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Latest comment: 10 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
Some mention should be made of his actions in Saigon and his help restoring the French to power (with help from Japanese POWs!) in Vietnam. Tommel02:30, 26 January 2006 (UTC)Reply
I'll second this. If you read William J. Lederer's "Our Own Worst Enemy" (Norton 1968), you'll find a scathing account of Gen. Gracey's actions in Saigon.
Whether you like it or not, the French were the de facto legitimate government in French Indo-China/Vietnam prior to the Japanese occupation, and it was none of Gracey's business to meddle in the political affairs viz., who ran the country after the expulsion of the Japanese.
As such Gracey was only concerned with restoring the legitimate government, and as the French one was the last legitimate government that existed prior to the war he was obliged to hand over power to them whether he or anyone else liked it or not. Once done, that was his job completed, the future of French Indo-China /Vietnam was someone else's problem, and in effect, none of his or the British Army's business. That's called having an apolitical army, and not meddling in other country's internal affairs.
Gracey's job was to accept power from the Japanese occupiers and then hand it over to the legitimate former rulers of the country, i.e., the one that existed before the outbreak of war. That's It. It wasn't his job to take sides or to preside over whatever infighting there may have been between the French colonial rulers and Ho Chi Minh. That was their business and their problem to sort out.
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