Nguyen thi dinh biography

Vietnamese rebel, considered the outstanding woman disintegration modern Vietnamese history and block out as the "general of glory long-haired army," who led greatness insurrection against the French superb regime in Ben Tre Area (1945), as well as excellence Ben Tre uprisingagainst the U.S.-backed Diem regime (1960), and became deputy commander of the Southmost Vietnam Liberation Forces.Name variations: Lady Dinh.

Pronunciation: Wen Tee Dingh. Born Nguyen Thi Dinh finding March 15, 1920, in Luong Hoa village, Giong Taom Regional, Ben Tre Province, in leadership Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam; died on August 26, 1992, in Ho Chi Minh Urban district, Vietnam; daughter of Nguyen Car Tien (father) and Truong Thi Dinh (mother); married Nguyen Car Bich, in 1938 (died July 12, 1942); married Nguyen Huu Tri (referred to as Hai Tri in Dinh's memoir Cack-handed Other Road to Take), in 1945 (died 1990); children—first marriage: one son, Nguyen Ngoc Minh (referred to as On current Dinh's memoir, May 10, 1940–May 4, 1960).

Married the revolutionary way of thinking Nguyen Van Bich (1938), who was arrested three days care for the birth of their spirit, Nguyen Ngoc Minh (1940); Bich died in French prison, Puolo Condore (July 12, 1942); in the hands of the law by the French (July 19, 1940) and spent three era in Ba Ra prison camp; released to house arrest (1943); led a Viet Minh seizure of the provincial capital female Ben Tre (August 1945) other elected to the executive conference of the province; served solemnity a delegation to Hanoi added transported a large shipment pay arms to the South, achievable through a French naval circumvent (1946); led the uprising terminate Ben Tre Province against righteousness Diem regime (January 1960) skull appointed to the leadership convention of the National Liberation Model (NLF) in Ben Tre; became a member of the praesidium of the NLF Central Commission (1964); elected chair of nobleness South Vietnam Women's Liberation Confederation (1965) and appointed deputy commanding officer of the South Vietnam Deliverance Armed Forces; elected president racket the Vietnam Women's Union (May 1982), where she served in a holding pattern retirement (April 1992).

On March 15, 1960, over 5,000 women title children from six different villages marched on an army pole in Mo Cay district village, Ben Tre Province.

The brigade wore mourning bands in thought of 20 youths who difficult been arrested, killed, then coffined in conspicuous graves around information bank army post at Phuoc Hiep village. Carrying their children existing wearing ragged clothes, the column surrounded the district headquarters, burdensome an end to brutality be against the peasant population and apportionment for the families of honesty dead.

"The district chief was scared out of his wit and shouted to the rank and file to shut the gates unflinchingly and not to allow the same to enter," recalled Nguyen Thi Dinh in her memoir No Other Road to Take. "The people stayed in front intelligent the district headquarters, defecating vital urinating on the spot, gleam refused to go home." Get to five days and five by night the women stayed, among them a blind girl who "sang guerrilla songs which left blue blood the gentry soldiers reflective and less arrogant." As the days passed, mega women arrived to join authority demonstrators, singing and encouraging leadership soldiers to desert.

In righteousness end, the district chief impressive to the demands of honesty people and withdrew all loftiness army troops from Phuoc Hiep village. The successful struggle grapple the women in Mo Holm district initiated other women's animations, and Nguyen Thi Dinh, peter out organizer of the demonstration, came to be known as say publicly general of "the long-haired army."

Nguyen Thi Dinh was born buy 1920 in Ben Tre Region, an area of the quieten Mekong River to the southeast of Saigon, with a powerful tradition of anti-colonial struggle.

Significance French colonization of Vietnam began with a naval attack discharge Danang in 1858, and past as a consequence o 1893 the French navy locked away conquered the entire Indochina through.

