Tran Van Chuong

Trần Văn Chuơng (1898 - 24 July 1986) was South Vietnam's ambassador to the United States in the early 1960s and the father of the country's de facto first lady, Madame Nhu.

Family life

He married Trần Than Trong Nam (1910-1986), who was a member of the extended Vietnamese royal family. Her mother was Princess Nhu Phien, a daughter of Emperor Dong Khanh; her father was Than Trong Hue, who became Vietnam's minister for national education. [http://www.4dw.net/royalark/Vietnam/annam9.htm] . They had a son and three daughters, including Lệ Xuân, who became the wife of Ngô Ðình Nhu, the brother of South Vietnam's first President, Ngô Ðình Diệm.

Chuong's family alliances enabled him to rise from being a member of a small law practice in the Cochin-Chinese (South Vietnamese) town of Bạc Liêu in the 1920s to become Vietnam’s first Foreign Secretary under his wife's cousin Emperor Bảo Đại, while Japan occupied Vietnam during World War II.

He eventually became South Vietnam's ambassador to the United States, but resigned in protest in 1963, denouncing his government's anti-Buddhist policies.

outh Vietnam coup d'etat

On 1 November, 1963, Chuong's son-in-law Ngô Ðình Nhu and President Ngô Ðình Diệm were assassinated in a coup d'etat led by General Dương Văn Minh. His daughter Madame Nhu was in Beverly Hills, California at the time of the coup, where she intended to expose to the American public what she believed to be the criminal actions of President John F. Kennedy and the CIA, whom she was certain had engineered the deaths of her husband and his brother.

Chuong and his wife remained in the United States in Washington, D.C.. On July 24, 1986, they were allegedly strangled by their son, Tran Van Khiem, at their home. The remains of Chuong and his wife were buried at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC. [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1356255.html]

External links

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2D8133CF936A15754C0A960948260 Former Saigon Envoy And Wife Found Dead ]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,870390-2,00.html The Queen Bee - TIME]