Trần Trọng Kim
Trần Trọng Kim (1883 – December 2, 1953), courtesy name Lệ Thần, was a Vietnamese scholar and politician who served as the Prime Minister of the short-lived Empire of Vietnam, a state established with the support of Imperial Japan in 1945 after Japan had seized direct control of Vietnam from the Vichy French colonial forces during the Second World War. He was an uncle of Bui Diem. Early years. Kim was born in Nghi Xuân, Hà Tĩnh Province, in northern central Vietnam in 1883. At the time, French Indochina had just been formed after the colonization of  Vietnam, and Hà Tĩnh was part of the central region, which had become a French protectorate under the name of Annam. In the immediate decade afterwards, the province was the scene of a guerrilla movement led by Phan Đình Phùng that attempted to expel the French authorities. The movement was particularly popular in the Nghệ An-Hà Tĩnh region, which had boasted a long line of nationalist icons. Nevertheless, the movement was crushed, and when Kim grew up, he initially studied in Hanoi at schools reserved for the ruling elite. He then worked in the public service of the French  administration. Kim's early career was as an interpreter, serving in Ninh Bình in northern Vietnam, then known as the protectorate of Tonkin. In 1905, Kim was sent to France as an employee of a private company. In 1908, he won a scholarship from the École Coloniale (Colonial School) to begin his training as a teacher at the École Normale of Melun (Seine-et-Marne). Kim returned to Vietnam in September 1911, commenced his career as a teacher in Annam and slowly rose in the educational hierarchy. By 1942, he had risen to become an inspector of elementary public instruction  in Tonkin. He wrote many works on pedagogy and started a review on the topic. Kim was also a freemason. Academia. In contrast to his low-key career as an education official, Kim was widely known as a scholar for a collection of textbooks published in Romanized Vietnamese ("quốc ngữ"), especially for his writings on Confucianism, Buddhism and Vietnamese history. His two best known works were "Việt Nam sử lược" ("A Brief history of Vietnam"), published in 1920, and "Nho giáo" ("Confucianism"), published in 1929–1933. In the first book, Kim emphasised the Chinese influence on Vietnamese society. The latter book  dealt with examining Confucianism in China and its impact on Vietnam. Kim strongly praised Confucianism, and his book provoked much intellectual debate on the philosophy's place in Vietnamese society. "Nho giáo" was seen as a link between the generations of scholars who were brought up under the Confucian examination system of pre-French Vietnam and those who grew up under the French system. "Việt Nam Sử Lược" remains in print as of 2009. His reputation in literary circles made Kim a leading figure in the Buddhist and Confucian associations, and in 1939, he was appointed to the Chamber of  People's Representatives in Tonkin. He was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour and listed in a French publication in 1943 that profiled prominent figures in French Indochina. World War II. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Japan continued its military conquest of Asia. It invaded and annexed Indochina into its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1940–1941. As France had fallen to Nazi Germany, the colonial administration in Vietnam of Admiral Jean Decoux was loyal to the Axis collaborationist Vichy France of Marshal Philippe Pétain. As Vichy France was nominally allied to Japan, the  French administration was left in charge of the day-to-day affairs of French Indochina, with the Japanese overseeing them. In the early 20th century, Japan was also seen by many Vietnamese as a promoter of Asian nationalism, and many Vietnamese nationalists had travelled to Japan in an attempt to further the Vietnamese independence movement. Kim was approached by several Japanese experts in Vietnamese studies. The contacts and his ties to a progressive organisation in Hanoi made Kim politically suspect to the Decoux administration. When Decoux implemented his second major purge of pro-Japanese Vietnamese in the autumn of 1943 , Kim was reported to be on the list of the Sûreté (Criminal Investigation Department). On October 28, 1943, Japanese agents escorted Kim to the Kempeitai (military police) office in Hanoi and put him under protection. There, Kim was joined by Duong Ba Trac, a co-editor on a dictionary that was currently being written. According to Kim's account, Trac persuaded him to co-sign a letter applying for an evacuation to Singapore. At the beginning of November, the Japanese escorted them to Saigon. After briefly living at the Kempeitai office, they became the guests of Dai Nan Koosi, a  Japanese business firm owned by Matsushita Mitsuhiro, which was known as a front for intelligence operations. On January 1, 1944, Kim and Trac boarded a Japanese vessel headed for Singapore. According to Ellen Hammer, the French threat to Kim appeared "to have been a wholly illusory French menace". After spending just over a year on the island, and following Trac's death from lung cancer in December 1944, Kim was transferred to Bangkok. Three months later, on March 30, 1945, he was unexpectedly recalled to Saigon by the Japanese to be consulted on "history". That came after Captain Michio Kuga  from the Japanese Army's liaison office in Saigon was flown to Bangkok for talks. By now, the Liberation of Paris in August 1944 and the fall of Vichy France meant that Japan could no longer depend on the French colonial administration to co-operate. As a result, they assumed direct control of Indochina by deposing the French in a coup on March 9 and declared Vietnam to be independent under the newly created Empire of Vietnam with Bảo Đại, Vietnam's titular monarch, as its head of state. Japan however, maintained military control. Bảo Đại was then charged with  selecting a prime minister and a cabinet. It was believed that Bảo Đại sent a message to Ngô Đình Diệm, who was then living under Japanese protection in Saigon, in asking him to form a government. However, the message never arrived, which was put down to Japanese concerns that Diệm would seek to govern independently, rather than toe the Japanese line. Arriving in Saigon, he met with General Saburo Kawamura, Chief of Staff of the Japanese Indochina Garrison Army and Lieutenant Colonel Hayashi Hidezumi, Kawamura's chief of political affairs. Kawamura told Kim that he was one of the "notables