Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- b. World War II and the Viet Minh
- (1) Formation of the Independence League, 1941
The fall of France in June 1940 was followed immediately by a Japanese demand for permission to occupy Indochina. On 19 June 1940, Japan presented the French the first of a series of ultimatums, which culminated, after some ungraceful maneuvering by the Vichy government, in an order signed September 2, 1940, by Marshall Petain, directing the colonial administration to negotiate terms by which Japanese armed forces might enter Indochina and use military bases there. Within the month, after demonstrations by the Japanese Navy off the Tonkin coast, and an actual invasion of Tonkin from China by the Japanese Army, the terms sought by the Japanese were forthcoming. The French ruled in Vietnam as hosts to the Japanese until 1945, but the presence of Japanese bayonets rendered their sovereignty largely titular. The Vichy administration under Rice Admiral Jean Decouz developed a peculiarly Indochinese French nationalism which dignified its client status, extolled France's tutelage functions for the Vietnamese, and foreclosed any concessions whatever to native aspirations for political independence. Above all, it attempted to preserve the fiction that the Japanese had been stationed in Indochina with its permission. Admiral Decoux held that:
- "A country is not occupied if it keeps its own arm free in its movements, if its government and all the wheels of its administration function freely and without impediment, if its general services and particularly its police and security forces remain firmly in the hands of the sovereign authority and outside of all foreign interference."11
But, the very emphasis the Vichy government placed upon its "freedom" dramatized among Viet patriots the extent of its collaboration. It was soon evident that the Decoux regime served the purposes of Japanese policy, and was "free" only to the degree the Japanese chose. Early in 1941 Japan countenanced a Thai invasion of Laos and Cambodia. French military action was successful in halting the Thais, but the Japanese, requiring Thai cooperation for their drive into Malaya, forced the French to grant Thailand all the territory it sought. On May 6, 1961, the first of a series of Franco-Japanese commercial treaties was signed, which had the effect of diverting from France to Japan all the exploitive gains from French colonial enterprise, without Indochina's receiving in return such goods as it normally received in trade from France. Japanese armed forces were granted full run of the country, and after December 7, 1941, Decoux declared Indochina part of the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
The Japanese entry into Indochina kindled, in 1940 and 1941, Vietnamese insurrections against the French, who now appeared more reprehensible and vulnerable than ever. Too, some Vietnamese nationalists had long looked to the Japanese to liberate their nation. The communists were apparently undecided whether to risk another premature insurrection. While it appears
