Word: tonkin
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...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...
...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...