Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 6, 1946
From: Cau Thai via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2024 12:07 PM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
I would like to add several points to this interesting discussion:
1. After Zone 9 was created in late 1945, Zone 9 commander Võ Văn Đức worked with Tăng Thiên Kim, leader of the Viet-Khmer military unit (Cao Miên Việt kiều cứu quốc quân), giving his unit some money and ammunitions.
2. In early 1946, Kim delivered a letter from Đức to Cao Triều Phát, Cao Đài leader, and reached an agreement between Việt Minh and Cao Đài. Kim also tried to resolve some local conflicts between the Vietnamese and Khmer. A Vietnamese-Khmer coalition was formed.
3. In late 1946, Kim' s unit had a new name, "trung đội Phạm Văn Đồng", and Kim was moved to a new assignment.
Cheers,
Calvin Thai
Independent
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Monday, April 15, 2024 12:12 AM
To: mchale@gwu.edu
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
Thank you very much, dear Shawn.
I have to confess that I don't know anything about the anti-Khmer activities in 1945 and 1946. My father never told me anything on the subject.
It's true that in these years, the Viet Minh had to reorganise their troops. Zone 9 was created in 1945 and my father was its first military commander.
I wrote in my books :
“In the South, on 7th September 1945, two envoys from the Central Committee in Hà Nội reunited the two Xứ Ủy Nam Kỳ (Southern Territorial Committee) who had been competing with each other since 1941, one under the name of Giải Phóng (Liberation) by the name of its newspaper, or Việt Minh cũ (Old Việt Minh) and the other, that of Trần Văn Giàu under the name of Tiền Phong (Avant-garde, Vanguard) also by the name of his newspaper, or Việt Minh mới (New Việt Minh). The first, always keeping the slogan “fighting the Japanese and French fascistsˮ criticized the second for being pro-French. A new Xứ Ủy Nam Bộ (Southern Territorial Committee) was set up with Tôn Đức Thắng as president, replaced 10 days later by Lê Duẩn, who held power until 1956. His right-hand man Phạm Hùng held the security. All armed forces and movements thanh niên (youth movement) were then integrated into the Việt Minh. >From 1947, a Ủy Ban Kháng Chiến Hành Chánh Nam Bộ (Committee of Resistance and Administration of the South) managed business in the South and reported to the central government in Hà Nội. "
“ The military training Nguyễn Ngọc Bích received at École Polytechnique helped him serve the resistance forces, as he showed them how to disassemble and use still little-known weapons taken from the French.
Musician Nguyễn Vĩnh Bảo (1918-2021) recorded in his Hồi Ký (Memoirs):
“That time the French troops raided and raided the revolution fiercely. A 75 cannon was seriously damaged, the French soldiers removed the key internal part of the gun (culasse-cylinder head) and leisurely left the cannon disabled at the scene. Unexpectedly, with Nguyễn Ngọc Bích's technical talent, the 75 cannon was recovered and the soldiers sought to bring it to the Cần Thơ river and fire it at the French troops. The French panicked and sent someone to investigate and were determined to go out and capture any Viet Minh figure who had recovered the cannon.”
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
Author of
- Le Temps des Ancêtres (in French) prefaced by historian Pierre Brocheux
- Viet Nam- Political History of the two wars- Independence war (1858-1954) and Ideological war (1945-1975) prefaced in the French version by historian Pierre Brocheux and in the English one by professor Janet Hoskins
- Cuộc Hành trình xuyên thế kỷ XX của một gia đình Việt Nam prefaced by Trầm Hương, author of a book on the Nguyễn Ngọc family "Đêm trắng của Đức Giáo Tông", to be published soon.
Mes articles (plus de 29.000 vues)
https://independent.academia.edu/ChauNGUYENNGOC2
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 4:14 PM
To: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>; Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
It's your family, I assume you know relevant details. I'm just giving my informed guess -- and it is definitely a guess -- about the situation in 1946, based on my extensive research into the years from 1945 to 1947. In my opinion, and here speaking generally, we can find lots of competing stories on the web and in secondary sources about events in these years, but I'm leery about many of them unless they are rooted in documents from the time.
You wrote "zone 9 covered the following cities : Cần Thơ, Sóc Trăng, Rạch Giá, Hà Tiên, Bạc Liêu, Long Xuyên, Châu Đốc, Vĩnh Long and Trà Vinh). " You wrote that your father served in zone 9. This zone goes all the way to the Cambodian border and includes areas of noticeable Khmer concentrations like Sóc Trăng, Trà Vinh, and so on. I am not trying to imply in the least that your father was involved in anti-Khmer activities -- but the reality is that in 1946, there was upheaval in the Resistance, which may have sidelined the "innocent." I will add to the above that the secondary sources in Vietnamese and French on what happened in 1946, like for much of the war, are not always reliable and report all sorts of competing rumors and stories. It's just hard to untangle the truth about this year.
