Nguyen Ton Hoan
Encyclopedia
Nguyễn Tôn Hoàn was Vietnam
ese Catholic physician who was a leader of the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
(Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam) from the 1940s to the 1960s, and was active in South Vietnam
ese politics during that time, serving briefly as Deputy Prime Minister in 1964.
, southern Vietnam, in May 1917. He studied medicine at the University of Hanoi, where he became involved in student politics. In 1939, he helped found the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
(Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam).
When the Vietminh gained a foothold over northern Vietnam in 1946, he fled to China, then under the rule of Chiang Kaishek's nationalist Kuomintang
, hiding under the deck of a junk. Hoan returned to Saigon—where the Vietminh did not exercise the tight control they possessed in the north—in 1947 to continue his political activism.
In mid-1947, Hoan joined forces with Ngo Dinh Diem
, later to become the first President of South Vietnam and a bitter enemy. A fellow Catholic, Diem was a former provincial governor in the 1930s and the younger brother of Ngo Dinh Khoi
, another provincial leader slain by the communists. For the rest of the year, the pair tried to organise anti-communists into a new nationalist body known as the Vietnam National Alliance. Both wanted to build a Third Force for Vietnam, that avoided communism on one hand and colonialism on the other. Hoàn's Dai Viet and Diem's power base generated some momentum, and it initially appeared to be a political player of note.
According to Hoan and Diem, the objective of the purpose of the VNA was to mobilise support for a new political movement under Bảo Đại, who had been forced to abdicate by the Vietminh during the August Revolution
and went into overseas exile. Bảo Đại then tried to recruit politicians such as Hoan to provide him with a conduit to power. The French also wanted to work with Bảo Đại so that he would lend more legitimacy to their colonial presence in Vietnam.
In 1949, the French appointed Bảo Đại as head of state of the State of Vietnam
, an associated state in the French Union
, which meant limited autonomy under the French umbrella. Hoan's Dai Viet at first cooperated with Bảo Đại, hoping that Vietnam would move towards increased autonomy and eventual independence. Hoan was Minister of Youth and Sports in two early cabinets of Bảo Đại, and he introduced ping pong to Vietnam. In contrast, Diem angrily denounced the State of Vietnam as a French sham and refused to help Bảo Đại, ending the Vietnam National Alliance. However, Hoan concluded that State of Vietnam would not lead to lasting change, so he and the Dai Viet withdrew.
In late 1953, Ngo Dinh Nhu
, younger brother and chief adviser to Diem, organised a Unity Congress, a forum of various anti-communist nationalists such as Hoan's Dai Viet, the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
and Diem's followers. Nhu's real objective was to gain publicity for Diem. Hoan agreed to participate, and the conference turned into chaos, but Nhu achieved his objective of gaining publicity for his brother and staging angry denunciations of Bảo Đại.
and Cao Dai
religious sects and the Binh Xuyen
organised crime syndicated vied for power. After his attempt to take power failed, he fled to France.
Diem banned the Dai Viet and forced its leaders into exile or into hiding. In a speech on July 7, 1963, the ninth anniversary of his appointment as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, Diem made a speech assailing "fascist ideologues disguised as democrats [who] were surreptitiously seeking to revive and rekindle disunity at home while arousing public opinions against us abroad", widely interpreted as a reference to Hoan's Dai Viet.
In November 1963, General Duong Van Minh
led a coup against Diem
, resulting in the assassination of the president. However, three months later, General Nguyen Khanh
deposed Minh
in a bloodless coup.
Khanh wanted to use Hoan to harness Dai Viet support for his regime, but it backfired. Hoan was unable to form a government as prime minister when he returned. The Dai Viet had broken into so many warring factions that he was unable to enlist enough support, and other political hopefuls resented the return of old guard politicians from exile to take power, and they refused to cooperate.
Khanh thereupon decided to act as both Prime Minister and Chairman of the reorganised Military Revolutionary Council. Hoan was appointed as the first Deputy Prime Minister in charge of rural pacification. He was given control of five ministries including the Interior, National Defense and Rural Affairs and two special commissions, which were primarily engaged in consolidating the strategic hamlets
of Ngo Dinh Nhu
into the renamed New Rural Life Hamlets.
