SENIOR GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP REMEMBERS

Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2003 by Currey, Cecil B

Closing down Le Travail didn't stop us. Under the leadership of Truong Chinh, I and the party committee published successively many newspapers both in French and in Vietnamese, such as Rassemblement, En avant, Notre voix, Thoi the, Ha thanh thai bao, The gioi, Doi nay, Tin tuc, Ngay moi, Ban dan, and lastly Giai Phong, another underground paper that was stopped after three issues when the authorities discovered the whereabouts of its press and seized it. Sometimes, in Notre Voix, a column appeared under the title Lettre de Chine (Letter from China), articles that were signed P. C. Lin, a pseudonym of Ho chi Minh. For all these papers I wrote mainly all my articles in French although I also took part in writing articles in Vietnamese for almost all the newspapers mentioned a moment ago. On 23 March 1937, as a delegate from the newspaper Rassemblement, I participated in the Congress of Newspapers of central Viet Nam.

Then on 24th of April 1937, I was chairman of the first Congress of newspapers of North Viet Nam, organized by the committee of the communist party. Tran Huy Lieu was vice chairman.

I was busy. During this period, I taught at Thang Long, attended courses at the University's Faculte de Droit, and still succeeded in passing the examination obtaining for me the license en droit. But the greater part of my time was indeed for writing in the papers. I knew all the process by now: writing a leading article, current events, news in brief, varied subjects, making investigations, reports, making up and composing, being a sub-editor, looking after the brush proof and very often being a newspaper man.

Sometimes the party would order Pham van Dong, Truong Chinh and Ho huu Nam to go on some special mission. I had to stay alone in front of a desk from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. the next morning, to write, to make up an entire issue of Notre Voix. After that, I had just enough time to run bringing to the press forty-eight typewritten pages, then to swallow down my breakfast, before rushing headlong to Lycee Thang Long. I still take pride in my journalism. In 1991 the Vietnamese journalists association awarded a medal to me reserved to journalists having been more than twenty-five years in this activity. I was very pleased.

Question: It seems you have always had a passion for creating and for orchestrating events through your journalistic efforts.

Answer: Yes. Later, when I served with the military, I used comparing the preparation of a battle with combined operations to the production of a newspaper. For me, the least detail has its importance: the choice of type, the appropriate use of a word, the page make-up in composition, the balance of articles, their place on the pages, how to take advantage from a newsworthy event, and so forth. I spared no pains in writing in my papers and was very happy when readers took an interest in my publications.

My activities as a journalist will never leave me. In even the worst of times [as we struggled against the French], when I was with the Maquis, I kept up my work. In 1941 I contributed to the newspaper Viet Nam doc lap, an underground publication intended for the population of Cao Bang, Bac Kan, Lang Son. This paper had a circulation of only a few hundred and was printed on bad paper using bad ink. But it was successful because its articles were written in a style anyone could comprehend and, more especially, they were printed in easily legible large type. Then in 1944, I brought out Tieng sung reo (The Guns Rumble) a manuscript paper, for internal use only by members of the Army of liberation. Later, with Ho Chi Minh's agreement, I prepared Nuoc Nam moi (Nam, the new country). After publishing only seven issues, the August Revolution came. In the heat of the movement in those days, I continued writing articles for Co giai phong (The flag of the liberation), Cuu quoc (National welfare), and Sao yang (Golden Star).