Japanese Occupation of Thailand - Resistance

Resistance

While the Thai ambassador in London delivered Thailand's declaration of war to the British government, the Thai ambassador in Washington DC, Seni Pramoj, refused to do so. Accordingly, the United States refrained from declaring war on Thailand. With American assistance, Seni, a conservative aristocrat whose anti-Japanese credentials were well established, organised the Free Thai Movement, recruiting Thai students in the United States to work with the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS). That Seni was able to achieve this was due to the State Department's decision to act as if Seni continued to represent Thailand, which enabled him to draw on Thai assets frozen by the United States.

Despite the reciprocal British declaration of war, a parallel resistance movement was formed by the Thai in Britain. They were organised by two leading students, Snoh Tambuyen and Puey Ungphakorn, and were assisted by members of the self-exiled royal family, including Queen Ramphaiphanni, the widow of King Prajadhipok, and her brother, Prince Suphasawatwongsanit Sawatdiwat.

From the office of the regent in Thailand, Pridi ran a clandestine movement that by the end of the war had with Allied aid armed more than 50,000 Thai to resist the Japanese occupation.

By the beginning of 1945, preparations were actively being pursued for a rising against the Japanese occupiers. Plans for an uprising relied on the success of a quick, surprise strike by a special police unit against the Japanese command structure. The residences of leading officers and the Japanese communications facilities were kept under surveillance. The police assault was to be coordinated with a general attack by the partly mechanised Thai 1st Army against Japanese troops in Bangkok. Fortifications, in the guise of air raid shelters, had been dug at key crossroads, and additional troops had been brought into the city in small groups in civilian clothes. The task of Free Thai forces elsewhere would be to thwart Japanese efforts to reinforce their Bangkok garrison by cutting communications lines and seizing airfields.

Pridi had to take into consideration that the Japanese were building up their forces in Thailand, which was likely to become a battlefront in the near future. Previously most Japanese soldiers stationed in Thailand had been support troops, but in December 1944 the local command had been upgraded from garrison status to a field army. The Japanese were gathering supplies and constructing fortifications for a last-ditch defensive effort at Nakhon Nayok, about 100 kilometers northeast of Bangkok.