It was a result of our wartime alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin. The enemy of my enemy is a friend. Resistance forces fighting against the Japanese occupation. They then fought against the returning colonial powers in Vietnam, the French and Indonesia, the Dutch. The British defeated the insurgents in Vietnam in part by conscripting Japanese POW’s and handed over to the French.
Malaysia and Singapore were a multicultural mix and the insurgents were mainly Chinese.
There were some fierce jungle fighting in Malaysia and in Singapore it was more of a gentle head banging with the way being prepared for a government that people could live and prosper with even though it may not suit those of a liberal outlook.
The British Commander that was the first allied force to come to Hanoi after the Japanese surrender, found that the Japanese forces had been disarmed by Ho Chi Minh’s forces and was kept in detention camps.
He is said to have stated; “I have not come to Hanoi to take the colony away from the French and put a barefooted coolie in the palace”.
He then freed and rearmed the Japanese and used them to chase the the Viet Minh forces out of Hanoi.
PS> They had been on the allied side during WWII. and had been fighting the French since 1935.
The French was beaten at Dien Bien Phu in 1954: Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations - Office of the Historian
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From a friend who fought there:
We should have left them be. Once he realized they weren’t there to win, he couldn’t figure out what they WERE there for.
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I believe the British entered Saigon and intervened south of the 16th parallel. The Nationalist Chinese occupied for a time the north. Correct me if this is mistaken.
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Malaysia that didnt have a problem suddenly did, what triggered that?
Where did money and guns suddenly come from?
The barefooted reference evoked a relevant episode of my experience.
I was an officer in an Australian frigate at the independence of the new island nation of Kiribati from the British in 1979. We were at anchor in Tarawa and the ceremony was at midnight and was all grass skirted women and men dancing, singing and displaying traditional skills as you could imagine with some good old fashioned British pomp and circumstance.
The following day we had invited the new Prime Minister and his cabinet aboard for lunch. Our entire crew was paraded on deck in ceremonial dress whites, swords and medals with a guard of honour for a salute.
They duly arrived only barefooted, baggy shorts and t-shirts (perfectly suitable tropical attire) but were nevertheless accorded full ceremonial. The PM was directed to a spot where he could face the guard of honour to receive his salute. The deck there was black anti-slip paint and you can probably guess the temperature of the hot steel in a tropical noonday sun.
He stepped on the spot and with well hardened feet from treading the sharp coral sands, lasted about ten seconds before gasping and dancing off to sizzle in a small pool of water from the last downpour just as the guard presented arms and his national anthem played on the speakers. Some foreign sounding epithets grunted out and his new cabinet ministers quickly gathered volubly to sympathise from their positions of safety under the awning.
It was not the normal response we were used to but with our normal naval equanimity in the face of the unexpected, we completed the due ceremony with stiff upper lip and no sniggering, dismissing and waiting for the same ceremonial for departure … with a shaded spot for receiving the salute.
He giggled happily and swayed perceptibly then after a long, lubricated lunch with the captain and no international ill will resulted.
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I haven’t found any reference yet, but the way I remember it told was that when the British forces arrived in Saigon to take the Japanese surrender there, a single British warship was sent to Haiphong to do the same in the north.
PS> This was before the French returned and before the Nationalist Chinese forces entered northern Vietnam.
When the Commander arrived in Hanoi he found that the Vietminh forces had already disarmed the Japanese in the Red River Delta and Ho Chi Minh had declared an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV).
I can not verify it, but have heard/read that he uttered the mentioned phrase, before rearming the Japanese and used them to expel Vietminh form Hanoi.
Apparently this was all that successful, since the French retook their Indochina colonies and fought a dirty war until their defeat in 1954.
The division of Vietnam into North and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel was formalized in the Geneva Accords in July 1954.
It was agreed that free all-Vietnam election was to be held by July 1956, but when the US realized that Ho Chi Minh would win the election on both sides, they vetoed and cancelled the election.
PS> Thus started the Second Vietnam War, which ended only in 1975 with the loss of
many lives on both sides:
This was followed by thousands of people taking to the sea, first in 1975 and again in 1978-79:
Vietnamese boat peopleVietnamese refugees waiting to be taken aboard the USS Blue Ridge during a rescue operation 350 miles (563 km) northeast of Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam,
Source: Vietnam War - French Rule, Division, Conflict | Britannica
PS> I was in the middle of the second wave of refugees, as Master of a drillship working in the South China in 1978-80. We picked up over 4000 refugees in that period. (Over 2000 in one 28-day hitch during June-July 1979)
Funny thing is Ho Chi Minh tried to ally with the USA at the end of WW II after he and the Viet Minh had worked with the US OSS against the Japanese. All he wanted was support for independence from France. He was turned down then sought help thru the UN but got nowhere so he turned to some people he really didn’t care for but they supported his efforts.The rest is history as they say.
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The way Vietminh was treated after WWII was shameful.
The European powers thought they could reclaim and retain their colonies and the Americans were scared of the Communists who had been their allies during the war:
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During those years I was living in the French Quarter, then the Faubourg Marigny in the early Eighties. I shopped (“made groceries”!) at the Schwegmann’s Supermarket at St. Claude and Elysian Fields, where everything was labelled in Vietnamese and English, due to the influx of refugees.
Some were more successful colonists than others.