Word: tonkin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...menace one of free China's best supply lines; 2) to help isolate British Hong Kong; 3) to strengthen the position of the large Japanese garrison on Hainan Island just off the coast; 4) to make a nasty threatening face at Indo-China just across the Gulf of Tonkin...
Japan, who had demanded temporary permission to quarter 6,000 men at specified bases in Tonkin Protectorate, was building permanent barracks for 25,000 near the capital, Hanoï. Three first-class airdromes, one with a concrete runway to handle the heaviest bombers, were being constructed. It was an open secret that once her northern base was completed, Japan intended to move south, probably in March or April. Japanese officers and merchants were securing houses in Hanoï on three-year leases "in the name of the Emperor" and forbidding Frenchmen to use the sidewalk in front of them. Even...
Within the territory still nominally under her rule, France saw the fabric of control disintegrating. Native uprisings, inspired partly by Japanese but mostly by bitter hatred of the French, were rampant in Tonkin, Cochin-China and Cambodia. Even among native troops bloody clashes occurred between Moroccan legionaries and Indo-Chinese. Native bands with equipment abandoned by fleeing Annamite soldiers had become a formidable menace as guerrillas. Upon growing chaos in Indo-China rested the blessing of Japan...
...steaming afternoon last week in Hanoi, Governor General Admiral Jean Decoux of Indo-China and Japan's supreme penetrator General Issaku Nishi-hara sat down and signed an agreement. It permitted Japan to establish three air bases in Tonkin, the northern province of Indo-China, and to garrison the bases with about 6,000 troops. The French out-Japanesed the Japanese in their comments. Admiral Decoux called the agreement "one of the greatest marks of confidence one country can give another." General Maurice Martin, Commander of the Indo-China Army, called it "the first manifestation of a durable friendship...
While the penetration of Tonkin was first of all a movement against South China, it was also the first move in consolidation of the flanks preceding an attack on Singapore. Since Thailand last week showed itself in complete sympathy with the Japanese by sending over French Indo-China a lone "token" bomber, and since there is a good railroad from Haiphong to strategic Saigon to the south, this single stroke practically sewed up the western flank. The eastern flank, comprising the Philippines and The Netherlands Indies, was also partially blanketed-by the three-way pact. The pact was largely directed...