Chapter 5 Southeast Asian Commerical Networks of the DRV ( 1945-51 )

 Chapter 5 

Southeast Asian Commerical Networks of the DRV ( 1945-51 )

The Viet Minh’s ability to regain and expand its hold upon the ICP’s prewar Southeast Asian network, including its new Indochinese sub-section, was crucial to the Viet Minh’s postwar success in supplying the war effort in Vietnam via Thailand. Between 1946 and 1951, overland and maritime routes operating from Thailand channelled stocks of weapons, equipment, explosives and medicines procured in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to Vietnam. Although the aid furnished by the Chinese communists from 1950 would be much greater and in the end decisive in the Viet Minh’s victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, it was access to Viet kieu bases in eastern Thailand and a remarkably vibrant Southeast Asian arms market based in Bangkok that helped the Viet Minh survive until Chinese communist troops opened a northern rearguard. Between 1946 and 1951, not only was the Vietnamese war against the French Indochinese in its geographical reach, it was also much more Southeast Asian than we have thought. As before World War II, at the bottom of these re-emerging peninsular operations were the Vietnamese communities in Thailand.

Taking Hold of the Vietnamese in Thailand – Again

On the eve of the outbreak of full-scale war in Indochina in December 1946, the need to control the Vietnamese in Thailand held an increasingly important place in the Viet Minh’s war preparations. On 30 November 1946, for example, just days after the French had driven Vietnamese defence forces out of Haiphong and Lang Son, the Viet Minh’s official mouthpiece, Cut Cuoc, announced that a DRV government representative was in northeast Thailand on a special visit to Vietnamese communities and leaders living there. During meetings in Udon Thani, this delegate thanked the Vietnamese on behalf of the government for their support and sacrifices. After reminding them of their patriotic responsibilities, he outlined five specific guidelines for them to follow in the light of the rapidly deteriorating situation in Tonkin. He asked that the Viet kieu fully support the DRV by standing ready to obey the government’s orders; that they link together closely and fight resolutely for national independence and unification; that they oppose French attacks in Vietnam; that they hold the French government to implement the September modus vivendi; and finally that they hail the heroic fighting spirit of the nation.

On that same day, General Vo Nguyên Giap informed his officials in Thailand that the situation in Hanoi had become ‘very serious’. The General ordered his representatives to put Viet kieu combatants in northeast Thailand on alert in the event that full-scale war should break out. Giap had already directed his representatives in Bangkok to instruct the Vietnamese in the still Thai-controlled provinces in western Cambodia to ‘naturalise’ themselves immediately as Thai nationals before these territories were retroceded to the French in December. Not only would this juridical status allow them to move out of harm’s way, but it would also give thousands of Vietnamese a legal shield behind which the Viet Minh could build their clandestine operations more effectively. The French understood this. In the November Franco–Thai treaty, the Quai d’Orsay insisted that those ‘Indochinese’ who had acquired ‘Thai’ nationality by virtue of the 1941 Tokyo agreement would have to revert to their pre-1941 nationality. In any case, what mattered most to Viet Minh strategists was that as war looked ever more likely in northern Vietnam in late 1946, the Viet kieu positioned along the entire western Indochinese border would have an important resistance role to play.

This led the Viet Minh to begin reorganizing longstanding immigrant communities in Thailand into two main tracks leading back to Vietnam. From 1946, as we know from Chapter 4, prewar ICP bases among the Viet kieu in upper northeast Thailand were linked by way of Laos to resistance bases in western central Vietnam, in particular to interwar zones IV and V (Lien Khu IV/ V). Englobing Thanh Hoa, Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces and largely free of French ground control, war zone IV was led by three of the ICP’s prewar outer-Indochinese experts: Nguyen Tai (Vice-President of the Peoples’ Committee of Nghe An), Ho Tung Mau (President of interwar zone IV’s Resistance Committee) and General Nguyen Son, among others. A second track skirted along immigrant communities living in lower eastern Thailand, stretching from communities located near the port of Bangkok to coastal relays in Chantaboun, Trat and Ban May Rut. From there, Viet kieu pockets fanned northeastwards to overland posts at Aranyaprathet, Ubon Ratchathani and (until late 1946) Battambang province in Cambodia. These lower routes were under the combined direction of the DRV’s delegation in Bangkok (see Chapter 6), the Nam Bo External Affairs Committee (Ban Ngoai Vu) in Ha Tien, headed by Nguyen Thanh Son; the President of the Southern Resistance Administrative and Executive Committee, Pham Van Bach; and the Commander in Chief of the Southern Army, General Nguyen Binh. If the upper Mekong Viet kieu helped supply interwar zones IV and V, the southern track fed war material to zones VII, VIII and above all IX.

The attraction of Thailand’s Viet Kieu was all the greater given that the original number of 20,000–30,000 permanent Vietnamese living there (see Chapters 1 and 3) had significantly increased with the arrival of another 50,000 Vietnamese refugees following the French reoccupation of Laos in mid-1946 (see Chapter 4). The majority of these Vietnamese had been pushed across the Mekong into regional bases long dominated by the ICP in Udon Thani, Nakhon Phanom, Sakhon Nakhon and Ubon provinces (see Chapter 2). Upon setting up the DRV’s delegation in Bangkok in mid-1946, one of Nguyen Duc Quỹ’s most important tasks was to gain the support of the Vietnamese communities and to aid the thousands of refugees who had recently fled from Laos. Similar orders had already been issued by the Viet Minh’s Tong Bo (General Bureau) since 1945, when Tran Duc Vinh began revamping northeastern Thai revolutionary organisations (see Chapter 4). Some time in 1946 or early 1947, in a move designed to expand the Viet Minh’s hold over the Vietnamese communities in all of Thailand, Nguyen Duc Quỵ and Tran Van Giau dissolved the Viet kieu National Salvation Association (Hoi Viet Kieu Cuu Quoc) to form a larger one, renamed the Viet kieu Association of Siam (Hoi Viet Kieu tai Xiem). It was also known as the Viet Kieu Association of Siam (Hoi Viet Kuu Tei Xiem). Worried by the November 1947 coup d’état that brought Phibun back into power, DRV delegates changed the association’s name to make it less ‘political’ and less visible. This was a very shrewd move. Indeed, in early 1948, Phibun Songkhram formally approved the Association, even providing 10,000 ticals as start-up funds on the condition that the Association did not exceed 200 members.

This would be easier said than done; for the new Association engulfed all the pre-existing revolutionary organisations in Thailand. Unsurprisingly, Udon Thani was home to the General Association (Tong Hoi). Nguyen Thoi Trong served as its first President. Le Duy Luong, a former teacher from Laos, replaced him in 1946. The Association had sections among the Viet kieu populations in Bangkok, Nakhon Phanom, Mukdahan, Thabo, Sakhon Nakhon, Khon Kaen, Khon Kaen, Nong Khai, Ubon Ratchathani, Surin, Chantaboun and Pachinbun. The Association’s public goals were to protect the interests of the Vietnamese émigrés in Thailand in their dealings with the Thai administration; to solve problems arising within the Vietnamese communities; and to provide the Thai government with the relevant identification papers for the Viet kieu. The head of the Bangkok section (Hoi Viet Kieu Cuu Te Bangkok) was Nguyen Van Chinh (Nai Sawat), an “old Vietnamese” (Viet kieu cu) who served as counselor to the DRV’s delegation and acted as its main liaison with Thai authorities. Chinh was seconded by another long-time resident named Nam Hong Chung. He was from central Vietnam, a wealthy mechanic shop keeper and a naturalised Thai citizen, married to a Thai.

With the go-ahead from the pro-series of 1945–47, the first General Assembly of the Assistance Association was held in February 1947 at Udon Thani in order to elect a ‘Provisional Directing Committee’. The Second General Assembly was not held until March 1949, when a definitive Directing Committee was formed. Nguyen Van Chinh served as President and Nam Hong Chung as Vice-President. Drawing upon the spirit of the Than Ai newspaper in the late 1920s, the Udon branch openly published the Doc Lap (Independence) paper for its readers. A wireless transmitter-receiver (named MK2) kept cadres in contact with other major transmitters in operation at the DRV’s delegation in 

Bangkok, its maritime relay at Ban May Rut, the delegation in Rangoon (see Chapter 8), and the major command centres in Bac Bo, Trung Bo and Nam Bo.

The Viet Minh’s overseas Vietnamese associations were under the secret control of the ICP’s Executive Committee for Thailand, based in Udon Thani, to which we shall return in Chapter 7.

A Land Awash in Arms

More than anything else, in 1946 Vo Nguyen Giap, then Minister of the Interior, needed the Viet kieu to provide trained soldiers and to funnel arms, supplies, medicines and equipment procured in or via Thailand to Vietnam. To the Viet Minh’s great advantage, World War II had transformed Thailand – like Singapore for the Indonesians15 – into a major source of war materiel. Moreover, because of the contacts local Viet Minh leaders had been able to form in Seri Thai and Royal Thai Army circles just prior to the Japanese capitulation, the DRV gained invaluable postwar access to the large quantities of arms introduced into Thailand by the Japanese since the late 1930s, dropped to the Seri Thai by the Allies in mid-1945, taken from surrendering Japanese troops at the end of the war, and smuggled from other arms depots in Asia and Europe thereafter.

Charged with disarming the Japanese at the end of the war, the British arranged seven permanent dumps and about 83 temporary ones throughout Thailand in order to stockpile arms removed from Japanese soldiers. The British engaged the Royal Thai Army to help disarm the Japanese and guard the arsenals. In one case, a total of three Thai battalions were used to protect seven large, permanent Allied weapons dumps. Of particular importance were the arms, ammunition and explosives stored at the ‘Ordine Store Section’ at the Thai military base of Bangsue under the direction of Lieutenant General Phin Chunhawan. The Allies established other arms dumps in a dozen Thai provinces.

Several temporary dumps for arms and equipment which the Japanese could not bring to the prescribed places were created in Udon Thani and Phitsanulok, often under Thai supervision and not direct Allied control. In the end, many of these arms depots escaped Allied destruction and entered into a vibrant regional arms market open to Viet Minh buyers.

These were not the only Allied dumps in Thailand. During the war, the Seri Thai had also acquired sizeable amounts of weapons and equipment which would later be channelled the Viet Minh’s way. Since 1944, when the US turned its attention to the war against Japan in the Pacific, men such as Tiang Sirikhan and Pridi Phonomyong had provided invaluable intelligence on Japanese troop movements and target information to American bombers. Pridi’s collaboration won his Seri Thai colleagues important access to arms drops in mid-1945 and quiet cooperation from OSS agents and, to a lesser degree, their British counterpart in SOE Force 136. Towards the end of the Pacific War, top-secret Allied supply missions, such as ‘Salad’, ‘Quisling’, ‘Sleeve’ and ‘Mixture’, delivered over 72 tons of arms into Seri Thai areas in June 1945; more than 100 tons on 31 July; and down to about 13,368 pounds as the war came to an end in August. Another source confirms this number, indicating that by the end of the war the Allies had dropped around 175 tons of arms and equipment to the Seri Thai. These weapons included Thompson submachine-guns, grenades, British stens, guns, detonators, booby traps and ammunition. These were some of the newest and most modern arms available at the time. With the war suddenly over in mid-August, most of these arms were stockpiled by Seri Thai leaders in secret depots on the Khorat plateau and near Bangkok. According to a recent Thai study, Thongphun Phipurhat and Tiang Sirikhan were two officials who took charge of large amounts of these arms and hid them in secret locations in northeast Thailand. Thai Police Major General Chana Samutvanich, who was involved in transferring arms to the Viet Minh in 1950, said in 1970 that the Allies never demanded the return of these arms after the Pacific War. According to a postwar British study, during the war against the Japanese, enough arms were channelled into Siam by submarine or airdrops to arm 100,000 men, but barely half of these arms reached their veritable destinations. The remaining half was stashed away by Thai villagers or seized by traffickers at the end of the war.

In Thailand, gun-running was further boosted by a general breakdown in law and order. This stemmed from a combination of social and economic dislocation caused by wartime occupation, the disarming of over 100,000 Japanese soldiers, the demobilisation of much of the Royal Thai Army by September and the arrival of almost 27,000 Allied troops. To make matters worse, rampant inflation gave rise to conditions ripe for corruption and smuggling. This postwar dislocation also meant that the Bangkok government found it very difficult to police the remote northeastern region. A ‘fascinating place’ is how Tran Van Dinh, a Viet Minh intelligence officer at the time, euphemistically described Thailand during the immediate postwar period. Even the Thai government

admitted in the National Assembly debates in 1947 that the country was rife with ‘banditry and general lawlessness’. Of particular worry were the large quantities of firearms circulating throughout the country and the fact that there was ‘no serious attempt by the authorities to control weapons’. To some in the government, even the ‘criminal elements were decidedly better armed than the police’.

Profiting from this illicit commerce were a host of characters and companies, ranging from shady Asian and Western traffickers as far away as Hong Kong, the Philippines, Italy, Indonesia, Sweden, and the US to high-level Thai civilian, police and military leaders. Navigating in between, of course, were Viet Minh and Indonesian agents instructed to take advantage of such favourable conditions for procuring arms and equipment. As Tran Van Giau joked during an interview in 1989: ‘Buying arms in Thailand was as easy as buying beer!’ - mua vu kbi o Thai-Lan – nh mua bi day’.

