By the 1930’s events taking place north of Indochina would have serious repercussions for the region for

the next six

decades.

The winds of war were blowing across Asia long before September 1939. In 1904-05 Japan had inflicted an embarrassing
defeat on a major European power, Russia. This new expansionist ‘supernova in the east’ took control of the Korean
peninsula and set eyes on China.

The 19th and early 20th century had seen massive upheaval in China, rebellions, war and famine finally ended the 2000
year old Qing dynasty in 1912. A mass exodus of Chinese, mostly young men, spread around the Pacific during this
period. A 1937 French census showed there were almost 10 times as many Chinese immigrants in Indochina than there
were French-born.

The new arrivals, mostly from the Teochew group, quickly set themselves up as middlemen, traders and money lenders.
Although there were issues with the French, mainly over the unwillingness to pay taxes and the control of the lucrative
opium trade, the Chinese were soon established as a trader class in Phnom Penh. The ‘Chinatown’ of the capital was the
Quartier Chinois, to the northwest of the Royal Palace around modern-day Street 13.
Although mixed marriages were common, many customs and traditions were kept, or merged with the Khmer, the
newcomers were not universally accepted. One example of how the mood may have been came from Anglophile King
Vajiravudh (Rama VI) of Siam, who published a Thai newspaper article in 1914 titled "The Jews of the East". He
accused Chinese immigrants in Thailand of excessive "racial loyalty and astuteness in financial matters." The king
wrote, "Money is their God. Life itself is of little value compared with the leanest bank account.”

The descendants of these Chinese traders would face persecution across much of Southeast Asia for all of the 20 th
century.

In mainland China a three-way struggle was being fought between imperial Japan, nationalist forces under the
control of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Chinese Communists (who themselves were guilty of infighting and purges
within their ranks).

The Chinese nationalist government was importing arms and fuel into the Vietnamese port of Haiphong and into
Yunnan province to use against the Japanese. The alliance between imperial Japan and Nazi Germany since 1936
was more through a common enemy in Stalin’s Russia, and Tokyo did little to provoke European interests in Asia
following the fall of France in the summer of 1940.

The new Vichy government of Marshall Petain was permitted to keep most of France’s colonies, but unlike those in
the Mediterranean and near-East, Indochina was far away and isolated. As other French colonies in the South
Pacific and Indian Ocean joined the Free French under Charles De Gaulle on the Allied side, Indochina remained
loyal to Vichy. To appease the Japanese, the supply routes to China were cut and a small Japanese force were
allowed to garrison in the colony.

However, it was Bangkok, not Tokyo who attacked Indochina.

Major-General Plaek Pibulsonggram (Phibun), the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand, (changed from Siam
in 1939) had taken power in 1938, following a revolution in 1932 that changed the kingdom from an absolute to a
nominally constitutional one and a series of counter-coups. A great admirer of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito
Mussolini, the de-facto military state was nationalist, anti-Chinese and pro-Japanese.
He gambled that Vichy France could not resist a Thai military campaign to recover parts of Cambodia and Laos lost
in 1907. In October 1940, the military forces of Thailand attacked across the border with Indochina and launched
the Franco-Thai War.

France was at a disadvantage from the offset. Around 48,000 Indochinese troops and 12,000 French and Foreign
Legionnaires faced a Thai military that had been modernized with ground, air and naval weaponry from Britain,
USA, Sweden and Japan.

The superior Royal Thai Air Force, which included Japanese made Mitsubishi Ki-29 and Ki-30 and US made Martin
B-10 bombers, along with Curtiss P-36 Hawk fighters and older Vought O2U Corsairs conducted daytime
bombing runs over military targets in Vientiane, Phnom Penh, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity.

The French, with an inferior Armée de l'Air retaliated with their own air attacks with less than equal results. The
activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the
governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with
plenty of war experience.

