General study of North Viet Nam - covers historical and geographical aspects, labour force, demographic aspects and social structures, living conditions, education, cultural factors, tradition, religion, the system of government, foreign policy, the economic structure, trade unionism, trade, banking, national level defence, the armed forces, etc. Bibliography pp. 415 to 476, maps, and statistical tables.

The study is intended to give background material on certain problem areas in the existing social system of North Vietnam. Emphasis is placed on the historical development of the North Vietnam Workers' Party (formerly the Indochina Communist Party), its structural organization, tactics employed to seize political power in North Vietnam after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, and the resistance war it waged against France in the period 1946-54. Details are given on the formation of the various front organizations, particularly the Viet Minh and its successor, the Fatherland Front; the youth and women's organizations; and the trade unions; and on the methods employed by the North Vietnamese Communist leadership to mobilize the masses and use them to achieve their political, social, and economic objectives. Included are the discussions of the roles of the puppet Democratic and Socialist parties in furthering the aims of the Communists. Additionally, background information is given dealing with problems affecting the Roman Catholics, ethnic minorities, resettlement of the population, evacuation of urban centers, and the development of local industry. (Author).

"Maps, research, and writing completed April 1970 ; April 1972."--T.p.

Ship of Fate tells the emotionally gripping story of a Vietnamese military officer who evacuated from Saigon in 1975 but made the dramatic decision to return to Vietnam for his wife and children, rather than resettle in the United States without them. Written in Vietnamese in the years just after 1991, when he and his family finally immigrated to the United States, Trần Đình Trụ’s memoir provides a detailed and searing account of his individual trauma as a refugee in limbo, and then as a prisoner in the Vietnamese reeducation camps. In April 1975, more than 120,000 Indochinese refugees sought and soon gained resettlement in the United States. While waiting in the Guam refugee camps, however, approximately 1,500 Vietnamese men and women insisted in no uncertain terms on being repatriated back to Vietnam. Trần was one of these repatriates. To resolve the escalating crisis, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a large ship, the Việt Nam Thương Tín. An experienced naval commander, Trần became the captain of the ship and sailed the repatriates back to Vietnam in October 1975. On return, he was imprisoned and underwent forced labor for more than twelve years. Trần’s account reveals a hidden history of refugee camps on Guam, internal divisions among Vietnamese refugees, political disputes between the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. government, and the horror of the postwar “reeducation” camps. While there are countless books on the U.S. war in Vietnam, there are still relatively few in English that narrate the war from a Vietnamese perspective. This translation adds new and unexpected dimensions to the U.S. military’s final withdrawal from Vietnam.