Word: thai
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vital Core. For the Thais, proud and sensitive to any hint of interference by farangs or foreigners in their national life, the enormous U.S. buildup is a painful concession to the grim facts of Southeast Asian life. They talk about it as little as they can, admit virtually nothing officially, and have carefully made only gentleman's agreements, one at a time, for U.S. use of their bases. The U.S. in turn respects Thai feelings by trying, as one official puts it, to present a "low silhouette" on the Thai landscape. But inevitably, with the growing accumulation of American...
...Biggest Job. In what amounts to a subtle, carefully unstated exchange for U.S. help in heading off the Communists at home, the Thais have tacitly permitted the U.S. to establish sanctuary and a second front in Thailand for the war in Viet Nam. From four Thai airfields, flying the Thai flag and guarded by Thai soldiers at Takhli, Korat, Udorn and Ubon, eight squadrons of U.S. Air Force F-105s and F-4Cs fly more than 125 missions daily - 80% of all the U.S. bombing of North Viet Nam. Peasants tending their rice fields rarely look up any more...
From Nakhon Phanom and two other Thai bases, helicopters swirl off to recover pilots downed over North Viet Nam. U.S. radar sweeps the horizon from Mukdahan and Ubon, and a giant new radar and communications complex is abuilding at the northern boom city of Chiang Mai. A large new military airstrip is under construction at Khon Kaen, and two strips are being readied to handle anything up to giant B-52 bombers. Not long ago, a 130-man U.S. Army Special Forces team quietly moved from Okinawa to set up headquarters at Lop Buri. If it ever comes to widening...
Everywhere, U.S. bulldozers are turning up the rich Thai soil to build roads, fuel pipelines, stockpile depots, communication nets. This mushrooming complex of support facilities is designed to support...
...mention the B-52s which could fly from its extra-thick runways. Sattahip's fuel pipeline system will eventually extend to Korat, where the U.S. Army's 9th Logistical Command has already stockpiled enough guns, tanks, trucks and ammunition for a full division. U.S. and Thai engineers are constructing the Bangkok Bypass, a strategic highway to carry vital traffic northward past the capital. It will have the side effect, as did the $20 million Friendship Highway completed two years ago, of opening up vast interior regions of the nation to the capital's culture and economy...