30 Quoted in Ronald H. Spector, In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia (New York: Random House, 2007), 114.

31 Maclear, Ten Thousand Day War, 11.

32 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 48889.

33 Ibid., 491, 492.

34 Bui Diem, In the Jaws of History, 39; Patti, Why Viet Nam?, 284; Phuong and Mazingarbe, Ao Dai, 5455.

35 Duong Van Mai Elliott, The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 131.

36 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 32728; Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China, 19451954 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 56.

37 David G. Marr, "Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 19451947," in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 88.

38 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 329; Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 19401955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 133.

39 David W. P. Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 19301975 (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), chap. 4; Hammer, Struggle for Indochina, 106; Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 7174.

40 Norman Sherry, The Life of Graham Greene, vol. 2: 19391955 (New York: Viking, 1995), 365.

41 Quoted in Andrew Forbes, "Graham Greene's Saigon Revisited," CPAmedia.com, www.cpamedia.com/articles/20051020_01/ (last accessed on July 20, 2010).

42 Buttinger, Dragon Embattled, 218; Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 19461966 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 6; Huynh Van Thieng interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection, openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam (last accessed on November 24, 2010).

43 Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 19451946 (New York: St. Martin's, 1987), 40.

44 M. E. Dening to FO, September 10, 1945, WO203, TNA; M. E. Dening to FO, September 25, 1945, FO 371/46308, TNA. British thinking in this period is examined in Mark Atwood Lawrence, "Forging the Great Combination: Britain and the Indochina Problem, 19451950," in Lawrence and Logevall, eds., First Vietnam War, 11117; and in Peter Neville, Britain in Vietnam: Prelude to Disaster, 19451946 (London: Routledge, 2007).

45 John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour Government, 194546 (London: Verso, 1993), 17778; John Springhall, "Kicking Out the Viet Minh: How Britain Allowed France to Reoccupy South Indochina, 194546," Journal of Contemporary History 40 (2005), 128. A sympathetic assessment of the thinking of Gracey and his officers is in Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War (New York: St. Martin's, 1985), esp. 16972, 18688.

46 J. F. Cairns, The Eagle and the Lotus: Western Intervention in Vietnam, 18471968 (Melbourne, Australia: Lansdowne Press, 1969), 29. See also the thoughtful examination of Gracey's mission in Neville, Britain in Vietnam.

47 John Keay, Empire's End: A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong (New York: Scribner, 1997), 278; Saigon Control Commission, "Political Report, 13th September, 1945, to 9th October, 1945," Gracey 4/8, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College London, UK.

48 Germaine Krull, "Diary of Saigon, following the Allied occupation in September 1945," WOS Special File, Record Group 59, Lot File 59 D 190, Box 9, NARA.

49 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 541; Springhall, "Kicking Out the Viet Minh," 122.

50 On the importance of this period in terms of what comes later, see Vo Nguyen Giap, Chien Dau trong vong vay (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan [People's Army of Vietnam Publishing House], 1995), 2223; and Vo Nguyen Giap, Memoires 19461954, vol. 1: La resistance encerclee (Fontenay-sous-Bois: Anako, 20034), 27.

51 Harold Isaacs, "Indo-China: A Fight for Freedom," New Republic, February 3, 1947.

52 One Viet Minh sympathizer, interviewed many years later, expressed great affection for Dewey. See Huynh Van Thieng interview.

53 George Wickes, "Saigon 1945," unpublished ms. in author's possession, p. 6; Bluechel interview; Karnow, Vietnam, 151; Rose, Roots of Tragedy, 61.

54 Dixee R. Bartholomew-Feis, The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 28899. For speculation as to what may have occurred to Dewey's body, see Spector, In the Ruins of Empire, 131.

55 NYT, October 1, 1945; Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 149; Saigon Control Commission, "Political Report."

