ABSTRACT
World War II marked a rapid expansion of the power and influence of the United States everywhere in the world, including Southeast Asia. The Japanese move into Indochina brought the first US military intervention into Vietnam in early 1942, about a month after America had entered the war. These wartime experiences confirmed the American sense of Vietnam’s significance as a source of foodstuffs and raw materials and as a strategic location astride major shipping lanes linking India, China, Japan, and the islands of Southeast Asia. By early 1945, the US and British forces had reclaimed many of Japan’s wartime Southeast Asian conquests. As the US Army officers joined with Vietminh leaders in Hanoi to celebrate the rebirth of Vietnamese independence, American leaders in Washington were clearing the way for the return of the French to Vietnam. The US military personnel serving in Vietnam who supported Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary nationalism had no political clout in Washington.