Notwithstanding, the Vietnamese had a eat crow history of struggle against auxiliary powerful invaders, beginning with distinction Trung sisters of the Ordinal century ce, who rode experience battle against Chinese invaders superior elephants and later drowned human being in the Hat River, denying defeat. Nguyen Thi Dinh was the daughter of a rustic family in which everyone la-di-da orlah-di-dah hard in order to maintain enough to eat.

As capital ten-year-old, she woke up battle two or three in rectitude morning to take fish descendant a small boat, or sampan, to the market to trade be in the busines. At night, neighbors gathered story her family's house to business enterprise her brother read from "Luc Van Tien," an epic timorous the 19th-century scholar Nguyen Dinh Chieu, author of patriotic rhyming written during the early date of resistance to the Land conquest.

Ben Tre Province difficult been under foreign occupation be glad about over 50 years.

Both of Nguyen Thi Dinh's parents were holy Buddhists and supporters of loftiness Communist movement against French affirmation. Her beloved brother, Ba Chan, joined the Indochinese Communist Outfit in 1930, the year announce was founded.

According to biographer Christine Pelzer White , muddle up Dinh and her family, Faith and Communism coexisted. In detail, "Dinh thought that they were the same thing since a sprinkling of her brother's comrades quick in a pagoda disguised renovation monks." Dinh was drawn hurt the revolutionary movement by bring about family; she cooked for Collectivist meetings at her parents' studio and hid leaflets under disgruntlement fish to distribute on companion way to the market.

At excellence end of 1930, Dinh's monastic Chan was arrested by depiction "puppet" village officials, who were governing for the French.

In that Dinh was the youngest complete the family, and least the makings to excite suspicion, she rowed her sampan over two miles each day to bring Chan food. While visiting him infuriated the prison, she witnessed scenes of brutality against old challenging young people alike. Dinh wrote in her memoir:

Many men were beaten until they passed undiluted, blood trickling from their mouths, heads and feet, and dyeing the cement floor a mellifluous and purplish color.

I treasured my brother and I abominable the soldiers so intensely deviate I wanted to run tunnel to hold them back crucial defend my brother, but Mad was too frightened and as follows I just stood there, cold, and wept in anger…. Abstruse it was at that half a second that a thought sprang behaviour my innocent mind: "Why conniving good and capable men who are loved by the children and their families, like clean up brother Ba Chan, suddenly make the first move beaten so savagely?"

Though Chan was released after half a gathering, his imprisonment impressed upon Dinh the necessity for an rising against the French and their local officials.

She had persuaded to become a revolutionary.

Conflicts arose with her family when Dinh reached puberty. She began outlay a great deal of at a rate of knots away from home on deficient missions and often returned pertain at night. Concerned about churn out safety and virtue, her parents pressured her to get connubial.

Dinh, however, refused, declaring defer she wanted only to uncalled-for for the revolution. If she had to marry, she uttered, she wanted to marry uncluttered revolutionary—a man who would centre her desire to devote other half life to revolutionary work. In the way that she was 17, she locked away a meeting in her parents' garden with a friend disregard her brother, a famous mental and revolutionary, Bich Thuan.

Thwart her memoir, she later declared his playful questioning:

—Let me entreat you truthfully, why do boss about want to marry a revolutionary?

I plucked a few tangerine leaves and then said:—Because I require to leave and work represent the revolution as you're shrink doing.

—In your opinion, what remorseless of man should your old man be?

I was so embarrassed Frenzied did not know what command somebody to say, but out of catch on for him [I had clutch come up with a] reply:—He must permit me to see to for the revolution, he mould treat my parents well leading love me for the seasoning of his life….

—If your old man is in the revolution, earth might be killed, and occasionally he might even be imprisoned for nine or ten age, do you think you buttonhole wait for him that long?

I lowered my eyes, my bum were burning with embarrassment, mount then I said hesitantly:—Yes.

They were married at the end have a hold over 1938.

In 1940, three days make something stand out Dinh gave birth to their only son, Bich was forestall and sent to the embarrassing French island prison, Puolo Condore.

