Nguyen Dinh Chieu (1822-1888):
Nguyen Dinh Chieu was born on 1 July 1822 in the village of Tan Thai in Gia Dinh Province within the present city limits of Sai Gon - Cho Lon. He died on 3 July 1888 in Ben T re at the age of sixty-six.
Nguyen Dinh Chieu received his education in the imperial city of Hue. At the age of twenty, he returned to his home province and in the next year earned a Bachelor of Arts in the regional examination. In 1849, the news of his mother's death while he was preparing for the national examination in Hue forced his return to Gia Dinh. Illness soon deprived him of his eyesight. In spite of blindness, Nguyen Dinh Chieu went into teaching, medicine, and literature. His fame as a physician and scholar spread to the six provinces the Western missionaries had named Cochinchina. Nguyen Dinh Chieu had planned to devote himself entirely to teaching and medicine, but then the French invasion began. In 1858, the French bombarded the port of Da Nang (called Tourane by the French) in Central Viet Nam to intimidate the Court of Hue. In 1859, they occupied Can Gio Port and the Gia Dinh Citadel. In 1862, the Court of Hue surrendered the three eastern provinces to the French and followed suit in 1867 with the three western provinces. Now, all of Cochinchina had fallen under the grip of French imperialism.
Nguyen Dinh Chieu took part in the popular resistance against the French. His writings, which were inspired by militant patriotism, stimulated the partisans' morale. Even though the French suppressed the popular resistance, he never gave up his struggle. Through his literary work, he kept confidence in the country's future alive for the population of the six provinces. The colonialists and their lackeys tried to win him over. Michel Ponchon, the governor of Ben Tre, visited Nguyen Dinh Chieu. Once, the governor even offered to give him back his house and land in Sai Gon. Nguyen Dinh Chieu retorted, "Why should I care about my house when the King has lost his domain?"
On another occasion, the official I press of Sai Gon wanted to organize a public campaign to help Nguyen Dinh Chieu, but he refused to participate, knowing only too well that this was another attempt to buy him off. Nguyen Dinh Chieu refused to collaborate with the invaders and preferred to live, instead, in poverty. To demonstrate his opposition, he refused to use anything imported from France and refused to send his children to French schools. Until his death, his irreproachable patriotism commanded respect from the people of Cochinchina.
Truong Dinh (1820 – 1864)
Truong Dinh was born in Binh Son District of Quang Ngai Province. While still a child, he followed his father, Truong Cam, a colonel of the provincial army, to Gia Dinh. As a young adult, he married the daughter of a well-to-do family in Tan An, Dinh Tuong Province and chose to stay on in his wife's native region after his father's death. Both Ky Xuyen Van Sao by Nguyen Thong, director of education in Vinh Long Province, and Paulin Vial's Les Premieres Annees de la Cochinchine (The First Years of Cochinchina) describe Truong Dinh as a tall man with a fair complexion and a proud bearing. Truong Dinh was renowned for his intelligence, marksmanship, and sound knowledge of military arts. During the reign of King Tu Duc, he spent much of his wealth in clearing waste land and organizing the poor, thereby earning a promotion to quan co, which was a position the feudal state had created to supervise plantation laborers. Truong Dinh was a good organizer and showed solicitude for the workers, who respected him.
French troops attacked Gia Dinh in 1859, killing Vo Duy Ninh, the citadel commander, and routing the imperial army. Truong Dinh stationed his own force of 500 farm hands to resist the French. He showed such courage that Lieutenant Paulin Vial, who fought against him several times, acknowledged his bravery. In his book, Paulin Vial gave this account: "Truong Dinh had a comrade named Huy. When the French seized Dong Son, Huy went over to the conquerors, which made him a canton chief. Huy lived among the French in their garrison. He spotted Truong Dinh's campsite and sent a servant with a letter to tell the French, but instead the servant took the secret letter to Truong Dinh. Truong Dinh immediately went to Dong San, beheaded the traitor, and returned to his own camp unscathed. He accomplished this feat in the very region where French troops were concentrated."