On 5 January 1941, following a French attack on Aranyaprathet launched from Poipet, the Thais launched an
offensive on Laos and Cambodia. The French responded, but were beaten back by the better-equipped Thai forces.
The Thai army swiftly overran Laos, but the French forces in Cambodia managed to rally and offer more resistance.

At dawn on 16 January 1941, the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held Cambodian villages of
Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Poor co-ordination and non-existent
intelligence against ready and waiting Thai forces saw the French retreat back to Sisophon. The Thais were held
back from advancing by the artillery of the Foreign Legion.
As the land war situation deteriorated, France still had a superior navy. Admiral Decoux ordered all available French
naval forces in the Gulf of Thailand to prepare for an ambush and offensive. The plan given to Capitaine Vaisseau
Regis Berenger was to support a planned offensive against the Thais advancing into Cambodia “Attack the
Siamese coastal cities from Rayong to the Cambodian frontier, compelling the Siam government forces to retreat
from the Cambodian frontier”
Early in the morning of 17 January, a French naval squadron, along with naval aircraft flying out of Ream airbase,
caught a Thai naval detachment by surprise at anchor off Ko Chang island. The subsequent Battle of Ko
Chang resulted in the sinking of five Thai warships with just 11 French sailors killed. Fearing the war would turn in
France's favor, the Japanese intervened, proposing an armistice agreement.

A week later on 24 January, Thai bombers raided the airfield near Siem Reap. The last Thai mission bombing
Phnom Penh commenced at 07:10 on 28 January, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid
on Sisophon, escorted by thirteen Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron. At 10.00 the same day an armistice
was declared and a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo on 9 May.

Japan forced the French to accept a peace treaty that returned the disputed territories of western and northwestern
Cambodia back to Thai control. Battambang, Banteay Meanchey, Oddar Meanchey, Preah Vihear, Siem Reap,
Kampong Thom and Stung Treng were put under Thai control. While Cambodia was permitted to keep Angkor Wat,
Cambodia had again lost around 1/3 of the country to the Thais.
The Thais were jubilant, although compared with what was taking place elsewhere in the world, the casualty rates
on both sides were low. The French army suffered a total of 321 casualties, of whom 15 were officers. The total
number of missing after 28 January was 178 (six officers, 14 non-commissioned officers and 158 enlisted men). The
Thais had captured 222 men (17 North Africans, 80 Frenchmen, and 125 Indochinese).
The Thai army lost 54 men killed in action and 307 wounded. 41 sailors and marines of the Thai navy were killed,
and 67 wounded. At the Battle of Ko Chang, 36 men were killed, of whom 20 belonged to HTMS  Thonburi, 14 to
HTMS Songkhla, and two to HTMS Chonburi. The Thai air force lost 13 men. The number of Thai military personnel
captured by the French was just 21.

King Monivong, who had supported French interests all his life, fell into a deep malaise and retired to his royal
residence on Bokor mountain, where he died on April 23 or 24, 1941, at the age of 65.

It was not the best of times for another bitter succession. The Japanese were demanding that 8,000 soldiers be
based in Cambodia, a gloating Thailand were celebrating the first ever Southeast Asian victory over a European
power, and the rivalry between the Sisowath and Norodom branches of the large royal family was always in danger
of spilling over into civil war.

The French decided to install a 19-year-old prince, who was of both houses Sisowath and Norodom, supposedly to
heal the rift. Despite these claims, it was believed by all that the young Norodom Sihanouk was chosen for his youth
and inexperience, which would make him more malleable to French interests. This would later prove to be wrong.

A Japanese force arrived in Cambodia in August, and as the reduced kingdom offered little other than a conduit
westward, the administration was left intact. In Tokyo plans were already being drawn up for the most audacious
strikes in history.

On December 7, 1941, at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii was attacked by 353 Imperial
Japanese aircraft (including fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers) in two waves, launched from
six aircraft carriers.

Simultaneous attacks were launched on US bases in  Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British

Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Japan was now at war with the US and British Empire.

