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FOLLOWING THE ARTICLE ON COLONEL TOOSIE AND BOON PONG IS THE STORY OF THE FREE THAI (SERI THAI) MOVEMENT The Free Thai Movement (Khabuankarn Seri Thai) was an underground resistance movement against Japan during World War II. The movement was one of the important sources to the Allies for military intelligence in the South East Asia region. Japanese forces invaded Thailand early on the morning of December 8, 1941 - shortly before the attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Prime Minister of Thailand, Field Marshal Phibunsongkram (Phibun), ordered a ceasefire at noon, thereafter entering into an armistice that allowed the Japanese to use Thai military installations in their invasion of Malaya and Burma. On December 21, a formal military alliance with Japan was concluded. The Phibun government declared war on Great Britain and the United States on January 25, 1942. Various members of the government who disagreed with the decision were removed from office. Among them were Direk Chaiyanam, the prominent foreign minister who advocated resistance against the Japanese, and Pridi Phanomyong, who was appointed to the apparently powerless post of regent to the absent King Ananda Mahidol. Whilst the Thai Ambassador in London delivered Thailand's declaration of war to the British government, Mom RajawongseSeni Pramoj, the Thai ambassador to Washington, refused to do so. Instead, he considered organising a resistance movement in the United States. On December 8, Seni confered with his staff at the legation and stated that he hoped for an Allied victory in the war. Aware that other Washington-based diplomats of similarly occupied countries had chosen to stay and cooperate with the US Government, Seni opted to do likewise.. Late the same afternoon, he returned to the State Department to offer their services to the Allied cause. Blaming pro-Japanese elements for the early Thai surrender, he spoke of unfreezing Thai assets in the United States for further prosecution of the war and suggested that the Thais in the country might “organise and preserve a government of true patriotic, liberty-loving Thais while his government is in the clutches of Japan.” The US State Department decided to pretend that Seni continued to represent Thailand. This enabled him to tap into the frozen Thai assets. He drew up a list of “reliable and influential Thai nationals known to be definitely patriotic and anti-Japanese” by the State Department. Seni advanced plans to mobilise Thai volunteers in support of the Allies. Beyond the legation staffers and their families, most of the other Thai residents were students enrolled at a range of college and universities, including such institutions as Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell. Many chose to stay in the wake of the Thai declaration of war in January, refusing repatriation. Most, like Seni, saw their nation as a victim of Japanese aggression. A parallel resistance movement was formed by the Thais in Britain. Beyond the legation staff, the natural leaders of the Thai community in England were three high-ranking members of the royal family, Prince Chula Chakrabongse, a dashing and popular grandson of King Chulalongkorn; Queen Ramphaiphanni, the widow of the late, self-exiled King Prajadhipok; and the Queen’s brother, Prince Suphasawatwongsanit Sawatdiwat, a former Thai army officer who had accompanied the royal couple into exile. Prince Chula declined involvement in Free Thai activities, opting instead for wartime services with the British Home Guard. In contrast, the Queen and her brother made clear their Free Thai sympathies and used their connections to assist like-minded students. Prince Suphasawat had reacted to the Japanese invasion by dispatching a letter to Prime Minister Churchill volunteering his services to the Allied cause. On January 1, 1942, he was asked to assist the geographical section of the General Staff in developing maps of Thailand, a project which, through an all-out effort, he completed in six weeks. Two leaders of the pro-Allied students, Snoh Tambuyen and Puey Ungphakorn, called on Prince Suphasawat in March 1942 to explain their desire to participate in the Allied war effort. Impressed by their determination, the Prince promised to help. He contacted Churchill’s office proposing that Thai volunteers could infiltrate into their homeland to organise anti-Japanese activities. He pinpointed Pridi as the most probable leader of the newly-formed underground movement. In late June, British foreign secretary Anthony Eden at last gave his seal of approval to plans to utilise Thai volunteers. Eden suggested that they be organised into a military unit from which “individuals could at a later date be chosen when required for any particular purpose.” The unit was the Pioneer Corps, a military labour unit open to enemy aliens, with the