In Vietnamese you are going to tell me why you joined the Resistance in 1945.

In 1945, not only I but all Vietnamese in their twenties joined the Revolution. This was because after one hundred years of French colonial domination we wanted to have freedom, independence and a new life. We did not want to be slaves any longer.

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In 1945, not only me, but everybody in Vietnam, you know teenagers, twenty or twenty-five years old, you know, should go, should follow the resistance! Because after one hundred years under the French colonialist domination, everybody want to have...to be free. To have independence is the proud of our nation. We want to have a new life.

Maybe, maybe I'll ask you one more, one more thing, if we could go a little tighter on this. If you could describe for me the way the French were acting, the way life was in Saigon at that time? This is...

In Vietnam, not in Saigon...

Not just in Saigon, but you were in Saigon.

Ah, no. I were in Saigon ah...

During the French colonial period the city inhabitants were perhaps a little better off. But the rural population was utterly poor and miserable. Furthermore, they could be arrested and thrown into jail at any time without any warning. Arrests and frame ups of all kinds. I think that this was not peculiar to Vietnam. The Indians and the Dutch I'm sorry the Indonesians under British and Dutch colonial domination had to suffer the same thing and so they also wanted to have freedom.

Before the revolution, I was a singer. I was a traveling minstrel going from north to south. When the Revolution came, I joined the Revolution. Besides carrying a gun to fight the French colonizers, I also wrote songs for the soldiers, for young people and for the peasants such as peasant women and children. For example, I wrote a song for the soldiers in the National Defense League which was called "Xuat Quan (To the Front)":

Forward, brave soldiers! The nation is resounded with the words: "Fight to the end!" March forth bravely under gunfire. The Vietnamese Army is carving out the soul of its fatherland. March forth to victory. March forth with the soul of the nation. March to victory. March forth to show them that we Vietnamese are coming. The echoes of the resounding footsteps intertwine with earnest trumpet calls, urgings from past heroes, shouts from fighters and the thud thud of distant cannons. We are drunk with the blood of the enemies which is flooding the battlefields. Enemies are all around us. Swords flash, and their heads roll. (Refrain)

Would you describe to me how the soldiers would sing with you and how they would react?

When I wrote this song, I was no longer a professional musician. I was already a soldier at the time. I fought with as well as sang for my comrades in arms. They liked the song very much and they sang along with me. This song became very popular. Later on, it became the official song of the military academy in South Vietnam.

Besides the songs for the National Defense forces, I also wrote songs for young people (thanh nien). Now, "thanh" means green and "nien" means age. So I wrote a song called "Nhac Tuoi Xanh (Music for Green Age)":

Last autumn the Revolution broke out. The Vietnamese nation is resounded with the shouts of thousands of young people flashing their swords to break up the yoke and the chain of slavery. Young men march forward and yell: "Fight to the end! Fight to the end!" That Autumn day young people said goodbye to their daydreams and waved the blood red banner in the fight for the hungry and the poor. Life is always full of hardship. But we should fight for the nation while we're still young (we're still green in age). Youth is like green rice stalks in early morning.

Youth has a bright future. Victory is in its grasp. Come, march forth hand in hand and build a memorial to glory. Let our singing fill up the sky: March forth and color the flag with our blood. March forth and water the rice fields with our sweat. The fields will be green and you and I will have Peace. Life will be rosy and you and I will enjoy our youth (green age). Let's walk our own path, build our own home, plow our own fields, bide our own time. Tomorrow life will be plentiful, the French will be destroyed and we will laughing and singing for your freedom.

Could you tell us why this became such a famous song? Why do you think people really liked it?

The reason why many people liked this song was because it is much more idyllic than those blood and iron songs such as "Xuat Quan." It's bright and it's resolute. For example, "Let's walk our own path, build our own home, and plow our own fields." This is to say, it expresses very resolutely the freedom that a colonized people is entitled to.

Besides the songs for soldiers and young people, I also wrote songs for the peasants, for mothers, rice cultivators and young wives. Here is one such song. It's called "Dan Do."

This is what a husband says to his wife before going to battle: "I have to go and fight the enemy. If I get killed, you'll have to avenge my death." I also wrote a refrain for a father to his son: "I have to go and fight the enemy. You must try your best to grow up right. If I die, avenge me with this gun." And I also have a third refrain: "I have to go and fight for the nation. If I die, my blood smeared gun waits for your hands."

I wrote songs for the Resistance because I realized that the Resistant fighters needed some kind of entertainment. But most important was the need to build up the spirit of the people. This was because during the struggle sometimes people lost their morale. So we had to build up their morale with meaningful songs. These songs had to lift up their spirit. They should not be songs which served to depress them and to make them afraid of the war.

Okay. So the reason why I make this song because at first because people want to be entertained. And then the most important is we have to build up the moral of the people. Because in the war people sometimes lose the morale. They can become very easy anti-war. So I build up the morale. And I did not say, I...it is successful. I cannot say that.

Tell us why you left the Viet Minh in 1951.

In 1945 I responded to the call of the Revolution to struggle for the independence of Vietnam. I thought that this was the struggle of the entire people. But when I realized that this was a Party which capitalized on the blood of all those Vietnamese who participated in the struggle in order to build up this Party this Party is the Communist Party, I left the Resistance because I did not want to become a Communist stooge.

The signs which indicated the true nature of the Communist Party to me and which forced me to leave the Resistance were quite simple: First of all, Ho Chi Minh and his clique said that they were going to disband the Communist Party. But the Communist Party remained intact with its three men cells and Party cells in the Army as well as in the entire administrative machinery. To me, this represented a lie. The second thing was the land reform in which they arrested landlords and buried them alive, executed them and killed many of them.

They created a class struggle and revealed their true Communist nature to me. For this reason, I left. And it should be remembered that when I left the Resistance area for the Nationalist area I cried. But I did not have any other choice. I'd rather leave for the Nationalist area with all its shortcomings than to remain with the Resistance where I would be considered a hero and a good citizen but where, in reality, I would only be a Communist stooge.