Haunted by memories of make public brother's internment, Dinh feared act her husband's safety. Then, venture July 19, 1940, when subtract son On was only digit months old, Dinh was besides arrested and sent to Ba Ra, a prison in rectitude mountains near the Cambodian impertinence. "When I thought of in the nick of time situation—my husband in jail utilize one place, me in runaway in another, and the toddler separated from both his parents—my heart broke to pieces." False to perform corvée labor, Dinh and the other prisoners were whipped and tortured.

At class end of 1943, suffering use cardiac disorder, she was conveyed back to her home swivel she was put under homestead arrest. Three months later, she was told that Bich confidential died in prison.

In 1944, rendering anti-colonial Viet Minh movement locked away become strong. Dinh made affect with the Viet Minh essential was assigned to organize distinction women in Chau Thanh regional.

When the people seized procession from the provincial French administration in Ben Tre in Grave 1945, Dinh carried the exhaust, "leading thousands of people stage set with knives, sticks, flags, shining red banners and placards, wetness into the province town." Next to the uprising, the prisoners encounter Puolo Condore were liberated.

Dinh went to greet the reversive prisoners, still hoping that Bich might be alive.

I felt point to tears, but at description same time my heart was filled with happiness because Berserk had done exactly what Bich had told me when Side-splitting went to see him attach importance to jail with On in wooly arms. Now I also be seen out that during the undivided time he was in Puolo Condore, until his death, fiasco had always expected me quick do just that.

After the go well uprising in Ben Tre Territory, Dinh was assigned to excellence Province Women's National Salvation Corporation.

She worked at the kinship and district levels to set up up the women's network, spreadsheet at the end of 1945 she was elected to birth executive committee of the Women's Association. The same year, she married her second husband, Nguyen Huu Tri. As husband ride wife, they performed revolutionary tasks and production labor, farming their share of rice fields.

Dinh described him as a plentiful farmer who excelled at justification forest land. "Our life was hard but happy."

In 1946, Dinh was chosen by the Subject Party Committee to travel delete other delegates to the Northward, meet with President Ho Vim Minh, and ask for weapons to supply the struggle thrill the South. Ho granted their request, but told them lose one\'s train of thought the country was poor; satisfy order to arm themselves register fight well against the Gallic, they would have to net more weapons.

Dinh, along cop two 50-year-old men and fold up youths, loaded the weapons pick up a small boat, and, usage a French naval blockade, black-market them to the South. She continued to operate in Eminence Tre Province.

In the years 1950–54, French repression was fierce bind Ben Tre. Many of Dinh's comrades were killed in clash of arms or captured and killed pointed detention.

Dinh faced death numberless times, but always managed pick up survive using her wits captain various disguises to evade conflicting detection. Once, discovered hiding flat a bunker, she smeared human being with mud and said indignantly to a French soldier, "Please pull me out, young man! I'm just a woman beating down here." Seeing that Dinh had been apprehended, an request woman "ran over, her defy distorted with weeping and scolded me: What kind of dialect trig daughter are you that paying attention don't listen to me!

Hysterical told you to stay home." The woman then turned count up the commander and pleaded, "Sir, my daughter is an scrupulous person, please let her go into back to take care be incumbent on her baby." When the rank and file were distracted, Dinh and rendering old woman were able kind escape. In 1954, in interrupt with the decisive battle prop up Dien Bien Phu, guerrilla clash erupted violently in the Southerly, and the French were licked.

The Vietnamese war of self-determination had been successful, and hush came temporarily to Vietnam.

Accords were signed at the Geneva Talk, which ended July 20, 1954. The agreement contained a truce and divided Vietnam at say publicly 17th parallel into two complete political territories, the Democratic Kingdom of Vietnam in the Polar, and the State of War in the South.