Also on December 7 Japan sent a formal request to Thailand to allow free passage for Imperial troops to attack the
British in Burma. A formal alliance was also proposed, but the matter needed a reply within 2 hours. After the Thai
government failed to come up with a response, Japanese forces launched an attack on four coastal provinces.
Around 3 hours later the Thais capitulated. On January 25, 1942, the Thais joined the Japanese and declared war
on the US and Britain.

Although the colonial government had been left in charge, Japanese calls of "Asia for the
Asiatics" found an audience among a small, but growing group of Cambodian nationalists.
When a prominent, politically active Buddhist monk named Hem Chieu, was arrested and
defrocked by the French authorities in July 1942, the editors of the nationalist Nagaravatta
newspaper led a demonstration demanding his release. They apparently overestimated the
Japanese willingness to back them, and the Vichy French authorities quickly arrested the
demonstrators and gave Pach Chhoeun, one of the Nagaravatta editors, a life sentence. The
other editor, Son Ngoc Thanh, escaped from Phnom Penh to Bagkok and turned up the
following year in Tokyo.

Acceptance of the Japanese presence had mostly ensured that atrocities carried out in other parts of Asia were not
carried out elsewhere in Asia. The Thais, satisfied for the moment with regaining the provinces ‘lost’ in 1907, turned
to claiming back parts of Burma long considered to belong to Thailand.

The resistance to both France and Japan was predictably centered around the ever-restive region of Tonking,
northern Vietnam.
Nationalist Vietnamese groups, both communist and non-communist had long been based over the border in
China’s Yunnan province. A man known as Quốc had been serving as a Southeast Asian advisor to the Chinese
Communist Party since around 1938. He had changed his name (one of many aliases) to what translates as ‘He
who has been enlightened (by) will/spirit bright’. We know him as Ho Chi Minh, head of the Indochinese Communist
Party and leader of the Viet Minh rebel army.

Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam in 1941 and was soon imprisoned under the orders of the Chinese nationalist
General Chiang Kai Shek. Ho spent 18 months in prison, before his release was arranged. By 1944 the Việt Minh
claimed to have 500,000 members of whom 200,000 were in Tonkin, 150,000 in Annam, and 100,000 in
Cochinchina.

With the war looking winnable, the Allies met in Cairo in November 1943. President Roosevelt, who loathed Charles
De Gaulle did not want to see the French control a post-war Indochina, and offered the region to Chiang Kai Shek to
govern under a Chinese administration. The Generalissimo’s reply was said to have been "Under no
circumstances!".

The war had mostly passed Cambodia by until the final months. The Thais, worried that their alliance with Japan
may cost them the reclaimed provinces in Laos and Cambodia gave support to Poc Khun*, an aristocratic Khmer,
and related to the royal family through marriage, who founded armed group in Bangkok in 1944, and called it the
Khmer Issarak. *Unsure if this is Pach Chhoeun, who was imprisoned by the French in July 1942.

American air raids hit the Vietnamese ports at Haiphong and Saigon, while on 7 February 1945, bombing of Phnom
Penh by the USAF saw Wat Ounalom hit by mistake, killing several monks and civilians.

On 9 March the Japanese removed the French administration in Indochina and interned most French military and
administrative personnel. During ‘Operation Bright Moon’ around 15,000 French soldiers were held prisoner by the
Japanese. Nearly 4,200 were killed with many executed after surrendering - about half of these were European or
French metropolitan troops. Practically all French civil and military leaders as well as plantation owners were made
prisoners. Emperor of Annam, and the last of the Nguyễn dynasty was installed in the newly created Empire of
Vietnam, as a Japanese puppet.

In Phnom Penh, King Sihanouk was allowed to take full control, and on 12 March he voided all agreements with
France and proclaimed the independence of the Kingdom of Kampuchea.

Son Ngoc Thanh was brought back from Japan to serve as foreign minister. Thanh’s time abroad had changed his
politics to that of a republican fascist. Following the Japanese surrender on August 15, he became Acting Prime
Minister and quickly made himself unpopular among the elite.

