The war for Vietnam began in Saigon on 23 September 1945 and ended there on 31 April 1975, when the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) defeated the Republic of Vietnam and unified the country under communist rule.
Under French rule from the mid-19th century, Saigon became the commercial center of Indochina and home to most of the 35,000 Europeans living there on the eve of World War II. The overseas Chinese were also most numerous in Saigon and in the neighboring agglomeration of Cholon (“big market”). Throughout the Indochina War, this urban area became known as Saigon-Cholon. French estimates put its total population in 1948 at 1,179,000, including 22,000 Europeans, 840,000 Vietnamese, and 310,000 Chinese among others. In 1954, the total population of Saigon-Cholon was estimated at two million people, most of whom were Vietamese who had arrived from the countryside during the later half of the conflict.
Until 9 March 1945, the European population in French Indochina lived in relative peace thanks to the condominium between France, Germany, and by extension Germany’s ally, Japan. On 9 March 1945, worried that leaderless Vichy authorities would rally to Gaullists, the Japanese overthrew the French in Indochina. For some five months, European settlers lived in precarious, humiliating, and often very dangerous circumstances. Things became even more complicated when the Allies defeated the Japanese a few months later. Vietnamese nationalist groups pledging loyalty to the Viet Minh took power in Saigon in the week following the August Revolution in Hanoi. However, the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) at the helm of the Viet Minh in the north was but one nationalist player among several working in a fragile southern coalition with Cao Dai, Hoa Hoa, and Binh Xuyen leaders. British troops under General Douglas Gracey began arriving in mid-September to disarm the Japanese and maintain order. For about a month, the French community living in Saigon found the tables turned on it as the former colonized sought to assert national control over the colonial city. The Japanese mainly looked on as they awaited the arrival of British forces sent to disarm them below the 16th parallel in Indochina. The Japanese had refused to free the colonial and foreign legion troops they had incarcerated in March. Meanwhile, Viet Minh leaders had a hard time preventing Vietnamese from humiliating and attacking the vulnerable European community. On 2 September 1945, for example, mobs attacked the French in Saigon during festivities organized to celebrate the declaration of Vietnam’s independence by Ho Chi Minh.
Many French promised to take revenge once they re-established control of the city. That day came on 23 September when British forces under Gracey backed a French coup d’état to oust the Vietnamese, using colonial forces incarcerated by the Japanese. The French coup unleashed months of pent-up fears and frustrations among many in the European community and the newly freed colonial troops. Some took out their anger on any Vietnamese they could find. But such violence only generated more of it. During the night of 24–25, Vietnamese attackers entered the district of Hérault in the Tan Dinh and Dakao suburbs of Saigon, and perpetrated one of the most gruesome massacres of the entire Indochina War against French, métis, and Vietnamese civilians.
The arrival of the Expeditionnary Corps en-sured French control over Saigon-Cholon. However, the DRV was determined to use the city as one of its main battlefields for a war of terrorism. This urban violence would signal the reality of the DRV’s national presence and serve to deter collaboration among Vietnamese tempted by French political projects. Between 1946 and 1950, Nguyen Binh, supported by Vietnamese communists in charge of Saigon-Cholon, ran an angry urban war in Saigon, targeting the assassination of French officials, Vietnamese allies of the French, and military points of strategic interest. The Viet Minh planted bombs, lobbed grenades, and distributed propaganda via an underground city they knitted together.
While this “grenading” of the Saigon did not stop its myriad of activities, it did directly affect the way people went about their daily lives in downtown Saigon. In 1949, Lucien Bodard tells us, as many as a hundred small grenades could go off in one night, usually around dusk, and mainly in the European quarters located along the rue Catinat in Saigon and the rue des Marins in Cholon. Shopkeepers responded accordingly. Protective fencing and iron mesh went up around establishments. “Tout Saigon se cloître derrière des barreaux”, Bodard recalled: C’est alors que le Saigon bien prend l’aspect d’une prison. Il s’enveloppe de grillages – boutiques, bistrots et dancings s’enferment dans des voiles métalliques. Bien à l’abri, les Français en traîn de boire ou de manger écoutent les détonations. One Chinese restaurant owner serving poor white settlers in the city finally decided to “enferme son établissement dans un épais rideau de fer”. One dined in peace, Bodard observed, but one did so “in a cage”. People were cognizant of their vulnerability. It weighed on their minds even if they got used to it being there.
At the same time, the Viet Minh needed Saigon-Cholon as one of its major sources of imports and trade. True, the DRV did its best to burn down the colonial cities upon withdrawing in 1945–46 and subsequently issued orders to embargo them as a part of its own politico-economic offensive to render enemy life unbearably expensive and to sow a climate of terror. However, the paradox was that the rural-based Viet Minh badly needed access to enemy urban centers to survive and in the end refrained from trying to destroy one of its most important commercial centers. Commanders carefully targeted urban sabotage. Intimidation often worked better than scorched earth tactics. Blind terrorism only served to alienate Vietnamese civilians, who would turn to the French and their Vietnamese allies. Undercover operatives soon received orders to cultivate relations with Western, Asian, and Vietnamese capitalists. The Viet Minh cut deals with Chinese merchants and the owners of the biggest gambling casino in town, Le grand monde. Viet Minh underground officials in Hanoi and Saigon were constantly on the look out for ways to buy the paper and ink required to ensure the continued operation of printing presses, the medicine and antibiotics to keep the state’s personnel, leadership, and fledgling army healthy, and the hard to find radio parts to guarantee real time communications.
When the French finally shut down the urban terrorism and dismantled much of the under-ground cities in Hanoi and Saigon by 1951, most of the urban population welcomed peace. Moreover, there is no evidence indicating that the urban populations in Saigon or Hanoi were ripe for or much less predisposed to rising up against Franco-Vietnamese forces. By late 1952, the Viet Minh could only count a few dozen operatives in Saigon. In the end, the best the DRV could hope for on the urban front in Saigon was that it could keep the civilians and non-communists nationalists on the fence, prevent them from supporting the Bao Dai solution or joining the Associated State of Vietnam’s army, and maintain its commercial activities in the city.