Perhaps. But if the supply was not a problem in early 1946, financing large-scale arms purchases was no laughing matter, and the market demand only increased over time as conflicts intensified in Indochina, Indonesia, Malaya and southern China. In a cable to Vo Nguyen Giap in September 1946, Pham Ngoc Thach pleaded for large amounts of money to buy arms and advised the government to authorise the borrowing from private individuals in Bangkok on the condition that they would be repaid with gold coming from Hanoi and Hong Kong. In another instance, Nguyen Duc Quy indicated in a late December 1946 cable to the Ministry of the Interior (now operating clandestinely somewhere on the outskirts of Hanoi): 'The situation in Siam is very favourable for us, but we don't have the money to make big deals'. Quy suggested that the government contact KMT leaders, such as Chang Fa-kwei and Lu Han, who might be able to send several thousands of dollars by way of Hong Kong and Singapore. Already in August 1946, Vietnamese representatives in Thailand regretted that because of a lack of funds they had been unable to take advantage of bargain prices in the Thai market.

Whatever the problems, the transformation of Thailand into a major arms market could not have been better timed for the Viet Minh. No sooner had the Pacific War come to a close than the DRV’s representatives were crossing the Mekong and the Gulf of Thailand on arms missions. Again, one of the reasons they could do this so quickly was because the ICP still had trusted men and women in the northeast, who would have had no trouble entering into the rough and tumble world of Asian arms smuggling. Second, the Party’s Asian revolutionary network, based on the Viet kieu, could easily be transformed into a pipeline for buying and transporting arms to Vietnam. Third, the Viet Minh had vital contacts to the highest levels of the Seri Thai government taking power, as well as to the Royal Thai Army, Navy and the national police. According to Tran Van Dinh’s recollection, in the midst of this turbulent postwar period, the Bangkok government 'closed its eyes' to Viet Minh’s clandestine activities in Thailand, while the provincial northeast government (almost certainly an allusion  to such politicians as Tiang Sirikhan, Chamlong Daórong and Thongon Phorhaphat) ‘supported’ the Viet Minh in its arms-buying missions. As for what remained of the Thai Army, Dinh claimed that it ‘gave full permission’ to the Viet Minh to work in Thailand. 

Vu Huu Binh stood out in such conditions. His fluency in Thai and Lao and his service and networking within both the Royal Thai Army and the Seri Thai during the war made him an invaluable link for the Viet Minh to a broad section of Thai officialdom in charge of these arms. Binh had a non-Seri Thai link in the person of then Lieutenant General Phin Chunhawan, the former Deputy Commander of the Isaan (Northeastern) Army. Although Phin was temporarily relieved of his post after the war, he retained considerable influence in military circles, remained hostile to the French and provided military assistance to Vu Huu Binh. The French claimed that it was Vu Huu Binh who introduced Nguyen Duc Quy into ‘the right quarters’ for conducting arms purchases in Thailand.

Binh’s Laotian friend, Thao Oun, also facilitated Viet Minh contacts with Thai army officers, with whom Oud had worked closely during the war. Tran Van Dinh conceded in an interview that Oun introduced him to Phin Chunhawan in late 1945.35 In a meeting with Dinh in November, Phin agreed to supply the Viet Minh with a large shipment of arms. According to Dinh, by the end of the year, the Thai General made good on his promise by delivering 10,000 rifles to Ho Chi Minh’s troops. At another meeting which Thao Oun had arranged with Phin in Bangkok, Dinh was actually taken to meet the ‘demobilised’ General at the military headquarters of the Thai First Army in Bangsue (where tons of Japanese arms were stored). 

On the Seri Thai side, Vu Huu Binh continued his wartime cooperation with the northeastern politicians such as Tiang Sirikhan, a member of parliament representing his home province of Sakon Nakhon as well as then Minister of Commerce and Industry. Tiang put Binh in touch with arms dealers, Thai officials having access to arms, and provided the Viet Minh with military assistance himself. Once again it was Thao Oun who had introduced Tran Van Dinh to Tiang Sirikhan in November 1945. Meeting Dinh at the Thai–Lao border, Tiang escorted him back to Bangkok to meet with Thai officials and discuss arms transfers. In turn, it was through Tiang that Dinh met Pridi.38 Viet Minh officials working with Tiang often referred to him as the “Thai Political Commissaire,” the ‘major person’ with whom they cooperated. Together with Chamlong Daoruang, Tiang was said to have had contacts with Vietnamese members of ICP branches in Thailand after the war.

Further south, along the Thai–Cambodian border, Khuang Aphaiwong gave a similar helping hand to the Viet Minh via southeastern Thailand. Just as Tiang could tap historic family links to Laos, the Aphaiwong family had even closer ties to western Cambodian and the Cambodian Court in particular (see Chapter 4). The Aphaiwong family was the driving force behind the Democratic Party, the most outspoken supporters of Thai claims to western Cambodian.

provinces and, as we shall see, arms suppliers to the Viet Minh. Pokhun, himself married into the Aphaiwong family, gave the Viet Minh an introduction to Cambodian anti-French clans at different points in time. Furthermore, prior to World War II, he had even met in Bangkok with the famous Vietnamese Trotskyist, Ta Thuo Thau. Since the late 1930s, Pokhun had employed northern Vietnamese tailors in his Thai-based garment business. One of his competitors in Bangkok in the late 1930s was, in fact, a Vietnamese named Nghia Loi, who later became one of the Viet Minh's most important agents in Bangkok after World War II. They all knew one another.

In short, the Viet Minh’s operatives in Thailand did their best to tap into longstanding regional kinship ties running across both the Thai-Lao and Thai-Cambodian border and against the French in order to root their operations along the two émigré tracks outlined at the start of this book. If Tiang had provided the Viet Minh with an Isaan connection, Khuang furnished equally important access to a Cambodian segment of the Thai government, both hostile to the French re-creation of Indochina (see Chapter 8). Indeed, on 23 March 1947 the DRV delegation wired the central government that if the Thais walked away empty handed from their follow-up territorial negotiations with the French, the Thai government would be willing to increase its aid to the resistance movements in Indochina. In late April, as Franco–Thai negotiations stalled, a ‘Permanent Committee of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia’ was secretly formed under the presidency of Thongin Phuriphap, an ally of Tiang Sirikhan. This group was, based on the premise that in the event of failed negotiations, the Thais would increase their military aid to the three groups. On 3 May the four ‘powers’ met to adopt a ‘concerted plan of action’. The French interpreted this as a move away from the earlier Thai policy of ‘neutrality’ towards ‘active’ though indirect participation against France. To celebrate both Ho Chi Minh’s ‘birthday’ and to underline Thai sympathy for the DRV, in 1947 Admiral Thormong delivered the Vietnamese President a ‘gift’ of 10 Springfield rifles, 10 machine-gun pistols and 5 Thompsons at an estimated cost of 40,000 taels.  

Although Thai sources are conspicuously quiet when it comes to this matter, Pridi Phanomyon reveals in his memoirs that the Viet Minh sent special representatives to Bangkok after the war to determine the degree to which new Thai leaders would support the DRV. In Pridi’s words:

At the end of the war, a Vietnamese patriot contacted me to make a request for arms. I allocated a certain amount of Seri Thai arms to the Vietnamese and, through Khun Sangwon, the military police were employed to guard the loading of these arms onto a train and oversaw their transportation to the border of Battambang, which at that time was still under Thai administration. 

‘Khun Sangwon’ was Thai Rear Admiral Sangwon Suwanachip. During the war, he had been a high-level Seri Thai leader and a close confidant of Pridi in charge of all military police in Bangkok and the head of major naval bases Following World War II, he became Deputy Minister of Defence in the caretaker government of Thawi Bunyaket and was subsequently appointed Adjutant General of the Armed Forces and then Chief of Police. He was said to have had ‘absolute’ control over the Free Thai arms ‘arsenal’.43 He was obviously an important supporter for the Viet Minh to have on their side, especially when it came to forming seaborne trading ties to southwestern Vietnam via the Gulf of Thailand.

The importance of this was not lost upon Ho Chi Minh himself, who conveyed his gratitude to Pridi for the above-mentioned military assistance. As Pridi remembered it: ‘Ho Chi Minh wrote me a letter thanking me for the arms and their transportation. He said that he had just formed two battalions of patriotic Vietnamese soldiers and would now give them the name: The Battalions of Siam’.44 Together with the Nam Tien militia forces sent from central and northern Vietnam in late 1945, these Viet kieu ‘Siames[e] battalions’ (tieu doan Xiem) were some of the first and probably the best trained combat units to go into battle in southern Vietnam.45 In 1992, Pridi’s wife, Thanypuying Poonsoook Phanomthong, confirmed that Pridi provided arms assistance to the ‘Indochinese independence effort’. ‘It is true’, she said, ‘that some weapons went to Indo-China’, citing as her example the ‘Siamee battalions’ (in Thai, kingpin sayam). Madame Thanypuying also noted that the ‘French should have been angry but they were not’. Reflecting on this postwar cooperation in the early 1990s, she concluded that this aid to the Vietnamese was an expression of solidarity: ‘We helped ... We were, after all, Asians together’.

There were no doubt feelings of Asian solidarity; but not all of these arms transfers were gifts. As in the late 18th century, there was also a lot of money to be made in this wartime commerce.

AT THE CROSSROADS OF REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ARMS FLOWS

In addition to the arms stockpiled in Thailand during the war by the Japanese and the Allies, Bangkok was the major Southeast Asian crossroads for arms shipments coming from abroad – from the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Macao and China on the one hand; and from Italy, Sweden and Czechoslovakia on the other. If Bangkok had served as a revolutionary intersection for the Comintern in 1930, from 1945 this port city became a regional arms interchange for anticonol revolutions fighting the Europeans.

The importance of supplying the Nam Bo resistance from Thailand was clear following the outbreak of war in southern Indochina in September 1945. The French claimed that Hoang Quoc Viet, a ranking ICP member, first organised the southern resistance’s arms purchases in Thailand some time in late 1945. This was also high on the list of topics discussed by Tran Van Giau in Hanoi in late 1945. Upon arrival in Thailand some time in 1946, Giau immediately created a secret supply organisation known as the Southern Supply Committee (Uy Ban Tiep te Nam Bo). Though it was initially housed in the DRV’s Southeast Asia delegation at Bangkok, it was an entirely independent southern operation in charge of running supply missions to Nam Bo from Southeast Asia and beyond. This supply section started operations in mid-1946 and may have been modelled on overseas Chinese and American “export–import” businesses that flourished in Southeast Asia after World War II.47 While I have no documentary proof, it was probably subordinated to Nguyen Thanh Son’s External Affairs Commission (Ban Ngoai Vu).

French-captured documents give us a few more glimpses into this “Supply Committee”. First, these sources confirm that Tran Van Giau formed an independent Southern Supply Committee in the DRV delegation in 1946, though some French intelligence officers referred to it as the Bangkok Supply Section. The Bangkok Supply Section was in turn subordinate to the Nam Bo Supply Committee (Ty Tiep to Nam Bo) in the southern coastal province of Bac Lieu. Subordinate to the Bangkok Supply Section were the relevant sub-sectors essential for moving goods and arms between Thailand and southern Vietnam, above all the transport service (Phan tyl van tai) headquartered strategically at the Point of Camau. Under its control were the transport subsection (Tieu Ban cho Chuyen); the warehousing subsection (Tieu Ban Chuyen Mon); and the radio subsection (Tieu Ban Vo Tuyen Dien). Secret radio posts were created and manned by Vietnamese agents attached to small relays running from the Point of Camau and Rach Gia, across Cambodia, to posts in Ban May Rut, Ubon, Udon and Bangkok.

If Giau appears to have created the Bangkok Supply Section, his southern ally, Duong Van Phuc, ran its daily operations. A corteie of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Thai and Chinese agents served as Phuc's deputies, messengers, escorts, guards, transporters, dealers, sailors and chauffeurs. Buddhist monks led by Bao An assumed a particularly important position (see below).

So where did the Viet Minh find their material? Weapons shipped from the Philippines were particularly important. As in Thailand, the Japanese had committed tens of thousands of troops to the Philippines during the Pacific War. The decision taken by the Americans to retake the archipelago at all costs transformed Luzon in particular into a massive battlefield. This also meant that at the end of the war large, though still indeterminate, quantities of arms were left in army surplus stores. No sooner had the war ended than an array of Asian and Western dealers began buying up large quantities of these weapons and equipment to sell to emerging anticolonial markets in Southeast Asia. A mosaic of modern gun-runners installed sophisticated army radios in junks, ships and even used submarines and planes to traffic arms from the Philippines to Bangkok, Hong Kong and Macao to sell to the Vietnamese and others. In one case, the French Direction Générale de la Documentation reported from first-hand sources that traffickers in Manila with access to World War II arms dumps were running arms across all the South China Sea and to Bangkok One of Vietnam's top-secret agents, Pham Ngoc Thao, organised a deal with Filipino traders (more likely Chinese intermediaries) to ship arms from the Philippines to

southern Vietnam in exchange for rice, shrimp, pork and above all gold and Indochinese bank notes.

The Viet Minh dispatched secret agents to manila to negotiate purchases,Nguyen Van Hoa , an ex-convict from poulo Condore, was said to have had US$13,000 at his disposad to buy arms in the philippines. His mission may have been related to the Viet Minh's offer to sell southern rice to the Filipino government's National Rice Corporation ( NARIC ) While it is unclear whether these exports ever materialised, according to the French this filipino firm brokered the viet Minh's US$13,000 arms deal in Manila. A Bangkok-based firm, Thailand Industrial, transported military arms and equipment for the Viet Minh from the Philippines, in addition to exporting dried fish from southern Vietnam to Singapore. In 1950 the US Legion in Saigon intercepted a radio communication indicating that the Viet Minh authorities in Thailand had “one million US dollars” to procure surplus arms from a dealer in Manila. The arms were known to include 10,000 carbines with 7,000,000 rounds of ammunition and 2,000 Thompson SMGs with 2,000,000 rounds of ammunition among other types of arms.