A power vacuum was left after the Japanese surrender in Vietnam. In July 1945 at Potsdam, Germany,
the Allied leaders made the decision to divide Indochina in half—at the 16th parallel—to allow Chiang Kai-shek to
receive the Japanese surrender in the North, while Lord Louis Mountbatten would receive the surrender in
the South. The Allies agreed that France was the rightful owner of French Indochina, but because France was
critically weakened as a result of the German occupation, a British-Indian force was installed in order to help
the French Provisional Government in re-establishing control over their former colonial possession. However, the
US did not whole-heartedly support the return of the French.

The Japanese began handing over weapons to the Viet Minh, who seized control of the major cities. The US, which
had been secretly supporting the Viet Minh in their fight against the Japanese had sympathy for the communists. On
August 22, American intelligence officer Major Archimedes L. Patti arrived in Hanoi to secure the release of
American POWs held by the Japanese in Indochina. Accompanying Patti was a French team headed by Jean
Sainteny, ostensibly in Indochina to care for French POWs. Ho Chi Minh warned Patti that Sainteny's real objective
was to reassert French control over Vietnam.

Patti reported to his superiors in China that "Việt Minh strong and belligerent and definitely anti-French. Suggest no
more French be permitted to enter French Indo-China and especially not armed." Patti refused to allow the release
of 4,500 French soldiers imprisoned in Hanoi by the Japanese.
 the American
On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He quoted
Declaration of Independence which had been supplied to him by the OSS (the American pre-CIA
intelligence department)-- "We hold the truth that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. This immortal statement is extracted from the Declaration of Independence of the
United States of America in 1776. These are undeniable truths." . One week later a force of 150,000
Chinese troops arrived to take the Japanese surrender and hold the peace.

British-Indian troops landed in Saigon on September 15 and began the process of handing Indochina back to the
French. They faced resistance and there were several bloody clashes between the European and Viet nationalists.
Named Operation Masterdom by the British and the Southern Resistance War by the Vietnamese, the war lasted
for over 6 months before British troops pulled out in March 1946, with 6 of the small contingent of British troops left
killed in an ambush in June. The First Indochinese war (the Anti-French Resistance War) officially began in
December 1946. Tactics honed and lessons learned would go on to shape Ho Chi Minh’s independence struggle for
the next 30 years.

A detachment of Gurkha troops arrived in Phnom Penh on October 8, and managed to avoid any confrontation. On
October 15, General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, Commander of the French Far East Expeditionary
Corps, arrived from Saigon. He summoned Prime Minister Tanh and immediately arrested him.

On January 4, 1946, an agreement was struck which saw Cambodia as an independent kingdom within the new
Indochinese Federation. France retained control of foreign relations, so Cambodia could not join the United Nations
or have embassies with other countries. All defense and military affairs were also placed under French command.

Although the protectorate had ended, the new federation pleased next to no one. Sihanouk, looking for full
independence on his terms begrudgingly began the democratic process as put down by the Fourth Republic.
Meanwhile, the Khmer Issarak, supported by Bangkok, took up positions along the Thai border areas. The occupied
territories taken in 1941 were returned in 1946 as a condition of Thailand joining the United Nations. To the east the
Viet Minh had already began using Cambodian jungles as bases to fight the French, and were busy recruiting and
training the “Khmer People's Liberation Army".

With the French still holding a central administration together, the combination of indecisive
leadership and interference from across the borders meant that Cambodia was preparing to
tear herself apart, as had been the case since the last kings of Angkor.
Democracy got off to a shaky start in post-war Cambodia. Two main parties emerged- the Liberals, a pro-French
conservative group, mostly supported by the Sino-Khmer business community and old elites who advocated a
gradual shift towards independence and close ties with France, and the Democrats, who looked to building a more
open society and democratic reforms.

