Messages to America: The Letters of Ho Chi Minh

Who was Ho Chi Minh?

Born in 1890 in Vietnam under French colonialism to a committed nationalist father, Ho Chi Minh would grow up to lead not one, but two successful wars of independence to liberate his country. In his formative years, Ho traveled widely as a sailor and lived in Paris, Harlem, and Boston, where he worked as a cook, baker, and did menial jobs. In his travels, he made contact with other colonized people, communists and nationalists, and saw the Vietnamese under France as part of an international system of empire.

Returning to Vietnam to expel the French colonizers and emancipate his homeland, Ho Chi Minh looked to the United States, once a colony of the British, as a model—the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence is clearly modeled on the United States Declaration—but also as a potential ally. Ho wrote numerous times to American audiences, presidents and the American people, reaching out for support. But American elites, seeing France expelled and wary of independence movements "infecting" their own colonies, decided to punish Vietnam and engaged in a decades long war of almost unthinkable violence.

During this time, while Ho Chi Minh was demonized in the United States, he continued to push the United States to respect Vietnam's sovereignty. He passed away in 1969 at the age of 79, not living to see the eventual Vietnamese victory in 1975. In 1976, Vietnam's capital city, Saigon, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in his honor.


1945

Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, September 2, 1945
Letter to President Harry Truman, October 17, 1945
Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 18, 1945
Letter to U.S. Secretary of State, October 22, 1945
Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 1, 1945
Letter to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 23, 1945
Telegram to Secretary of State James Byrnes, November 26, 1945

1946

Letter to U.S. President Truman, January 18, 1946
Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1946
To the Governments of CHINA, UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA, UNION OF SOCIALIST SOVIET
REPUBLICS and GREAT-BRITAIN., February 18, 1946
Telegram to President Truman, February 28, 1946
Memorandum of Discussion with Ho Chi Minh, September 12, 1946

1948

Letter to President Truman, November 8, 1945

1966

Message to the American People, December 23, 1966

1967

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson


1969

Exchange of Letters with U.S. President Richard Nixon

Where are the other Letters?

If you find more, send them to us at History Is A Weapon.