740.0011 Pacific War/1957
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Chief of the Division of European Affairs (Atherton)
The French Ambassador1 called upon me at his request. He said he had a most urgent matter to take up with me and he was hoping to see the Secretary at a later date if the Secretary would give him an appointment. He referred to the situation in Indochina and the defensive agreement France had in her weakness and lack of military powers of resistance in the Far East been forced to make with the Japanese Government.2 He said that he had just received a telegram from his Government that the Chinese had stated since the Indochinese authorities were giving facilities to Japan, as a neutral, there could of course be no objection to giving the same facilities to Chinese troops and to Chinese efforts. The French Ambassador said the information they had made them very suspicious but that certain De Gaullist elements, supported by the British, were taking a position against General De Caux [Admiral Decoux], the French Government Administrator, to put his regime in as unfavorable a position as possible. He said under the defensive agreement with Japan, Indochina still had three and one-half divisions of French troops who had not been disarmed. There were 25,000 Japanese troops in the Tonkin area, but as to other Japanese troops occupying Indochinese territory, they were mostly only passing through the country.
He continued that, under instructions from his Government, (he had discussed the situation with Mr. T. V. Soong3) he was bringing this situation to the attention of the State Department. He had stressed to Mr. T. V. Soong that if China massed troops on the northern borders of Tonkin so as to threaten the safety of the 25,000 Japanese [Page 750] troops there, the Japanese would be forced to augment their garrisons in that area, and, consequently, the defensive agreement made between Indochina and Japan would be broken by the Japanese. In this case the three and one-half divisions of armed troops comprising the French Forces could be used in cooperation with the Chinese effort, and Mr. T. V. Soong had undertaken to point this out to his Government.
The French Ambassador said Vichy was concerned as to maintaining her territorial integrity and did not wish to give China any claim for occupying Indochinese territory which, undoubtedly, the Chinese would want to hold at the end of the war. However, if the terms of the Indochina-Japan agreement were violated by Japan, Indochina would be in a position to make common cause with the Chinese forces. The French Ambassador said we must not judge this Indochina political situation entirely from the Indochina point of view. He cited that three and one-half divisions of French armed troops under above circumstances might be used against Japan but that without these attendant circumstances France, and Vichy in particular, would be subject to even more concentrated German pressure than continental France was undergoing at the present time if Indochina took a position versus Japan. He asked if we realized the amount of independence of support it required of the Vichy authorities these days not to completely crumble under the weights and threats that the Germans were bringing to bear for effective cooperation. Thus far, Vichy did not wish to lose Indochina either to the Chinese for fear they would hold it, or to the Japanese because of their forceful occupation of the country with troops at the present time. Nevertheless, the position of Vichy vis-à-vis Germany was also a factor as well as the fact that with justification to break the Japanese agreement, Indochina would be prepared to resist further Japanese aggression.
- Gaston Henry-Haye.↩
- See telegram No. 919, July 21, 1941, 4 p.m., from the Ambassador in France, Foreign Relations, 1941, vol. v, p. 220.↩
- Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs.↩