 Viet Minh agents in Burma were also organising Southeast Asian shipments from the port of Rangoon. In early 1947, for example, the French learned that Nguyen Thanh Son was “full of optimism” about an arms-buying mission he had sent to Mandalay. In 1991, a former ICP agent sent to Burma in 1948 confirmed that the Burmese government provided the DRV with “several hundred guns.” In Tokyo, Charles Pham, the Vietnamese Director of the Indochina Commercial Corporation, promised in a letter to Viet Minh representatives that he would get the necessary products for the resistance. I will do all I can to send it by way of our commercial correspondents in Bangkok.

Though relative newcomers, at the end of the Pacific War several American military officers used their wartime contacts, experience and knowledge of Asia for money-making deals. Indeed, they played important roles in channelling arms from the archipelago to the ports of Hong Kong, Macao and Bangkok. The names of Thompson, Wester, Cederbert, Browne and Grigware were well known to Vietnamese and Indonesian (and French) agents as some of the most active merchants in the region.58 James Thompson stood out among these postwar American ‘businessmen’. Educated at Princeton, Thompson served in the OSS in Thailand during World War II. Thanks to his friendship with such men as Tiang Sirikhan and Taoen, etc., in particular, after the war he built up a wide range of contacts with Viet Minh, Lao Issa and Khmer Issa leaders as well as with non-Seri Thai figures such as Khuang Aphaiwong. Such connections allowed him to start his famous silk business and to get his Oriental Hotel project off the ground. He was allegedly a good friend to the Indonesian nationalist Mamaris, former Minister of Finance of the Indonesian Republic and one of his most important customers in the region.59 Several of these former OSS agents were some of the Viet Minh’s best contacts in Bangkok and Hong Kong for locating and negotiating arms deals. Thompson had access to the Allied arms parachuted into  Thailand at the end of the war thanks to his Seri Thai collaborators. And Thompson was not alone. A particularly effective arms-smuggling syndicate run by the Americans Murray and Simmons moved arms from the Philippines to mainland Southeast Asia via Thailand and Macao.

Even the representatives of major Western oil companies were doing a little business with the Viet Minh from their Bangkok offices. A contract signed with the Viet Minh in 1949 held Caltex to provide DRV forces with 8,000 litres of petrol a month. Caltex had Chinese subsidiaries at Khorat, Ubon and Udon. The French knew that 200-litre barrels of gas had already been shipped to the Viet Minh by way of Laos and Cambodia. Also in Bangkok, Phayong Phong Panch, a representative of Colt arms manufacturers, arranged the sale of Seri Thai arms caches to the Viet Minh and CCP. This company was particularly well versed in recuperating Japanese arms dumped by the British into the port of Bangkok. 

“In addition to relying on American traders, the Viet Minh turned to even older Chinese trading networks. In Thailand, Viet Minh agents sought to penetrate two levels of Chinese regional activities in particular. From Bangkok, they contacted representatives of the CCP’s own Southeast Asian revolutionary organisation re-rooted among the overseas Chinese immediately after World War II (see Chapter 7). According to the French, one of the leaders of the CCP’s Bangkok branch, Tan Yoo Hong, used his party and family connections to the CCP branch in Singapore to procure arms on the Nam Bo Supply Committee’s account via the Siam Gulf Line Co. Based in Bangkok, the Siam Gulf Line channelled arms and foreign exchange to the CCP, the Viet Minh and the Soviet Legation in Bangkok. Run by a Chinese named Eap Hean Chay, Siam Gulf grouped some of the largest Chinese companies in Bangkok. In another instance, Luong Kien Sam, a Chinese professor in Bangkok and clandestine CCP member, specialised in trafficking arms to the Viet Minh. Part of his success was linked to his wartime membership in the Serin Thai and the Allied arms he had stowed away in Nakhon Nayok. Another Chinese trading house, Hong Kong They, was one of the chief suppliers for the Viet Minh in Bangkok. Its Director, allegedly a Chinese communist, dealt with the Viet Minh’s main dealer in Bangkok, the Vietnamese monk Bao An (see below). This company channelled arms to the southern Vietnamese resistance via the Gulf of Thailand.60

In addition to relying on American traders, the Viet Minh turned to even older Chinese trading networks. In Thailand, Viet Minh agents sought to penetrate two levels of Chinese regional activities in particular. From Bangkok, they contacted representatives of the CCP’s own Southeast Asian revolutionary organisation re-rooted among the overseas Chinese immediately after World War II (see Chapter 7). According to the French, one of the leaders of the CCP’s Bangkok branch, Tan Yoo Hong, used his party and family connections to the CCP branch in Singapore to procure arms on the Nam Bo Supply Committee’s account via the Siam Gulf Line Co. Based in Bangkok, the Siam Gulf Line channelled arms and foreign exchange to the CCP, the Viet Minh and the Soviet Legation in Bangkok. Run by a Chinese named Eap Hean Chay, Siam Gulf grouped some of the largest Chinese companies in Bangkok. In another instance, Luong Kien Sam, a Chinese professor in Bangkok and clandestine CCP member, specialised in trafficking arms to the Viet Minh. Part of his success was linked to his wartime membership in the Serin Thai and the Allied arms he had stowed away in Nakhon Nayok. Another Chinese trading house, Hong Kong They, was one of the chief suppliers for the Viet Minh in Bangkok. Its Director, allegedly a Chinese communist, dealt with the Viet Minh’s main dealer in Bangkok, the Vietnamese monk Bao An (see below). This company channelled arms to the southern Vietnamese resistance via the Gulf of Thailand.

Besides the CCP’s regional networks, Viet Minh agents could tap ideologically unflanked regional Hoa Kieu trading operations. The Sino–Indochina Development Corporation (SID) is one example. Formed in northern Vietnam in October 1945, this Sino-Vietnamese trading company had been active in legal and not so legal forms of trade between Vietnam and the exterior since mid-1945. Following the outbreak of war in Hanoi in late 1946, the French captured part of the records of the SID. Based on these documents, it was learned that the DRV’s Ministry of Defence paid the SID 9 million piastres to finance arms imports. The Sino–Siamese Bank on Gia Long Boulevard in Hanoi handled this sum for them. 62 A SID subsidiary existed in Bangkok (61–63 Praharut Road) …”

and it is possible that the SID was, in fact, a Sino–Thai operation.63 In a letter to Pham Ngoc Thach, this Chinese-run company asked the government to allow it to begin handling part of the government’s foreign trade, offering to export goods to Bangkok, Hong Kong and San Francisco. It was ready to export 50 tons of coffee, tea and an unlimited quantity of coal to Thai clients in Bangkok.64 Unfortunately, despite the government’s enthusiasm,65 the available evidence does not tell us whether an accord was ever struck.

Thai arms traders were in an even better position to tap this Southeast Asian trade, given their closer historical links to overseas Chinese trading networks; their family ties to Thai military, government and business power-brokers; their knowledge of, if not safeguard of, Japanese arms depots at the end of World War II; and their relationships with American intelligence officers turned counterbandits from 1945.

Khuang Aphaiwong's family and business associates were directly involved in trading with the Viet Minh in foreign exchange, arms and medicines. The Cie Kovit, headed by Khuang, was in the forefront. Based in Bangkok, this company held 19 mining concessions in southern Thailand and was valued at 1 million baht. Besides heading the Democrat Party, Khuang was also the company's Director. A Swede by the name of Anderson ran its daily operations. Another collaborator was Mr Martin, a Swede or Czech who was a representative of the well-known Swedish arms industry, Bofors. Relying on the Aphaiwong family’s contacts with the Khmer Issarak groups and the Viet Minh, Anderson was in direct contact with the Nam Bo Supply Committee. Thanks to its access to arms from Japanese arms depots in Paknampho, Chiang Rai and elsewhere, the Kovit Company was able to offer the Viet Minh the sale of 30,000 Japanese guns and ammunition worth 6 million baht (tical) in December 1946. Short on cash, DRV representatives in Bangkok worked out a deal with Anderson in February 1947 to buy 10,000 guns in groups of 1,000 to be shipped via the extreme north of Thailand. Anderson was also able to reroute arms from British-guarded Japanese arms dumps near Paknampho. Khuang Aphaiwong's brother, Chawalit, met secretly with the Viet Minh in Samsen in April 1947 to arrange the transport of over a thousand rifles, six machine-guns and three Bofors anti-aircraft guns.

Khun Lek, Khuang's wife, was a notably powerful regional trader. Her strength derived from her kinship ties and a web of relationships with Thai, Chinese (KMT and CCP), Western (American and European), and Viet Minh (communist and non-communist) merchants. She had formed a profitable trading house called Borisat Souvannaphoum during the Japanese occupation, which remained in operation after the latter's defeat. The French reported that in one case she had received 4.5 tons of benjoin from the Viet Minh in exchange for military supplies. She helped the Viet Minh contact leading Thai military traders of the War Veterans’ Organisation. She was particularly important to the Viet Minh in terms of trading and speculating on a variety of foreign currencies. On 4 October 1949, for example, she paid US$10,000 to a member of the Nam Bo 

Supply Committee in exchange for gold. A Chinese trader was the trusted intermediary for transactions between the Borisat Souvannaphoom and the Nam Bo Supply Committee.67 A French intelligence officer summed it all up nicely:

As such, Bangkok has become the market, the plaque tournante, where a band of traffickers operates by hiding their nefarious actions behind fallacious commercial covers. Important navigation companies are often created with no other goal than to traffic [arms], while air transport companies and a very fluid junk trade feed the Siames market – already well supplied – with a variety of arms.

As in the 18th century, Bangkok also opened European markets to the Viet Minh. As late as 1950, Nguyen Van Long, one of the rare Vietnamese communists to have been trained both in Thailand and Moscow (see Chapter 7), arranged 120 shipments of Czech arms which were sent via Italy to Jakarta, and then on to the southeastern Thailand. From there, they were shipped to Nam Bo by sea and land routes. Having met Long personally, the Australian Consul General Alan Loomes reported to his superiors in 1951 that he had ‘positive proof’ that the former was still shipping Czech and Filipino arms to the Viet Minh. Loomes was ‘sure beyond reasonable doubt’ that Long had a ‘private pipeline into the Thai Cabinet – most likely to the Minister of the Interior …’”

Luang Prom Yothi. Such international liaisons are confirmed in part by an intercepted telegraphic communication emanating from a Viet Minh organisation in Gia Dinh, reporting that Czech dealers had been furnishing the Viet Minh with ‘heavy arms’. It is unclear whether this was related to the Czech weapons firms, Kovo Let and the Société Nationale Tchécoslovaque d’Import–Export, both active in Bangkok and elsewhere in Asia at this time. In 1950, the French reported that a ranking member of the Vietnamese delegation in Bangkok, Le Hy, had tried to negotiate an arms deal with Kovo’s Bangkok office.⁷¹ A certain Johan Perge, a Czech in Bangkok after the war, allegedly organised the purchase and transport of Czech arms by way of China to the Viet Minh. This Czech connection may also explain why the DRV delegation in Bangkok was in direct contact with its officials stationed in Prague, home to Kovo (see Chapter 8).⁷² In another instance in 1947, other sources reveal that Vietnamese arms buyers in Thailand were negotiating with a European arms dealer concerning the purchase of Swedish Bofors surface-to-air weapons and 30,000 Japanese rifles. While the Viet Minh would have had a hard time financing (and operating) technically sophisticated surface-to-air weapons in 1946, mention of the 30,000 rifles is a clear reference to the negotiations of the Swede Anderson with the Viet Minh in late 1946. Certain Thai dealers were even caught transferring large cash deposits to Europe in preparation to buy arms in Sweden and Czechoslovakia at this time.

Just as these postwar Western traders were actors among others in a larger Asian mosaic, so too the Viet Minh were not alone in tapping into this Southeast Asian wartime commerce. The British reported in 1950 that Burmese General Ne Win was in contact with Italian arms dealers. Ne Win had toured their factories during his visit to Italy in August–September 1949. Italian arms had already been sent to Burma, where advisers were overseeing the construction of a weapons factory.⁷⁴ To the south, Indonesian nationalists were also tapping into this arms trade, exchanging opium for arms and rice for medicines in remarkably similar ways. Vessels, often owned by Chinese businessmen in Singapore, transported the young republic’s cargoes from Cirebon, Tegal or Probolinggo to Singapore for sale. The Indonesian Minister of Finance, Maramis, travelled to Bangkok in 1948, where he entered into negotiations with James Thompson and L.A. Lewis, Bangkok representative of the American firm, William Hunt Co. Inc. Like the DRV’s agents, Indonesian Republican representatives set up a semi-official delegation and a clandestine arms-buying mission in Singapore and Bangkok. 

“The Viet Minh’s War Economy: an Overview

However, it would be wrong to conclude from our study at this stage that the DRV only financed and supplied its war effort from the ‘outside’ or through Thailand between 1945 and 1950. Here we need to make a detour in our story to consider, if only briefly, the DRV’s internal economy. Just as we examined the relationship between internal political and military events in Vietnam and their relationship to the Viet Minh’s activities in Thailand in Chapter 4, so too must we consider how the DRV’s internal economy informed its foreign trade. Moreover, consideration of the internal economy helps us to gauge better the relative importance of the exterior in the Viet Minh’s overall Asian exchanges. While we consider the Viet Minh internal war economy in detail elsewhere,78 further research may well show that the inside was, in fact, more important than the outside between 1945 and 1950. What is sure is that two were linked.

