FRENCH INDOCHINA

Admiral Decoux

On 13 January 1939, Decoux was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Naval Forces in the Far East by President Albert Lebrun. He assumed his new appointment, in the rank of squadron vice-admiral (vice admiral), on 12 May.

In 1940 he was named French governor of Indochina, succeeding General Georges Catroux.
Like his predecessor, Decoux initially wanted to continue the fight against the Axis powers, but he swore allegiance to Pétain's regime after realizing that his meager armed forces were no match for the Japanese.

Decoux reportedly received demands from the Japanese in early August for permission to move troops through Tonkin (later Vietnam) in order to build air bases and block Allied supply routes to China. Decoux cabled his Vichy superiors for help, but when no help was forthcoming signed a treaty on 20 September 1940 opening Haiphong harbor to the Japanese giving them the right to station troops in the region.

Decoux worked to improve relations between French colonists and the Vietnamese, establishing a grand federal council containing twice as many Vietnamese as Frenchmen and installing Vietnamese in civil-service positions with equal pay to that of French civil servants. The Indochinese Federal Council, which was composed only of Indochinese, and later the Grand Federal Council, were the formal structures that Decoux felt he needed to build to develop the Indochinese federal consciousness simultaneously with the elevation of the elite. Rather than a legislative or executive body, the Federal Council in both its forms was a body constituted of non-elected elites who gave their opinions to the Governor General to assist him in his decision-making, and served as a forum to strengthen the relations between these elites and the authorities. The GFC replaced the IFC in 1943 by introducing 23 French representatives (from the economy's principal sectors, making it, according to Decoux, more representative) and adding five local members, thereby ensuring that the Indochinese presence outnumbered the European. Decoux believed this would reverse the reluctance of the locals to believe in the genuineness of the politics of collaboration, and he most likely wanted to show goodwill toward the Indochinese peoples following Roosevelt's public statement, heard on BBC radio and known to Decoux and his entourage, that maintaining French sovereignty in Indochina was not a principal objective of the US.

Decoux enforced the discriminatory laws against Gaullists and Freemasons, as well as the anti-Semitic Statute on Jews, despite decrying the laws harmful to the Vichy agenda.
One author claims Decoux to have been unconcerned during the famine of 1945. During this time over one million Vietnamese died of starvation in the countryside and urban cities and the author asserts that the Decoux government did nothing to help the Vietnamese peasants, farmers, and poor, despite soliciting and courting the Vietnamese elite. However, archival records show Allied bombardment of railways and the requisitioning of boats by the Japanese made it impossible to transport rice from the Cochinchina to Tonkin.

On 9 March 1945 the Japanese took direct control of the government and ousted Decoux, establishing the Empire of Vietnam.

Arrested and tried after the war, Decoux was not convicted. He was restored to his rank and prerogatives in 1949. He later wrote the book A la barre de l'Indochine. He died in Paris in 1963.

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This composite French colony, comprising modern Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, did not come under Vichy control for some months following the French armistice with Germany of June 22, 1940. Meanwhile, Governor and General Georges Catroux closed the border with China in a vain effort to forestall Japanese pressure for concessions by ending French resupply of Jiang Jieshi and the Guomindang . French Indochina was a key launchpad for Japan’s nanshin strategy, and therefore the gesture proved futile. Upon receiving a Japanese ultimatum in July, Catroux was forced to agree to permit Japanese military bases in the north (Tonkin) at the end of August. His Vichy successor, Vice Admiral Jean Decoux, was not given a chance to complete peaceful negotiations even though he signed a base agreement on September 22 and accepted Japanese troops who crossed the northern border that day. Despite the absence of French resistance, local Japanese commanders conducted an active amphibious assault on Haiphong the next day. They probably sought to create a provocation for war akin to the Mukden incident in Manchuria in 1931 and the Marco Polo Bridge incident in northern China in 1937. But the French garrison did not oppose the landings.

Imperial General Headquarters was greatly displeased with the local Japanese commanders. Some officers were court-martialed, a rare thing in an Army used to disobedience from junior officers and its overseas garrisons. French forces fought against a Thai invasion of Laos and Cambodia in 1941, but the Thais had Japanese support and five Laotian and Cambodian provinces were ceded to Thailand. On July 21, 1941, the French agreed to Japanese occupation of the south (Annam and Cochin China). Japanese troops entered Saigon on July 24. In March 1945, the Japanese ended the long fiction of French authority by dismissing the French colonial government. As the French reoccupied the composite colony later that summer and fall, some Japanese deserters fought against them alongside the Viêt Minh . The Laotian and Cambodian provinces seized in 1941 by the Thais were returned to French control after the war.

