World War II and Japanese Occupation
Phibun's alliance with Japan during the early years of war was initially popular. The Thai army joined Japan's Burma Campaign with the goal of recovering part of the Shan states previously given over to Britain by the Treaty of Yandabo. They gained the return of the four northernmost Malay states lost in the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, and with Japanese mediation in the Franco–Thai war they also recovered territory lost in the Franco-Siamese War of 1893.
But Japan stationed 150,000 troops on Thai soil. As the war dragged on, the Japanese increasingly dealt with Thailand as a conquered territory rather than as an ally. Though the United States had not officially declared war, on 26 December 1942, US Tenth Air Force bombers based in India launched the first major bombing raid that damaged Bangkok and other targets and caused several thousand casualties. Public opinion and, even more important, the sympathies of the civilian political elite, moved perceptibly against Phibun's alliance with Japan.
Read more about this topic: Free Thai Movement
Famous quotes containing the words world, war, japanese and/or occupation:
“Patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications: with address enough to refuse, without offending; or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation: dexterity enough to conceal a truth, without telling a lie: sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“... when there is a war the years are longer that is to say the days are longer the months are longer the years are much longer but the weeks are shorter that is what makes a war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)