Without getting bogged down in the details,79 what concerns us most here is that between early 1947 and 1950 the Viet Minh’s anticolonial economy was largely decentralised. Despite the central government’s efforts to pursue an ‘interventionist’ economic policy at the outset, war and its disruption of communications quickly forced the authorities to abandon this policy in favour of a highly sectional and mobile one. Policies stressing ‘autarky’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ became the major economic slogans. There were few alternatives given the circumstances. The nine interwar zones into which Vietnam had been divided obtained much greater leeway in planning their economic policies, although the government maintained strict control over all products relating to ‘national defence’, at least in northern Indochina.80 Each interwar zone had its economic and financial committees, reaching down to the village level, and each committee had sub-sections in charge of production, supply/distribution and transports. Although a government-run External Trading Bureau (Ngoai Thuong Cuu) came to life in February or March 1947, each interwar zone was, in reality, in charge of organising its own foreign trade committees. Similar committees were formed for trade with the French-controlled zones, which served as one of the Viet Minh’s most important ‘foreign’ trading partners throughout the entire war against the French (and then the Americans). Of all the interwar zones, IV and parts of V remained largely unoccupied by the French throughout the war (but never untouched by the French air force). Englobing Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Thanh Hoa provinces, zone IV was home to one of the Viet Minh’s most important arms industries. To the northwest, in the Viet Bac zone, the Viet Minh held important mountainous territories along the Lao-tian and Chinese borders and would eventually establish a firm hold on the Phu Tho lowlands. In the south, the Viet Minh was particularly strong in the densely forested and marshy areas south of Saigon stretching across Ca Mau, Rach Gia and Ha Tien, all maritime openings to the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. However, until 1950 (and even into the 1960s) interzonal communications in Vietnam were extremely difficult given effective French surveillance and the Viet Minh’s limited economic resources. Moreover, we must never forget that the north remained largely cut off from the south during the entire length of the war. Positioned in the middle, interwar zones IV and V thus tended to serve as the resistance nerve centre, a kind of Vietnamese ‘yenan’ (Dien An) as General Nguyen Son liked to imagine it, at least until the Chinese victory in 1949 transformed the Viet Bac zone into the most powerful piece on the entire Indochinese battlefield (see Chapter 8).”

As for communications, Viet Minh’s thin, S-like shape on the eastern edge of the peninsula facing the sea and French domination of the major roads meant that the coastal junk trade became one of the most important ways by which the Viet Minh conducted its inter-zonal seaborne exchanges. Junks and sampans supplied rice-deficit regions (like lower Triong Bou) from Viet Minh rice granaries in Nam Bo, where a million tons of excess rice was annually ready for export. Junks also ensured the transfer of heavy arms from interwar zone IV to Nam Bo. During the northeast monsoon between November and April, most traffic sailed from the north towards the south, while during the southern monsoon from May to October it flowed towards the north. In the Gulf of Tonkin, though, exchanges went in both directions. And as in days gone by, the junks serving the Viet Minh on the South China Sea were often (but not always) run by Chinese crews. Similarly, the profoundly aquatic nature of the southern and northern deltas made sampans a vital part of the Viet Minh’s internal exchanges, while oxen-drawn carts, bicycles and horses served the overland routes and the highlands (until East European trucks began to appear in the north in the early 1950s). Given that the French controlled Vietnam’s three most important ports – Haiphong, Haiphong and Saigon – the Viet Minh’s breathed through their maritime openings in interwar zone IV (Vinh), southern Nam Bo (Ha Tien/ Rach Gia) and the islands running to Canton and Macao. Never static, their land routes traversed Laos and Cambodia and, in more difficult ways, reached into southern China. Significantly, in interwar zones IV and V, segments of the Trans-Indochinese railway still transported people, arms and goods.

Chinese traders in Nam Bo played an important role in transporting Viet Minh rice from the countryside to Saigon for sale in the local and international markets. In 1949–50, Chinese rice huskers in Quan Mu paid estimated taxes of 500,000 piastres to the Viet Minh. They also played a key role in the Viet Minh’s ability to break the French blockade of 1948. Besides exporting rice, the Viet Minh was able to ‘import’ via these Hoa kieu networks much-needed pharmaceutical and chemical products, and especially the petrol needed to fuel their arms-producing workshops. Chinese experts from Saigon-Cholon and even from as far away as Hong Kong gave technical advice to Viet Minh weapons specialists.84 When it came to trafficking foreign currencies, the Viet Minh had no choice but to work with the Chinese in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. Viet Minh relations with the Hoa kieu increased notably from 1949, when southerners received instructions to step up cooperation with the Chinese, to win over the Hoa kieu in French-occupied zones, and to prevent the French from using thousands of defeated KMT troops holed up in Phu Quoc.85 The closing of Thai trading routes in 1951 (see Chapter 8), the French economic blockade of the south after 1948 and the CCP’s victory in China in 1949 left both DRV and Hoa kieu traders to intensify their economic cooperation by 1950–51. 

But whether by land, rail or water, the four most important products that had to be circulated were rice, salt, medicines and arms. And in spite of some very notable and little talked about (financial) failures, the Viet Minh succeeded in providing these items, especially the first two, to the populations under their control. This was another reason why the Viet Minh were able to hold out against superior French forces between 1945 and 1950.

financially, though, war was an extremely costly affair. Like the young Indonesian state to its south, the DRV was more of a guerrilla state constantly in motion, divided for long periods of time into regional bodies that often operated without a central head. Unrecognized, the DRV lacked access to international credit and aid. The traditional tax structure and levers were largely controlled by the French. The DRV’s currency was often at mercy. In many ways, the Viet Minh had to create a counter-financial system from scratch. In areas under its control, the war government applied a variety of resistance taxes on the populations. In Nam Bo, for example, the province of Bac Lieu produced 879,143 piastres for the month of June 1948; Bien Hoa generated 198,000 for July 1948, followed by Saigon-Cholon at 340,000 for the same month. Between November 1947 and March 1948, taxes on rice for the three provinces of Soc Trang, Bac Lieu and Can Tho put 21,300,000 piastres into (southern) Viet Minh coffers, or about 1,400,000 every month, though deficits were chronic. The government also allowed interner zones to issue resistance ‘bonds’. The province of Gia Dinh, for example, issued two bonds amounting to 1,000,000 piastres in October 1946 and a second in 1947 amassed 2,500,000 piastres. Added to this were ‘gold weeks’ when people were urged to surrender gold, silver and jewellery to ‘the cause’. Meanwhile, the Viet Minh levied taxes on a wide range of transport types and maintained a monopoly on salt sales. And in some cases, of course, the Viet Minh resorted to more unconventional ways of obtaining sought-after products, especially medical ones. Le Sûreté Fédérale reported that between 1 June and 30 August 1948, nine million units of penicillin, 200,000 packets of Dagenam and 60,000 packets of quinacrine (both anti-malarial medicines) disappeared from Saigon-Cholon pharmacies.

Another important source of revenue was the Viet Minh-run or owned commercial enterprises, such as the Hoa Viet and Hai Kien in Viet Bac (Dien Dien); and above all the famous Viet Thang in Interzone V. As in Indonesia, these resistance trading houses exported and imported rice and salt and circulated medicines, paper and a wide variety of office products inside Vietnam, including French-controlled zones and within Hoa Kieu markets in Cholon and Haiphong. The state-owned Viet Thang had its own monopoly on rice alcohol production and owned small paper factories. The Viet Thang was actually a creation of the Tran Trong Kim government of mid-1945. Nguyen Thanh Son would revive it with 5 million Indonesian piastres in 1946 in order to financing the war-torn south from Vietnam north of the 16th parallel. It was initially based in Faifo (Hoi An), with four main branches spread from Hanoi to Da Nang. It exported sugar, rice and cinnamon to southern China and Hong Kong in exchange for war supplies and fabrics. Following the French reoccupation of the north, the Viet Thang’s headquarters was transferred to Tam Quan and its capital 

was increased to 10 million Indochinese piastres. Together, the Viet Thang and Viet Hoa ran interwar zone IV and V’s trade with Hong Kong and Macao, while two other companies, Minh Duc and Lien Hung, traded with Pakhoi. Outfitted with their own junks, relays and peoples, these companies managed an important part of the Viet Minh’s external trade with southern China until 1950–51.

What were the Viet Minh’s arms needs exactly? It is hard to say with certainty. The French claim that the Viet Minh had a maximum of 100,000 men in their armed forces as of 19 December 1946, with 60,000 of them located above the 16th parallel. Of the total, 80 per cent of the northern effectives were armed (about 48,000 men) and around 65 per cent in the south (about 26,000 men), giving a combined total strength of around 74,000 armed troops in the whole of Vietnam. By August 1947 Viet Minh’s effectives had increased to 61,000 in the north and 40,700 in the south. The French estimate their total armaments at 27 canons, 362 mortars, 66 heavy machine-guns, 1,500 light machine-guns, 2,150 pistol-machine-guns, and 78,700 guns.

Following the 9 March coup, one estimate said that 34,000 guns, muskets and rifles had fallen into Viet Minh hands as well as a number of arms parachuted to the Viet Minh by the OSS in mid-1945. Defeated, Japanese troops in northern Indochina made more arms available to the Viet Minh as did Chinese nationalist troops keen on turning a quick profit on Hanoi or Haiphong’s black market during the Chinese occupation in 1945–46.

Two other important sources of arms for the Vietnamese were captured weapons from the enemy and the home-produced ones based on the pilfering of foreign models, as practised by Phan Dinh Phung’s partisans had first decades earlier (see Chapter 1). According to captured Viet Minh documents, there were 207 arms and explosives workshops ( binh xuong ) in Bac Bo (of which 55 were important); 93 operated in Trung Bo (16 important); and 166 in Nam Bo (5 important ones).92 By early 1949, interwar zone IV had formed a rudimentary, though important arms industry which produced impressive monthly quantities of 10 mortars (models 60 and 80); 2,000 to 3,000 mortar shells; 1,000 land mines; and 10 PM Sten-type guns.93 Bac and Trung Bo were industries in better shape than their southern counterparts, given the several copper, silver, graphite and mercury mines under their control.94 In the south, in 1947, a special ‘Inter-Zonal Technical Conference’ was held to make plans for forming a southern armament service for Nam Bo to rationalise arms making and the distribution of scarce resources.95 Nguyen Thanh Son would several times over the year that they often lacked crucial inputs such as detonators, Bickford wicks, sulphuric acid and iron. Locally produced weapons were often defective. Home-made grenades often failed to explode while, as one weapons expert wrote, ‘land mines did so when they were not supposed to’.96 Most troubling was the lack of replacement parts, the chemicals needed to make explosives, radios and paper for communication and medicines and surgical equipment to heal the sick and wounded.

Here, southerners turned to foreign trade delegations to procure these vital, technical imports from abroad. In June 1949 a sizeable convoy of arms landed in southeastern Cambodia to provide ‘important materials for the arms workshops’ under Thanh Son’s command. From March to June 1950, according to the British, the Viet Minh imported 40,000 kg of copper, salpeterte, and chlorate of potassium into Cambodia from Thailand.98 Let us now return to Thailand to consider how the Viet Minh went about financing, organising and transporting this material to Vietnam.

FINANCING THE VIET MINH’S SOUTHEAST ASIAN TRADE

Whether in southern China or Thailand, Viet Minh arms dealers knew that purchasing arms on the black market was no simple matter. The low prices Tran Van Giau and Nguyen Duc Quy had encountered in 1946 did anything but decline as supplies dwindled and buyers multiplied. So how did the Viet Minh go about financing their purchases? Major purchases in Thailand were funded by the central government through gold collections in Vietnam, tax revenues from Viet Minh-controlled areas in Indochina, the opium trade, and from the sale of agricultural and commercial products exported from regions under the Viet Minh’s control, as outlined above. Taxes on and donations from the 50,000 Vietnamese in Thailand certainly helped. A 20-bank ‘Aid to National Defence’ tax, for example, was levied monthly on thousands of Vietnamese in Thailand.

This was on top of the monthly dues of 10 baht expected from the Vietnamese colonies.99 According to Le Manh Trinh, Viet kieu donations in Thailand reached 3 million baht each year, or around 12 million Indochinese piastres.

 In practice, the organisation of funds for purchases in Thailand was left to each separate interwar zone given the poor state of national communications. Each zone was thus responsible for organising its own funds and arms lists for the Viet Minh’s designated buyers in Thailand (and southern China). In late January 1947, for example, 20 kilograms of gold were procured from interwar zones VIII and IX to underwrite purchases in Thailand. In another instance, 1 million piastres and 5 kg of gold were transferred from interwar zone IV to agents in Nakhon Phanom province. According to French intelligence, in late 1946 Tran Van Giau had received 2 million piastres from the government for the purchase of arms and equipment.

