Snakehead Training Swordsmanship In One Of His Ships, Circa 1969.
Thanh "The Snakehead" Hu Viet (1898 - 1992) was the leader of the Da Nang Boys gang from Vietnam. He was nicknamed "the Snakehead", which was the ceremonial title for the head of the gang, and Thanh was involved in human trafficking as well as drug smuggling until his 1992 death.
Biography[]
Thanh Hu Viet was born in Da Nang, French Indochina to a Buddhist Vietnamese family in 1898. He was a skilled swordsman and a fierce warrior, and he became the head of a criminal organization that developed out of disaffected youths during the Vietnam War. Rather than flock to the Viet Cong's banner, these youths decided to steal money from the corrupt South Vietnamese government and make money for themselves during a time of crisis. After the war's end, the gang operated under the communist government, which was preoccupied by wars with Cambodia and China during the 1970s and 1980s.
Move to America[]
Thanh Hu Viet after being slain
By 1992, the gang already had a presence in San Francisco in the US state of California, and Thanh Hu Viet planned a full move to America. Based on a container ship, Thanh Hu Viet set sail for America with several of his gangsters and many enslaved people, hoping to join the parts of the gang that were already fighting the San Francisco Triads for control of Chinatown, San Francisco. Triad associate Carl Johnson infiltrated the container ship in hopes of destroying the Da Nang Boys, and he killed several of the gangsters before freeing the slaves. He then encountered Thanh Hu Viet on the bridge, and Thanh Hu Viet gave him a katana to fight honorably. Johnson cut down the elderly crime boss in two blows, and the police would later find the abandoned container ship full of bodies.