Valor: Flying Tiger

By John L. Frisbee

As a P-40 pilot with a "frontier" air force, Bruce Holloway launched a career that led to four stars.

In May 1940, the US was not at war. China was, fighting for survival against Japanese invaders. The US agreed to let Chiang Kai-shek have 100 older P-40Bs with crews to be recruited from the Army and Navy and trained by Claire L. Chennault. One disappointed would-be volunteer was Lt. Bruce Holloway, West Point 1937. Only Reservists were eligible.

Two years later, the US was at war. Bruce Holloway was sent to Chennault's American Volunteer Group (AVG), the Flying Tigers, as an observer. On July 4 of that year, the AVG was disbanded to become the nucleus of the AAF's 23d Fighter Group, later Fourteenth Air Force. During his 18 months in China, Holloway rose from major to colonel; he commanded first a squadron, then the 23d Fighter Group, and finally Fourteenth Air Force Advance. He became one of the first AAF aces of World War II and returned to the States in November 1943 as the leading ace in the China-Burma-India theater, with 13 confirmed victories.

When we talked with one of the AVG/23d pilots who flew with Bruce Holloway, he said Holloway was the smartest combat leader he flew with--a man who led all the tough missions. He continued, "You'll never get a story from Bruce about his own heroism. He would consider that bragging." General Holloway's unpublished diary of his China days bears that out. There is plenty of combat narrative about other members of the 23d, but in his own case only the facts: "Shot down two today." "Got behind a Zero and told my wingman to take it."

What did Bruce Holloway find when he arrived in China? First, the most colorful collection of airmen ever assembled anywhere. Next, absolute austerity: no navigation or letdown aids in a region of chronic bad weather, maintenance done in the open, a warning net of Chinese who reported sight or sounds of enemy planes by radio or phone, constant shortage of all but spirit. Everything used by the 23d Fighter Group (and later by some bomber squadrons) had to be flown over the Hump in the longest supply line of the war. It was comparable to a frontier cavalry post in the early days of the American West. There seldom were more than 50 fighters operational to cover an area as large as western Europe, but, despite all their problems, the 23d's pilots led by Holloway shot down enemy aircraft at a rate of 10-to-1.

An April 1943 mission typifies Bruce Holloway's leadership. When General Chennault was away, as he was at the time, Colonel Holloway and Col. "Casey" Vincent were responsible for operational decisions. There undoubtedly were lucrative targets on Formosa (now Taiwan), some 500 miles from the easternmost Fourteenth Air Force base. Holloway decided to find out.

It would be a solo reconnaissance because "I didn't want to risk losing more than one airplane in the event I got lost or the weather socked in completely." Flying his P-40 across the 100-mile-wide Strait of Formosa from a crude Chinese Air Force base near the coast, he found many bombers at airfields near Taihoku and Sinchiku while ducking in and out of a 1,500-foot overcast to avoid enemy planes. On the way back to the mainland, he shot down an enemy bomber "with about 15 rounds" to complete a daring mission that set Formosa up for future bomber strikes.

Holloway was shot down once--by ground fire--while strafing a column of trucks several miles west of the Salween River in Burma. His Allison engine ran for three minutes with no oil pressure, enough to get across the river into China. Once the Chinese peasants, who knew little about the war, were convinced he was on their side, they sent him on a triumphal five-day journey by pony, horse, and charcoal-burning truck to Yunnanyi, whence he was flown to Kunming.

One of General Holloway's most unusual experiences could only have happened in China. The Yunnan government requested help for a remote town on the border of Tibet that was besieged by bandits. He took three P-40s to the walled city of Chungtien, located at 13,000 feet in a beautiful valley surrounded by 20,000-foot peaks--a Shangri-la setting. Six frag bombs dropped on the bandits outside the wall lifted the siege.

After the war, Bruce Holloway commanded USAF's first jet fighter group. He rose to General through key command and staff assignments, and, after serving as vice chief of staff of the Air Force, was named commander in chief of Strategic Air Command. He continued to be an active pilot until his retirement in 1972 and is the only four-star general to check out in the SR-71.

Jimmy Stewart, one of the General's old friends, said: "Anyone who knows Bruce Holloway knows he has never forgotten the difference between machines and people. You keep machines going with wrenches and hammers, but people with human understanding." That just about sums up this distinguished but unassuming man of great good sense, admired and respected by all who know him.