During the 19th century, the French gained control of Annam, Cochin-China, and Tonkin, which are today Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. These were collectively known as French Indochina. In 1941, the Mekong River delta was a major rice-producing region.
When France
capitulated to the Germans
in 1940, the colonial
administration remained loyal to Vichy,
and in September 1940 the Japanese
were able
to pressure Vichy
to permit Japanese troops to be stationed in northern
Indochina.
The United States
responded by embargoing scrap
metal to Japan.
Thailand, encouraged by French weakness, attacked French Indochina in early 1941 to recover ethnically Thai regions. Japan again pressured the French to yield up the disputed border regions.
In July 1941, Japan occupied southern Indochina, and the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands responded with an oil embargo. This was one of the immediate causes of the Pacific war. By the time war broke out, Japan was in thorough control, though the French administration was left in place. Bases in French Indochina played a key role in the early Japanese offensives.
Japanese abuses, particularly their
seizure of the rice crop
(resulting in the deaths of an estimated one to two millions by
starvation)
resulted
in an insurrection by Communist guerrillas
under Ho Chi Minh.
The
guerillas received some aid from the United
States through the OSS, which
identified with the Viet Minh to the point where there was some
question whether the liberation they were seeking was from the Japanese
or the French.
With the liberation of metropolitan
France
in 1944, de Gaulle began pressuring the governor, Vice Admiral Jean
Catoux, to to turn on the Japanese occupiers. de Gaulle feared that the
Viet Minh would take control of the colony if the French were not seen
to be contributing to its liberation. However, the Japanese had became
distrustful of the French colonial
administration and acted first. On 9 March 1945
they arrested and massacred most of the French civil and
military leaders in the colony and installed a puppet government under
Bao Dai,
a member of the former imperial family of Vietnam. French casualties
were about 1000 killed and another 8500 taken prisoner. Surviving French
troops attempted to escape across country to China. The British were eager to help,
but the Americans were reluctant to offer any assistance, leading to
one of the most bitter disagreements between the two allies during the
war. de Gaulle raged at the American ambassador: "What are you driving
at? Do you want us to become, for example, one of the federated states
under the Russian aegis?" In the
end, Wedemeyer cited
lack of logistical capability to
justify the lack of American assistance to the French. Eventually some
5000 French troops made it to China.
The Americans blocked efforts by de Gaulle to
deploy additional troops to Asia, and French agents dropped by
parachute were murdered by the Viet Minh. The turf war between
Wedemeyer and Mountbatten
over who had responsibility for Allied
activities in French Indochina was resolved by dividing the colonies at
the 16th parallel. Esler Dening, Mountbatten's political advisor,
prophetically noted that "The division of French Indochina by the
parallel of 16 degrees north ... is going to cause a lot of trouble."
After the war, the French and Ho Chi
Minh fell out with each
other, leading to the First Indo-China War.
References
The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia (c) 2006, 2008 by Kent G. Budge. Index
