The Vietnam Wars

Connecting the Pieces Through Radio: A Personal Journey

by Don Moore

Part Two

Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

Except where noted otherwise, all photos are from the Vietnamese Military History Museum in Hanoi.

At the end of Part One I wrote how Vietnam became a single united independent country on 2 September 1945. That may have surprised you. It did me. But before we look at what happened, let’s consider what could have happened.

Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist with a desire to create a strong, independent Vietnam. Vietnam may have declared independence in 1945, but it needed help from a stronger nation to rebuild and to tell the French to keep out. Ho appealed to both the Soviet Union and the United States to support his new nation.

Ho Chi Minh had embraced Communism after living and studying in the Soviet Union for a few years in the 1920s. So, could modeling the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence after the US one have been part of a conspiracy with Moscow and a trick to cover Ho’s true intentions? Some claim so, but reality tells a different story. In 1945, the Soviet Union was devastated by World War II. Stalin’s focus was on rebuilding and on bringing the future satellites in Eastern Europe under his wing. He did not have the means, the interest, or the need to support an ally in a distant corner of Asia. Not only did Moscow ignore Ho’s requests, but the Soviet Union didn’t even recognize his government until 1950.

As a young man, Ho had also lived and traveled in the United States. He admired the country and its revolutionary heritage. He had good relationships with his OSS advisors. He believed that the American people were generally opposed to colonialism. Washington had already announced that the Philippines would become independent on 4 July 1946 and President Franklin Roosevelt was known to have opposed continued French rule of Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh had strong hopes that the United States would use its diplomatic might to tell the French to stay out. If that had happened, Vietnam would have been drawn closer to the United States. Then what? It would probably have developed into an Asian version of Tito’s Yugoslavia – a non-aligned country with an economy blending Communism and capitalism.

The French War

History took a different path. At the July 1945 Potsdam conference, Allied leaders had agreed that French troops would occupy and disarm the Japanese south of the 16th parallel and that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Chinese would do so in the north. By the end of August, the Vietnamese had already taken care of that for themselves. But the plans didn’t change. On 13 September 1945, a joint French and British force landed on the coast near Saigon and began to take control of population centers in the south. Meanwhile, two hundred thousand Nationalist Chinese troops crossed the border from the north, occupying all the major towns and cities, including Hanoi. Clearly outnumbered, the Viet Minh retreated to the countryside.

What happened over the next nine years is a long, complex story. It was brutal, and both sides committed atrocities. The British and Nationalist Chinese would soon be replaced by additional French troops. Unlike his predecessor, President Truman of the United States fully backed renewed French control of the region. The Viet Minh fought back. For the first few years, they were on their own and desperate for any help. They finally got that after Mao Tse-tung’s victory over the Nationalist Chinese in 1949. But what the Chinese supplied never matched the quality and quantity of what the French forces received from the United States. The Viet Minh countered that advantage through strong support of the populace, a well-developed intelligence-gathering network, and effective use of communication.

On 9 October 1947, Vietnamese forces shot down a French plane carrying Colonel Lambe, the Deputy Chief of Staff for French forces. This radio unit came from that plane. The make is not identified, but it appears to be from the American-made ARC-5 series.

This transceiver was captured by Vietnamese soldiers in 1950. The label on the bottom identifies it as a US Army Signal Corps RT-196/PRC-6

The American-made RPC-10 transceiver was used by Vietnamese forces in 1954 to coordinate the attack on the French position at Doc Lap in the early phases of the Dien Bien Phu campaign.

The Vietnamese forces also operated clandestine radio stations to broadcast their views to the general populace. The Voice of South Vietnam operated in the south with transmitting equipment built by Vietnamese engineers. It’s probable that the transmitters were still being used by clandestine stations into the 1960s and 1970s. (Photos from the Vietnam National Museum of History).

Another SSTR-1 set spy radio. This one was confiscated from French spies in Hanoi after the peace agreement had been signed. (Photo from the Vietnam National Museum of History).

By 1954, the war had turned into a sideshow of the Cold War. The Viet Minh were now firmly in the Communist camp, that being where their support came from. France had firm backing from the United States in the name of stopping Communism. Neither side was capable of decisively defeating the other. But the people of France were tiring of the endless war. The turning point came in May with the surrender of 11,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu. The French people no longer had the stomach to continue the war. However, France still controlled much of the south. In 1949, they had created the quasi-independent State of Vietnam with its capital in the southern city of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). The 1954 Geneva Conference resulted in Vietnam being divided into two countries at the 17th parallel. A few months later, the State of Vietnam became the fully independent Republic of Vietnam. France was done in Southeast Asia.