However, given the great difficulties the DRV economy faced, the Viet Minh had to turn to other ways of generating foreign currency. Viet Minh leaders in Thailand agreed circulated much-needed foreign exchange in Bangkok by speculating on artificially devalued Indochinese piastres in Indochina and then selling them abroad for a nice profit. Without entering into the complex details, this occurred thanks to the decision taken by French authorities in Indochina to peg the piast to the franc, when outside of Indochina the piastre was only worth 7 to 8.5 francs. This ‘cadeau royal’, as a virulent French critic of this traffic put it, allowed the Viet Minh to procure French francs at half-price, and then exchange them on the international market for US dollars or other strong currencies necessary for their arms purchases. The Viet Minh also traded gold sent from Vietnam for US dollars on the Bangkok market and in Cholon. In other cases, the Viet Minh manufactured false notes in Bangkok in exchange for real ones in Indochina. Maintaining gold and dollar reserves in Bangkok was obviously an important priority for Viet Minh agents determined to hedge against inflation and to ensure the transaction of key arms purchases abroad. The DRV delegation and southern leaders in Bangkok kept large baht and dollar accounts in major Thai Banks, above all the Thai Farmers’ Bank and a host of other ones in Hong Kong, Europe and even in the US. In 1950, the US–Thai company Saard Co. Ltd promised to sell the Southern Supply Committee ammunition landing barges and other amphibious craft on the condition that the Viet Minh paid in gold or US dollars. Other foreign arms dealers could be more lenient. A group of Czech industrialists accorded a ten-year loan of 35,000 piastres to the Nam Bo Resistance Administrative Committee for the future purchase of Czech arms.

 Agricultural exports from southern Vietnam were sold on the Thai market to finance further arms purchases. Goods came from southern Vietnam and Cambodia via a collection of Viet Minh junks and sampans, with Chinese skippers sometimes serving as the intermediaries. Already in January 1947, the French seized 22 Viet Minh junks transporting salt, sugar, uniforms and piastres on their way to Thailand. In October of that year they captured 100 tons of rice, salt and coffee. Even luxury goods – Madagascan pelts for example – imported into Indochina were often re-exported to Thailand where they could fetch higher prices. By the early 1950s, the Viet Minh controlled much of the (Chinese) pepper production in Kampot province in Cambodia and were often able to traffic precious stones out of Palin to the Bangkok market. A detailed French study in 1953 revealed that the Viet Minh reaped 40 million piastres in 1952 from their control of Chinese-run pepper farms in Cambodia and did their best to create a monopoly on their sale in Thailand. Meanwhile, the French estimated that Viet Minh tax revenues from fishing in the Tonle Sap totalled around 4 to 6 million piastres annually, though it is extremely doubtful that this was the case for the entire war.

We get an idea of just how important the Thai market was to the Viet Minh, when, in 1947, the Inspector of the Nam Bo Economic Service issued instructions to Tran Van Giau and Tran Van Luan to form a DVA export–import company in Bangkok, almost certainly modelled on the Viet Thang operating in war-zones IV–V and Hong Kong and Macao. Unable to export easily through Saigon because of close French monitoring, southern leaders sought to develop a western opening in order to export southern agricultural goods to Thailand and then on to markets in Sumatra and Hong Kong. Thailand was considered the perfect intermediary for channelling an exportable stock of 40,000 tons of rice, with another 65,000 tons safely dispersed in storehouses hidden amongst Viet Minh-controlled populations in Nam Bo. The Nam Bo Supply Committee also wanted to export 1,000 piastres of fish and shrimp, 100,000 sugar eggs, as well as poultry and pigs. All these products would be traded for gold or strong foreign currencies in Southeast Asian markets. To get it started, the Nam Bo Economic Committee allotted 500,000 piastres in capital for opening of an export–import company, probably near the port of Bangkok. While it is unknown whether this ever happened, in mid-1948 French military intelligence confirmed ‘on several occasions’ that southern Vietnamese were exporting rice to Singapore markets via 60- to 80-ton junks.”

Trade with Vietnam generated considerable interest in Thailand. In 1950, the French reported that since July 1949 the Thai War Veterans’ Association had promised the Nam Bo Supply Committee at Bangkok that it would buy all rice and rubber coming from Viet Minh sources in Nam Bo. The Thais offered to take 4,000 tons of rice and 400 tons of rubber per trimester and re-export this to Singapore and Manila (Thailand was already a rice exporter). According to this source, the War Veterans’ Association was in fact a partnership run by Lt. General Phin Chhunhawin, his son-in-law Phayo Syronda, Chief of the Police, and Phitbun Songkhram, the Prime Minister. It held a virtual monopoly on the national market, controlling in particular the railways and rice culture of the northeast. This Thai offer may well have been related to the French blockade of the Transbass region, a move designed to deny the Viet Minh its large tax revenues from rice grown there. Approved on 14 January 1949, this blockade left the Viet Minh with a million tons of unsold rice on their hands.

Another important foreign exchange earner for the Viet Minh was opium. It was grown in DRV-controlled areas in northern Vietnam and Laos. One kilogram of opium brought 6,200 piastres at Hanoi and 7,000 at Haiphong, and thus had the potential to be a major (and easily transportable) source of revenue for the Viet Minh economy. Significant amounts were also imported from Laos to interwar zone IV and then sold in French-controlled zones for a large profit. According to a Japanese deserter who lived there until 1952, the majority of Thanh Hoa’s resistance income came from the opium traffic. Going in the other direction, the Viet Minh exported opium procured in Laos through Issara intermediaries to provincial markets in northeast Thailand, on to Bangkok and from there to larger maritime markets in Singapore and Macao.109 As a hypothesis, further research needs to investigate to what degree the opium trade might explain the strength of interwar zone IV and the Viet Minh’s almost ferocious desire to hold on to it. A comparison with interwar zone IV’s economic reliance on Cambodian pepper exports from Kampot province might also shed some light on how the Viet Minh organised their interwar zones.

According to the French, the Viet Minh’s western Indochinese opium export system worked fairly well at the outset, but later declined due to competition from emerging markets in Burma. The French feared as early as June 1964 that the Viet Minh were targeting the opium harvest in Xieng Khouang as a means of financing their arms imports.110 Vu Huu Binh, no doubt because of the Laoation contacts he marshalled across the Mekong, was said to be one of the leading organisers of the DRV’s opium trade. In one case, he met with a Thai Colonel to arrange a ‘large’ opium shipment coming from Viet Minh-controlled areas in ‘Indochina’ in exchange for Seri Thai arms stockpiled in northeast Thailand.111 To the north, Le Van Hien, the Finance Minister, reveals in his memoirs that in August 1949 he had 600 kg of opium stored in Cao Bang for financing government imports.

The French were well aware of the danger of letting the Viet Minh control the Laotian opium harvest. They claimed this market constituted ‘a very unpredictable’ source of income for financing a good part of the DRV’s arms purchases in Thailand. In 1949 the French Commissioner for Laos ordered the customs service to increase its fight against the Viet Minh’s opium traffic. In 1950, according to this document, all the opium of the Houa Phan went to the Viet Minh.113 I have not yet been able to quantify the size of the Viet Minh’s opium trade.

THE WESTERN AND MEKONG FRONTS

Having discussed the nature, the origins and the financing of the Viet Minh’s Southeast Asian trading operations based in Thailand, we now must ask ourselves how arms and supplies were transported back to Vietnam. Most historians assume that questions of supply are a given, or that they only emerged with the Chinese communist victory in 1949 or with the ‘birth’ of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in May 1959. The Viet Minh, alas, did not have the luxury of skipping the first five

years of the war. Supplying the resistance – externally and internally – was one of the greatest concerns of the Viet Minh from the outset of the war in southern Vietnam in late September 1945 until the communist victory there in 1975.

The outbreak of full-scale war in northern Vietnam in December 1946 effectively severed the primitive land and coastal supply lines that had been running from northern Vietnam to its southern half since late 1945. This, in turn, resulted in the routing of the DRV’s external trade in three major directions. First, southerners turned to the Gulf of Thailand to intensify their contacts with Southeast Asia via the Nam Bo Supply Committee and the DRV’s delegation in Bangkok. Published in July 1947, the guidelines of the Nam Bo Resistance Economic Front (Mat Tran Kinh Te Khang Chien) called for the creation of trading routes to Bangkok and Singapore markets. These orders coincide with cables sent by Viet Minh agents in Bangkok to southerners, instructing them to begin studying maritime routes to Burma and Singapore. Second, central Vietnamese leaders in war-zones IV and V expanded their overland routes to upper northeast Thailand via Laos and developed their maritime exchanges with Macao, Hong Kong, Canton and above all Hanoi through resistance companies like the Viet Thang. Third, if southerners looked to the Gulf of Thailand, northerners turned to the Gulf of Tonkin and southern China like the Tay Son. Northerners expanded their maritime links to Pakhoi, Macao and Hong Kong and their overland trade with markets in southern China, such as Nanning. They did this through the private companies outlined above and via the DRV’s official Bureau of External Trade (Ban Ngoai Thuong), created in Tuyen Quang or Cao Bang province in February 1947 and run by another prewar Asian hand and good friend to Nguyen Tho Thuy. Until 1950, thanks to Thuy, this office handled the DRV’s trade with southern China, Chang Fa-kwei and a mosaic of local bands and small-criminal elements inscribed in the social geography running across the Sino-Vietnamese border. This in this geographical context that we should place the rest of our discussion of the DRV’s Southeast Asian trade via Thailand.”

General Giap began opening his routes to northeast Thailand within weeks of the outbreak of full-scale war on 19 December 1946. In early January 1947 the French reported that he had approved creation of a special war zone called the Mekong Front (Mat Tran Cuu Long) in Thailand. Vietnamese communist sources reveal that in January 1947 a meeting of the Viet kieu General Association was held in Udon Thani. Attending this meeting were ICP representatives in Thailand and delegates from Vietnam, including Cao Hoang LanH. According to the French, Lanh had become the head of the ‘Office of Diplomatic Relations with the Chinese’, as well as charged with the special task of arranging arms supplies from Thailand. During this meeting in Thailand, Ho Chi Minh’s call for nationwide resistance was studied and ways were discussed to implement it among the Viet kieu in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Hoang Van Hoan reveals in his memoirs that immediately after 

“the outbreak of full-scale war in December 1946, the ICP’s Central Committee directed the Party Section of the Viet kieu in Thailand (Dang bo Viet kieu o Thai-lan) to aid the Laoian and Cambodian fronts from the west. To this end, Vietnamese communists in northeast Thailand formed the ‘Western Front Military Committee’ (Uy Ban Quan Su Mat Tran Mien Tay).

 It remains unclear whether the Mekong Front (Mat Tran Cuu Long) and the Western Front (Mat Tran Mien Tay) were, in fact, one and the same war zone. Tran Van Dinh claims they were not (but Dinh was by no means privy to such important, internal military matters). The least we can say is the Mekong Front was a supply operation extending southwards from Laos to include the Viet Minh’s maritime routes running across the Gulf of Thailand. The Western Front did not include the lower Indochinese tracks, only the land routes across lower Laos and upper Cambodia. According to French intelligence, the Mekong Front was linked to central Vietnam by clandestine liaisons with Vinh and Sakhon Nakhon. Further south, attempts were made to form supplementary liaisons between Ubon Ratchathani and Quang Ngai by way of Attapeu and yet another through Saynane in Laos. Although some Viet Minh detachments did apparently use these routes, they remained small-scale and extremely primitive. Stronger links were formed further south between Ubon and northern Nam Bo, with Stung Treng and Kratie serving as important mid-points. Another route was projected to run from Ubon across Cambodia to the highlands. General Nguyen Binh was said to have put his weight behind the Ubon–Kratie–Nam Bo itinerary. In any case, as of 1947, some 700 soldiers were active in the Mekong Front, supported by another 500–700 Lao Issara and 800–1,000 Khmer Issarak troops.”

As for the Western Front, it ran down both sides of the Mekong River from upper Laos south to northwestern Cambodia, but apparently not to the Gulf of Thailand. According to Hoang Van Hoan, Vu Huu Binh was in charge of the Western Front’s military affairs, while Tran Van Giau and Le Huu Quan tended to political matters. Vietnamese officials, referred to only as Xo, Khnh and Cung by Hoan, were also said to be members. The Western Front was a part of the overall Viet Minh military structure, directly linked to the other interwar zones into which Vietnam — and later Laos and Cambodia — were partitioned. This front was under the joint direction of the ICP’s Viet kieu Special Committee (Dac Vuet Kieu) in Udon and the DRV delegation in Bangkok, although the degree of coordination between the two was contested internally (see Chapter 7). As a part of the front’s operations, military training camps were set up in northeastern Thailand to train Viet kieu recruits and Lao and Cambodian fighters, with some of the Front’s main covert training camps located in the forests of Ubon Ratchathani. The Western Front comprised five ‘special zones’ (dac khu).

According to a French intelligence report, on 27 January 1947 the Nam Bo Administrative and Resistance Executive Committee decided officially to concentrate its arms-buying activities in Thailand. Funds would be sent by the DRV government in northern Vietnam to ‘Hoang’ (Tran Van Giau) in Thailand, who would then make the purchases. According to this document, the central government was even thinking of supplying northern Vietnam from Thailand by way of Nam Bo after the outbreak of war in Tonkin/Bac Bo. Strategists probably hoped that the transfer of many Leclere’s best troops from southern Vietnam to the north from March–April 1946 would give General Nguyen Binh and Nguyen Thanh Son more room in which to import arms and organise supply lines in southern Indochina. According to one Vietnamese source, because the French took control of strategic points along the vulnerable central provinces of Quang Binh, Quang Tri and Thua Thien in 1947, the Viet Minh had to assign the Territorial Committee (Xu Uy Nam Bo) the important task of ‘reverse supplying’. This meant that arms and equipment were brought out of Nam Bo to the ‘Cambodia–Thai–Lao Road’ in order to be distributed to other areas to the north.

