Word: huã
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Dates: during 1961-1961
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...Dinh Diem grew to manhood. His father, Ngo Dinh Kha, was a cultured, educated mandarin whose family had been converted to Catholicism by missionaries in the 17th century. He was called to serve as administrative adviser to Emperor Thanh Thai in central Viet Nam's imperial capital of Hu??, but quit in a huff when the French, interfering constantly in the affairs of the court, decided to depose the Emperor. Penniless ("We did not even have enough to pay for school," recalls Diem), Kha resigned himself to life as a farmer, borrowed enough money to rent some rice fields from...
Leaflets in the Haystacks. At first, young Diem seriously considered the priesthood. But the example of his scholar father soon led him to the local French school of law and administration in Hu?? (where he graduated first in a class of 20), then into government service as a district administrator...
That was in 1933. For the decade that followed, Diem steered clear of politics, mostly read and studied at his home in Hu??. It was a crucial time, for the revolutionary spirit was incubating swiftly. While developing the country, the French were extracting every possible sou in profits; every salt worker had to sell his output to the French-controlled monopoly, which sold the salt back to the Vietnamese at a handsome markup; each village was required to buy its rice liquor at fixed prices from the French distillers; as for reform and freedom, there was not a word...
Another brother, a short, fortyish bachelor named Ngo Dinh Can, controls central Viet Nam from the family's hometown of Hu??. He has his own network of secret police, holds sway over the government's provincial chiefs in the region. Reputedly owner of vast tracts of land, he is wealthy, contributed heavily to the construction of a new cathedral in Hue where Brother Ngo Dinh Thuc is now Archbishop...