Born in 1928, Nguyen Manh Can attended Truong Buoi in Hanoi starting in 1942, where he joined and interacted with several anticolonialist youth organizations. After the Japanese coup in March 1945, he left Hanoi, joined the Viet Minh, and was sent to the area of Tu Son, Bac Ninh. Having to be mostly self-reliant, Can had to find and secure a base of operations, organize propaganda and mobilization of peasants in the area, as well as help the latter to raid rice storehouses to alleviate the effects of famine. Returning to Hanoi in the immediate aftermath of the August Revolution, he joined the Communist Party in late 1945 and was sent back to Tu Son, where he faced opposition from members of the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang and helped organize the election of January 1946 in a village of the area. In 1948, Can was sent to the province of Hung Yen, where he occupied several high ranking positions in the Party apparatus of that province. Among other things, he describes how he had to hide underwater in a pond for a full day in order to avoid French patrols, his duties as a leading cadre of the area, and how he contributed to the destruction of a road in 1949. In 1950 he was sent to China for political training, where he learned about ideological rectification and self-criticism, the Chinese Revolution, and Party building. He describes the Chinese as friendly and enthusiastic, though he disagreed with some of the Maoist methods he learned. He also talks about some mistakes made during the land reform.