Shawn McHale
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 6:00 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
Thank you for your reply.
The 9th region seems to be far from the Cambodian border.
My father declined the offer to join the Communist Party the same day (14/07/1946) lawyer Gaston Phạm Ngọc Thuần accepted it ( G. PNThuần became President of the Resistance and Administrative Committee of South Viet Nam, and far after, the VNDCCH Ambassador in East Germany). Both were very close friends and were sharing the same roof in the resistance. They spent the entire night of 14/07/1946 to discuss on their respective decisions. In 1979, Gaston Phạm Ngọc Thuan was able to return his Party member card because of his age and his sickness and came to France for treatment. Feeling liberated, he wanted to tell me what he and my father had discussed all the night in 1946 after their respective responses to the Party. My father was summoned to go to Ha Noi (The Lost Crusade – America in Vietnam , Chester L. Cooper ) and was arrested in the house where he was waiting for the arrival of the guide in charge of his journey.
I don't know if he was betrayed or not by his colleagues as written in the China Quarterly of 1962, since he never said it, he had no proof.
It was on 12 July 1946 that the Viet Minh attacked the Quốc Gia of the Coalition Government with the support of the French army ( Léon Pignon in l’homme-clé de la solution Bao Dai et de l’implication des États-Unis dans la guerre d’Indochine).
That's why I think that to refuse to join the Party was dangerous in 1946.
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
Mes articles (plus de 29.000 vues)
From: Shawn McHale via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 3:49 PM
To: Chau NGUYEN NGOC <yakiribocou@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Fwd: Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
You raise interesting questions. I have tried to tackle the issue of what was happening in 1946 in the Monong delta my 2021 book, relying heavily on documents from the Service Historique de la Défense as well as from the Archives nationales branch in Aix As background to my comments, I will note that 1) the French military drives into the Mekong delta in late 1945 and into the Spring of 1946, taking over many of the main cities of the delta. 2) in the process, they recruited volunteers to act as militia troops of various kinds 3) many of these recruited militia troops are Khmer, with some Vietnamese as well 4) this is the period when extensive Khmer-Vietnamese violence breaks out across the delta 4) Viet Minh/ Resistance units are often broken apart into smaller bands 5) while the French take the major cities, they do not have control of the countryside 6) some Resistance/ Viet Minh units engage in (retaliatory?) violence against Khmers.
Given this background, I would not assume that Nguyen Ngoc Bich was not mentioned because he declined to join the Communist Party. At this early date, there were few communists in the Viet Minh/ Resistance in the Mekong delta. The Resistance, at this early date, had to rely on non-communists. The purges of non-communists seem to begin in 1947, which I also write about. A possible exception is related to those persons in positions of authority who engaged in violence against the Khmer. These individuals seem to have been pushed out precisely because the Resistance did not want to antagonize the Khmer.
All that being said, as much as I tried to make sense of what happened in 1946, the available documents (intercepted or French or Vietnamese) are not as abundant as for later years.
Shawn McHale
George Washington University
Washington, DC USA
mchale@gwu.edu
From: Chau NGUYEN NGOC via Vsg <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2024 2:18 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Subject: [Vsg] Fwd: Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
Ceasefire negotiation after the preliminary agreement of March 06, 1946
In the coded telegram about the ceasefire negotiations, the name "Bích" is mentioned, which means Nguyễn Ngọc Bích, my father. He was graduated from the French École Polytechnique (X31), a Civil Engineer (Ponts 33), the Deputy Commander of Zone 9 Viet Minh (South Viet Nam was divided into 3 zones, 7, 8 and 9 and zone 9 covered the following cities : Cần Thơ, Sóc Trăng, Rạch Giá, Hà Tiên, Bạc Liêu, Long Xuyên, Châu Đốc, Vĩnh Long and Trà Vinh) and the Military commander of this Zone. He was famous for having blown up several bridges (Cái Răng (Cần Thơ) bridge, Nhu Gia bridge, etc...) in front of the advancing army of General Leclerc commanded by generals Nyo and Valluy. A street in Cái Răng is named after him.
The documents in vietnamese from the Viet Minh side that I have on the Zone 9 on this period (1945-46) didn’t mention the name of Nguyễn Ngọc Bích. May be because he declined the invitation to join the Communist Party. If you are able to find something on the subject, please tell me.
Thank you,
Nguyễn Ngọc Châu
Mes articles (plus de 29.000 vues)
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