During the Second World War, Vietnam was captured by the Japanese. The Japanese had seized Vietnam in order to serve as a base for widespread invasions in Southeast Asia when war started in the Pacific in December 1941. After its capture by the Japanese, Vietnam became the site of a bloody struggle between occupying Japanese forces and the native resistance groups. The Viet Minh fighters were heavily involved in fighting against the Japanese forces. Helping them, unofficially, was the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS). At one aid station in the fall of 1942, an OSS doctor was treating a patient by the name of Ho Chi Minh. Ho Chi Minh was dying from malaria, dysentery, and other debilitating diseases caught in the Vietnam jungles. He was given some modern drugs by the OSS doctor, and Ho Chi Minh soon made a remarkable recovery. Some seventeen months before in mid-1941, Ho Chi Minh had been in China when he formed the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam). The Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek had Ho arrested, but after United States entered the war, Ho Chi Minh was released at the request of the OSS, to organize anti-Japanese intelligence throughtout Vietnam. He fought against the Japanese for three years and after the war ended he marched into Hanoi, forced Emperor Bao Dai to abdicate, and became the president. Just twenty years later, Ho and his tough Viet Minh jungle fighters were fighting against the United States forces in Vietnam. How different would the history of Southeast Asia had turned out, had the OSS doctor not treated Ho Chi Minh during World War 2. Bibliography Breuer, William. Daring Missions of World War II. John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Back to Table of Contents -- World War Two Newsletter March 2003 Back to World War Two Newsletter List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by Shahram Khan. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com