Jean Decoux

Jean Decoux was a French naval officer who in June 1940, at the moment of France’s defeat, commanded its small squadron in the Far East. Marshal Pétain’s government entrusted him with French Indochina, the largest and richest colony in Asia, and for almost five years Decoux governed it on behalf of Vichy, surrounded by Japanese troops. His policy was to give way to Japan on military and economic matters in order to preserve the French administration, flag and army. He agreed to the entry of Japanese troops into Tonkin in September 1940 and into southern Indochina in July 1941, which gave Japan the bases from which to attack Malaya. He introduced Vichy’s laws in the colony and persecuted Gaullists, yet at the same time he awakened among the Vietnamese, Khmers and Lao a sense of their own identity. His rule ended on 9 March 1945 with a Japanese coup. To some he was the man who, in a hopeless situation, saved the French presence in Indochina; to others he was a collaborator.

A sailor from Bordeaux

He was born on 5 May 1884 in Bordeaux, into a family from Haute-Savoie, the youngest of three children. In 1901, at the age of seventeen, he entered the naval academy, the École navale. He followed the usual path of a naval officer: in 1906 he became an ensign, in 1913 a lieutenant, in 1920 a lieutenant commander, in 1923 a commander and in 1929 a captain. He served in ships on many of the world’s seas, which he later described in his memoirs. In 1935 he was promoted to rear admiral, and in 1938 he took command of the Toulon defence sector and became a vice admiral.

On 13 January 1939 President Albert Lebrun appointed him commander of French naval forces in the Far East. On 12 May 1939 Decoux hoisted his flag in the cruiser Lamotte-Picquet at Saigon, receiving at the same time the rank of vice-amiral d’escadre (squadron vice admiral). His forces were modest: an old cruiser, a few avisos, submarines and river gunboats. In June 1939 he personally directed the search for the submarine Phénix, which sank with all hands during exercises off the coast of Indochina.

A governor under siege

France’s defeat in June 1940 left Indochina in an impossible position. Japan, which had been fighting in China for three years, demanded the closure of the border across which aid for Chiang Kai-shek flowed along the railway from Haiphong to Kunming. On 20 June the Governor-General, General Georges Catroux, gave way on his own authority, without consulting the government. The government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, which two days later signed the armistice with Germany, recalled Catroux by a decree of 25 June and appointed Decoux in his place. The admiral took office on 20 July 1940, by which time the Vichy government had already been formed in France. Catroux went over to Charles de Gaulle.

By his own account Decoux at first considered continuing the fight alongside the British, but concluded that the colony, cut off from France and surrounded by Japan, lacked the strength to do so. He threw in his lot with Vichy, where he enjoyed the confidence of the commander of the fleet, Admiral François Darlan. On arrival he found the Japanese military mission of Major General Issaku Nishihara and ever more far-reaching demands: airfields, rights of passage, the stationing of troops. He urged Vichy to reject them, counting on firmness to deter Japan. Meanwhile, on 30 August 1940 in Tokyo, France recognised the “pre-eminence” of Japanese interests in the Far East in return for recognition of its sovereignty over Indochina.

Decoux played for time and sought weapons in the United States and help from British consuls, but obtained nothing. Under the threat of a Japanese ultimatum he approved the agreement signed in Hanoi on 22 September 1940 by General Maurice Martin and Nishihara: up to 6,000 Japanese troops in Tonkin, airfields and rights of passage. A few hours later the Japanese 5th Division, without waiting for a peaceful entry, attacked across the border near Lạng Sơn. After three days of fighting, on 25 September, Decoux ordered resistance to cease so as not to lose the whole colony. The Japanese apologised for the “incident” but stayed in Tonkin, and the border with China was closed.

Between Tokyo and Bangkok

France’s weakness was exploited by Thailand under Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram, which demanded the return of lands in Laos and Cambodia lost to France at the turn of the twentieth century. Border fighting went on from November 1940. Decoux decided to counter-attack, and on 17 January 1941 a French squadron defeated the Thai fleet at the Battle of Ko Chang, one of France’s few victories in the war. It made no difference. Japan imposed itself as “mediator”, and under a treaty signed in Tokyo on 9 May 1941 France had to cede to Thailand the provinces of western Cambodia and the Lao lands on the right bank of the Mekong.