56 Christopher E. Goscha, "Belated Asian Allies: The Technical and Military Contributions of Japanese Deserters (194550)," in Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, eds., A Companion to the Vietnam War (London: Blackwell, 2002), 3764; John T. McAlister, Jr., Viet Nam: The Origins of Revolution (Princeton, N.J.: Center for International Studies, Princeton University, 1969), 212; Lawrence, Assuming the Burden, 150.

57 Wickes, "Saigon 1945," 1112. I'm grateful to Mr. Wickes for sharing this memoir with me.

58 Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London: Longman, 1994), 127; J. Davidson, Indo-China: Signposts in the Storm (Hong Kong: Longman, 1979), 42.

59 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 1.

CHAPTER 5: The Warrior Monk

1 A superb, deeply researched study of the period covered in this chapter and the next is Stein Tnnesson, Vietnam 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

2 D'Argenlieu's devotion to de Gaulle is a theme in his posthumously published account, Chronique d'Indochine 19451947 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1985). A trenchant biographical summary produced in the British Foreign Office can be found in FO 371/46307, TNA.

3 Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 19401955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 122.

4 Bernard Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1964), 72.

5 Philippe Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 a 1952 (Paris: editions du Seuil, 1952), 195; Joseph Buttinger, Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled, vol. 1: From Colonialism to the Vietminh (New York: Praeger, 1967), 233.

6 Francois Guillemot, "Viet Nam 19451946: L'elimination de l'opposition nationaliste et anticolonialiste dans le Nord: a coeur de la fracture vietnamienne," in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoit de Treglode, eds., Le Viet Nam depuis 1945: etats, contestations et constructions du passe (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004); David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 550.

7 Marr, Vietnam 1945, 551; Cecil. B. Currey, Victory at Any Cost: The Genius of Viet Nam's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (Dulles, Va.: Potomac, 2005), 106.

8 David G. Marr, "Creating Defense Capacity in Vietnam, 19451947," in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds., The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 74104; William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 346.

9 Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 347; Peter G. MacDonald, Giap: The Victor in Vietnam (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 69. On the extraordinary efforts made to secure weapons and ammunition in this period, see also Nguyen Thi Dinh interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection, openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam (last accessed on October 15, 2010).

10 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1997), 168; Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict, 19541963 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 3.

11 Jean Sainteny, Histoire d'une paix manquee, Indochine 19451947 (Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1953), 166; Charles Fenn, Ho Chi Minh: A Biographical Introduction (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), 9495; Jean Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam: A Personal Memoir (Chicago: Cowles, 1972), 51ff.

12 Robert Shaplen, The Lost Revolution: The U.S. in Vietnam, 19461966 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 43. Pignon's memoirs, unfinished at the time of his death, were completed and published by a team led by his widow. See Elise Pignon et al., Leon Pignon: Une vie au service des peuples d'Outre-Mer (Paris: Academie des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, 1988). Pignon's role in French Indochina policy is also the subject of Daniel Varga, "La politique francaise en Indochine (194750): Histoire d'une decolonisation manque," these de doctorat, Universite d'Aix-Marseille I, 2004.

13 Frederic Turpin, De Gaulle, les gaullistes et l'Indochine 19401956 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2005), 18390; Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 355.

14 On this point, see Gilbert Bodinier and Philippe Duplay, "Montrer sa force et negocier," in Guy Pedroncini and Philippe Duplay, eds., Leclerc et l'Indochine 19451947 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1992), 18182; and Tnnesson, Vietnam 1946, 161, 351n54.

15 Devillers, Histoire du Viet-Nam, 176; Fall, Two Viet-Nams, 107.

16 Leclerc to Juin and d'Argenlieu, February 14, 1946, Tel. 933, AOM; reprinted in Gilbert Bodinier, ed., 19451946. Le retour de la France en Indochine. Textes et documents (Vincennes: Service historique de l'armee de terre, 1987), 2089; D'Argenlieu to Sainteny, February 20, 1946, F60 C3024, AN; Mark Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), 128. See also Martin Shipway, The Road to War: France and Vietnam, 19441947 (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn, 1996), 16768.