Paulin Vial added that this daring escapade made Truong Dinh famous and enhanced his prestige as a rebel dedicated to a noble cause. In another passage, Paulin Vial acknowledged that Truong Dinh possessed the flexibility and boldness needed to fulfill the complicated task he had set for himself. The French defeated the royal army at Phu Tho during the first month of the Lunar year of the Rooster (Tan Dau, 1861). The royal army fell back to Bien Hoa, and Truong Dinh withdrew his forces to Tan Hoa, where he commanded armed plantation workers and the regular Court soldiers who had reassembled after the debacle. During their siege of Bien Hoa and Vinh Long, the French discounted Truong Dinh and his men, calling them pirates who hardly merited attention. Truong Dinh took advantage of the French lack of vigilance to acquire and store food, manufacture arms and munitions, and raise more troops with the help of two mandarins, District Chief Luu Tien Thien and an eighth-degree clerk, Le Quang Quyen.
The insurgents had nearly a thousand men. Since he was familiar with the terrain, Truong Dinh mounted ambushes and inflicted heavy losses on the French. The Court heard about his victories and made him a lieutenant colonel of the Gia Dinh Provincal Army. During the eleventh lunar month of 1861, French troops seized Bien Hoa. The court reprimanded Than Van Nhiep and Nguyen Tuc Trung, the two mandarins responsible for defending the district, and ordered them to contact Truong Dinh at Tan Hoa and recapture Bien Hoa. Truong Dinh had already succeeded in occupying Qui Son; by now, his army consisted of six divisions with more than 6,000 men.
After the French occupation of Gia Dinh, the insurgent Vietnamese troops lacked discipline. Only the forces commanded by Truong Dinh at Tan Hoa and Nguyen Van Trung at Tan Thanh retained any degree of organization. The discipline and courage of Truong Dinh's men in battle earned them popular support and respect; their ranks grew. As a result, during the second month of the Year of the Dog (Nham Tuat, 1862), the Court gave Truong Dinh command of all the patriotic troops in Gia Dinh. His principle base was in Go Thuong District of Tan Hoa. In his Histoire de l'expedition de Cochinchina (History of the Cochinchina Expedition), Leopold Pallu de la Barrire remarked that "the attack on Go Cong by a well-led armed band astounded everybody. One believed the Annamites to be still buried in primitive stupor. The servile, frightened crowd that went trembling past the French in Sai Gon did not foreshadow such an act of resistance.... "
Ton Duc Thang (1888 - 1980):
Ton Duc Thang, who was President of the SRVN (Socialist Republic of Viet Nam) until 1980, led an eventful life, including a long period of vigorous struggle against the French colonialists. His name is closely associated with the Vietnamese working class and with liberation of the nation. Ton Duc Thang was born in Long Xuyen Province (Cochinchina) in 1888; four years after French colonialists had completed their conquest of Viet Nam. His family could not afford to send him to school. Poverty forced him to leave his family for Sai Gon, where he began his schooling while working as a servant. Young as he was, he resented the social injustices he felt and persuaded his schoolmates to boycott the classes of a teacher favoring pupils who gave the teacher presents and ran his errands. The school expelled Ton Duc Thang. He earned his living doing odd jobs.
Ton Duc Thang was working in a Sai Gon ship repair yard attached to a technical school in 1912 when a strike broke out among the student apprentices. The French colonialists called in the workers of Ba Son, another shipyard, to break the strike, which spread to that yard. Both strikes were successful, resulting in French concessions. However, the French turned their wrath against Ton Duc Thang, one of the movement's leaders and organizers.
During the World War I, Ton Duc Thang worked as a mechanic in the French Navy, and was aboard the cruiser, Paris, in the Black Sea when the French sailors mutinied, refusing to fight against the new Soviet State. He well remembered the day he had to leave his home country. After the pupils of the Sai Gon Technical School and the workers at the Ba Son Naval Shipyard struck with their demands, he had to disguise himself and use another name; he took work on a French ship to escape the manhunt the Security Service had mounted.
That's how Ton Duc Thang began his new life at sea. He thirsted after learning and was obsessed with how to make the struggle more effective when he returned home. He tried to get in touch with Comrade Nguyen Ai Quoc (Ho Chi Minh) many a time, but never managed to find him.
He first came across the 'Russian Revolution,' 'Bolshevism,' and 'Lenin' as names and ideas in some of the uncensored press the navy allowed reading at that time. Those newspapers helped him to see that the capitalists and imperialists denigrated the Russian revolution, yet the revolution made them shake in their shoes. His contacts with French workers also helped him to understand better that this was a social revolution, a revolution of oppressed workers. They told him about the Paris Commune, a revolution of workers and laborers that had ended 'n failure. Even though the French workers had kept up their revolutionary traditions and struggle, the Russians were the first to have a successful evolution. These comrades also explained that all the peoples of the former Russian Empire had united behind the revolution and that Lenin had called for equality and co-operation among these peoples.