Japanese demands did not let up. In May 1941 Indochina granted Japan most-favoured-nation status and undertook to supply rice, rubber and ores. In July 1941 Vichy, under pressure from Tokyo and without German support, agreed to the joint defence of the colony and the entry of Japanese troops into southern Indochina. Decoux had to carry this out. In December 1941 Japanese aircraft from the airfields around Saigon sank the British ships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya. Indochina, formally still French, became a rear base for Japan’s war in the Pacific, in which Vichy France officially took no part.

The National Revolution in the colony

In internal policy Decoux transplanted Marshal Pétain’s “National Revolution” to Indochina. The cult of the Marshal, youth and sports movements, and the slogans of work, family and fatherland were meant to bind the colony to France and to counter Japanese propaganda proclaiming “Asia for the Asians”. At the same time Decoux courted the local elites. He brought more Vietnamese into the administration, equalised their salaries with those of the French in the same posts, and set up an advisory Federal Council in which representatives of the peoples of Indochina sat. He encouraged an emphasis on Vietnamese, Khmer and Lao distinctiveness in order to weaken Thai and Japanese influence. Many of those who gained experience in the administration and youth organisations at that time later found their way into the independence movements.

The other side of his rule was dark. Decoux introduced Vichy legislation in Indochina: the Statute on Jews, the removal of Freemasons from public service and the prosecution of de Gaulle’s supporters. More than a hundred people were interned without trial, several hundred officials were dismissed, and military courts sentenced those who tried to reach the Allies. Captured Gaullists were kept in cells with their legs chained to an iron bar, which was later bitterly dubbed the “barre de l’Indochine”, in a play on the title of his memoirs. Among those sentenced to hard labour was Pierre Boulle, the future author of The Bridge over the River Kwai. The Vietnamese uprisings against the French in the autumn of 1940, in Tonkin and Cochinchina, were suppressed with great severity.

Downfall

As the tide of war began to turn, Decoux tried to establish contact with the French in Algiers, but to de Gaulle he was Pétain’s man. In 1944, after the liberation of France, he recognised the authority of the Provisional Government, but Paris did not trust him and secretly entrusted the leadership of the resistance in Indochina to General Eugène Mordant. In the colony, now being bombed by the Americans, there were in practice two centres of French authority. On 6 January 1944 Decoux’s wife, Suzanne, was killed in a car accident.

The Japanese, fearing an Allied landing and a French switch to the Allied side, decided to put an end to the French administration. On the evening of 9 March 1945 Ambassador Shun’ichi Matsumoto presented Decoux with an ultimatum: all the forces and authorities of Indochina were to pass under Japanese command. Decoux refused. That same night, in a coup d’état, the Japanese attacked the French garrisons and interned the governor at Lộc Ninh in Cochinchina. Emperor Bảo Đại proclaimed Vietnam’s independence under Japanese tutelage. Northern Vietnam was at that time in the grip of a famine which, according to various estimates, claimed between several hundred thousand and two million lives. It was caused by Japanese requisitions, Allied bombing of the routes from the south and crop failures; Decoux’s administration is accused of not doing enough to prevent it.

Trial and memoirs

After Japan’s surrender Decoux was released, but on de Gaulle’s orders he was sent back to France at the beginning of October 1945, where he was arrested and charged with collaboration before the High Court of Justice. According to his biographers, while held under house arrest he was attacked by former partisans who beat and tortured him, and he spent a long time recovering in a military hospital. In 1949 the proceedings were dropped and the admiral’s rank and entitlements were restored. He then published his memoirs, À la barre de l’Indochine (1949), in which he defended his policy, followed by books about his years at sea. He died in Paris on 21 October 1963 and was buried in Annecy.

Assessment

Decoux had no good choice in 1940. A colony without a fleet, an air force or outside help could not defend itself against Japan, and war would have meant losing it. His defenders stress that thanks to his concessions France kept Indochina until 1945 and its population was spared direct Japanese occupation. His critics point out that those concessions gave Japan bases for its war against the Allies, that the admiral faithfully applied Vichy’s laws and repression, and that his rule helped awaken a nationalism that turned against France after 1945. The Japanese entry into Indochina, to which he put his name, was one of the steps leading to the American oil embargo and the war in the Pacific, and the collapse of his authority in March 1945 opened the way to the revolution of the Việt Minh and the Indochina War.