Embedded Files
Hue-Tam Ho Tai hhtai at fas.harvard.edu
Thu May 3 12:14:46 PDT 2007
Dear all:
On behalf of Professor Sean Wilentz of Princeton, I'd like information
about Vietnamese exiles in Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s. Prof.
Wilentz has come across mentions of Nguyễn Thái Bình and Tran van Tung
in the papers of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as well as of Phan Quang Dan,
and would like to know more about them but also about Vietnamese exiles
in that period more generally. Many thanks.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
Judith Henchy judithh at u.washington.edu
Thu May 3 12:30:47 PDT 2007
Hue Tam,
Is this the same Nguyễn Thái Bình who was shot at Tân Sơn Nhất after the
hijacking? We have some information here about him, since he was a UW
student, including the student newspaper that was started, I believe after
his death (published in LA), and the archive of the Memorial Committee based
in Seattle.
Judith
Stephen Denney sdenney at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu May 3 12:36:19 PDT 2007
The Indochina Archive of UC Berkeley (closed for now) has biographical
files, which might include materials on Nguyen Thai Binh. These files were
photocopied in 1997 and Texas Tech's Vietnam Center has the photocopied
biographical files.
- Steve Denney
Stephen Denney sdenney at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Thu May 3 17:11:00 PDT 2007
Was the newspaper Thai Binh, published by the Association of Vietnamese
Patriots in the U.S.?
- Steve Denney
Hue-Tam Ho Tai hhtai at fas.harvard.edu
Thu May 3 17:15:22 PDT 2007
Judith and Steve:
I don't know anything about Nguyen Thai Binh whose name shows up in the
papers of Schlesinger. It may well be he, so any information regarding
him would be welcome.
Hue-Tam
Judith Henchy judithh at u.washington.edu
Thu May 3 17:53:19 PDT 2007
Steve,
This is the paper that was published after Nguyen Thai Binh's death. Thanks
to Chung for the details of his life. It does look as if the Paris
connection is a different person:
Thái bình.
by Liên Hiệp Việt Kiêu tại Mỹ.
Language: Vietnamese Type: Serial Publication : Periodical
Publisher: Fullerton, Calif. Liên Hiệp Việt Kiêu tại Mỹ.
ISSN: 0364-8559 | OCLC: 2208559 |
We just microfilmed it a couple of years ago, but haven't yet cataloged the
film copy.
Judith
Chung Nguyen Chung.Nguyen at umb.edu
Thu May 3 17:17:27 PDT 2007
I think the Nguyen Thai Binh who is now lionized in Vietnam because of his sacrifice for the
antiwar cause in the 1972 could not be the one referred to here. He couldn't be in exile in
Paris in the 1950s or early 1960s for he was born in 1948 and graduated from highschool in
Saigon in 1968.
Coming to the US the Leadership scholarship for undergraduate study in 1968, Nguyen Thai
Binh hijacked the American 747 on July 2, 1972 and ordered it to fly to Hanoi as a protest
against the war. The plane flew to Saigon instead, and he was shot dead by an American on
the plane. He was 24 years old.
Chung Nguyen Chung.Nguyen at umb.edu
Fri May 4 05:43:56 PDT 2007
et me correct that NTB graduated in highschool in 1967, instead of 1968. There were other
Vietnamese at the time in Paris who were also actively involved in the antiwar movement -
Nguyen Ngoc Giao, Tran Hai Hac, Ha Duong Tuong, Dang Tien, Huynh Trung Dong, etc.- later
mostly members of "Hoi Viet Kieu Yeu Nuoc Tai Phap" (Association of VNese Patriots in
France). Lot of the names could be gleaned from the list of signers to the Letter from the
Heart (Buc Tam Thu) that NN Giao spearheaded in Dec 1989.
Nhu Miller trantnhu at gmail.com
Fri May 4 03:40:40 PDT 2007
Back to Vietnamese exiles in Paris:
Hoang Xuan Han and his brother Hoang Xuan Man.
Nguyen Tien Lang
Nguyen Ton Hoan
Tran Van Khe
Vo Lang
Pham Bich
Pham Ngoan
Pham Hoan
and many other members of Pham Quynh's family
Ton That Thien
Nguyen Cam, the artist -- who at the age of 16 - began bringing
his 7 siblings to France.
