June 1919: Denied a lifetime

 

Ho Chi Minh battled for 50 years to free his native land, Vietnam, from foreign domination. First defeating the Japanese, then the French, and then battling the Americans. That journey started 100 years ago in Paris at the Paris Peace Conference, where he was working as a busboy in the Ritz Hotel. In Paris he assumed a new name - Nguyen ai Quoc (Nguyen the patriot)- and started speaking out for independence. It would be another 21 years, and 7 years after he had been officially registered as dead, that he assumed the name Ho Chi Minh (“The Enlightened One”) and the leadership of the Vietnamese resistance army, believing force was the only way that Vietnam would ever achieve its independence. This month’s episode details the start of Ho Chi Minh’s life’s mission while he was clearing up after the diplomats and politicians and bigwigs and the Paris Peace Conference.