The Resistance grew rapidly within the French army. Airdrops take place, the secret of which is difficult to keep; the chatter reveals many plans, real or imaginary, while the Vietnamese listen and observe.
The Japanese authorities were soon alerted to these preparations_ which all
indicates that they aim to take Japanese armies from the rear, in case as there is any Instead of thinking it, the Allies would be preparing to land on the coast of Annam or in southern China. In January 1945, the Japanese general staff in Indochina demanded from the French authorities a large increase in the financial contribution paid to it and increased its workforce to 60,000 men.
While the Allied successes multiplied in Asia, the Provisional Government, denying that France could only assert its rights in Indochina insofar as it had participated in the battles for the liberation of Southeast Asia, organized, according to the orders from General Blaizot, intervention units which should be placed at the disposal of Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Commander-in-Chief of the South East Asia Command.
Charged, for its part, in close liaison with the Allies, with clandestine action to prepare in Indochina for the assault against the Japanese forces and the return from France, the French Liaison Section in the Far East (S.L.F.E.0 .) has elements in Calcutta and Kouen-Ming, in. the Chinese province of Yun-Nan.
The Japanese general staff, whose anxiety was growing, obtained full powers in Indochina from Tokyo and, on March 9, dispatched Ambassador Matsumoto with Admiral Decoux. It's 8 p.m. The last ultimatum that the Japanese ambassador presented to the Governor General demanded neither more nor less that the French troops be placed under Japanese command. The evasive response from the admiral tends to get the ambassador some time to think things over. But, without waiting, the Japanese forces will spend the same night on the attack.
The surprise is total in Saigon and in almost all the South, where our units are quickly neutralized. Elsewhere, mainly in Hue and Hanoi, our forces, although overwhelmed by the crushing numerical superiority of the attacker, were alerted in time and put up a heroic resistance to the Japanese, who will return military honors to them.
Almost everywhere else, the Japanese army disgraces itself by the refined treacheries which precede the attack and the savage massacres which follow it. to helplessness. Only a few elements manage to take the maquis, to reach Halong Bay or certain points of Chinese territory not occupied by the Japanese. 6,000 men, under the command of Generals Gabriel Sabattier and Aimé Alessandri, will reach, at the cost of a long ordeal, the upper region, where the G.P.R.F. will send them the order to hold their ground; but a few weeks later, for lack of material support refused by the Americans, they will be forced to abandon Indochinese territory to reach China, where they will be welcomed, of course, but disarmed and unable to intervene. in the events that will follow.