To the Editor:

Frances FitzGerald in her excellent review of Bernard Fall’s last book [March] makes the following statement: “Taking Vietnamese independence as a moral axiom, Roosevelt in 1945-6 first left the French resistance forces in Indochina defenseless, to be slaughtered by the retreating Japanese armies and then . . . abandoned the embryonic nationalist army to be slaughtered by the returning French armies. For seven years afterwards, the United States diplomatically forgot about Indochina; finally in 1953, on the eve of a Vietminh victory, the Eisenhower administration decided to intervene in the Indochina war—on the side of the French.”

This is rather alarmingly bad history. President Roosevelt died in April 1945. President Truman, who had been kept informed about nothing by his predecessor, but who nevertheless did his homework exceedingly well, could not get around to Indochina until it was too late because the French, with British connivance, and the Nationalist Chinese had already occupied what was later to become Vietnam.

American interest in Indochina was not aroused until early spring 1950 when France requested urgent American military aid on the plea that without it the Vietminh would take over the whole country. President Truman agreed and, ironically, on July 4, 1950 a Joint State-Defense Military Assistance Mission left Washington to organize and make recommendations on the nature and size of military aid programs for Southeast Asia, Indochina being the principal one. I was the Chief of that mission. Between then and Dien Bien Phu, American military aid amounted to roughly one billion dollars. After a few weeks in Indochina, I came to the conclusion that the whole idea was a tragic mistake. Nothing that has happened since then has caused me to change that opinion.

John F. Melby
Department of Political Studies
University of Guelph
Guelph, Ontario