Hoan lobbied for an Ethnic Minorities Ministry, anti-corruption drives, land reform, and free elections with a transition to civilian rule. This put him increasingly in conflict with the junta and the Americans, who were more interested in turning Khanh into a strong leader to fight the communists. Gradually, the generals squeezed Hoan out of control of rural pacification, while the Dai Viet leader still sought an opportunity to become prime minister. Hoan also lost his weekly Sunday radio slot. The Americans felt that Khanh needed to make regular speeches to establish political support among the populace, and the general agreed, and he took over Hoan's slot.
Feeling that he was being marginalised, Hoan began to undermine the Khanh regime. He publicly accused Khanh and the Americans of ignoring him, and began to join forces with their critics. In mid-June 1964, Catholic demonstrations broke out, in response to protests by Buddhists. Hoan covertly supported some of the more vigorous Catholic agitators, who accused Khanh and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
of "fomenting religious discrimination" against Catholics, charging that they helped the Buddhist majority.
Hoan later tried to mobilise support among Dai Viet members and supporters among the officer corps, in an attempt to overthrow Khanh, However, the conspiracy never got off the ground, as the plotters feared that the Americans would support their regime if they managed to take power, thereby making it impossible for them to rule.
over the country's Vietnam policy and immigrated to the US.
He taught Vietnamese
at American military complexes and then opened a Vietnamese restaurant. He also continued his political activism against the Vietnamese communist government. He died on September 19, 2001, in Mountain View, California
, at the age of 84. Hoan was married to Phan Thi Binh; they had two sons and three daughters, all now living in the US.
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese Catholic physician who was a leader of the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
Đại Việt Quốc dân đảng , often known simply as Đại Việt, was a nationalist and anti-communist political party and militant organisation that was active in Vietnam in the 20th century. The party was founded by Trương Tử Anh, known as Anh Cả Phương...
(Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam) from the 1940s to the 1960s, and was active in South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
ese politics during that time, serving briefly as Deputy Prime Minister in 1964.
Early career
Hoan was born in Tay NinhTay Ninh
Tây Ninh is a town in southwestern Vietnam. It is the capital of Tay Ninh province, which encompasses the town and much of the surrounding farmland....
, southern Vietnam, in May 1917. He studied medicine at the University of Hanoi, where he became involved in student politics. In 1939, he helped found the Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
Dai Viet Quoc Dan Dang
Đại Việt Quốc dân đảng , often known simply as Đại Việt, was a nationalist and anti-communist political party and militant organisation that was active in Vietnam in the 20th century. The party was founded by Trương Tử Anh, known as Anh Cả Phương...
(Nationalist Party of Greater Vietnam).
When the Vietminh gained a foothold over northern Vietnam in 1946, he fled to China, then under the rule of Chiang Kaishek's nationalist Kuomintang
Kuomintang
The Kuomintang of China , sometimes romanized as Guomindang via the Pinyin transcription system or GMD for short, and translated as the Chinese Nationalist Party is a founding and ruling political party of the Republic of China . Its guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, espoused...
, hiding under the deck of a junk. Hoan returned to Saigon—where the Vietminh did not exercise the tight control they possessed in the north—in 1947 to continue his political activism.
In mid-1947, Hoan joined forces with Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
, later to become the first President of South Vietnam and a bitter enemy. A fellow Catholic, Diem was a former provincial governor in the 1930s and the younger brother of Ngo Dinh Khoi
Ngo Dinh Khoi
Ngô Ðình Khôi was a brother of South Vietnam’s first President, Ngô Đình Diệm, and of Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục. He served as a governor in the French administration of Việtnam during the French Indochina years. He was buried alive by the Communists for refusal to join the Việt Minh as a minister in...
, another provincial leader slain by the communists. For the rest of the year, the pair tried to organise anti-communists into a new nationalist body known as the Vietnam National Alliance. Both wanted to build a Third Force for Vietnam, that avoided communism on one hand and colonialism on the other. Hoàn's Dai Viet and Diem's power base generated some momentum, and it initially appeared to be a political player of note.