But both were extremely bold, overly ambitious plans, for which the Viet Minh’s external transport and communications services were still badly prepared in 1947. On 31 March of that year, the Nam Bo leadership reported that it could not assure the supplying of the northern given that ‘the convoys of arms, ammunition and medicines coming from the South to supply Annam and Tonkin [were] blocked [by the French]. Each country [bo in Vietnamese] will be responsible for negotiating the purchase of arms and weapons in Thailand.”

There is, however, solid evidence showing that a decision was made by Nguyen Thanh Son and Cao Hong Lanh sometime in 1947 to revamp entirely their commercial networks in Thailand with a view to supplying all of Vietnam from the west. This plan was first advanced in 1947 by Lanh, who was the ICP’s man in charge of liaison with the Chinese and the arms trade in Thailand. However, it was only in 1949 that 10 million piastres were finally allocated to Lanh’s plan. His project was clearly behind Nguyen Thanh Son’s voyage to Bangkok in that same year, given that Son carried this exact amount of money. In November 1949, Son reported that he had unified the routes and transport systems and that he had 10,000 cartridges at his disposal and 1,000 kg of saltpetre from Thailand. Son’s trip coincides with the French blockade of the southern resistance economy.

THE LOWER INDOCHINESE SUPPLY LINES

Whatever the precise trails, by late 1947 we can detect two major supply routes running to Vietnam: (1) a lower Indochinese one crossing Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand by land and sea routes and (2) an upper Indochinese one running from Udon Thani across Laos to interwar zone IV in Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh and Thanh Hoa provinces. This was a natural reflection of Vietnam’s thin, S-like position on the edge of the Indochinese peninsula and the geography of trading and immigration routes which had historically always linked Vietnam to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand (see Chapter 1). What needs to be underscored here is that transporting military supplies and equipment across the river ways of Cambodia and especially across the Gulf of Thailand was much easier than taking it overland across Laos in a time of war. This led to a reversal from the strong prewar revolutionary track between upper northeast Thailand and northern central Vietnam towards a southern one running from Bangkok and Ban May Rut to Rach Gia and Camau. To southerners, this link to Thailand was also known as the Western Route (Duong xuyen Tay).

The People

The Vietnamese in Thailand were essential to arranging the purchase and transport of this5 war m6aterial. From the border, young Viet kieu filled the convoys for transporting arms across Cambodia. Like their prewar predecessors, their cultural, linguistic and hands-on geographical knowledge of the region made them vital to the functioning of the supply networks. In fact, it was one of Khun Viset's former colleagues, Nam Hong Chung, who became Nguyen Duc Quy's 'closest confidant' after World War II. In exchange for his consultancy services, the Viet Minh gave him a ranking position in its patriotic hierarchy: President of the Viet Kieu Assistance Committee at Bangkok. Chung, in turn, opened a wider range of contacts to southerners through Ho Van Mi and Nguyen Van Chinh, both influential Viet kieu representatives.

Further down the pipeline, Tran Van Giau and Duong Van Phuc recruited an array of Vietnamese and Chinese émigrés. For example, Kim Hong, a rich Chinese merchant trading with the Viet Minh well into the 1950s, was in fact the son of Kim Son, a famous Chinese pirate in the Gulf of Thailand. 

 Ari Vanakorn, the adopted Thai name of a Vietnamese called ‘Hop’, was the son of a ship outfitter who had run a Mekong transport service from the silver mines of Laos before World War II. Having gambled it away, he emigrated to Thailand in the early 1940s (no doubt thanks to Phibun’s liberal immigration policies) and married the daughter of a Thai military officer. After World War II, his knowledge of river transports, his proficiency in Thai/Lao, and his family connections made him a perfect guide for Tran Van Giau, who recruited him immediately upon his arrival in Thailand. Thanks to his father-in-law in the Royal Thai Army, Hop was able to procure arms from military arms depots for the Nam Bo Supply Committee. The Vietnamese tailor, ‘Nghia Loi’ (whom Ta Thu Thau met in Bangkok before World War II) became Giau’s main arms ‘detector’. Further down the coast, ‘Mui’, a Vietnamese fisherman from May Ruot, worked as a maritime spy. A Lao–Vietnamese métisse, married to a Thai bureaucrat, he helped out in Chantaboun. Running the maritime routes, Nguyen Y Net, a former captain of coastal trading junks, placed his prewar seafaring and geographical knowledge of the Gulf of Thailand in the service of the Nam Bo Supply Committee. 138 In March 1948, 50 Malayans were finally sent to Ha Tien to fight on the Viet Minh’s side. More were dispatched to Chantaboun. 

Of equal importance were the allies, southern leaders found in Vietnamese Buddhist monks living and preaching in the Bangkok area. The senior monk, Bao An, stands out. He was not only a widely respected religious leader in Bangkok, but also one of the five most important members of the DRV's delegation in Thailand, and one of best arms dealer the Viet Minh had in Southeast Asia. Of course, Vietnamese monks in Thailand were not new to Vietnamese clandestine operations, as we saw in the case of Phan Boi Chau and the 'Vegetarian Monk' (see Chapter 1). Born in Sadec in 1911, Bao An spoke Cambodian and Thai. He had travelled widely between Phnom Penh and Battambang from 1931 to 1946, at which time he took refuge in Thailand.

But what made Vietnamese monks like Bao An so valuable to the Viet Minh? First, they often had Thai nationality, something that allowed them to go about their business and that of the delegation, without fear of arbitrary arrest (at least not until after 1951; see Chapter 8). Second, as Buddhist clerics, they held a special socio-religious status in Thai society. Thai authorities were unwilling to risk a public outcry by arresting them. Bao An was said to have had 'great prestige among the Siamese authorities'. During his 1949 voyage to Bangkok, Nguyen Thanh Son went to Nong Loern temple to discuss with Bao An the reorganisation of supply operations to Nam Bo. Third, due to their long residence in Thailand, Vietnamese monks spoke Thai and could touch wider segments of Thai society than could a French-speaking official like Tran Van Giau. Fourth, these monks usually had good contacts with the local authorities, something that Giau and Quy needed badly. Lastly, since the days of the VNQDD, if not long before, religious temples had always served as preferred meeting places for secret societies and revolutionaries keen on shaking off the French-employed Asian spies tracking them. Unsurprisingly, Bao An had received his undercover training from the Japanese in Bangkok in the early 1940s.

What made Bao An such an effective agent? First, he directed liaisons and transactions with Thai and Chinese arms dealers. This monk was the buyer for the 'Hong Kong They', a Chinese supply house. Arms procured via this company were transported by canal to Bao An's temple, Nang Loern. There, Duong Van Phuc and Bao An resided and arranged their arms deals.Serving on his team of a dozen or so agents were six other monks. They were said to be the 'best organised and the strongest in Thailand' when it came to smuggling. The French claimed that one of the Viet Minh's major warehouses for storing arms until their shipment to Nam Bo was in the Gia Long Temple in Bang Pho, reminding us of other Vietnamese who had relied on Thailand to win back Vietnam in the 18th century.

Picking up where Phan Boi Chau and Ho Chi Minh had left off, Viet Minh leaders in Thailand (and elsewhere) also turned to criminal elements, as the dispatch of the ex-convict from Poulo Condor, Nguyen Van Hoa, to Manila made clear. Meanwhile Vietnamese sailors smuggled US dollars and gold from Europe to Saigon and Bangkok. However, from 1945 Vietnamese agents in Thailand also targeted highly skilled émigrés now on the run from this same war. Of the 38 names listed in a French study of the Viet Minh technical organisation in Thailand, eight were former colonial radio operators and four were skippers who had commanded junks on the South China Seas before the war.  In brief, the Viet Minh did their best to exploit age-old immigration patterns and diverse social milieux spanning the peninsula. Vietnamese fishermen at Ban May Rut and Tonle Sap were turned into spies; Buddhist monks became gun-runners; and French-trained telegraphists from Laos were transformed into wartime communications experts.

Directly or indirectly, both Pridi Phanomyong and Phibun Songkhram gave the Viet Minh a big hand in creating these western supply routes. Government and military officials made available boats, trains, and were even ready to lease to DRV members airplanes to transport weapons from Thailand to Indochina. The Thai Navy, dominated by Pridi’s Seri Thai partisans, allocated boats to the Vietnamese to export arms, equipment and medicines to Vietnam. Often military hardware was loaded on to Viet Minh boats in the port of Bangkok and clandestinely shipped out by night under Thai protection and the Thai flags to avoid detection by French spies. Until mid-1951 the pro-Seri Thai Navy, Coast Guard, and Customs Service allowed the Viet Minh to cross Thai waters without interference (see Chapter 8). After leaving Thai waters, Viet Minh naval guides took over the navigation of the vessels along designated sea routes. In 1992, the Bangkok English-language daily, The Nation, reported that one of those Thais who had escorted Viet Minh’s arms by boat was Chana Samutvanich. Speaking decades later as a Police Major General, Chana recalled his mission in 1950 as follows:

I stayed on deck throughout the journey and was truly unaware of what was kept in the hold underneath. My orders were to see to the safe passage of the boat beyond Pak Nam, to clear up any misunderstandings in case of an encounter with police along the way. stayed on deck throughout the journey and was truly unaware of what was kept in the hold underneath. My orders were to see to the safe passage of the boat beyond Pak Nam, to clear up any misunderstandings in case of an encounter with police along the way. 

The Sea Routes

If the Thais gave the Vietnamese a helping hand and turned a blind eye, it was up to the Viet Minh to organise and transport the war material to Vietnam. One way in which the Vietnamese did this was by grafting their clandestine movements on to an ancient coastal junk trade running eastwards from Bangkok to southern Cambodia by way of the islands of Phu Quoc and Koh Kut, through the canals of Rach Gia, Cau Mau and Bac Lieu and, from there, up the Vietnamese coast to southern Chinese entrepôts, Hong Kong, and across to the island of Hainan. In effect, the Viet Minh abandoned the ICP's previous reliance on large European or Japanese ships plying the South China Sea in order to move closer to mainland Southeast Asia's borders and ports by way of coastal Chinese and Vietnamese traders. To tap this age-old junk trade, the Viet Minh bought, built or rented Chinese, Siamese and Hainanese junks as well as Vietnamese and Cambodian sampans. Viet Minh junk-building workshops existed on the island of Phu Quoc and in the forests of Rach Gia, where combatants could find the vital wood, sao, or import it easily from southeastern Cambodia. One boat-building outlet on Phu Quoc employed 100 workers. The Viet Minh’s junks were small, though, 1ranging between 20 and2 200 tons3 and between 15 and 40 metres in length. Larger tonnages were simply too risky to run against the French Navy. In early 1947, the French intercepted Viet Minh communications revealing that Nguyen Thanh Son was looking to recruit more Chinese-speaking personnel to run his junks, suggesting that the Viet Minh were relying on Hoa kieu merchants for their Gulf trade.

Rudimentary coastal and island relays (tram) were formed between Bangkok and Nam Bo to guide crafts across the Gulf of Thailand (tiep chuyen). The junk traffic was heaviest from the Gulf of Thailand to the port of Cua Lo-Vinh, suggesting that interwar zone IV would have been important as an intersection for land and sea routes running to Thailand, southern China and Hainan. Boats brought arms procured from Thai and Japanese upland arms depots to Cholburi/Bangkok. Shipments from the port of Bangkok were channelled along the coast to Ban May Rut, where the Nam Bo and its Bangkok-based Supply Sections had established their most important maritime departure, complete with two rudimentary warehouses and a functional junk service. If the Vietnamese did not have enough boats available to move personnel and supplies from the port of Bangkok, they used a Thai automobile transport company called Seng Prathip to truck their goods. Once at Ban May Rut, voyagers met with trusted Vietnamese residents in Thailand, who provided the convoys with maps and information about the state of the communication lines running back to Vietnam. As far as the French could tell, Ban May Rut hosted an average of four trips a month to Nam Bo — two each way.$^{149}$ The Ban May Rut relay was, one source said, the 'Committee Centre par excellence'. It had the protection of the Thai District Chief of Klong Yai, the support of a rich Cantonese merchant named Kim Hong, and valuable contacts within the Thai Police and Customs services. In 1953, Kim Hong would reappear in a Sûreté report concerning the sale of pepper exported from Ha Tien to May Rut by the Viet Minh to exchange for special paper needed for printing Ho Chi Minh notes. Hong was, in turn, working with another Chinese merchant working for a Japanese trading house.

On the island of Koh Kut, there were between 300 and 500 hundred Vietnamese serving the Viet Minh’s Gulf operations as a reserve labour force, liaison agents, and guards for the economic and transport committee missions. In May 1947, the French ‘cleaned’ pockets of Viet Minh agents and workers stationed on the island of Phu Quoc, but had to repeat their actions a year later. It was not the last time. From the islands, boats then made their way to destinations along the Cambodian coast before disappearing into the Mekong Delta’s inlets. From there, specially appointed Viet Minh guides and porters unloaded the arms into smaller vessels or on to pack animals to distribute the goods to specific military units. Significantly, the Viet Minh ruled many (but by no means all) of the small rivers and inlets around the Point of Camau and 'the majority of the islands in the Gulf of Siam', considered by the French to be the most useful relays for the trade coming from Thailand, the Malay peninsula and the Philippines. According to the testimony of a member of the External Affairs Committee (Ban Ngoai Vu), Ha Tien was the most important Viet Minh interchange with the exterior, the 'principal artery which kept the [southern] resistance alive'. This is somewhat exaggerated. What is notable, however, is that until 1950 the French ceded the coast of Tra Vinh province to the Viet Minh. There, unsurprisingly, southern leaders anchored their southern traffic with Southeast Asia, not unlike Gia Long and the Sino-Vietnamese Mac family in the 18th century.