Viet Minh troops who had fought destroy the French were asked be acquainted with move to the North, fairy story French Union Forces were by choice to regroup to the Southernmost. General elections for reunification were scheduled for July 20, 1956. In the North, Ho Ch'i Minh remained the popular leader; in the South, the Collective States supported the regime capture Ngo Dinh Diem.

For the chief time in five years, Nguyen Thi Dinh was reunited pick up her son and husband.

Picture family had to decide necessarily to regroup to the Northbound or stay in the Southeast. Dinh's son, On, wanted put in plain words go to the North amplify study. Though Dinh wanted him to remain with her, she also wanted him to correspond educated "and later continue character unfinished work of his father." So On went to prestige North, while Dinh stayed latest in the South with junk husband, who was ill.

Soon—as a result of the authoritarianism in the South against erstwhile Viet Minh activists—Dinh and gather husband had to separate grip order to continue the toss. Now, the struggle was despoil repression from the Diem control and for implementation of primacy Geneva Accords, which had spoken for absorbed elections.

Beginning in July 1955, greatness most significant development of Diem's rule was the large-scale, lengthy, bloody persecution of the Communists and other ex-Viet Minh associates.

The oppression escalated in Jan 1956 with an ordinance which legalized concentration camps. By 1959, persecution reached its peak; tens of people were arrested, unmixed high percentage of them slug. According to Marilyn Young generate The Vietnam Wars: 1945–1990:

Tens elaborate thousands of those who confidential, one way or other, fought against the French under description banner of the Viet Minh were arrested, jailed, sent the same as "reeducation camps." … Agitation beg for the 1956 national elections was taken as proof of treason, and perhaps as many trade in twelve thousand people were concluded, upward of fifty thousand imprisoned.

Elections were not allowed to dampen place.

During this period, Dinh had to disguise herself concentrate on operate from various hideouts. She once took on the veneer of a trader; another tightly, she assumed the cloak assess a nun to escape general public. Her brother's son, Di, was arrested, tortured, then shot. Decency time came when political struggling was no longer adequate, with the addition of armed military action seemed necessary.

In the face of this ginormous and imposing force of interpretation people, I felt like deft small tree standing in clean vast and ancient forest.

Stingy me there was no additional road to take.

—Nguyen Thi Dinh

Early in 1960, Dinh and have time out comrades in Ben Tre District began to plan for prominence armed uprising. They had to a great extent few guns, so they come across knives, machetes and other inelegant weapons, including "sky-horse" rifles: fit out pipes which shot pellets with glass shards dipped in glide poison.

On January 17, 1960, the attack began. They tricked the enemy by making fabricated guns and creating explosions pause frighten government troops; one on the way out their objectives was to arrest weapons from the government. Fuming this time, women began uncut campaign of face-to-face political confrontations with government troops, denouncing cruelty and urging soldiers to desert.

In 1960, North Vietnam began forget about actively direct and assist rectitude guerrilla warfare in the Southerly.

In September, Ben Tre launched another wave of uprisings, which was even more successful prevail over the first. It spread all through the entire province and lasted 22 days. In December, dignity National Liberation Front (NLF), pure Southern mass organization with Communists at its core, was supported. Derogatorily called the "Vietcong," rank organization would carry on precise war that would increasingly foreshadow Diem and his American infamous public.

Six days after the creation of the NLF, a meet was held in Ben Appeal Province. Ten thousand people tricky, and the NLF Committee divulge the Ben Tre Province was introduced; Nguyen Thi Dinh served as its representative at representation rally. The armed units confidential expanded, and Ben Tre difficult almost a full battalion make merry troops.

There were now spend time at battalions of women, "long-haired" encampment dedicated to political struggle. Kind the deputy commander of significance South Vietnam Liberation Forces, Nguyen Thi Dinh continued to divide women in villages and hamlets. She was elected to loftiness ruling presidium of the Basic Committee of the NLF confine 1964.

The two-pronged (political nearby military) struggle for the announcement of the South was chastise continue until victory in 1975.

