FAR EAST: Harvest of Hate

Instead of the 6,000 Japanese troops which, by agreement with unoccupied France, were to be permitted to man three Indo-Chinese air bases, Chinese sources reported last week that 38,000 Japanese troops with 60 tanks had landed at Haiphong. Instead of withdrawing, the 20,000 Japanese who “by mistake” had invaded the colony near Dong Dang and Langson the week before, were advancing on Hanoi, the capital. One of the first big grabs by the invading Japanese was 1,000 U. S.-made motor trucks at Haiphong. Other characteristic acts included humiliating white Europeans in front of Orientals by accosting them at every turn, demanding to see their credentials and subjecting them to exhaustive searches.

At Langson, in violation of the agreement, Japanese forces crossed the Chinese frontier and attacked the garrison. Ordered to withhold fire, the 6,000 French Foreign Legionnaires and native troops had permitted themselves to be surrounded by the Japanese, who then attacked from all sides. One thousand were killed or wounded, 2,000, including a brigadier general, were taken prisoner and 3,000 escaped by fleeing unarmed into the jungle. Pro-Japanese guerrilla bands were reported to have recaptured 30 Frenchmen and killed them slowly. “The Japanese herded us together like cattle,” reported an escaped Legionnaire. “Some had cover but most of us sprawled or sat for four days in the open under a hellish sun.” The Japanese slapped white captives to prove to native soldiers that it could be done.

First indication of the value to Japan of Vichy’s surrender came when 45 Japanese planes, taking off from their new bases in French Indo-China, bombed Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, vital aviation and manufacturing centre, junction of both the Burma Road and Indo-China Railway. Japan was also in position to bomb supplies brought by motor truck over 600 tortuous miles of the Burma Road, if & when Britain reopens it.

New Order. That Japan had come to Indo-China to stay was plain. Shipping between Formosa and Haiphong stepped up, hotels teemed as more than 1,000 Japanese and Formosans set up businesses.

With the Army and traveling salesmen arrived propagandists intent on stirring up native hatred of whites. Coming from China, where brutality was their code of conduct, Japanese soldiers assumed in Indo-China the role of liberators, fraternized with the natives and invited them to inspect and play with the guns of the hitherto forbidden French coast defense. Thousands of agents preached the New Order and distributed pamphlets explaining it. Lavishing tips on ricksha coolies and beggars, Japanese officers protested loudly their affection for the people.

All for France. The Indo-Chinese were willing to be liberated. The French were at last reaping the harvest of the particular brand of civilization they had sown in Indo-China. By exploiting 23,000,000 natives, 28,000 Frenchmen had arranged for themselves an attractive existence, including the extraction of a tidy income from 10,000 tons of opium sold annually to the population under Government license. They had built European towns with broad, immaculate avenues, spacious buildings, beautiful squares adorned with statues of the French great. Beyond the exclusive French quarter, in utmost squalor and poverty, lived the native population, including a great number of half-castes, products of frequent matings between French officials and Annamite girls.

Economically the French kept Indo-China in swaddling clothes. They had done little with the colony’s extensive deposits of iron ore, tin, antimony, wolframite, manganese and zinc. But from the concentrated cultivation of rice and rubber and the sale to the natives of manufactured goods made in France, more than three billion francs went to France from Indo-China every year. The native standard of living remained one of the lowest in the world. The harvest of this policy was hate. A recent straw vote taken in a native high school revealed that, of 300 boys, only one preferred French to Japanese rule.

Indo-China fits into Japanese economy like a key in a keyhole. Japan is hungry, has been since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war. The annual Indo-Chinese rice surplus of more than one million tons would go far towards filling Japanese bellies. Japan has large stocks of textiles and manufactured gadgets in her warehouses. French Indo-China can buy them. Last week the Indo-Chinese were ready to regard the New Order as something distinctly desirable.