When I was growing up in France in the 1950s, most Vietnamese were very pro
Ha noi except for Nguyen Ton Hoan, of course. But there was little indication that
any would return to live in Ha noi. It was very much wait and see. And most of
the above mentioned remained in France for the rest of their lives, except Tran Van
Khe who now lives in Saigon.
T.T.Nhu
P.S. I am amazed at the longevity of Nguyen Thai Binh's memory. There are
streets and schools named after him in many cities. I visited his parents
shortly after his death in 1972 and they told me that the NLF had assured them that he would
be memorialized as a hero. At the time, I thought they were hallucinating.
But apparently, they were not.
Mike High mike.high at earthlink.net
Fri May 4 06:54:24 PDT 2007
> Hoang Van Chi, the author of ³From Colonialism to Communism² was an exile in
> Paris in the early 60s. (According to the book jacked, he had moved south in
> 1955, after seeing some of the terrors of the Land Reform campaign, but
> eventually found the Saigon regime too restrictive, and left Viet Nam
> altogether.)
pascal bourdeaux pascalbourdeaux at yahoo.fr
Fri May 4 11:40:29 PDT 2007
Don't forget professor Trinh Van Thao who arrived in Paris after anti-Diem student movements
in 1955
and maybe Ngo Van??
P.B.
phuxuan700 at gmail.com phuxuan700 at gmail.com
Fri May 4 18:33:16 PDT 2007
People like Dang Thuy Tram, Nguyen Thai Binh, etc. were very fortunate that
they died young.
If they had lived to see what their beloved country turns out today, to find
out how their dreams were betrayed, their hearts would have been broken into
thousands of pieces!
Mai Chi Tho, Le Duc Tho's younger brother, one of the most powerful person
in the South in the 1980's, wrote in his memoire, "In the old days [while
part of the country was under the French or the American control],
prostitutes were ashamed of their work; nowadays, they are proud of being
associated with foreigners ... Moral values have gone in the opposite
direction..."
Was the price for being heroes worth the cost ?
Calvin Thai
Edward Miller Edward.G.Miller at Dartmouth.EDU
Fri May 4 14:45:32 PDT 2007
To return to one of the three exiles that Hue-Tam mentioned originally:
Phan Quang Dda'n (a.k.a “Phan Huy Dda'n”, his birth name) was born in Vinh
in 1918 to a prominent family; two of his brothers were lawyers and two were
merchants. In the aftermath of the August Revolution, Dan was linked both
to the VNQDD and the Dai Viet, and he fled to China in 1946 where he was
apparently sheltered by the KMT. He met up with Bao Dai in Hong Kong in the
late 1940s when the latter was being courted both by the French and by
would-be Vietnamese Third Forcers. According to one source, Dan was
introduced to Bao Dai by the VNQDD leader Nguyen Hai Than. Dan may even
have accompanied Bao Dai to Europe in 1948. As the Bao Dai solution took
shape, Dan seemed likely to get a high ranking position in the State of
Vietnam; however, in 1950 he broke with Bao Dai and founded an oposition
group known as the "Cong Hoa Viet Nam" party in Paris. This group was
anti-French, anti-Bao Dai and anti-Viet Minh. According to several sources,
Dan travelled extensively between France, the US, Thailand and Indochina
during the early 1950s; he also studied public health at Harvard for a time.
(Perhaps he met Schlesinger there?) According to sources I found in Aix,
the French linked him to Dinh Xuan Quang, a former Secretary of State, so he
seems to have maintained some ties to Bao Dai even while he was publically
critcal of the ex-emperor. The French also placed him in Bangkok in 1952,
where he was allegedly pursuing an American-funded Third Force scheme. The
French eventually came to the conclusion that Dan’s outfit was part of a
“Front Démocratique anti-communiste du Sud-Est Asiatique”, financed by the
Americans. But even if this was the case, as the Front seems to have been
moribund by late 1953.
