Yet as a Vietnamese Buddhist by he had decisively turned against Communism in Vietnam. He then joined the Vietnamese nationalists. He became the mayor of Da Nang , and was later a province chief in the Mekong Delta. The ultimate government goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people eventually led him to enter politics. He became a legislative leader. Detention under house arrest followed. Soon after Saigon fell in , he was arrested and held by the new communist regime, in a re-education camp.
Released in , he and his family made their escape by boat, eventually arriving in America in His grandfather Tran Tram was a well-known scholar and a minister in the imperial cabinet, and his father Tran Dao Te was a chief judge. He followed two older brothers and a sister.
Afterwards he was made a platoon leader. Exemplary was his young immediate superior Ho Ba, also from a mandarin family. Yet he saw what he thought a senseless execution of a young woman justified as "revolutionary brutality. Promoted then to " battalion political commissar", Ho Ba had asked him to join the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh β proclaimed Vietnamese independence, and became the first President. Several writers comment that in Ho Chi Minh had become indelibly identified with Vietnamese independence, conferring on him the Mandate of Heaven in the eyes of many Vietnamese, and that his ultimate victory against France and later America predictably followed.
Although remaining a nationalist in favor of step-by-step independence, he severed his ties, and began his outright opposition to communism.
