Word: tonkin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...such a one, life was not easy. Leaders of Cochin China's neighbor, obstreperous, independent Viet Nam (new state formed of Annam and Tonkin), urged Thinh's countrymen to throw off Western control, called Thinh a quisling and threatened him with torture. Gentle Dr. Thinh was revolted by stories of extremists disemboweling pregnant women and burying Europeans alive...
Recently, France's good friend, Annamite Emperor Bao Dai (a topflight ping-pong player), formed a government of Viet Minh leaders who promptly ousted Bao Dai. New ruler of Annam, Tonkin and Cochin China was cagy, tuberculous Russian-speaking Premier Ho Chin Minh (known a generation ago around the Paris Peace Conference as Nguyen-Ai-Quoc). Followers of Communist Ho Chin Minh insulted and cowed the French in Saigon, tore down the World War I memorial, flung earth from the Verdun battlefield into the Saigon River...
...probing finger of Chinese columns, reaching to the Gulf of Tonkin, were 150,000 Japs in Indo-China and Thailand...
...limited to backdoor lines from India, Chinese troops did the best they could, hacked cautiously at targets of opportunity. When Thai puppets suddenly deserted the Japanese, the Chinese seized the opportunity and dashed across the Indo-China frontier to take the minor port of Moncay on the Gulf of Tonkin. The capture of this position gave Chungking the hint of a corridor...
...biggest bombing raid thus far launched from Chinese bases, the big Liberators swept out over the blue expanse of the Gulf of Tonkin toward Hainan Island, twelve miles off the southeast tip of China, 1,500 miles southwest of Japan proper. Full-bosomed, oversized nudes, painted on the Liberators' noses by the crews, leered down at the Hainan airdrome, barracks, warehouses and oil-storage tanks where the bombs fell. No defending fighters appeared, ack-ack was weak and inaccurate, and the bombers had suffered no losses when they turned homeward from the blazing targets...