Tag: OSS
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Viet Minh and USA Relations in 1945
Part of my Master’s Thesis that I wrote a couple years back dealt with the Viet Minh, the Vietnamese nationalistic rebels who warred with the Japanese and French during and after WWII. The Americans had some very interesting interactions with them in the summer of 1945. Some have called these interactions nothing less than a…
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Know Your History: Indochina 1945 from a Page in my Novel
I’m going to change up the “know your history” post this time around and use a direct quote from my new novel, The Reach of the Banyan Tree, to emphasize the strange WWII ties which existed in Indochina in 1945. Here’s a short paragraph from the chapter entitled “The Strange Ways of the Universe”: On a cosmic…
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Ho Chi Minh & Truman: Part II
Part II of my post from yesterday: http://wp.me/p25YFc-C8 – The second part of this post even talks about Tan Trao, the mountainous headquarters of the Viet Minh which is home to the glorious banyan tree which inspired my third novel, soon to be released. Ho took up the mantle of fighting for Indochinese independence by supporting…
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Ho Chi Minh & Truman: Part I
My new novel coming out in a couple weeks, “The Reach of the Banyan Tree”, is in no small part a by-product of my love for 20th century Vietnamese history. Unlike most Americans who study Vietnam, I became much more fascinated at the 1945 connections between the Americans and the Vietnamese rather than the Vietnam War…
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Know Your History: Americans Helping the Viet-Minh in 1945
On July 16, 1945 a group of American OSS officers (Office of Strategic Services – the precursor to the CIA) parachuted into the Viet-Minh HQ in Tan Trao, Tonkin. (Tonkin was the name for northern Vietnam during the French colonial period.) This small group of officers were charged with helping to train the Vietnamese to…
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Vietnamese General Giap: 1911-2013
The revolutionary general of the Viet Minh and the North Vietnamese communists died earlier today. (You can check out the slide show of his life on yahoo HERE!) He was the military mind and right hand man of Ho Chi Minh. He dressed in street clothes and a fedora, making an unassuming presence. But his presence…
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Mixing real historical figures into a work of fiction. Vietnam 1945.
My untitled third novel that I’m currently working on is set during two different time periods in Vietnam. The first is 2000 and the second is 1945. Nineteen-forty-five is the crucial year in modern day Vietnam. It’s the year that the Japanese completely overthrew the remnants of the French Empire in Indochina. It’s the year…
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Essay: A Historical Overview of Vietnam from WWII through the Vietnam War
From time to time, I like to post complete essays of mine which touch upon topics near and dear to my heart. If you know me, you won’t be surprised that this one is about Vietnam. I try to give a broad overview of the historical context which led to the Vietnam War of the…
Author Mark W Sasse 