietnamese living in France, was secretly serving as an agent for the French police.
Ho Chi Minh shortly after his arrival in the Soviet Union in 1923. This photograph, which clearly displays the unusual shape of his left ear, belies his later claim to an acquaintance that he had never worn a necktie in his entire life.
On his arrival in Moscow in the summer of 1923, Ho gradually emerged as a spokesman for
the oppressed peoples of Asia, and fie was frequently invited to attend ceremonial occasions as the token Asian revolutionary. Here he attends a rally in Red Square. To his immediate right on the Kremlin Wall is the old Bolshevik and Stalin intimate, Klementi Voroshilov. Next to Voroshilov is Evgeny Zinoviev, then serving as director of the Communist International.
In this building, the Comintern headquarters in downtown Moscow, Ho Chi Minh honed his revolutionary credentials during his stay in the Soviet Union from 1923 to the end of 1924. Ho worked at the Far Eastern Bureau, while attending classes in the Stalin School.
In the summer of 1924, Ho Chi Minh was selected as a delegate to the Fifth Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow in July. Here he is seated in the front row, on the far left, with a number of other delegates and their families.
In December 1924, Ho Chi Minh left Moscow for south China, where he set up the first avowedly Marxist organization to promote revolution in Indochina. The origins of this picture are unknown, but Ho was later criticized by colleagues for allowing photographs of his comrades to fall into the hands of French agents in China.
Ho Chi Minh with students and faculty members at the Institute of Peasant Work in Canton. It is from this photograph, taken sometime early in 1925, that French security agents discovered the real identity of “Comrade Ly Thuy,” then serving as an interpreter at Comintern headquarters in the city.
One of the brightest young stars in the Vietnamese revolutionary movement was Tran Phu, who joined the League in the late 1920s, and was then sent to Moscow to study at the Stalin School. In 1931, he died in a French prison.
One of the first female members of the Indochinese Communist Party, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai came to the attention of Ho Chi Minh while serving as his assistant in Hong Kong in 1930. Plans for their marriage were apparently underway when she was arrested by the British police. She later married one of Ho’s colleagues and was executed by the French in 1941.
In early June 1931, Hong Kong newspapers reported the arrest by British police of a man suspected of being the dangerous Vietnamese agitator Nguyen Ai Quoc. The suspect, who had been apprehended in an apartment on Kowloon peninsula, was described as the “supreme leader” of the Annamite revolutionary movement.
After his release from a Hong Kong prison in late December 1932, Ho made his way by a circuitous route back to Moscow, where he finally arrived in the late spring of 1934. This photograph, which was apparently taken in the Soviet Union, suggests that his prison experience must have been an arduous one.
In August 1945, Ho Chi Minh sent a letter of farewell to Charles Fenn in south China, expressing his belief that relations between their two countries would now undergo some difficult times. But he expressed his hopes that they might meet again in the future, hopes that were not to be realized.
In this building, located in the heart of the Viet Bac, leaders of the Vietminh Front held their fateful meeting, known as the Tan Trao Conference, to launch the August Revolution to restore Vietnamese independence from Japanese occupation and French colonial rule.
On August 19th, 1945, crowds began to gather in front of the Viceroy’s Palace, in downtown Hanoi, to demonstrate their commitment to the creation of a free and independent Vietnam. Within two weeks, Ho Chi Minh would begin to use the palace as his administration building. Today it serves as a government guesthouse.
In late August, units of Vo Nguyen Giap’s People’s Liberation Army arrived in Hanoi to consolidate Vietminh power in north Vietnam. Shown here is a women’s detachment, carrying weapons and bearing the flag of the new independent republic of Vietnam. Later, such units would become known as the “long-haired army.”
On August 26, 1945, a Vietnamese delegation led by Vo Nguyen Giap visited the newly arrived U.S. OSS Mission in Hanoi. Here, Giap and Archimedes L. Patti salute Old Glory while a band plays the National Anthem. Other Americans in the picture were Robert Knapp and Ray Grelecki.
On his secret return to Hanoi in mid-August 1945, Ho Chi Minh settled in a typical three-story Chinese-style house in the old commercial district in the northern sector of the city. Here he wrote the Declaration of Independence for a new independent Vietnamese republic.
Built by the French at the beginning of the twentieth century, the baroque Municipal Theater played a crucial role in the Vietnamese revolution. Here Vietminh activists called on the populace to rise up against the French in mid-August 1945. Residents of Hanoi pictured here are preparing to march to Ba Dinh Square to hear President Ho Chi Minh declare national independence.
On September 2, 1945, on a hastily elected pavilion in a park in the northwestern sector of Hanoi, President Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh is standing fourth from the right behind the microphone.
Shortly after declaring Vietnamese national independence, Ho Chi Minh posed with members of his new government on the steps of the Municipal Theater. In the center of the photograph, Ho is clad in his now characteristic Sun Yat-Sen suit. Later the building would serve as the Vietnamese parliament.
President Ho Chi Minh and his chief advisers, taken sometime in the fall of 1945. In the foreground, standing left to right, are Pham Van Dong, Tran Huy Lieu, and Vo Nguyen Giap. In the background is the enigmatic Truong Chinh.
A view of President Ho Chi Minh at work on administrative matters in his office in the Northern Palace. In a playful mood, Ho would sometimes launch messages to subordinates by folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them from his window down into the courtyard.
Ho Chi Minh prior to his departure to take part in the delicate negotiations with the French government at Fontainebleau in the summer of 1946. The intensity of his demeanor suggests the seriousness of the purpose.
En route to France to attend the Franco-Vietnamese conference at Fontainebleau, Ho Chi Minh remained briefly at the French resort of Biarritz to await the results of French national elections and the formation of a new government in Paris. The men with Ho Chi Minh strolling on the beach are members of his entourage.
In early June 1946, the French representative Jean Sainteny escorted Ho Chi Minh from Biarritz to Paris to attend the peace conference at Fontainebleau. Here Ho and Sainteny await the arrival of their plane at the airport in Paris. Sainteny, in his memoirs, noted that Ho Chi Minh appeared exceptionally nervous on the occasion.
During the days leading up to the opening of the Fontainebleau conference in the summer of 1946, President Ho Chi Minh was feted by French officials in the capital of Paris. Here he receives a wary welcome from the new French prime minister Georges Bidault, whose new government was about to adopt a tough stand in the negotiations.
During the summer and fall of 1945, a widespread famine caused the deaths of over a million Vietnamese living in the northern and central provinces. This letter from Ho Chi Minh to President Truman contained an appeal for U.S. assistance. There was no reply from Washington; officials at the State Department did not forward letters from Ho to the White House.
After the creation of the Provisional Republic of Vietnam in early September 1945, Ho Chi Minh sent several letters to President Harry Truman seeking U.S. support for his new government. Some, as in the case here, praised the United States for its humanitarian ideals.
Vietminh troops passed under the Long Bien bridge in mid-December 1946 to cross the Red River to flee from attacking French forces. A generation later, the bridge would be heavily bombed by U.S. B-52s during the Vietnam War.
In the fall of 1950, Vietminh forces confronted French units near the town of Dong Khe on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier. Ho Chi Minh, assisted by Chinese advisers, observed the battle from a command post in the mountains above the town.
After the outbreak of war in December 1946, Vietminh leaders retreated to the Viet Bac to carry on their struggle against the French. During the eight-year conflict, Ho Chi Minh changed his residence on at least twenty different occasions. Here he has taken temporary refuge in a ca
ve.
Ho Chi Minh Page 43
