Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

The Pacific War ended before Leclerc’s force had a chance to intervene. On August 15, after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war against Japan, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender. The Japanese, whose actions since 1940 had done so much to transform French Indochina, now promised to create more upheaval, this time by leaving the scene. There would be a vacuum of power, all informed observers could see, and the question was who would fill it. Charles de Gaulle, for one, seemingly had little doubt. On August 15, he sent a message from “the Mother Country to the Indochinese Union,” expressing France’s “joy, solicitude, and gratitude” for Indochina’s “loyalty to France” and her resistance to the Japanese. Even as he uttered those words, however, in the jungles of Tonkin, Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh readied to make a triumphant entry into Hanoi. Their message to the crowds awaiting them: With Japan defeated and France prostrate, the moment of liberation was at hand.52