Independence Given By The Japanese Authorities
Towards the end of the Japanese Occupation of Laos in 1945, when the Japanese were losing the war against the Allied Powers, the Japanese pressured the Lao King (Crown Prince Savang Vatthana) to declare the independence of Laos on 8 April.
Following the Japanese surrender on August 15th 1945, Prince Phetsarath made an attempt to convince King Savang to officially unify the country and declare the treaty of the French Protectorate invalid because the French had been unable to protect the Lao from the Japanese. However, King Savang said that he intended to have Laos resume its former status as a French colony.
In October 1945, supporters of Laotian independence announced the dismissal of the king and formed the new government of Laos, the Lao Issara, to fill up the power vacuum of the country.
Read more about this topic: Lao Issara
Famous quotes containing the words independence, japanese and/or authorities:
“... we’re not out to benefit society, to remold existence, to make industry safe for anyone except ourselves, to give any small peoples except ourselves their rights. We’re not out for submerged tenths, we’re not going to suffer over how the other half lives. We’re out for Mary’s job and Luella’s art, and Barbara’s independence and the rest of our individual careers and desires.”
—Anne O’Hagan (1869–?)
“A pragmatic race, the Japanese appear to have decided long ago that the only reason for drinking alcohol is to become intoxicated and therefore drink only when they wish to be drunk.
So I went out into the night and the neon and let the crowd pull me along, walking blind, willing myself to be just a segment of that mass organism, just one more drifting chip of consciousness under the geodesics.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“The new supplants the old. Yet men’s minds are stuffed with outworn bunk. Educating the young in the latest findings of authorities and scholars in the social sciences is important. It is equally important to devise ways and means for aiding the middle-aged and old to reexamine hang-over unscientific doctrines and ideas in the light of recent discovery and research.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)