Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- "For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.
- "The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.
- "We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Viet-Nam.
- "A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.
- "For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, solemnly declare to the world that Viet-Nam has the right to be a free and independent country — and in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty."34
- b. Short-lived Independence in Cochinchina
September 2, 1945, found South Vietnam in profound political disorder. The successive collapse of French, then Japanese power, followed by the dissension among the political factions in Saigon had been accompanied by widespread violence in the countryside. The Cao Dai set up a state at Tay Ninh; the Hoa Hao established a capital in Can Tho; jacquerie flared, and a number of rural officials and landlords were murdered. On September 2, violence in Saigon took the lives of a French priest on the threshold of the Cathedral, several other French, and a number of Vietnamese; French homes were sacked, and an atmosphere of fear-ridden tension descended upon the city.
- On 12 September 1945, the first British troops arrived in Saigon — a Gurkha battalion; they were accompanied by a company of Free French soldiers. General Douglas D. Gracey, commanding, arrived on 13 September. Prior to his departure from India, Gracey had announced that:
- "The question of the government of Indochina is exclusively French. Civil and military control by the French is only a matter of weeks."35
