Thailand’s Relations with Japan

Thailand’s Relations with Japan

From the middle of the Nineteenth Century until as late as 1932 the great powers in South-East Asia were Occidental—Great Britain and France. National security depended on the ability of Thailand’s politicians to balance the ambitions of these two great powers. It was not until 1932 that Thailand began to suspect that Japan might replace France as the second most important power in South-East Asia. This prospect which indicated a complete volte-face in Thai foreign policy, alarmed both Great Britain and France. After the 1932 revolution, “Siam(Thailand)’ as Andrew A. Freeman has observed, “ opened its front door to the “big Brother of Asia” and left the back door ajar for the exit of Britain and France, Siam’s traditional and self-appointed guardians.”

One of the most significant developments in Thai-Japanese rapprochement occurred on February 24, 1933, when the Thai delegate at Geneva was instructed to refrain from voting in the League of Nations Assembly on a motion of censure against Japanese military action in Manchuria. Although this act of abstention may have been to some extent a feature of the traditional Thai policy of balance of power as between great powers, at the time most European observers feared that it meant that Thailand would most likely side with Japan. Among them was Freeman, who wrote in 1936 that since the Manchurian crisis Thailand and Japan “ have been drawn closer and closer until today(in 1936) it appeared that the heretofore obscure Land of the White Elephant has hitched its wagon to the rapidly rising sun of Nippon.” As the 1930’s wore on, Thailand’s cordial relations were indicated. Japanese propaganda towards Thailand became increasingly active.

Tokyo newspapers gave publicity to the claims of the irredentists. Missions of various types, economic and cultural, arrived in Bangkok. Thai representatives were invited to conferences in Japan on matters of ostensible common interest to the peoples of the Far East. Free trips to Japan were given to Thai journalists. Scholarships were offered to Thai students for study in Japan. Efforts were made to developed propaganda around the theme that Japan, like Thailand, was a Buddhist country. In general, the theme of the New Order in Asia and of Asia for Asiatics was propagated. Japanese trade with Thailand increased in this period until it became second only to that with the British Empire.

Japan had come to regard Thailand as of strategic and economic importance to its southward advance. This was indicated in a book entitled Japan Must Fight Britain written by Lt.Comdre. Tota Ishimaru, a Japanese Naval Officer. As Tota wrote in 1936:

This country (Thailand) lies across the northern end of the Malay Peninsular…and with its backing our operations against Singapore would obviously be facilitated. Its alliance with us would bring the people of India out in open revolt and leave Singapore in a precarious position…We must bear in mind that our relations with her have their strategic as well as their commercial side.

The so-called Pan-Asia movement or “Asia for the Asiatics” with Thailand included was known about by the makers of foreign policy in Bangkok even before Tota Ishimaru’s book was published. In December 1934, the Thai Minister in Tokyo, Phra Mitrkarm Raksa, informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to that effect. Japan, the Thai Minister further stated, was making an attempt to reach a compromise agreement with China with regard to the Manchurian incident; after that the scheme of Asia for the Asiatics would be implemented. Japan would bring the Indian people out in open revolt in British India and I hoped to use Thailand as a base for sending arms to them.

Had any Thai hoped to avoid becoming involved in Japan’s Pan-Asia movement, a domestic struggle for power in 1933 prevented it. Indeed, Phya Phahol and Phibunsonggram, then Commander-in-Chief and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army respectively, used Japan as a countervailing factor against Britain and France. On June 20, when both military men ousted Phya Manoprakorn, the Prime Minister, by a coup d’etat, they feared that France and Britain might interfere to help restore him to power. On the day of the bloodless coup, the two planners invited Yatabe Yasukishi, the Japanese Minister in Bangkok, to be present at their headquarters. They pointed out that Thailand was in a difficult position from fear of hostility from European powers and it hoped to rely on Japan. Yatabe for his part expressed his sympathy for the coup planners and assured them that Japan would provide the new government with Japanese capital and technology with a view to helping Thailand liberate itself from European influence. In return, Yatabe requested that Thailand closely co-operate with Japan in the economic and commercial sphere, that Japan be treated as the equal of Britain and that Japanese advisers be attached to the Thai government.

