Nguyen Thua Ke was born in Tien Du, Bac Ninh, in 1920. He did not have the means for an education, and so traveled to several areas of the North as a simple worker in his youth. Joining the Party in 1946, he eventually became a district Party Secretary, and still occupied important (though unspecified) positions within the Party at the time of the interview (2008). He gives few specific details concerning events during the Indochina War, and often simply retells general information touching upon events such as the famine in Tonkin and Annam or the land reform campaign.