“Hon Thi has a circumference of 6,750m and is located about 3km from the mainland. The island features many rugged rock formations and has a source of fresh water, which is favorable for daily living. Therefore, for a long period, this place served as an important naval base for the Tay Son movement, the Trinh Phong uprising, as well as during the resistance war against the French colonial invasion from 1945 to 1954 by the people of Khanh Hoa province” [2].
The terrain of Hon Thi consists of interconnected rocky mountains, with a length of over 1,200m from East to West. In the early years of the resistance against the French, the armed forces and civil-administrative agencies of the Party in Khanh Hoa province were based at the Hon Heo base; on Hon Thi was a production unit of the 80–83 Combined Regiment and a military uniform tailoring unit belonging to the Khanh Hoa Provincial Military Command [3].
History of the monument's formation: Hon Thi also goes by the formal name Cu Son. Hon Thi holds a natural advantage with many large rock formations creating a series of interconnected caves, crevices, and grottos that allow for movement underground from one end of the island to the other. It offers a wide view of the sea and provides an excellent defensive position; a portion of the population lived on the island, providing favorable conditions to move cadres into the city (temporarily occupied areas) legally, or to bring local cadres out from the city to the base.
In early 1947, after the French colonialists consolidated Nha Trang as a Military Sector (secteur militaire) for the South Central region, revolutionary resistance forces had to disperse and establish bases, as they could no longer congregate close to Nha Trang. Mr. Nguyen Chanh (also known as Chanh Theo), former Commander of the commando forces and Chief of the Khanh Hoa military intelligence agency, sent an advance team to Hon Thi in March 1947, and by mid-1947, he moved the entire unit from Hon Tre to Hon Thi. The Intelligence Branch at that time consisted of about 25 people, including commanders, research officers, mobile officers, logistics, security, and communications personnel…
Some activities of the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch at Hon Thi: The scope of operations for the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch and the Inter-zone V Intelligence Sub-committee extended from Ho Chi Minh City, Da Lat, Buon Ma Thuot, and Nha Trang to as far as Quang Nam… After stabilizing their living and working arrangements, the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch reinforced the Khanh Hoa Provincial Military Command to build and strengthen the Military Intelligence organization of the Provincial Command.
Throughout the seven years of resistance (1947–1954), despite enemy sweeping operations into the Hon Thi base involving coordinated battalion and regimental-scale forces, our side still managed to preserve the base. A typical example was at the end of 1948, when the enemy encircled the area, and our soldiers patiently hid under the rock formations for 21 days and nights, forcing the enemy to withdraw.
In early 1949, according to mission requirements demanding centralized direction of intelligence activities across battlefields, the Intelligence Department of the General Headquarters directed the merger of the Intelligence Boards of Zone 5, Zone 6, and Zone 15 into the Inter-zone 5 Intelligence Board [4]. Subsequently, a special unit of the Inter-zone 5 Intelligence, led by comrades Nguyen Van Hoi and Le Van Hoang, moved from Vung Dinh, Hon Heo, to be stationed on Hon Thi, alongside the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch. Building the Hon Thi base was an important task assigned to Khanh Hoa Intelligence by the Inter-zone 5 Command.
From 1950 to 1954, Inter-zone 5 Intelligence built and developed a "deep-penetration" network of assets, collecting a great deal of information on the garrison situation, defensive deployments, and troop movements of the French and puppet forces across the battlefields. At various times, this included highly valuable intelligence: information regarding the growth of puppet military forces in Northern, Central, and Southern Laos; major enemy transport activities; and news about enemy sweeping, terrorizing, and forced conscription operations. In particular, information about France's formation of small rapid-response cavalry units and information regarding Operation Atlanta were highly valued by superiors.
During the 1953–1954 Winter-Spring campaign, according to the Navarre plan, the French concentrated large forces in the Central region to launch Operation Atlanta with the intention of thinning out our forces and destroying the main force of Inter-zone 5, aiming to divide our efforts in support of the Dien Bien Phu and Northern Delta campaigns. The Inter-zone 5 Intelligence (Nha Trang – Khanh Hoa Intelligence[5]) exploited information through enemy codes and managed to obtain the Atlanta Plan, promptly reporting it to the Inter-zone 5 Command, which helped superiors deploy forces to shatter the large-scale French operation [6].
Together with the battlefields in the South and North, Inter-zone 5 Intelligence (including Khanh Hoa Defense Intelligence) contributed to fulfilling the guiding principles of the Party and the General Headquarters to break the enemy's war strategies, leading the resistance against French colonialism to final victory, the pinnacle of which was the world-shaking Dien Bien Phu victory. The historic site of the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch at Hon Thi was ranked as a Provincial-level Monument by the People's Committee of Khanh Hoa province in Decision No. 2598/QD-CT.UBND dated September 18, 2015.
Monument of the Khanh Hoa Intelligence Branch at Hon Thi
Nguyen Thi Hong Tam
[1] Khanh Hoa Gazetteer (2003), National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, p. 20.
[2] Nguyen Cong Bang (2008), Some notes on Hon Thi island in history, Journal of Science, Technology and Environment of Khanh Hoa, No. 2, p. 24.
[3] Account by Mr. Tran Khanh Lan, born in 1930, address: 27 Trinh Phong, Nha Trang city.
[4] Department 11 (General Department II) (2012), 30 Years of the Silent Epic, V78 Printing Factory – General Department II, p. 16.
[5] Account by Mr. Kieu Xuan Cu, born in 1925, address: No. 7 Ngo Thoi Nhiem, Nha Trang city.
[6] Op. cit., p. 17.
