The Nobility of Our Hearts by Louis Tuệ Hovanky Kim Thinh Hovanky

Author:Louis Tuệ Hovanky, Kim Thinh Hovanky [Louis Tuệ Hovanky, Kim Thinh Hovanky]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781732422421
Google: MB_UuQEACAAJ
Publisher: Hovanky Publications, LLC
Published: 2018-11-06T01:09:12+00:00

Cẩm-Hồng and Kỳ-Trân walking along Catina Street (Tự-Do) in Saigon, circa 1950

Mr. Hồ văn Kỳ-Trân, mid-1950, professor at School of Education (École Normale), Saigon

A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

IN ORDER TO MORE FULLY UNDERSTAND the political situation in which Kỳ-Trân and Cẩm-Hồng’s family found themselves, a historical overview might be useful—some of which will already be familiar. Depending on the reader’s own environment and upbringing, he or she may have never undergone such turmoil in their home and native land. Needless to say, this is a state of affairs for which one must be extremely grateful. Such a peaceful and smooth existence was not to be the fate of the heroes in this story.

In October 1945, French troops under the World War II general Jacques-Philippe Leclerc arrived in South Vietnam to restore French rule. The Việt Minh began a guerilla campaign to harass the French, even as the French succeeded in expelling the Việt Minh from Saigon.

In 1949, the French reinstalled King Bảo Đại as Vietnam’s chief of state and organized the Vietnamese National Army. In the years leading up to Bảo Đại’s reappointment, Vietnam endured several short-lived Vietnamese prime ministers—namely, Lê Văn Hoạch, Trần Văn Hửu, and Nguyển Văn Tam—all of whom ran the country while it was being torn apart by the war between the Việt Minh guerillas and the French troops.

In 1954, after the defeat of the French base at Điện Biên Phủ by the Việt Minh, the Geneva Agreement divided Vietnam in half. The land situated north of the seventeenth parallel belonged to the totalitarian regime of the Việt Minh, and they took as their allies the Soviet Union, Red China, and several Eastern European countries, all under the banner of international communism. The land located south of the seventeenth parallel adopted a democratic regime, taking as their allies France, the United States, and other Western democracies.

After the Geneva Agreement, King Bảo Đại chose Ngô đình Diệm to be his prime minister of the new state South Vietnam. On June 25, 1954, Mr. Diệm arrived in Saigon from the United States and accepted the transfer of the French governor’s palace, which he named the “Independence Palace.” Right from the outset Mr. Diệm ran into enormous difficulties, including the resettling of one million North Vietnamese refugees. How to help them find new homes without conflicting with local land rights and customs?

Only about one hundred thousand Việt Minh southerners chose to move to the North, whereas the number of refugees going to the South was ten times that size. Over a half a million Northern refugees arrived by international ships, mostly American; another quarter million came by plane, and several hundred thousand more by their own means, by land or by sea.

Tensions, however, were not just limited to those between the two halves of the formerly unified country. In the South, other disagreements were unfolding between officers in the army. Some sided with Mr. Diệm, while others sided with General Nguyễn Văn Hinh, a former French aviator colonel and naturalized French

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