Prince Bovoradej’s abortive counter-revolution in October 1933 also had a Japanese dimension. Concrete evidence to demonstrate active Japanese participation is unavailable, but a Nanking(China) newspaper pointed out that Prince Bovoradej’s uprising was “ not without the participation of England and France while in its suppression an important part was played by Japanese war supplies and Japanese advisers.” In the event, Japan was the first country to congratulate the government army as soon as they had succeeded in crushing the rebellion. After the uprising, the Phya Phahol Government needed Japan’s help as Prince Bovoradej had sought political asylum in French Indo-China and there was a report that he and many members of the royal family, who had obtained political asylum in Indo-China, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, were making attempts to restore the ousted absolute monarchy with assistance from European Powers.

While Thailand’s relations with Britain and France were cool, closer relations economically, politically, and culturally developed between it and Japan. Japanese advisers to Thai government departments supplanted those from European nations. Thai military and naval officers were sent to train in Japan instead of in Western countries. Members of the new Thai Parliament went to Tokyo on a friendship mission. In addition to these fraternal exchanges, Thai trade was diverted to Japan. Japanese factories built rolling stock for Thailand’s railways and warships for its navy. Plans were also completed to converted Thailand into a greater cotton field from which Japan hoped to obtain raw materials. By 1936 Thailand had ordered from Japan dynamite, detonators, fuse wires and four 370-ton submarines for its fleet. Two coastal defense vessels—Dhonburi and Sri-ayudhya, the largest units in the Thai fleet, were also ordered from Japan. This occurred after Luang Sindhu Songgramchai, the most powerful officer in the Thai Navy and six other officers, had been invited to visit Japan and observe the military exercises of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1934. During their stay in Japan, the Thai naval officers were told by their Japanese counterparts that the latter were determined to arm the “Siamese, very poor Navy”, with the hope that it could cause nominal trouble to the British Royal Navy on the Singapore front in the event of open conflict between Great Britain and Japan. Rear Admiral Sangworn Suwannacheep, who accompanied the Navy Mission on the same occasion, disclosed in his memoirs that the Japanese authorities tried to please the Thais and made an attempt to foment anti-British sentiment among the Thai Naval officers.

The Japanese won over the mind of Luang Sindhu Songgramchai. He, being educated in Denmark, had a pro-European bias; but after being warmly received by the Japanese government and the civil population alike. Suddenly changed his opinion on Japan. He became definitely pro-Japanese and anti-Western. When he became Naval Commander-in-Chief in 1939, the Navy as a whole had long been manifesting goodwill towards Japan.

Concurrently, the French became concerned not only about the Thai admiral’s pro-Japanese bias, but also about the construction ordered by him of a naval base at Sattahip, in the eastern province of Chonburi. The French saw this as a direct threat to the Cambodian coast. They also shared with the British concern about the reports that the Japanese were constructing, with Thai approval, a canal across the Kra Isthmus, lying between southern Burma and northern Malaya, with a view to by-passing Singapore, though investigation showed that there was no basis of truth in such reports.

While the Japanese seemed to encourage the Thais to take an openly anti-British stance, the latter sought to avoid taking such a stance. The Thai irredentists realized that the time was not ripe for them to antagonize Britain, given their first priority in Indo-China. In this sense, they were prudent. They were conscious of their own weakness in face of the European powers and knew that they must be careful not to antagonize simultaneously their powerful neighbors in the West (Britain) and those in the East(French). The Thai leaders, especially Phibunsonfggram, then Minister of Defense, considered that Indo-china was in a more vulnerable position than Malaya. Therefore in 1936 he informed the Japanese Minister in Bangkok,Yatabe Yasukishi of Thai priorities, adding that they would use all means to obtain the return of the lost provinces in Indo-china with the aid of Japan in exchange for a military alliance with Japan in time of war. Phibunsonggram was determined to rely on Japan for the execution of irredentist policy in Indo-China, which resulted in tension along the Thailand-Indo-China border between 1938 and 1938.