Following the premature death of Democrat leader Prince Sisowath Youthevong, a French-educated aristocrat with
a genuine commitment to parliamentary democracy in July 1947, the elected National Assembly descended into
squabbling.

In September 1949, Sihanouk finally intervened and dissolved the National Assembly. Elections were to be
postponed indefinitely and government was to be run by a royal council of ministers selected by the king. This was
the first time since his coronation in 1941 that Sihanouk had got directly involved in politics. It was not to be his last.

This angered the Democrats and also strengthened the anti-monarchist Issaraks slowly building up forces in the
north and west. Political intrigue in Bangkok had weakened the Issarak’s main sponsors from Thailand and the
movement split into various factions. Several of these groups either turned to support from, or came under the direct
control of, Viet-Minh agents who were keen to exploit the anti-colonialist feelings in the Cambodian countryside and
open up new fronts against the French for the ‘First Indochinese War’.

In October 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. Now Ho Chi Minh had a communist ally
on the northern border willing to supply arms and equipment to his Viet Minh. The French were no doubt concerned
after losing an ally in Chiang Kai Shek, and the potential of the huge Chinese population becoming a fifth column
within Indochina.

Chairman Mao and his successors in the PRC would have a massive impact on the history of Cambodia in the
years to come.

The Dawn of Independence

The political situation in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, along with Korea and China, in the immediate aftermath
of World War II should be looked at to try to find some context for events that took place in the next decades.

Thailand: Ananda Mahidol, who reigned as Rama VIII, was recognized as the Thai king in 1935, following the
abdication of Rama VII and a series of revolutions and coups which ended the absolute monarchy. The choice of
Ananda was a convenient one for those in the cabinet who decided on a successor. Aged just 9 years old, the
German born prince spend most of his life in Switzerland until December 1945, when he arrived in Bangkok.

Six months later he was found dead from a gunshot wound in his bed. He was aged just 20. The shooting has never
been fully explained and the circumstances surrounding the death are still debated today.

In 1950 Ananda’s brother, 2 years his junior, Bhumibol Adulyadej was crowned as Rama IX.

In theory both King Sihanouk and Bhumibol should have found a great deal of common ground. Both were of a
similar age, and came to the throne as young men. They were foreign educated Francophones, Theravadin
Buddhists and shared a love for music- especially jazz. If this family tree is correct, the kings were distant cousins.

If there was any hope that there could be a flowering of Southeast Asian democracy similar to European countries
such as Britain, The Netherlands and Scandinavia, they would soon be quashed.

The relationship between the kings was never friendly. With the advancements of education in Siam at the end of
the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, a version of ultra-nationalist Thai history was written, mostly by the son
of King Mongkut Prince Damrong
Rajanubhab. Relying mostly on old folklore rather
than fact, he became the key proponent of Suvarnabhumi, the idea of a golden land of ‘Thai’
domination over Asia. His writings, dismissed by modern historians, but still important in modern day Thailand, say
the Thai people were from Mongolia (possibly due to the might of the Mongol khans) and migrated through Yunnan
province. During this supposed ‘golden age’ much of Burma and all of Laos and Cambodia were mere provinces of
the Thai race.

Therefore, for much of the 20th century, and perhaps even a notion that lingers today, Cambodia was a backwards
region that rejected the superiority of the Thais and suffered for it.

The Thai royal family did, and to an extent still do hold a divine status among the common people, which was
carefully crafted by Bhumibol and his court during his exceptionally long reign. Sihanouk, with his interest in
directing movies, took a different approach and took to direct politics, casting himself in a ‘man of the people’ role.
The aloof Thai royal family must also have been somewhat disdainful of the inflated Cambodian royal family which
numbered in at least the high-hundreds or even thousands of minor princes and princesses. Many of these were

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/cambodia/history-japan.htm

https://books.google.com.kh/books?
id=4PgwCKQQP1gC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=Yang+Dang+Khum&source=bl&ots=a8mlFAw1QU&sig=ACfU3U1uslPWt
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