(However, the French government hadn’t learned a thing from their experiences in Vietnam. Before 1954 was over a rebellion broke out in Algeria. That led to another brutal colonial war until Algeria was granted its independence in 1962.)

The Vietnam era produced dozens of recognizable, memorable images. In my memories, the one that stands out above all others is of a Buddhist monk sitting calmly as he is engulfed in flames. What would cause a peaceful monk to pour gasoline over himself and then light a match? And it wasn’t just one person. At least seventy-six Buddhist monks and nuns are known to have self-immolated in the early 1960s.

It’s easy to think in black and white. The North was Communist, and that made them the bad guys. But what if the other side weren’t the good guys, either? The government of South Vietnam was never popular with its own citizens. The people who France put in charge of the south were, unsurprisingly, sympathetic to French interests. Many had collaborated with the Vichy French during World War Two. Some, including President Ngo Dinh Diem, had collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces. But the biggest reason for the government’s unpopularity was religion. The vast majority of the South Vietnamese people were Buddhists, but the government was almost wholly run by Roman Catholics. They represented only ten percent of the population. The corrupt Diem government gave preference to Catholics in every way and systematically discriminated against Buddhists. That led to growing Buddhist opposition, which in turn led to the government further oppressing Buddhists. By the early 1960s, the Saigon government had even begun outlawing public displays of some Buddhist religious symbols. And that is what led to the self-immolations that drew international attention to what was happening in South Vietnam.

The American War

The third section of the Vietnamese Military History Museum is about the American War. We call it the Vietnam War in the United States. Military historians refer to it as the Second Indochina War, the first being the one with France just before. Once again, what happened is a long, complex story. Some of you reading this were there. Others, like me, have been around long enough to remember those times.

In 1960, opposition to the Diem government led to the formation of the Viet Cong guerrilla movement. Hanoi would do all it could to fan the flames of the rebellion, but it was the policies of the Saigon government that provided the fuel to start the fire. If Saigon had had a Buddhist government, maybe the war would never have happened, and there would still be two Vietnams, as there are two Koreas.

What followed was a gradual escalation on both sides. Hanoi began by providing the Viet Cong with supplies and military advice. The United States did the same for the Saigon government. When one side increased its involvement, the other did the same. Within a few years, American forces were fighting alongside the South Vietnamese army, and the North Vietnamese Army was fighting alongside the Viet Cong. (Although they worked hand-in-hand, the VC and the NVA were not the same. The Viet Cong were an insurgent guerrilla force. The NVA was an army and fought in organized military units.)

This radio transmitter was used by the 84th Artillery Regiment of the North Vietnamese Army in Quang Tri province during the January 1968 Tet Offensive. The campaign was a surprise attack on over one hundred towns and cities in South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year celebrations. It was one of the bloodiest periods of the war.

According to the display, Company Five of the 205th Regiment of the North Vietnamese Army used this set to send 213,567 messages between 1965 and 1968. I doubt anyone really kept an exact count, but the radio clearly had a lot of use.

This unit was used by the First Battalion of the Tenth Division of the North Vietnamese Army from 1968 to 1975.

The Finale

It seems long ago, but there once was a time when my daily news arrived in the form of a printed newspaper and not on the screen of a cellphone. The number of newspapers that I’ve held in my hands must number over ten thousand. But there is only one headline that I remember. It was late October 1972. I went to the back door to get the morning paper, the Altoona Mirror, and opened it up. Blazoned across the top were the words “PEACE IS AT HAND!” I can still picture it clearly over fifty years later.

According to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the peace talks were on the verge of producing a cease-fire. The 1972 US presidential election was just days away, and the war was the most important issue. No one doubted that Richard Nixon would win reelection, but being able to declare he had ended the war would add to his margin of victory. But Kissinger had been ignoring the South Vietnamese government, and the next day they rejected the treaty on numerous points. That caused the North Vietnamese to walk out.

Both the North and the South were willing to continue the war, but their major backers wanted it over. Nixon had made historic visits to China and the Soviet Union earlier in the year, and all three were looking for improved relations. Neither China nor the Soviet Union supported the North walking out, other than making obligatory diplomatic statements.