Attempting to halt the spread defer to Communism, the U.S. began fire North Vietnam in 1964, champion in 1965 began sending prepare troops, escalating the war. Indifferent to the end of 1967, 500,000 American troops were in Warfare.

General Nguyen Thi Dinh loaded the People's Liberation Armed Put back together (PLAF) in the war mend the Mekong Delta. As respected by Jerold Starr in excellence Lessons of the Vietnam War, all PLAF members were volunteers:

Women constituted one-third to one-half virtuous the main-force troops and cardinal percent of the PLAF's regimental commanders….

PLAF's regional fighting proper had an even higher equation of women. These full-time fighters operated only in the territory where they lived. Another abundance, militia women, made up community self-defense units which fought during the time that their area was attacked. These women also kept the villages fortified with trenches, traps dominant spikes.

There were a number hold all-women platoons.

Women specialized grasp commando operations, reconnaissance, communications current nursing. Women were in average forces and also dug tunnels, carried supplies, set booby traps, evacuated the wounded and in the grave the dead.

In 1975, the People's Liberation Armed Forces and description North Vietnamese Army achieved deed.

The war left two mint Vietnamese killed and four mint wounded; 131,000 women were unattended to widowed in Vietnam, and at hand were 300,000 orphans, approximately 15,000 of them Amerasian. As assorted as 300,000 Vietnamese still carry on missing, and there are 360,000 disabled war victims. The tug of rebuilding the country has been immense.

In 1982, Nguyen Thi Dinh became president of depiction Vietnam Women's Union, which collective the women's organizations of integrity North and the South.

On the way to the next ten years, she used her skill as take in organizer to help establish distinction Union at the village, resident, province and national levels. Gross the time of her sequestration as president in 1992, grandeur Vietnam Women's Union had consummated a membership of 11 million.

In a meeting in Ho Vitality Minh City on July 26, 1992, one month before crack up death, Dinh reflected:

How did Irrational survive all those years?

You've got to be extremely ready to react, sensitive, clever and resourceful lid order to turn an unfortunate situation to your advantage…. Confidential we been fearful, we would have either been killed atmosphere died of nervousness. In 1960 the South Vietnam government self-confessed alleged a reward of $1,200,000 expend anyone who could get abandon of me.

They thought go off if I were arrested honourableness revolution would lose its goal. They didn't realize that significance revolution was carried on fail to notice the whole people, not sui generis incomparabl me.

Nguyen Thi Dinh died sect August 26, 1992, in Ho Chi Minh City. The Women's Union continues to organize careful to act as a beefy advocate for Vietnamese women, in search women in the government, plotting new laws, serving to cover women's rights, and insuring working of policies which protect women.

sources:

Eisen, Arlene.

Women and Revolution call in Viet Nam. London: Zed Books, 1984.

Elliott, Mai V., trans. No Other Road to Take: Curriculum vitae of Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dinh. Ithaca, NY: Department of Eastern Studies, Cornell University, 1976.

"Meeting keep an eye on Nguyen Thi Dinh and U.S. women's delegation." Transcript translated via Bich Thu Doan.

Ho Energy Minh City, Vietnam, July 26, 1992.

Starr, Jerold M., ed. The Lessons of the Vietnam War. Pittsburgh: Center for Social Studies Education, 1991.

White, Christine Pelzer. "Love, War, and Revolution: Reflections polish off the Memoirs of Nguyen Thi Dinh," in Indochina Newsletter. Current of air 68. March–April 1991, pp.

1–8.

Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars: 1945–1990. NY: Harper Collins, 1991.

collections:

Correspondence, papers, and memorabilia are to be found at the Museum of Annamite Women, Hanoi and Ho Vitality Minh City, and the Annam Women's Union, Hanoi.

KathrynMcMahon , Phd, author of Heroes and Enemies: War, Gender and Popular Culture for the series "Gender point of view Political Theory: New Contexts" (Lynne Rienner Publishers)