James Rhode, an American war veteran who has visited Vietnam many times in the past 40 years, said he is always proud to talk about President Ho Chi Minh. For him, the Vietnamese leader is not only an eminent scholar and a writer full of emotion, but also a great character of humanity.

James Rhode

Rhode was very impressed by ‘Uncle’ Ho’s simple lifestyle. In his eyes, Ho Chi Minh is both a great leader and a sociable man, who could drink tea with ordinary people. Rhode said that many newspapers in the US compared Ho Chi Minh to the US’s first president George Washington.

Another US veteran, Sedgwick Tourison, who got involved in the Vietnam War in 1961, said in Vietnamese he could never forget the Vietnamese people’s deep affection for the President during their anti-US war of resistance. He told a VOV correspondent in Washington, DC, that many Americans also call Ho Chi Minh Uncle Ho as the Vietnamese people do.

“Once in Binh Dinh, I asked some Vietnamese civilians detained by an US army unit about the name of the chief of the province,” Tourison recalled. “They answered ‘no’. And they didn’t even know the name of the then President of the Republic of Vietnam. When asked about Uncle Ho, they all nodded and said ‘we know; everyone knows’.”

Tourison

Tourison agreed that President Ho Chi Minh’s famous saying ‘there is only one country of Vietnam and one people of Vietnam’ is 100 percent correct.

Frank Velgara, a New Yorker, who has conducted thorough research on President Ho Chi Minh praised him as a great revolutionary in the movements against French, Japanese and US invaders.

Merle Ratner, an American woman said she had read many books and newspapers about Vietnamese leaders, including Ho Chi Minh.

She believed that Ho Chi Minh’s bright example will be followed by not only Vietnamese but also other people over the world.