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Who Invaded Thailand In World War Ii And What Happened?


December 8 1941 when Japan invaded the country along its southern coastline and from Cambodia. After initially resisting, the Phibun regime (Phibun was the Prime Minister of Thailand) allowed the Japanese to pass through the country in order to attack Burma and invade Malaya. Convinced by the Allied defeats of early 1942 that Japan was winning the war, Phibun decide to form a military alliance with the Japanese.
As a reward, Japan allowed Thailand to invade and annex the Shan States and Kayah State in northern Burma, and to resume sovereignty over the sultanates of northern Malaya which had previously been lost in the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909 with Britain. In January 1942 Phibun declared war on Britain and the United States, but the Thai Ambassador to the US, Seni Pramoj, refused to deliver it to the State Department. Instead, Seni denounced the Phibun regime as illegal and formed a Seri Thai Movement in Washington. Pridi, by now serving in the role of an apparently powerless regent, led the resistance movement inside Thailand, while former Queen Ramphaiphanni was the nominal head of the movement in Great Britain.
Secret training camps were set up, the majority by the populist politician Tiang Sirikhanth in the northeast region of the country. There were a dozen camps alone in Sakhon Nakhon Province. Secret airfields also appeared in the northeast, where Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Force planes brought in supplies, as well as Special Operations Executive, Office of Strategic Services, and Seri Thai agents, while at the same time evacuating out prisoners of war. By early 1945, Thai air force officers were performing liaison duties with South East Asia Command in Kandy and Calcutta.
By 1944 it was evident that the Japanese were going to lose the war, and their behaviour in Thailand had become increasingly arrogant. Bangkok also suffered heavily from Allied Strategic bombing. This, coupled with the economic hardship caused by the loss of Thailand’s rice export markets, made both the war and Phibun’s regime very unpopular. In July 1944 Phibun was ousted by the Seri Thai-infiltrated government. The National Assembly reconvened and appointed the liberal lawyer Khuang Aphaiwong as Prime Minister. The new government hastily evacuated the British territories that Phibun had occupied and surreptitiously aided the Seri Thai movement, while at the same time maintaining ostensibly friendly relations with the Japanese.
The Japanese surrendered on August 15 1945. Immediately, the Allied military responsibility for Thailand fell to the British. As soon as practicable, British troops were flown in and these rapidly secured the release of surviving POWs. The British were surprised to find that the disarmament of the Japanese soldiers had already been largely completed by the Thais.
The British regarded Thailand as having been partly responsible for the immeasurable damage dealt upon the Allied cause and favoured treating the kingdom as a defeated enemy. However, the Americans had no sympathy for what they considered to be British and French colonialism and supported the new government. Thailand thus received little punishment for its wartime role under Phibun.

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