According to Hoan and Diem, the objective of the purpose of the VNA was to mobilise support for a new political movement under Bảo Đại, who had been forced to abdicate by the Vietminh during the August Revolution
August Revolution
On August 19, 1945, the Việt Minh under Hồ Chí Minh began the August General Uprising Tổng Khởi Nghĩa, which was soon renamed the August Revolution . Whether or not this series of events should be called a "revolution" is disputable; what is clear is that, from August 19 onwards, demonstrations and...
and went into overseas exile. Bảo Đại then tried to recruit politicians such as Hoan to provide him with a conduit to power. The French also wanted to work with Bảo Đại so that he would lend more legitimacy to their colonial presence in Vietnam.
In 1949, the French appointed Bảo Đại as head of state of the State of Vietnam
State of Vietnam
The State of Vietnam was a state that claimed authority over all of Vietnam during the First Indochina War, and replaced the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam . The provisional government was a brief transitional administration between colonial Cochinchina and an independent state...
, an associated state in the French Union
French Union
The French Union was a political entity created by the French Fourth Republic to replace the old French colonial system, the "French Empire" and to abolish its "indigenous" status.-History:...
, which meant limited autonomy under the French umbrella. Hoan's Dai Viet at first cooperated with Bảo Đại, hoping that Vietnam would move towards increased autonomy and eventual independence. Hoan was Minister of Youth and Sports in two early cabinets of Bảo Đại, and he introduced ping pong to Vietnam. In contrast, Diem angrily denounced the State of Vietnam as a French sham and refused to help Bảo Đại, ending the Vietnam National Alliance. However, Hoan concluded that State of Vietnam would not lead to lasting change, so he and the Dai Viet withdrew.
In late 1953, Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...
, younger brother and chief adviser to Diem, organised a Unity Congress, a forum of various anti-communist nationalists such as Hoan's Dai Viet, the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang
The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng , also known as the Việt Quốc and the Vietnamese Kuomintang, is the Vietnamese Nationalist Party, a revolutionary socialist political party that sought independence from French colonial rule in Vietnam during the early 20th century...
and Diem's followers. Nhu's real objective was to gain publicity for Diem. Hoan agreed to participate, and the conference turned into chaos, but Nhu achieved his objective of gaining publicity for his brother and staging angry denunciations of Bảo Đại.
Exile
In 1954, Diem was appointed prime minister by Bảo Đại. In the first year, Diem's government was unstable as various groups including the Hoa HaoHoa Hao
Hòa Hảo is a religious tradition, based on Buddhism, founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ, a native of the Mekong River Delta region of southern Vietnam. Adherents consider Sổ to be a prophet, and Hòa Hảo a continuation of a 19th-century Buddhist ministry known as Bửu Sơn Kỳ Hương...
and Cao Dai
Cao Dai
Cao Đài is a syncretistic, monotheistic religion, officially established in the city of Tay Ninh, southern Vietnam, in 1926. Đạo Cao Đài is the religion's shortened name, the full name is Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ...
religious sects and the Binh Xuyen
Binh Xuyen
Bình Xuyên, often linked to its infamous leader, General Le van "Bay" Vien, was an independent military force within the Vietnamese National Army whose leaders once had lived outside the law and had sided with the Viet Minh...
organised crime syndicated vied for power. After his attempt to take power failed, he fled to France.
Diem banned the Dai Viet and forced its leaders into exile or into hiding. In a speech on July 7, 1963, the ninth anniversary of his appointment as Prime Minister of the State of Vietnam, Diem made a speech assailing "fascist ideologues disguised as democrats [who] were surreptitiously seeking to revive and rekindle disunity at home while arousing public opinions against us abroad", widely interpreted as a reference to Hoan's Dai Viet.
In November 1963, General Duong Van Minh
Duong Van Minh
Minh was born on 16 February 1916 in Mỹ Tho Province in the Mekong Delta, the son of a wealthy landowner who served in a prominent position in the Finance Ministry of the French colonial administration...
led a coup against Diem
1963 South Vietnamese coup
In November 1963, President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam was deposed by a group of Army of the Republic of Vietnam officers who disagreed with his handling of the Buddhist crisis and, in general, his increasing oppression of national groups in the name of fighting the communist Vietcong.The...
