As the Viet Minh (a precursor to the Viet Cong) rose to power, they persecuted the wealthy and destroyed our property to achieve equality between rich and poor. In order to pacify them, I joined the Viet Minh dance and vocal group in our village when I was only nine years old. This musical troupe was another clever way for the Communists to spread their propaganda.
My father initially protested my participation and would often beat me when I returned from performances. But my cousin, a staff member of the Viet Minh, convinced my father to let me stay. He argued that if we did not have a family member join this group, the Viet Minh would continue to persecute us and make life difficult for our family. My father begrudgingly complied like many who were coerced in those days to work for the Viet Minh. To do otherwise would not seem patriotic.
The Viet Minh trained villagers how to hide themselves in trenches whenever French planes were flying overhead and they promised to protect us if we helped them. Yet many took advantage of their power. Viet Minh soldiers frequently barged into our home and demanded that we feed them. Then, after eating all our food, they would provoke other villagers to wreck our home. They claimed that if a house was too big, the French might use it as a base of operations. Many other landlords experienced similar cases of vandalism, but we all had to put up with this harassment or risk losing their protection. Another time, my oldest sister got into an altercation with the vandals and accused them of being ingrates who “break the rice bowl they ate from.” They punished her by throwing her into jail until my mother could bail her out.
We were spared the worst of it, however, because many of the Viet Minh still felt indebted to my mother. She had always been compassionate toward them when they were poor and had helped them with past kindnesses. Yet my father despised the Communists for causing the death of his middle brother and his father in China. He would openly voice his hatred toward them, so they would repeatedly throw him in prison.
Then, in May of 1954, the French lost the Battle at Dien Bien Phu and surrendered to the Viet Minh, thus ending seventy years of French colonial rule in Vietnam. At the International Geneva Conference, Vietnam was then divided into North and South along the seventeenth parallel. The Viet Minh controlled the North under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, while the South was initially governed by Emperor Bao Dai and his Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem.
Civilians were granted the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300–day period. During this time, about one million northerners (mainly minority Catholics) fled south, fearing persecution from the Communists. Over 100,000 Viet Minh soldiers regrouped in the North, expecting to return to the South within two years. The South Vietnamese government also returned our family’s land which had been seized, though only about half of it. Our family began conducting business again, but we never came close to the prosperity we enjoyed before my brother’s imprisonment. My father also rebuilt the house in Tan Loc atop its existing foundation, though we kept the house in Ca Mau just in case.
Almost everyone in our village eventually followed the Viet Minh, including my own relatives (my mother’s nephews and nieces). So, although none of my immediate family joined, we were spared further persecution through the influence of our extended family. The wealthy who did not have any of their family members in the Viet Minh party were often killed.
During this tumultuous time, many also sought revenge against my father. Those who had lost property due to their own gambling debts accused him of stealing their land. Some of those greedy opportunists even included our own relatives. For instance, one relative, who had gambled foolishly and lost his entire family fortune to my father, joined the Viet Minh and became a high-ranking officer in the county. He then came back to our village and demanded that my father return his land. He even spread rumors that my father was a greedy landlord who had robbed and cheated him of everything. Thankfully, this relative’s own nephew, also in the Viet Minh, came to my father’s defense: “Comrade, what you say is untrue. Tran Chieu came from China with just a bag of clothes. He did not even bring a gun with him. So, what do you mean that he robbed you of your land? You call yourself the poorest of the farmers. I say you are the grandfather of the farmers.”
My father’s life was spared, but the Viet Minh eventually seized back all his land and imprisoned him in a remote village. Not even family members were permitted to see the prisoners. It was only because I was a member of the Viet Minh dance and musical troupe that they allowed my mother to visit. So, I would perform for the Viet Minh while my mother visited my father in jail. Thankfully, they did not torture him like the other prisoners because of the influence of my mother’s family. If not for her connections, my father, as a rich landlord, would likely have been killed as well.
Whenever we visited the jail, we also paid taxes to the Viet Minh on any crops which the French had burned. They called it the “dumb tax” for having crops available to be destroyed. Sometimes, my mother’s brothers had to loan us money to pay this tax so that my father would be released. Yet every few months, the Viet Minh would send another “bill” stating that the previous amount was incorrect. Each time, when we didn’t have the money, my father would be jailed again. This happened many times over, causing my father to hate the Viet Minh all the more. After the French departed, the Viet Minh took control of the South as well. They seized all the land and distributed it among the poor. So, in 1952, our family abandoned the house in Tan Loc and we all moved to Ca Mau. My father opened up a fabric store, but grew discouraged by his misfortune. He hated living in the city, which he felt was polluted, and would much rather have invested his money in the countryside than run a business in Ca Mau. As a landowner, he didn’t need to perform any of the labor himself, but was able to benefit from the harvest of his tenant farmers. My father fell into a deep despair after the Viet Minh burned our home and seized our land. Then, in 1969, he suffered a stroke. My second oldest brother and his wife took care of my father in their home, but he was bed-ridden until his death. My father’s life showed how acts of kindness can benefit everyone, but foolishness can cause much harm.
