man's burden' was largely a smokescreen to cover an especially vicious brand of imperialism. France exploited Vietnam ruthlessly" (5). Under French rule, Vietnamese were second-class citizens. Hammer said "most Vietnamese withdrew entirely from political life, silently if unmistakably indicating their passive resistance to foreign rule. Some turned to violence and revolution" (74). In the late 1920s nationalist groups organized and demonstrated against the French. In 1930, Ho Chi Minh, who was trained as a communist in Moscow, formed the Vietnamese Communist Party in Hong Kong. In 1931 the French 'White Terror' suppressed both movements. According to De Villers and Lacouture, by refusing . . . to allow any nationalist activity within the colonial framework, the . . . French . . . prevented the Vietnamese from establishing open and legal organizations and . . . thereby helped embed revolutionary Communism firmly within the heart of Vietnamese nationalism" (13).
In 1940 Japan turned Vietnam into a military staging area for its 1941 invasions of Malaya and Burma. The Japanese stood aside while the Vichy French authorities in Vietnam put down nationalist uprisings. From bases in southern China, Ho organized the Vietminh (League for the Independence of Vietnam) which with Nationalist Chinese and American (OSS) military supplies conducted partisan warfare against the Japanese and rescued downed American fliers. On March 9, 1945, the Japanese dissolved the French colonial government, interned many French military and civil officials and informed startled Vietnamese that Vietnam was now an independent member of Japan's East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Bao Dai, the heir of the Nguyen dynasty, was placed on the throne as Vietnamese Emperor and a collaborationist government under non-communist scholar Tran Trong Kim was set up in the old imperial capital, Hue. The Japanese united the three French subdivisions of Vietnam, Cochin China (South Vi...