Jean Decoux
Jean Decoux (1884 - October 21, 1963) was a French navy Admiral, who was the Governor-General of French Indochina from July 1940 to 9 March 1945, representing the Vichy French government.
[edit] Biography
Decoux was born in Bordeaux. In 1940 he was named French governor of Indochina, succeeding General Georges Catroux.
Like his predecessor, Decoux initially wanted to continue the fight against the Axis powers, but he swore allegiance to Pétain's regime after realizing that his meager armed forces were no match for the Japanese.
Decoux reportedly received demands from the Japanese in early August for permission to move troops through Tonkin (later Vietnam) in order to build air bases and block Allied supply routes to China. Decoux cabled his Vichy superiors for help, but when no help was forthcoming signed treaty September 20, 1940 opening Haiphong harbor to the Japanese giving them the right to station troops in the region. [1]
Decoux worked to improve relations between French colonists and the Vietnamese, establishing a grand federal council containing twice as many Vietnamese as Frenchmen and installing Vietnamese in civil-service positions with equal pay to that of French civil servants. [2]
Decoux enforced the discriminatory laws against Gaullists and Freemasons, as well as the anti-Semitic Statute on Jews, despite decrying the laws harmful to the Vichy agenda.[1].
One author claims Decoux to have been terribly unconcern during the famine between 1943 and 1945. During this time two million Vietnamese died of starvation in the countryside and urban cities. The Decoux government did nothing to help the Vietnamese peasants, farmers, and poor, despite soliciting and courting the Vietnamese elite.[2] However, archival records show Allied bombardment of railways and the requisitioning of boats by the Japanese made it impossible to transport rice from the Conchinchina to Tonkin.
In 1945, the Japanese took direct control of the government and ousted Decoux, establishing the Empire of Vietnam.
Arrested and tried after the war, Decoux was not convicted. He was restored to his rank and prerogatives in 1949. He later wrote the book A la barre de l'Indochine. He died in Paris in 1963.
[edit] References
- ^ Jennings, Eric Vichy in the Tropics: Petain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-44 Stanford University Press, 2004 ISBN 0804750475
- ^ Khanh, Huynh Kim "Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945" Cornell University Press, 1986 ISBN 0801493978
