Word: indoing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...theater was watery and vast, extending from the Kurils to Jap-held Java, from the Carolines to central China. The job was vast. Thailand, Indo-China, Malaya and The Netherlands East Indies-a world in themselves-had to be cleared. China had to be freed. Before victory, Japan had to be brought to the same terms as the other Axis partner: unconditional surrender...
Frenchmen All. A special Government statement already had announced that the empire would be sweepingly reorganized as "the French Union." Most likely, it would become federal in structure, with representative governments for its components and a representative Federal Assembly of the Union. Specifically, the Government had assured Indo-China, one of the empire's richest colonies (tin, rubber, rice, strategic bases) that it would have democratic and equalitarian liberty, including "ministers chosen from among the Indo-Chinese [23,000,000] as well as from French residents...
General Charles de Gaulle looked at the bright new posters and found them good. They pictured Indo-China's blue skies, palm trees and temples as a backdrop for French tanks and jungle troops. Their slogan: "Yesterday Strasbourg, tomorrow Saigon! Join the French Expeditionary Forces of the Extreme Orient...
...news from the Extreme Orient had more effect than the posters. In Hanoi, capital of French Indo-China, Japanese troops violated the last pretense of French sovereignty, * took full control over France's richest colony (rice, rubber, tin, coal). They arrested Vice-Admiral Jean Decoux, Vichy-appointed Governor General, promptly decreed martial law, a sunset-to-sunrise curfew. In Hanoi, Saigon (strategic harbor on the South China Sea) and other cities they disarmed French and Annamite garrisons. They formally proclaimed the "independence" of the Empire of Annam, province nearest the Philippines...
Stiffly Charles de Gaulle accepted an armful of flowers from a creamy Annamese girl. Stiffly he spoke: "Chère Indochine . . . noble, loyal and intelligent Annamese people. . . . France wants to make the political, economic, social and cultural development of the Indo-Chinese union one of the principal aims of her . . . reborn power and greatness." In effect, the General told the Big Three that the Big Fourth reserved all rights in the Far Eastern colony seized by the Japs before Pearl Harbor. Indo-China-bigger than France, with a population of 23,000,000, rich in rice, rubber, tin and zinc...