understanding that “special qualifications possessed by individuals should be made use of in other branches of the armed forces later on.” The latter was a critical inducement because the Thai students, most of them from the upper crust of society, considered the Pioneer Corps very low and dishonourable. In the United States, when members of the first Thai military group, their number increased to twenty by additional volunteers, completed training they were formally commissioned as Free Thai officers by Colonel Mom LuangKhap Khunchon, the military attaché, at an early December ceremony in the Thai legation. In Thailand itself, those skeptics who disagreed with Phibun's optimism towards the alliance with Japan looked to the Field Marshal's chief political rival Pridi Phanomyong for leadership. Immediately after the Japanese army arrived in Thailand on December 8, 1941, Pridi had discussed the possibility of resistance with some of his associates.. They discussed plans for the formation of a secret organisation to oppose the Japanese - a resistance movement, one that would gradually draw political and military strength from both inside and outside the kingdom. This small group that formed the Free Thai's core organisation became known as the X-O. By 1945, preparations were being made for a rising against the Japanese occupiers. Thousands of Seri Thai volunteers were now under arms and eager to drive the invaders from their nation. Phibun had been forced to resign, and the new prime minister, Khuang Abhaiwongse, was himself a member of the Seri Thai. Thai air force officers were performing liaision duties with South East Asia Command in Kandy and Calcutta. Thai plans for an anti-Japanese uprising relied heavily on the success of a quick, surprise strike by a special police unit against the Japanese command structure.. The Japanese had begun accumulating supplies and constructing fortifications in preparation for a last ditch defensive effort at Nakhon Nayok, a hundred kilometres northeast of Bangkok. The American OSS was a major player and Major John Wester, for a time the sole American agent in Bangkok was the local organiser. He had to cope with strong complaints that Allied bombs routinely missed Japanese facilities and inflicted death, injury, and property loss on Thai civilians. For example, during a March 5 raid on the Bangkok Noi train station in Thonburi many stray bombs landed on the east bank of the Chao Phraya River. Another problematic bombing came on March 22 when Allied planes hit a train carrying Thai troops on the railway line near Paknampo. The attack came despite a Thai request that the line be left intact to facilitate the transfer of troops to the northeast in preparation for a potential showdown with the Japanese. One of the first OSS-trained Free Thai officers to reach the country's outlying provinces was Sunthon Khantalaksa. On March 2, 1945, an RAF Catalina disembarked Sunthon off the forested islands of Ko Surin Tai and Ko Surin Nua.. On the mainland, Sunthon moved into the Governor's official residence and set up his radio there. It took him a month to rig a workable antenna, but thereafter he was able to transmit intelligence information. In July he would organise the transfer of equipment to a fellow officer at Chumphon and the receipt of a load of arms sent in by seaplane. Three additional OSS Thai officers entered Thailand via RAF seaplanes in the early morning of March 23. Two Catalinas landed near Sattakut Island in the Gulf of Thailand, unloaded a ton of supplies, and picked up seven young men sent by Pridi for training in India. Later a fourth Free Thai officer and thirteen supply chutes were dropped from a B-24 between Phrae and Lampang. On April 4, OSS Majors Richard Greenlee and Howard Palmer reached Bangkok and faced agitated Thais about a recent Allied air attack on a railroad station that the Thais had specifically requested be exempted from bombing because of troop movements toward the Korat area. There were threats that providing military information would stop if such actions continued. The American officers sent a message to Kandy warning that “indiscriminate bombing and strafing” were destroying good will toward the United States. They had little success, and the bombing continued. On April 7, American planes attacked the main Bangkok airport at Don Muang, causing considerable damage to the Thai air force. Two planes that had just arrived with the Phayap Army commander and members of his staff were among the aircraft destroyed. On a later occasion British and American B-24s bore in on Bangkok for a two-hour air raid. In addition to killing two hundred civilians, the bombs virtually destroyed the Samsen power plant and badly damaged the city’s other power facility, leaving most of Bangkok without power and water. Palmer described it as a “useless piece of work” because the Japanese Army had its own