Eyes West

JAPAN--FRANCE

It was midnight in Hanoi and Admiral Jean Decoux, Governor General of French Indo-China, was in bed when Major General Issaku Nishihara, head of the Japanese military mission, arrived at his residence last week and demanded an immediate audience. "I am not getting up," shouted the irate Admiral. "If the Japanese want to declare war, they can do it tomorrow morning."

War was so close to French Indo-China last week that the thought of it no longer caused alarm. Japan, self-appointed guardian of "Greater East Asia," had left no doubt that she intended to fall upon the fat prey to the south, but two factors caused her to hold her hand: uncertainty regarding the outcome of Hitler's war in Europe, and the presence of the U. S. Navy in the Pacific. The risk of becoming involved both in China and French Indo-China before Britain was definitely on her back, plus the probability of a complete U. S. embargo on scrap iron and gasoline and possible action by the U. S. Navy, were sufficient to cool Japanese hotheads. While waiting for Britain's defeat and the departure of the U. S. Fleet to guard the Atlantic ramparts, Japan continued to present demands to the impotent Vichy Government, which had already virtually ceded French Indo-China to her.

On paper Japan had been granted the use of three Tonkin air bases and permission to transport 20,000 troops on the French-owned Indo-China Railway for a backdoor attack on China. It was to demand permission to transport 40,000 more troops and the free use of the great French naval base at Cam-ranh Bay that General Nishihara made his midnight call.

In French Indo-China itself open rebellion against Vichy, with 95% of the French colony backing General de Gaulle was reported. General Julien Franc,ois Rene Martin, commanding the Indo-Chinese forces, announced that he would resign if the Japanese demands were granted. The Ile de France, interned at Singapore by the British while en route to French Indo-China with a cargo of airplanes, was reported at Saigon, headquarters of pro-De Gaulle forces, with its cargo intact. British diplomatic circles even declared that Admiral Decoux had forsaken Vichy and cast his lot with De Gaulle but had refrained from announcing it because if French Indo-China became a British ally, Britain might find herself at war with Japan.

Preparing for war with or against French Indo-China, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek concentrated 120,000 local Chinese troops on his southern border with an additional 80,000 from his Chungking Army to form a rear guard. His sappers dynamited the 450-foot railway bridge spanning the Red River on the Indo-China-Yuennan border at Lao-Kay and Chinese labor crews began to take up the track of the Chinese portion of the French-owned railway for use elsewhere in China. One hundred and twenty small and large Japanese warships moved into the Gulf of Tonkin and dropped anchor.

Jockeying for position, the warlords of the Far East waited for results from the war in the west. Upon the outcome of the attack on the heart of the British Empire depended the fate of millions of brown and yellow men.

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