In September 1945, American policymakers were in an understandably triumphant mood. On September 2, Japanese representatives on the USS Missouri signed the surrender papers that ended World War II. At this point, the Huks had not yet turned their ire toward the newly independent Philippine government, and Mao Zedong was still a few years away from defeating the Nationalists. However, the events on Tokyo Bay overshadowed another vital strategic development in East Asia. On the same day, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh issued a declaration establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in what was then known as French Indochina.

A communist since the early 1920s, Ho opened his remarks by directly placing the Vietnamese people’s struggle in the context of the American Declaration of Independence. Having been “subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese,” Ho argued, the Vietnamese people were “determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.” Yet, as the Vietnamese would quickly learn, France was not eager to grant its colony independence. In fact, after the Japanese ended their occupation of the region at the end of World War II, France reestablished its colonial rule in Indochina, granting only minor political concessions to the nationalists.