Word: thais
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spectacular drive of the Viet Minh Communist army through Laos last week threatened to set off a chain reaction through Southeast Asia (see map). The ethnic majority in this region is Thai (pronounced tie), an ancient racial group distinct from both Chinese and Indians...
There are White Thais (whose women wear mostly white), Black Thais (who wear black), and, more recently, Red Thais (from the political colors they wear), who have their own autonomous administration in southern Yunnan (Red China). But Thais, of one color or another, inhabit Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Siam and northern Burma. In Laos the Communists have already set up their own puppet government (see above), but Communist propaganda speaks of "liberating" the Thai people as a whole and establishing among them a "Free Asian Republic...
Siam, the monarchy of songwriting King Phumiphon Adundet, may be the Communists' next objective. Siam's population (17 million) is largely Thai, and the government is torn with dissension. On the Siamese side of the Laos border there are already some 50,000 pro-Communist Chinese and Vietnamese rebels, organized and trained by Chinese and Viet Minh agents. They sit astride the traditional opium-smuggling routes, and are believed to have accumulated stocks of modern arms. Field Marshal Phibun Songgram's border guards find it prudent not to trouble them. Former Premier Pridhi Panomyong has long been...
...months had passed since Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap conquered the Thai country lying between Red China and Laos (see map). Instead of throwing all his forces against several hundred thousand French Union and Vietnamese troops bottled up in the Red River delta and in the airstrip at Nasan, Giap began probing the defenses of Laos with his Viet Minh commandos. In his exquisite white palace overlooking the palm-fringed Mekong River, aging (67), crew-cropped King Sisavang Vong told the French: "This is my country; this is my palace; I am too old to tremble before danger." Not until...
Back in Tokyo, a U.N. liaison officer offered a tentative explanation. "You see," he said, "some time ago the Thai government sent up a list of some 70 American soldiers it wanted to decorate for assistance to the Thai battalion. The list was written in Thai, which is a very difficult language. It has its own alphabet, which is very squiggly. I can't say for sure, but I've got a hunch that the medal in question was supposed to be given to some other Johnson." It was-to Private Walter N. Johnson, now back...