Liveblogging the Cold War: September 23, 1945: Vietnam
In July 1945 at Potsdam, Germany, the Allied leaders made the decision to divide Indochina in half at the 16th parallel to allow Chiang Kai-shek to receive the Japanese surrender in the North, while Lord Louis Mountbatten to receive the surrender in the South. The Allies agreed that France was the rightful owner of French Indochina, but... a British-Indian force was installed in order to help the French in re-establishing control....
Major-General Douglas Gracey was appointed to head the Commission.... Douglas MacArthur caused an uproar at the Southeast Asia Command by forbidding reoccupation until he had personally received the Japanese surrender in Tokyo.... The chief beneficiaries in Indochina were the Communists.... The Viet Minh, the nationalist party founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941... rushed to seize the seats of government, by killing or intimidating their rivals....
Upon Gracey's arrival on September 13, he immediately realized the seriousness of the situation. Anarchy, rioting, and murder were widespread, Saigon's administrative services had collapsed, and a loosely-controlled Communist-led revolutionary group had seized power. In addition, since the Japanese were still fully armed, the Allies feared that they would be capable of undermining the Allied position. Furthermore, Gracey had poor communications with his higher headquarters in Burma because his American signal detachment was abruptly withdrawn by the U.S. government.... Gracey wrote that unless something were done quickly, the state of anarchy would worsen. This situation was worsened by the Viet Minh's lack of strong control over some of their allied groups. Because of this, the French were able to persuade Gracey (in a move which exceeded the authority of his orders from Mountbatten) to rearm local colonial infantry regiments who were being held as prisoners of war....
Gracey saw this as the quickest way to allow the French to reassert their authority in Indochina while letting him get on with the job of disarming and repatriating the Japanese.... Gracey gradually eased the Viet Minh grip on Saigon, replacing their guards in vital points with his own troops. These vital points were then turned over to French troops.... By September 23, most of Saigon was back in French hands,with less than half a dozen vital positions in those of the Viet Minh. The French subsequently regained total control of Saigon. On that day, former French prisoners of war who had been reinstated into the army together with troops from the 5th RIC ejected the Viet Minh in a coup in which two French soldiers were killed...
