Browse Items (100 total)

  • Tags: Kenneth Landon’s SE Asia Trips 1945-1966

After the British-Thai negotiations ended in Bangkok, Kenneth travelled over to Saigon and called on the High Commissioner, who was Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu. He had been sent out by DeGaulle. The Admiral gave Kenneth a nice lunch, with a…

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Kenneth had been working for several years, off and on, on a book about an American adventurer named Walter Gibson. Gibson had gotten crosswise with the Dutch, and they had thrown him into a prison called Weldebreton. He had been tried for various…

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The Weldebreton Prison had originally been the Prins Hendrik Fort, which was built to defend against the British. Once the need for it had passed they turned it into a prison.

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There was no regular transportation between Saigon and Hanoi except under the authority of the French Admiral or the British General Gracie. At the time, there was only one plane in Saigon, a C-47, with bucket seats down the aisles. One of our OSS…

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One of the OSS men, the son of a US senator, was murdered at the airport in Hanoi. He was mistaken for a Frenchman because he was brought up in France. When Kenneth was in Hanoi the senator called him to ask him to try to find out more about the…

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Kenneth was going to fly to Hanoi, so he went to the airport but found no one there. He waited for hours before General Salan showed up, well fed and smelling of wine. The plane took off and Kenneth tried to have a conversation with the General. He…

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The conversation with General Salan played out after a while. There was nothing to eat or drink on board. The plane arrived in Hanoi late in the afternoon. By this point, Kenneth was "just miserable," dehydrated, having had nothing to eat or drink…

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Kenneth asked a soldier if he could help Kenneth get into Hanoi, twenty miles away. The soldier answered that many soldiers would be going into town for rest and recreation, that is to eat and be merry with the girls. As a way to get to Hanoi,…

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The soldiers dumped Kenneth off in front of the Hotel Metropole. Kenneth hauled his little tin trunk in to find out who was in charge to ask about getting a room. Well, all the rooms were filled. The manager said that here was no place that he could…

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Kenneth walked across the street and into the old high commissioner's palace, which was just a few hundred yards from the hotel. He asked to see Ho Chi Minh, and the staff people asked him who he was, which he told them. No one asked him to prove it.…

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In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh arranged for Kenneth to stay longer than he initially intended, in order to give Kenneth a good opportunity to move around Hanoi and see how conditions were. He also assigned Kenneth a car with a driver.

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Kenneth's driver took him to a large house and spoke with some women before Kenneth was told to come on up. So he went up and was escorted to a bedroom. This house, or mansion, was the dwelling of an American graves mission that was out there hunting…

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Ho needed the help of the Americans to keep the French out of Indochina. Kenneth told Ho that he was the man who had drafted that policy, which really put him in tight with Ho. Many of the discussions Kenneth had with Ho were in the field of…

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While Kenneth was in Hanoi, he often asked Ho about Bao Dai, who had been the emperor. Bao Dai had abdicated in favor of Ho Chi Minh. Kenneth told him he wanted to see Bao Dai, so he arranged for Kenneth to meet Bao Dai, who was an educated man, and…

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In that 1946 period in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh expressed great concern about the Chinese. He badly wanted them out of the country, just as he did the French. He couldn't get rid of them. They would manufacture and print phony Vietnamese currency up in…

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The political adviser to General Lo Han, who was the warlord of southern China, was a man named Yuan Tser Quien. Kenneth talked to him for the most part, to find out what the Chinese really expected. Kenneth learned that a French political adviser to…

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Through the entire trip, Kenneth sent a steady stream of telegrams home to the State Department. Some of those messages appeared in the Pentagon Papers. Also, every day at the end of the day, Kenneth wrote a letter to Abbot Low Moffat in the…

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Ho Chi Minh knew he couldn't give Kenneth a gift, and didn't offer him one. He was a clever man, and what he did was give Kenneth a tortoiseshell vanity case for Margaret. 

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One night in Hanoi, Kenneth and his driver were going along at night in the little "bathtub" car when the driver lost control of the car at a crossroads. They drove head on into one of those sandbag gun embankments. There was yelling and screaming…

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One of the subjects Kenneth talked to Ho about was the many people he saw dying of smallpox. He saw people with pox all over them. People were emaciated. Ho told him that the starvation in Vietnam was terrible. He said that during the war the dykes…

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From Saigon Kenneth traveled to Bangkok and Calcutta to catch a military plane that took him to the Philippines. On the plane from the Philippines there were only two passengers. There was no place to sit, so they simply rolled up in blankets and…

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We begin on Kenneth's 1950 trip to Southeast Asia. The new King, King Phumipol, was going to get married and be crowned, and he was going to cremate his brother, King Ananda, before the marriage and coronation. Kenneth suggested that the US send the…

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Kenneth represented the State Department at the ceremonies. They were very formal, white tie, tails, and top hat. Every morning, during the ceremonies—which went on for several days, first the cremation, then the wedding, which Kenneth didn't attend,…

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Kenneth went over to Saigon with a picture of Harry Truman autographed by the President to former Emperor Bao Dai, who had fled from Hanoi up to Hong Kong, and then later had come down to head up the government of South Vietnam with the French…

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Bao Dai sent an official driver to pick Kenneth up in a big limousine. They went up into the mountain area where Bao Dai was staying, with the road along the edge of a cliff, and it was breathtaking. There were no guard rails or anything! The driver…

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