A Campus and a War: Michigan State University and Vietnam Exhibit: Major Allison Thomas

Allison Kent Thomas, a Lansing lawyer, enlisted in the US Army to fight in World War II and served as a Major in the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner to the CIA). He and six others, code-named “Deer Team,” parachuted into the jungles of northern Indochina in July 1945 to meet the Viet Minh resistance against the Japanese. Their mission was to help train a guerrilla team of 50 to 100 men, led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, to attack railroad lines and prevent the Japanese from going into China. The Deer Team trained the Viet Minh on how to use American M1 rifles, mortars, grenades, bazookas and machine guns, as well as tactics to fight guerrilla warfare. Shortly after training began, the team received word of the Japanese surrender after the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Deer Team and the Viet Minh traveled to Thai Nguyen, where Ho Chi Minh claimed leadership of the provisional government. The Deer Team left Indochina on September 16, 1945. Major Thomas returned to Lansing and continued practicing law. He returned to Vietnam in 1990 and in 1995 visited with General Giap as part of a Ford Foundation project to repair US-Vietnam relations, visits he cherished until his death on May 7, 2005. Major Thomas’ role in supporting the Viet Minh resistance was part of a broader American campaign to support anti-Japanese movements around Southeast Asia at the end of World War II, regardless of their political orientation. Thomas remembered asking Ho point-blank if he was a communist. Ho replied, “Yes, I am. But we can still be friends, can’t we?” When asked about his friendship with Ho, Thomas stated, “I was friendly with him and why shouldn’t I be? After all, we were both there for the same purpose, fighting the Japanese…it wasn’t my job to find out whether he was a Communist or not.”