Vietnamese documents and the testimonies of prisoners captured by the French reveal that the Viet Minh used two main sea routes to channel arms and supplies to Vietnam. An 'off-shore route' employed motorised junks operating under cover of night (and sometimes with primitive radar). Junks left the coast to skip across the island relays of Koh Kut and Poulo Wai, before making inland dashes to the web of canals opening on either side of the point of Camau. For shore routes, on the other hand, small, shallow-draught craft including sampans were used to hug the Cambodian coast by night. From the banks, agents used radios to scuttle the boats from relay to relay until they could vanish into the canals near Rach Gia. From there interior waterways shuttled the arms and equipment to waiting troops scattered across Nam Bo. Maritime-arms traffic in the Gulf of Thailand tended to be seasonal, reaching its peak between November and March, when the sea was rough along the eastern coast of Vietnam and vice-versa along the southern one.

The French Navy was in a particularly difficult position to stop this trade along more than 2,500 kilometres of Indochinese coastline. Moreover, because the Indochinese ‘conflict’ was, in legal terms, not ‘actually a war but a police affair’, French naval commanders were restricted by the need to ‘follow the rules of international law in a time of peace’ in international waters. Their actions inside Indochina’s territorial waters were, of course, much more aggressive.

The Land Routes

From 1946 Vietnamese resistance leaders positioned along the Thai–Cambodian border started organising mobile combat units to supply arms and young men to the southern resistance. The first military team formed out of southeastern Thailand was a battalion called Tran Phu (named after the first Secretary General of the ICP). Giau says that this battalion numbered around 500–600 troops. It was recruited from among Vietnamese émigrés in Thailand and western Indochina and was initially stationed in the still Thai-administered parts of Battambang province in mid-1946. Well armed, the Tran Phu operation sent young Viet kieu men to interwar zone VIII in Nam Bo to join the resistance against the French and transport tradable goods from Vietnam in exchange for arms and supplies.

Another mobile fighting unit that was set up by Viet Minh officials in Thailand was called Quang Trung, named after the late 18th-century Tay Son hero. The Quang Trung group was based in the area north of the Tonle Sap in Cambodia. It moved between that point and northeastern Nam Bo, interwar zone IX, with the dual tasks of transporting weapons back to southern Vietnam and engaging the French in guerrilla fighting. Though much less known, the Duong Tan armed detachment supplied men and arms to interwar zone VII. Viet Minh officials in Thailand organised elephant caravans to transport war matériel across the Cambodian land routes to Nam Bo. Each elephant was able to carry between 150 and 200 kilograms of supplies. The Viet Minh sent two to three caravans a year. It was a highly laborious and dangerous mode of transport in comparison to the maritime routes.

In 1946, DRV representatives working from Thailand presided over the formation of two more combined supply-combat groups: the Mekong I and Mekong II (Cuu Long I – Cuu Long II).$^{159}$ Mekong I was a sea operation which went around the coast of Cambodia to southern Nam Bo. Its main task was to transport weapons acquired in and through Thailand to the southern resistance. Mekong II was an overland route which originated in the area south of the Tonle Sap and travelled from Pursat and Battambang to Kompong Thom and then into Nam Bo by canals. It reportedly numbered around 300 personnel and transported weapons and equipment back to Vietnam and engaged the French. According to Giau, it was later ‘almost completely decimated by the French’. Another combat unit was known as That Son, named after the seven-mountain border region, but the details of its operations remain unknown. Between 1946 and 1954, Viet kieu communities in Thailand provided around 6,000 recruits, a majority of whom worked in this Mekong operation.$^{160}$ Giau said in an interview that two more combat units, Mekong III and IV, were also created under Viet Minh supervision. Mekong III left from Battambang, crossed Siemreap, Kompong Thom, and Komgpong Cham and ended in Tay Ninh province in southern Vietnam.$^{161}$ It is unclear which course Mekong IV took, although its tasks were probably similar to the others. Considering the military importance of these units to the Nam Bo resistance, it seems certain that Viet Minh officials present in Thailand in 1946, such as Nguyen Thanh Son, Pham Van Bach and Nguyen Binh joined Giau in organising and directing these military groups. Pridi facilitated their work by allowing them to work from Thai soil and through continued military assistance. In one case in 1946, he made available 20 tons of carbines to the Viet Minh, no doubt divided into smaller portions to avoid one fatal capture by the French. The lack of Thai and French presence in these remote areas contributed greatly to these supply routes. One British intelligence officer in northwestern Cambodia wrote in March 1946 that there was ‘virtually no check on the heavy smuggling across the Great Lake’.

Giau’s claims are largely confirmed by French sources, which concede that he had formed an ‘Overseas Army’ (Bo Doi Hai Ngoai) in June 1946 (which was renamed Ban Ngoai Vu in 1948). The first detachment consisted of about 200 men located in Siemreap under the command of Tran Van Tan, former head of the Chau Doc Sûreté; Ngo That Son, a former student from Hanoi; and 'Hoang', a reference to Tran Van Giau himself. It appears that this group was the one that briefly occupied Siemreap in August 1946. A second detachment was formed in November 1946 with the aid of Vu Huu Binh and was based at Ubon. It was named Tran Phu by Nguyen Thoi Trong on behalf of Tran Van Giau, thus confirming Giau's version of events. It left Thailand around 19 December 1946 to deliver arms to interwar zone 8. Son Ngoc Minh was the Deputy of the Tran Phu detachment. A third group was formed in January 1947 near Pursat. It was led by Hoang Xuan Binh in charge of a smaller convoy operation to interwar zone IX.

Extent of the Southern Indochinese Trade

Based on the sources currently available, it is impossible to determine precisely the amount of arms and supplies transported successfully to southern Vietnam from Southeast Asia via Thailand between 1945 and 1951. Vietnamese interviewees today tend to play it up, while some French intelligence officers at the time preferred to minimise it or exaggerate it wildly for a variety of politico-military purposes. The author of one French report on the Viet Minh's activities in Thailand admitted that the French lacked 'intelligence on the amount of arms being transported' from Thailand to Vietnam.To my knowledge, Vietnamese communists have not published their external trade figures for the period. And it would be simply perilous to assume that the French were aware of every Viet Minh supply mission.

Despite its serious methodological weaknesses, this chapter represents a preliminary, and admittedly detailed, attempt to study the Viet Minh's Southeast Asian trade between 1945 and 1951 in the hope that we will eventually be able to compare it to the volume of the DRV's internal trade and its exchanges with East Asia. As noted above, this will in turn allow us to determine which was most important in the Viet Minh's economic ability to 'hang on' until the Chinese communist victory opened a much more important commercial opening (see Chapter 8). With this in mind, it is important to get beyond simple statements that the DRV's trade with Thailand was 'substantial' or 'inconsequential'. For if the tonnages turn out to have been statistically small (which I think is the case), then it would suggest that more attention should be paid to the internal resistance economy evoked above.

What we do know is that in 1950, under pressure to provide some quantifiable number for the Viet Minh's trade via Thailand, the French reported to the British that the amount of traffic passing through the western part of Cambodia from Thailand amounted to 12 tons a month. It was thought that maritime routes accounted for nearly 80 per cent of the total traffic between Siam and (southern) Indochina. If true, this would mean that around 576 tons of war supplies reached southern Vietnam by Thailand every year by sea.

According to another French source, between 1949 and 1950, 13 tons of materials were transported monthly by overland transport units between Nam Bo and Thailand – or around 156 tons a year. Not particularly large amounts.

Another indicator of the size of this clandestine traffic coming from Asian sources in general (and not just Thailand) is the number of junks sunk by French naval patrols. During the third trimester of 1947, for example, we know that the French Navy seized 250 tons of war equipment and supplies, but admitted that it was probably only a fraction of the arms getting through to Vietnam by sea (though we do not know ‘which’ fraction). In 1950 the French Navy sank or destroyed 4,151 junks at a cost of 1,891 tons of merchandise, followed by 5,998 sunken junks in 1952 at a cost of 2,824 tons of merchandise. However, it is not certain whether all of these vessels were, in fact, Viet Minh-operated commercial junks.$^{169}$ According to Viet Minh statistics recovered by the French, 50 per cent of its material going by sea was seized by the French or ‘dumped’ by the Vietnamese in order to avoid confiscation. Although I have no indication of how much actually ‘got through’ from Southeast Asia, one author has claimed that of the 15,000 combattants active in the south, 60 per cent were armed, thanks to arms coming from or through Thailand. Another source claimed that as of December 1946 the majority of the modern arms used by troops in Nam Bo had been imported from Thailand.

It is important to keep this ‘Southeast Asian’ trade in perspective. After all, Chinese communists were estimated to have supplied the Viet Minh in northern Vietnam with 2,300 tons of war material during just the last three months of 1951.

My own preliminary impression is that the DRV’s Southeast Asian trade was not as important as the internal exchanges – that is, commerce with the French-occupied markets (including the Hoa kieu ones) and the capture of arms from the enemy. This was especially the case from 1948 onwards, when Allied arms depots in Southeast Asia began to dry up, prices rose, DRV finances dwindled and the French tightened their maritime and overland surveillance via a very effective economic embargo on the Vietnamese economy, especially the southeastern part. Arms imports into southern and central Vietnam from Thailand were probably at their height during the 1945–48 period. Thereafter, pharmaceutical products, surgical instruments, radios, paper, acids, petroleum products, steel and explosives – not arms – constituted the bulk of the DRV’s foreign trade in Southeast Asia between 1945 and 1951.

THE UPPER INDOCHINESE SUPPLY LINES

As for what was occurring along the northern Indochinese route, it is even harder to say. We know that arms procured in Thailand for central and upper Vietnam were being sent by car, truck and train to northeastern Thai depots. Since the end of World War II Thai officials, including such ranking figures as Pridi Phanomyong and Navy Rear Admiral Sangwon Suwannachip, had arranged 'special trains' (more likely freight cars) to transport by rail Vietnamese–procured arms and equipment to Thai frontier towns such as Ubon and Surin. After having secretly loaded arms and equipment on to these trains, Viet Minh members accompanied the shipments to the Thai–Indochinese border, escorted by Thai military police and, on certain occasions, even Thai Ministers (probably Tiang Sirikhan and Thongin Phuriphat). Thai border authorities were often under direct instructions from Bangkok to permit Vietnamese cargoes to be transferred without inspection. As in the prewar period, Vietnamese anticolonialists knew how to hook themselves into the local politics of northeastern Thailand. The 600 Vietnamese living 2in Aranyaprathet lent a hand in the transfer of Viet Minh war materials to Indochina. They had long been living in the area as small-time traders, full-time drivers and part-time black-marketeers. Thanks to these Vietnamese, DRV agents won over the collaboration of ‘Sanguon’, an important Thai trader better known locally as ‘Head Gangster’. He was helped by a Vietnamese woman, a contraband specialist for the Viet Minh.

Perhaps most interesting was an alleged secret agreement between the Thais and DRV representatives, whereby Thai airplanes were to be leased to the Viet Minh to bring gold, opium and other goods out of Indochina to sell in Southeast Asia. With the money earned from such sales, the Viet Minh would purchase weapons, ammunition, medicines and equipment. Nguyen Duc Quy said in an interview with me that these planes were to be flown by Thai pilots, with the understanding that in the event of a fatal accident, the Vietnamese would have to provide financially for the family of the deceased pilot. While I have been unable to confirm independently whether any shipments were actually made by air, Quy implied to me that they had.$^{176}$ The French intercepted radio communications between the Viet Minh’s delegate in Udon Thani and the head of interwar zone IV concerning Thai orders for large quantities of opium. The Viet Minh’s man in Udon explained that he was in a position to fly arms into Vietnam in exchange for the opium stockpiled in interwar zone IV. He asked for instructions, the price of the opium available and the location of the zone’s airstrip.

If the Nam Bo Supply Committee in Bangkok was responsible for trade with southern Vietnam’s trade with Thailand, the Viet Kieu Assistance Association in Udon Thani dealt with interwar zone IV’s Bureau of International Affairs and eventually supplied what would be known as the Viet Minh’s Laotian Front (Mat Tran Lao; see Chapter 8). Concerning the itineraries for transporting arms to Vietnam across Laos, the French had a difficult time intercepting them, given the ‘apathy’ of the local populations, the ‘weak’ presence of the French military implantation in Laos, and the key role played by the Vietnamese in Thailand in the transport of these arms. As noted, the need to open an arms route to central and northern Vietnam was at the heart of the creation of the Mekong Front in January 1947. Since 1945, the Laotian routes had been used during the dry season from October to June. Most of the Viet Minh's convoys crossing Laos ran between relays concentrated in the areas of Nong Khai, Khemmarat, Nakhon Sakhon, and Phimun, linked to parallel receiving points on the other side of the Mekong, and receiving centres in interwar zone IV. The main routes included a northern one crossing Tran Ninh into Nghe Tinh provinces and a southern one leaving Ubon and feeding northern Nam Bo by way of the intersection of Attopeu. Messengers and scouts were delegated the job of escorting the convoys across Laos, while Vietnamese fishermen working along the Mekong hauled the military supplies across the river. To make sure that all went well, interwar zone IV put its longstanding Mekong expert, Nguyen Tai, in charge of running this Laotian traffic (see Chapters 1 and 2 on Tai). From interwar zone IV, the Viet Minh exported gold, foreign exchange and opium via Thailand. Through Udon Thani, the Viet Minh imported goods bought in Thailand, Burma and India.As early as 23 December 1946, officials in Siam had sent a message to General Giap informing him that an arms delivery was on its way across Laos.