Dan was still living outside of Vietnam at the time of the Geneva Accords in
1954. On May 15, 1955, the NYT published a letter to the editor by Dan in
which he called for the creation of National Assembly in South Vietnam. He
also called for Bao Dai to step down, but refrained from any overtly pro- or
anti-Diem statements. The letter was dated Manila, May 10.
Dan returned to South Vietnam a few months later. In an interview in the Cao
Dai paper Thoi Bao (published 13 Sept 1955), Dan reported that he had been
in the US for much of 1953, and then was travelling in Europe and the near
east until his return to Vietnam in Sept 1955. (See also his interview in
the Cao Dai journal Quoc Gia, published on 12 Sep 1955.)
After 1955, Dan became increasingly critical of the Diem government. The
regime apparently did not initially consider Dan to be much of a
threat--probably because he had no political organization behind him.
However, he joined with other non-communist oppositionists in early 1956 in
boycotting the National Assembly elections that Diem had organized, and he
continued to be critical of the regime thereafter. One source indicates he
was involved with the newspaper Thoi Luan, which was one of the main
oppositionist publications until it was shut down by the government in the
late 1950s.
Dan became South Vietnam's most famous anti-communist dissident during the
later years of the Diem government. In the 1959 RVN National Assembly
elections elections, Dan decided to run as a candidate from a district in
Saigon. He won an overwhelming victory over the government-backed
candidate. However, Diem proceded to void the election results on a
trumped-up technicality and Dan was barred from taking his seat.
Interestingly, despite the attention that this case received in the
international media, Dan was not a signatory to the Caravelle manifesto when
it was signed in April 1960--apparently his brand of dissidence was not
something that the (rather conservative) signers of that document wanted to
associate themselves with.
Dan was detained by RVN security forces in November 1960, on suspicion of
involvement with the failed ARVN paratrooper coup against the Diem
government. He was subsequently sent to Con Dao, and he was still there
when the Diem government fell in 1963.
Dan published an as-told-to English-language memoir in the early 1990s,
entitled "The Dawn of Free Vietnam: A Biographical Sketch of Doctor Phan
Quang Dan."
Ed Miller
Dartmouth College
Ginger R. Davis ginger.davis at temple.edu
Sat May 5 05:01:40 PDT 2007
I have letters from a Nguyen Thai Binh in Paris to Walt Rostow
in October 1961. I copied them from the Kennedy Library in
Boston. Unfortunately they are in storage in the US, so I
can't access them readily nor give you the citation. I am
certain, given the great archival staff at JFK, that they
would be happy to help you locate the materials.
What I remember from the letters: This NTB stated that he was
part of an peace organization in France. I also recall he
quoted from several French newspapers regarding the progress
of the American war. If I am not mistaken, attached to his
letters was his biography and some materials from his
organization. There were at least three separate letters,
maybe more.
I happen to have the following notes from one letter with me,
which may help to determine if this is the right person:
"US foreign policy has supported a familial dictatorship whose
tyrannical methods have incurred the hatred and compounded the
misery of the Vietnamese people.
The reluctance of the Vietnamese people to fight for “freedom”
as President Kennedy observed, is understandable when one
considers the choice they are facing: to succumb to Communist
aggression, or, to fight a despot whose tyranny has made them
miserable for seven long years. No amount of US military aid
is going to compensate for the evils that have been committed
in the name of democracy by the Diem regime. It is never too
late to fight for democracy, but it is certainly far too late
to turn the tide of well deserved hatred away from the corrupt
Diem. The Vietnamese people will never give their support to
him."
Hope this helps-
Ginger
Hue-Tam Ho Tai hhtai at fas.harvard.edu
Sat May 5 05:55:01 PDT 2007
Many thanks. This is indeed very helpful. I will forward this to Prof.
Wilentz.
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
David Marr dgm405 at coombs.anu.edu.au
Mon May 7 19:55:52 PDT 2007
I don't know how far Prof.Wilentz wants to go
into the topic, but there were different kinds of
Vietnamese `exiles' in France in the 1950s and
1960s. Some could not or would not go back to
the south, some the north, and some were
disgusted with both. Some were useful to Saigon,
some to Hanoi, some did their own thing. In the
third category I'd put Hoàng Xuân Hãn and Trần Văn Khê.
Others? I suspect history will be kinder to them.
David Marr
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