In order to bring the North back to the negotiating table, the US launched Operation Linebacker II, the most controversial bombing campaign of the entire war. From the 18th to the 29th of December 1972, over two hundred B-52 bombers dropped over twenty thousand tons of bombs on Hanoi and Haiphong. Thousands were killed, and huge swaths of both cities were leveled, destroying everything from military installations to children’s hospitals.

One target was the Voice of Vietnam’s Me Tri transmitter site in central Hanoi. In the early morning hours of December 19, it was hit by several bombs. The antenna towers and power generator were destroyed. One staff member and a police guard were killed. (Photo from the Ho Loa Prison Museum.)

The North fought back with anti-aircraft guns and Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles. Hanoi claimed to have shot down thirty-six B-52 bombers while the Pentagon put the number of losses at fifteen. However, the US figures did not include several planes that made it back to base but were so heavily damaged as to be beyond repair.

Today one of the downed bombers is the centerpiece at the B-52 Victory Museum in downtown Hanoi.

Among the other items on display at the B-52 Museum is this back-up generator used by one of Hanoi’s radio stations during the war.

The bombing campaign brought the North back to the negotiating table, and the US government put pressure on the South to be more flexible with its expectations. By the end of January 1973, a treaty had been signed in Paris, and the war was over. Well, not really. But the United States was able to withdraw all combat forces without admitting defeat. John McCain and the other POWs came home.

The two sides soon restarted the fight, but the South was unable to stand on its own. Gradually the North gained the upper hand until by early April 1975 they controlled most of the South. The final push to take Saigon was launched in mid-April, and now we come to what might be the most important radio in the Vietnam Military History Museum. At 11:30 a.m. on 30 April 1975, the North Vietnamese high command in the south was listening to this transistor radio when they heard South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh announce his government’s surrender. The war was over.

Finishing the Museum

The Vietnam Military History Museum finishes with a small display about the continued development of the Vietnamese military with a strong focus on communications. It’s interesting to note that two of the pictures are from the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. For years, China has been encroaching on the claims of several nearby countries in the islands. A future war is not out of the question.

Who Won?

When I was in school, we were taught that Communism is a monolithic system. Everything is run by the government through central planning. There is no individuality or freedom of choice. Everything and everyone is expected to conform to a model handed down from above.

I spent hours wandering the streets of central Hanoi. The Asian culture was a new experience for me, but in some ways Hanoi was like Cuenca, Ecuador, or Chiclayo, Peru. The streets are lined with small businesses. As in Latin America, similar businesses congregate together. Both sides of a block may be lined with fifteen or twenty little stores selling kitchen utensils, the wares spilling out onto the sidewalk. The next block over might be school supplies and around the corner all the stores sell plumbing supplies. It’s convenient to have the stores clustered like that. If one store doesn’t have what you want you just go to the next one and then the one after that. As it’s easy for customers to compare prices everyone has to charge a fair price. And every store is an owner-operated small business.

Small restaurants and food stands are scattered everywhere in Hanoi. Some are indoor restaurants with tables and chairs and menus. Those come in all sizes and price ranges. Then there are the simple street stalls with a couple of gas burners that sell a few simple dishes made up on the spot. Customers sit on the sidewalk on short plastic stools at knee-high plastic tables that the owner can easily gather and stack up at night. The big international fast-food chains have found Hanoi, too. But those can only be found in the touristy and upscale parts of the city. I’d be surprised if they represent more than one or two percent of Hanoi’s eateries.

The commercial center of Hanoi was so different from the shopping centers and malls back in the United States. There, almost all the businesses belong to large corporations. Each store or restaurant is a cookie-cutter image of the others in its chain, right down to the employee uniforms. Each chain is run through central planning at a distant corporate headquarters.

Maybe it’s easier to see the true meaning of free enterprise and individualistic capitalism in the streets of Hanoi than in an American shopping mall?

Of course, economics is more complex than where you buy a bowl of noodles or a hammer. The Vietnamese government relies on central planning at the top of the economy. There are numerous state-owned corporations and about twenty percent of the economy is state-owned. But that’s down from nearly forty percent in the 1980s. And maybe it’s a stretch to compare huge corporations to Communist governments. Still, when I travel around the USA, I make every effort to eat at locally owned restaurants in lieu of chain ones. I value individualism.

I’m not an economist. These thoughts are just the ramblings of someone who rambled the streets of Hanoi. Visiting the city reaffirmed my understanding that reality isn’t black and white. It’s gray. And how would I describe today’s Vietnam? I would say it’s a non-aligned country with an economy blending Communism and capitalism. Hmmm… where did I hear that phrase before?