, resulting in the assassination of the president. However, three months later, General Nguyen Khanh
Nguyen Khanh
Nguyễn Khánh is a former general in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam who variously served as Head of State and Prime minister of South Vietnam while at the head of a military junta from January 1964 until February 1965. He was involved in or against many coup attempts, failed and successful,...
deposed Minh
1964 South Vietnamese coup
Before dawn on January 30, 1964, General Nguyen Khanh ousted the military junta led by General Duong Van Minh from the leadership of South Vietnam without firing a shot. It came less than three months after Minh's junta had themselves come to power in a bloody coup against then President Ngo Dinh...
in a bloodless coup.
Power
Khanh and some of his co-conspirators were regarded as being pro-Dai Viet and they summoned Hoan back to become prime minister, although he only heard of the offer on a radio. Hoan had remained active while in Paris, publishing a magazine and keeping up to speed with political developments in Vietnam. He also tried to manipulate politics through subordinates.Khanh wanted to use Hoan to harness Dai Viet support for his regime, but it backfired. Hoan was unable to form a government as prime minister when he returned. The Dai Viet had broken into so many warring factions that he was unable to enlist enough support, and other political hopefuls resented the return of old guard politicians from exile to take power, and they refused to cooperate.
Khanh thereupon decided to act as both Prime Minister and Chairman of the reorganised Military Revolutionary Council. Hoan was appointed as the first Deputy Prime Minister in charge of rural pacification. He was given control of five ministries including the Interior, National Defense and Rural Affairs and two special commissions, which were primarily engaged in consolidating the strategic hamlets
Strategic Hamlet Program
The Strategic Hamlet Program was a plan by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War to combat the Communist insurgency by means of population transfer.In 1961, U.S...
of Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngo Dinh Nhu
Ngô Ðình Nhu was the younger brother and chief political advisor of South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Ðình Diệm. Nhu was widely regarded as the architect of the Ngô family's nepotistic and autocratic rule over South Vietnam from 1955 to 1963...
into the renamed New Rural Life Hamlets.
Hoan lobbied for an Ethnic Minorities Ministry, anti-corruption drives, land reform, and free elections with a transition to civilian rule. This put him increasingly in conflict with the junta and the Americans, who were more interested in turning Khanh into a strong leader to fight the communists. Gradually, the generals squeezed Hoan out of control of rural pacification, while the Dai Viet leader still sought an opportunity to become prime minister. Hoan also lost his weekly Sunday radio slot. The Americans felt that Khanh needed to make regular speeches to establish political support among the populace, and the general agreed, and he took over Hoan's slot.
Feeling that he was being marginalised, Hoan began to undermine the Khanh regime. He publicly accused Khanh and the Americans of ignoring him, and began to join forces with their critics. In mid-June 1964, Catholic demonstrations broke out, in response to protests by Buddhists. Hoan covertly supported some of the more vigorous Catholic agitators, who accused Khanh and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was a Republican United States Senator from Massachusetts and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See . He was the Republican nominee for Vice President in the 1960 Presidential election.-Early life:Lodge was born in Nahant,...
of "fomenting religious discrimination" against Catholics, charging that they helped the Buddhist majority.
Hoan later tried to mobilise support among Dai Viet members and supporters among the officer corps, in an attempt to overthrow Khanh, However, the conspiracy never got off the ground, as the plotters feared that the Americans would support their regime if they managed to take power, thereby making it impossible for them to rule.
Later life
In September, Khanh forced Hoan to resign. The Dai Viet leader went to Japan and then returned to France. In 1965, Hoan had a dispute with French President Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
over the country's Vietnam policy and immigrated to the US.
He taught Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
at American military complexes and then opened a Vietnamese restaurant. He also continued his political activism against the Vietnamese communist government. He died on September 19, 2001, in Mountain View, California
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, at the age of 84. Hoan was married to Phan Thi Binh; they had two sons and three daughters, all now living in the US.