All this increased Ton Due Thang's sympathy for the Russian revolution and strengthened his conviction that the workers in Russia had risen to abolish injustices that he himself had also known as a worker among colonized people of the yellow race. He was convinced that the justice and beauty blossoming in Russia were harmful to the interests of the capitalists and imperialists. As they talked, the French workers and sailors showed their respect for Lenin and the Russian workers. They had made up their minds not to let the capitalists and imperialists use them to fight the Russian people. He was quite determined to resist on the same count.
When night fell, the ship was about to pass through the Straits of the Dardanelles. The atmosphere on board was electric. Some of the comrades urged the sailors to hold a meeting as a show of resistance to the officers. "Before the meeting starts," they said to him, "you hoist the red flag on the mast so that the ships of the Red Army know we're friends." He jumped at the chance.
Day broke as the cruiser steamed into the Black Sea. The bugle sounded. A routine affair, but this time the order did not come from the officers. The red flag was immediately hoisted on the mast. He thought to himself: The ship was still a long way from their port. They could not see the red flag yet. But from the middle of the Black Sea it fluttered his greetings to them. He hoped the ship would reach their port with the flag still flying; then he could jump ashore to join their revolution and learn how to go about things when he got back to his own country.
When the cruiser returned to Toulon, Ton Duc Thang took part in the struggle of the workers and soldiers in the port. He returned in Viet Nam in 1920, but had still not gained a complete n understanding of the organization of the party of the working class. Nevertheless, he was the first to Ii spread in southern Viet Nam a consciousness of sympathy with the Russian Revolution and an understanding for the French working class. Above all, he organized the first bases in Sai Gon – Cho Lon for the clandestine Association of Workers. This was a very important step both for the workers' n movement and for political thinking in Viet Nam. Between 1921 and 1925, the Associations organized by Ton Duc Thang were active in the national movement. They preserved their original structure until 1926, when they merged with the Association of Revolutionary Youth (Thanh Nien cach Mang Dong Chi Hoi).
The workers' movement in Viet Nam was n developing rapidly in 1929 when the French colonialists arrested Ton Duc Thang. They sentenced him to twenty years of imprisonment and transported him to Poulo Condore Prison. In During his seventeen years in prison, Ton Duc Thang remained an example of courage and valor for his comrades. He was released from prison during the August Revolution of 1945. Ton Duc Thang became an energetic leader during the Resistance War against France in the South and was often found among the fighters at the front or among the munitions carriers. He often succeeded in penetrating areas the French had encircled, and he covered up the withdrawal of patriotic Vietnamese units.
In January 1946, the population of Sai Gon - Cho Lon elected Ton Duc Thang to the National Assembly of the DRVN (Democratic Republic of Viet Nam). He worked closely with the Party's Central Committee and held important positions in the National Assembly, the Fatherland Front, and the Government. Ton Duc Thang served as Minister of the Interior, Chairman of the Standing Committee of DRVN National Assembly, Chairman of the Central Patriotic Emulation Committee, President of the Lien Viet National Front, President of the Vietnam - USSR Friendship Association, Honorary President of the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labor, Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Viet Nam Fatherland Front, and President of the DRVN. His last post was President of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (SRVN), the name chosen in 1976 by the first National Assembly of a unified Viet Nam.
Nguyen Thi Minh Khai (7970-1947):
Streets in Ho Chi Minh City as elsewhere in Viet Nam often bear the names of important people from Vietnamese history and literature. The boulevard that divides Districts 1 and 3 and runs in front of Independence Palace is named for Nguyen Thi Minh Khai.
Nguyen Thi Minh Khai came from Nghe An Province in Central Viet Nam and, in 1935, was the first Vietnamese woman revolutionary to study in Moscow. She addressed the Seventh Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, where she emphasized the oppression of women peasants and workers in colonized countries and chided the Congress for not including more women delegates from the West.
After returning to Sai Gon, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai organized farmers and women, created training materials, and was selected Party Secretary for Sai Gon and Cho Lon. She was arrested on 30 July 1940. While in Catinat Prison, Minh Khai bit her fingertip and, using her forefinger as a pen and her blood as ink, wrote a revolutionary poem on the prison wall. A firing squad executed Nguyen Thi Minh Khai on 28 August 1941. She insisted that the guards remove her blindfold so she could stare at her executioners. She intentionally wore a white blouse so the marksmen would be forced to see her blood.
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