5 Chapter Five Asian Genesis $1 You've got to go back at least to the year Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs to chart the beginning of the Communist revolution in Vietnam. Emerging late in 1927, the Communist group there was known as the VNQDD. Its credo was national liberation — radical thought for that time and place. In 1930, the VNQDD caused an armed rebellion called the Yen Bay mutiny, which precipitated the arrest of 10,000 Vietnamese and the deaths of at least that number. The revolt was quashed by the French, a loss which sent Ho Chi Minh, the founder of the Communist group, into exile in Europe. Despite the defeat, the uprisings gave way to a new popular struggle among the progressive Vietnamese. The growth of the religious sects like Cao Dai in the 1930s, plus the slide of the Vietnamese Communists into a political and armed force with considerable clout, caused French suppression also. The French treated these threats, real and otherwise, seriously, and it wasn't until the Vichy regime was set up during World War II that anything actually challenged their rule in Indochina. During World War II, Vietnam was quickly occupied, and the country was opened to the Japanese conquerors.