Based on the sources available, the quantity of arms transported across Laos probably never reached the size or rhythm of those being channelled to Nam Bo by way of Cambodia and the Gulf of Thailand. Part of the problem stemmed from the difficulty of crossing the open areas of western Laos and then the rough terrain of the mountains in eastern Laos. It was relatively easier to patrol the Mekong River in Laos, the open lowlands, and the few crossings in the Annamese Range than it was the high seas of the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea or the Mekong Delta. In 1948, representatives in Udon informed Ho Tung Mau in interwar zone IV that the dispatch of any convoy to Thailand had to be signalled at least ten days in advance and had to possess a ‘strong escort’ given ‘severe’ French surveillance.

Adding to this problem was the fact that the French Laotian Front’s Deuxième Bureau executed a counter-revolutionary operation in Thailand in late 1947 which impeded the Mekong Front until at least 1948. This is not the place to delve into the complicated details of the operation. What concerns us here is that Colonel Crèvecoeur, Commander of the Laotian Front, and his Service de Renseignements headed by Jean Deuve, devised an effective deception operation designed to paralyse the Viet Minh’s Mekong activities. They did this by sowing mutual discord among the ICP and Viet Minh ranks in northeast Thailand. Relying on a combination of intercepted Viet Minh cable traffic, locally recruited Vietnamese (Catholic) spies, and knowledge of the complicated political situation in Thailand, Crèvecoeur’s team carefully disseminated false information, letters, cables and propaganda in order to provoke splits and suspicions within the Viet Minh’s leadership in Thailand. They succeeded in convincing the Viet Minh headquarters in Vietnam, Udon Thani and Bangkok that there was a ‘counter-revolutionary’ movement afoot in the already paranoid revolutionary climate of northeast Thailand (see Chapter 7). Executions and assassinations occurred. Moreover, this operation took advantage of the 8 November 1947 coup in Bangkok and Phibun’s return to power to plant false information among the Thai Police, indicating that the Viet Minh was actually plotting with the Seri Thai against Phibun. This secret operation succeeded, for better or for worse, in shutting down the Viet Minh’s clandestine movements across Laos for at least a year and dangerously jeopardised the Viet Minh’s relations with the new government(s) coming to power in Bangkok from early 1948 (see Chapter 7).

Crèvecœur and Deuve’s plan may partly explain the decision taken by the ICP to send its Thai expert, Hoang Van Hoan, back to Udon Thani a few weeks after Crèvecœur’s operation was disclosed and promptly terminated in February 1948 (see Chapter 7). Whatever the case, Crèvecœur’s operation probably contributed to shifting the centre of gravity of the ICP’s Asian revolutionary network further away from its prewar upper northeast Thai track towards Nghe-Tinh to the southern track running to Ha Tien, Rach Gia and Camau from Bangkok and May Rut.

It was only in 1949 that we learn of a study undertaken by interwar zone IV’s Resistance Committee and its Bureau of External Relations on three new routes between Nghe-Tinh provinces and northeastern Thailand. By March 1950, interwar zone IV leaders could inform the government that liaisons with Thailand had ‘been better established’. This may have been related to the confirmed arrival of a large shipment of war material to interwar zone IV from Thailand on 10 December 1949 (coinciding with Nguyen Thanh Son’s mission to Thailand).

For the most part, Viet Minh agents in upper northeastern Thailand had to content themselves with circulating cadres to and from Southeast Asia, such as the voyage of Pham Van Bach to a meeting in southern Laos in 1947, Vu Huu Binh’s trip from Vietnam in November 1948 with a large gold supply, and the escort of Prince Souphanouvong to Vietnam in late 1949. Thanks to an ouverture by Pham Ngoc Thach, a Burmese delegation of four, consisting of two members of the ‘Anti-Fascist Federation’ and a Cabinet Secretary of the Prime Minister, travelled to interwar zone IV in March 1948. There, they were received by Tran Van Giau. Yet, despite three weeks of friendly exchanges and heartfelt toasts, this Burmese delegation had no official powers and was unable to continue northwards to meet Ho Chi Minh.$^{187}$ Moving in the other direction, the ICP dispatched an important foreign affairs mission to Rangoon on orders to form a second DRV delegation in Southeast Asia in early 1948 (see Chapter 8) and another led by ‘Chuong’ to which we shall return in Chapter 7.

THE FINAL VOYAGE OF THE SONG LO

Before concluding this chapter, let us travel with the Viet Minh’s Song Lo junk on its last mission from Bangkok to interwar zone IV to get a better idea of what was going on in the Viet Minh’s regional trading networks. In September 1948 the DRV’s Ministry of National Defence sent a representative to Thailand to make an important purchase of radio materials, paper, pharmaceutical products, training textbooks, as well as to take shipment of medical donations made by the Indian Red Cross and the World Democratic Youth League in that same month. The Ministry of Defence appointed a 'special delegate' for this task. His name was Nguyen Nhu Kim, allegedly a close friend of General Giap. It was not until June 1949, however, that this mission would get underway.

Initially, this shipment was to go by land along the Laotian routes. However, because these itineraries were too closely monitored by the French and after a failed attempt to rent a transport plane from an American company in Bangkok, Kim acquired authorisation and 'around 100 kg of gold' to purchase a 30-metre junk. The delegation's pointsman, Nam Hong Chung, negotiated the deal on behalf of the Southern Supply Committee. The boat's name was changed from Prasamud to Song Lo VN 198 and outfitted with three motors totalling 160 horsepower.Initially, this shipment was to go by land along the Laotian routes. However, because these itineraries were too closely monitored by the French and after a failed attempt to rent a transport plane from an American company in Bangkok, Kim acquired authorisation and 'around 100 kg of gold' to purchase a 30-metre junk. The delegation's pointsman, Nam Hong Chung, negotiated the deal on behalf of the Southern Supply Committee. The boat's name was changed from Prasamud to Song Lo VN 198 and outfitted with three motors totalling 160 horsepower.

Meanwhile, Kim made sure that Thai authorities (more likely the Thai Navy) were 'neutral'. They were. It was agreed that the boat would fly a Thai flag in Thai waters and would travel by way of the 'international route', away from the coast, before turning inland towards the shores of Trung Bo, to make the projected delivery to interwar zone IV. The Ministry of Defence gave the military commander of interwar zone IV, General Nguyen Son, the task of finding the best landing point on the Viet Minh-controlled coast near Vinh. After much discussion, Cua Lo was selected as the entry point where the Song Lo could land easily, whatever the tide level, and from where sampan-transport teams could unload the boat rapidly. Interwar zone IV's Committee for Supply and Transport at Do Luong would take it from there. A 'remarkable' radio system was installed in the Song Lo: the crew would be in constant contact with the DRV delegation in Bangkok, interwar zone IV headquarters, and the Ministry of Defence itself. 'Nothing was left to chance', is how a talented French decrypting team described the preparation of the Song Lo's mission. Secret codes were meticulously established and changed, as the decoders kept breaking them just as feverishly.

On 23 June 1949 the Song Lo left Bangkok harbour bound for the Point of Ca Mau. There, the crew spent a week repairing an engine in special resistance marinas hidden somewhere in the marshes. Kim asked interwar zone IV to determine a safe landing point for the boat, given that French naval patrols were combing the coast and a typhoon loomed in the distance. On 9 August, reassured by the departure of French patrol boats, General Son advised Kim that the landing would still take place at Cua Lo. On the 17th, the Song Lo left Ca Mau. French écoutes fired this information off to their vessels along the coast. However, just when the French were ready to strike, Kim reported that an enemy military plane had flown over the boat and photographed it. Kim fled to Hainan island, where the CCP had some secret bases. Undoubtedly aware of French decrypting skills, the Ministry of Defence ordered the Song Lo's crew to change immediately radio codes and frequencies. To no avail. Meanwhile, Kim's refuge on Hainan was complicated by the presence of KMT troops and the approaching typhoon. Photographed by another French plane on the southern

tip of Hainan, Kim asked the government to provide him information on possible CCP enclaves where he could take refuge. When the government informed him that there were none, Kim lost his cool. On the night of 28 August, he decided to make a run for Cua Lo. He chose a landing point. Apprised of his decision, the French moved in. Outrun and gunned, the Song Lo was hit and split in two, sending a spectacular ball of fire dancing above the water. Of the initial crew of 30 men, 21 were recovered, with 7 wounded seriously. The entire 10 tons of medicines and supplies were lost.  The Viet Minh’s trading operations had their failures as well as their successes.

However, the fate of the Song Lo is historically important for two other reasons. First, it sheds new light on the meticulous organisation and the tenacious determination of the Vietnamese to supply their war effort against great odds and at heavy costs. In a detailed study of the Viet Minh’s maritime trade, a French officer conceded that had the Song Lo junk not been spotted from the air, it would have made it to shore, thereby confirming that the French Navy never stopped all of the DRV’s trading vessels. $^{193}$ Second, the Song Lo mission shows that the Thai government – or at least the Thai Navy – remained sympathetic to the Viet Minh well after the November 1947 coup that ousted Pridi’s allies from power. When it came to these regional trading networks, the Cold War had still not arrived in Southeast Asia. And the remarkable relationship between Thailand and Vietnam continued – in spite of the tumultuous changes in Thai politics.

It is now time to make our way to the top of the DRV’s networks in Thailand, the diplomatic ones: first the non-communist ones, then the communist ones. They were all connected.

NOTES

1.Chen Jian, ‘China and the First Indo-China War’, The China Quarterly no. 133 (March 1993), pp. 85–110, based on recently published official Chinese documents. Also see Chapter 8.

2.Vague references to Thailand’s role in the Vietnamese war against the French can be found in Lich Su Quan Gioi Nam Bo (1945–1954) [A History of Military Armament in Nam Bo, 1945–1954], Hanoi: NXBQDND, 1991, p. 289.

3.‘Phai Vien Chinh Phu Viet Nam Tham Kieu Bao o Xiem’ [A Vietnamese Government Delegate Visits Vietnamese Nationals in Siam], Cuu Quoc, no. 422 (30 November 1946), p. 1 and ‘Kieu Bao o Xiem’ [Nationals in Siam], Khang Chien [Resistance], no. 1 (3 December 1946), p. 2.

4.Intercepted cable from ‘Hanoi, Vo Nguyen Giap to Hoang [Tran Van Giau]’, 30 November 1946, CSTFEO, EM/2B, ‘Documents vietnamiens’, no. 6078/2, 20 December 1946, s.d. Renseignements vietnamiens, d. 2, FFEO, 2B, c. 10H602, SHAT.

5.Intercepted cable cited in CSTFEO, EM/2B, ‘Note de renseignements: Activité extérieure du gouvernement de Hanoi dans certains pays du Sud-est Asiatique’, no. 5462/2, Saigon, 13 November 1946, c. 161, AO, IC, 1944–1955, MAE.

6.‘Échange de Lettres Franco–Siamois du 17 novembre 1946’, in Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Notes Documentaires et Études, no. 465 bis, Accord Franco–Siamois signé le 17 novembre 1946 à Washington et documents annexes, p. 16 and Le Monde (19 November 1946).

7 EMFTEO, EM/2B, ‘Organisation de l’autorité politico-militaire adverse en Indochine’, no. 19, 5 June 1948, chart: ‘Organisation générale de l’autorité civile et militaire V.M. [Viet Minh]’, c. 10H620, SHAT and Quan Khu 4: Lich Su Khang Chien Chong Thuc Dan Phap Xam Luc (1945–1954) [War Zone 4: A History of the Resistance against the Invading French Colonialists], Hanoi: NBXQNDN, 1990, pp. 67, 84. Others included Tran Van Quang and Hoang Diem. The French controlled Hue and Faifo/Hoi An.

8 And from behind the scenes: Le Duan and Le Duc Tho. See: CCFAEO, EM/2B, Sl, ‘Synthèse de renseignements sur les liaisons-transports entre le Siam et la Cochinchine depuis le mois d’octobre 1949’, no. 1810/FAEO/2S, c. C838, SHAA, based on intercepted documents.

9 Interview with Nguyen Duc Quy, 5 April 1989, Ho Chi Minh City.

10 SF, PSE, no. 1589/PSE-S, 30 September 1949, pp. 6–7, 10–12, d. Enquête sur les survivants du Song Lo pari contrebandier Viet Minh, 10H279, SHAT.

11 HCFI, SPSF, ‘Attitude des autorités samoises à l’égard des organes Viet Minh’, no. 8382/Sg-1, Saigon, 29 April 1949, c. 8–9, CD, CAOM. Phibun’s support should not surprise us in the light of earlier Thai–Vietnamese contacts. In January 1948, a Bangkok-based paper, Liberty, published an article on the DRV’s celebration of the sixth anniversary of the foundation of the first Viet Kieu Mutual Aid Association in Bangkok in 1942. Addressing a crowd of 300 Vietnamese, Nguyen Van Long explained the history of the Bangkok association that he had helped found himself in 1942. Long also underscored the aid it had received from the Thai government. See: Liberty (20 January 1948). Mention of the 1942 founding date and Long’s personal address suggests the post-WWII Bangkok-based Viet Kieu section was, in fact, an avatar of the ‘League for the Restoration of Viet Nam’ (Viet Nam Phuc Quoc Dong Minh Hoi) formed in Bangkok in 1942 by Duong Van Giao (see Chapter 3). This continuity would be reinforced by the fact that Nguyen Van Long (see Chapter 4) also worked in the Phuc Quoc’s Viet kieu association in Bangkok. Moreover, both Long and Giao knew Phibun.