facilities. On April 21, four Thai air force officers, icluding Wing Commader Thawee, boarded a seaplane sent by Pridi in the hopes that their advice on bomb targeting would be heeded. The Wing Commander was taken by Colonel John Coughlin of the OSS to meet Lord Mountbatten at Kandy. There Thawee received his OSS codename, "Dicky Stone". At Kandy Wing Commander Thawee studied aerial photographs of Thailand and assisted the bombing planners at South East Asia Command in selecting accurate Japanese military targets as opposed to Thai civilian ones. The Thai operated at Mountbatten's American deputy, General Raymond B. Wheeler's headquarters. Again acted as a consultant to various USAAF bombing-run plans. He returned to Thailand a while later via seaplane. Thawee was to collect intelligence regarding Japanese troop dispositions, and to aid in the establishment of secret airfields for which the Allies could fly in agents and supplies to reinforce the Seri Thai. The british equivalent of the OSS was the SOE. OnMay 26 the British sent their first provincial liaison mission headed by a British officer. Major C. S. Hudson parachuted in near Khon Kaen Thai airmen flew British officers to Phu Khieo. They conferred with local officials and were joined at by three escaped British POWs who had been sheltered by the Thai and six Thai volunteers designated for training with Force 136. On May 31, the party flew back to Na An, where a C-47 picked them up,. Its pilot ordered the plane’s cargo parachuted to reduce weight before making the first successful, planned landing by an Allied aircraft on Thai soil since the beginning of the war. While OSS Detachment 404 had been struggling to expand its Thailand operations in the face of obstructionism, the British had been preparing Operation Roger, the planned invasion of Phuket Island. Force 136 planned to place ten radio-equipped operatives at six locations in peninsular Thailand. Although their supply deliveries to Thailand fell short of expectations, the British nonetheless held the early lead in the realm by default. With the OSS hobbled, Force 136 delivered three times more material to Thailand than Detachment 404 between the beginning of April and mid-June 1945. Approximately half of 75000 pounds of British supplies went to Operation Candle near Sakon Nakhon. On June 18 the Americans executed a long-planned drop of medical supplies into Bangkok. Nine P-38 fighters swept over the city escorting three B-24s at midday. The bombers dropped propaganda leaflets and parachuted twenty-five containers of medical supplies from 400 feet above the grounds in front of the Grand Palace. Resistance fighters and Thai army personnel under Thawee Junlasap stationed in the area grabbed the containers before the Japanese could intervene. Although several attacks were made by the Seri Thai on isolated Japanese units, Pridi gave in to Mountbatten's wishes that the Seri Thai delay the rising in order to coordinate with a planned Allied invasion. The atomic bombings by the United States of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the surrender of Japan and the rising thus did not take place. Attempts to liberate POWs became unneccessary. The connection between the “v” organisation (a clandesine group of civilian internees), the Seri Thai and individuals such as Boon Pong are difficult to assess but there had to be some connections. The Seri Thai are remembered as having preserved Thailand's honour by demonstating that despite Phibun's actions, the Thais were not willing partners of Japanese imperialism. The British government demanded three million tons of rice from Thailand as reparations, but Thailand would have been treated much more harshly by the war's victors without the actions of the Seri Thai . Several of the key figures in the wartime Free Thai underground were subsequently eliminated in extra-legal fashion by the Thai police, run by Phibun’s ruthless associate Phao Sriyanond. Fortunately, most of the OSS and SOE Thai officers had returned to their studies in the USA and Britain shortly after the end of the war. Among the best and brightest of their generation, many went on to distinguished careers in bureaucratic service or in private business, often in both. The most well known Free Thai veterans are Puey Ungphakorn from the British side and Siddhi Savetsila from the American. Puey gained renown for his economic expertise, heading the Bank of Thailand from 1959 to 1971. He subsequently served as rector of Thammasat university before being falsely accused of inciting student protestors during a violent right-wing coup in 1976. He found refuge in England, where he died in 1999. Air Chief Marshal Siddhi, meanwhile, rose through the national security bureaucracy to become foreign minister in the 1980s, under Prem. He still serves as a privy counsellor. Further reading
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