Decline
Kim's historic achievement was immediately overshadowed by external pressure and domestic infighting. On July 26, the leaders of the Allies issued a declaration demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan. Japan was on the defensive and quickly losing ground, and its aim was no longer to win the war, but simply to find an honorable ceasefire. On the Vietnamese front, the possibility of future punishment by the Allied forces for collaboration with the Japanese discouraged many possible supporters of Kim. His ministers and public servant corps began to dwindle in number. The Imperial Commissioner of Bac Bo, Phan Ke Toai, accompanied by his son and other Vietminh sympathisers and secret communists such as Nguyen Manh Ha and Hoàng Minh Giám submitted his resignation. Nguyen Xuan Chu, a leader of the Vietnamese Patriotic Party (Viet-Nam Ai Quoc Dang) and one of the five members of Cường Để's National Reconstruction Committee refused the offer of replacing Toai. Returning to Thuận Hóa, Kim arrived to find increasing conflict among his ministers. Chuong wanted credit for arranging the integration of the three ceded cities and southern Vietnam to Kim's government and was regarded as having Prime Ministerial designs himself. The government meetings of August 5 and 6 were headlined by personal disputes and the resignation of the ministers of interior, economy, and supplies. Ho Ta Khanh, the economy minister, went further and demanded the resignation of the government. Khanh proposed that the Vietminh be given a chance to govern because of its strength. The government resigned on August 7. Bảo Đại asked Kim to form a new government, but the end of the war made this impossible.
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. The following day, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, and Japan's resistance to the Allies was quickly ended. Japan decided to give Kim and Vietnamese nationalists the full independence and territorial unification that they had sought for decades. Kim was urged many times to come to Saigon to officially accept control of Nam Bo. Multiple factors prevented Kim from leaving the capital. From August 8 onward, Pham Khac Hoe, Bảo Đại's office director, was instructed by Ton Quang Phiet (the future chairman of the Vietminh's Revolutionary Committee in Huế) to persuade the Emperor to abdicate voluntarily.
In order to carry out his mission, Hoe persistently disrupted Kim's activities, particularly by citing Kim's failure to call the most influential figures to Thuận Hóa to form a new government. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nam, cited the communist uprisings in Thanh Hóa and Quang Ngai in central Vietnam to discourage Kim from traveling to Saigon. The acceptance of the handover of Nam Bo was thus temporarily placed at the feet of the Council of Nam Bo.
On August 14, Bảo Đại appointed Nguyen Van Sam, former president of the Journalists' Syndicate, to the post of Imperial Commissioner of Nam Bo. Sam left Thuận Hóa for Saigon. However, he was delayed ‘’en route’’ as the Vietminh had taken advantage of the military power vacuum caused by the Japanese surrender to launch a general insurrection with the aim of seizing control of the country.
Read more about this topic: Empire Of Vietnam
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
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