Catroux and Tokyo's pressure on Indochina
General , 62, has been Governor-General of French Indochina since the summer of 1939. A Saint-Cyr-trained officer marked by his colonial career and by a long captivity in Germany during the Great War, he administers the Indochinese Union — Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia, Laos — from Hanoi.
In June 1940 his position is untenable. The metropolis is collapsing under the German assault; on 17 June, Marshal Pétain sues for an armistice. Indochina finds itself cut off from France, beyond reach of reinforcements, with a handful of ill-equipped divisions. And Imperial Japan, at war with China, sees in this isolated colony a piece of prey.
Tokyo goes on the diplomatic offensive. The Japanese demand the closing of the Yunnan railway, the Haiphong-Hanoi-Kunming line through which part of the supplies of Nationalist China pass, and demand the dispatch of a control mission charged with verifying on the spot the halting of the convoys. Catroux has no force to oppose an armed intervention, and no hope of rescue from Bordeaux. He must reply quickly to a demand that bites into French sovereignty.
Should one accede to the Japanese demands without hope of reinforcement, or refuse in the name of French sovereignty?
Catroux applies A: as early as 19-20 June 1940, judging any resistance suicidal, he agrees to close the frontier to arms transit toward China and admits the entry of a Japanese inspection mission led by General Nishihara. He acts on his own initiative, without waiting for the green light from the metropolis. The Bordeaux government, incensed that a proconsul should have yielded without orders, removes him from his post by late June and replaces him with Admiral . Catroux, censured, refuses to return to France; he will rally to de Gaulle's Free France in the autumn of 1940, becoming one of its highest dignitaries. His concessions did not suffice: in September 1940, Japan militarily occupies Tonkin. The episode illustrates the insoluble dilemma of colonies orphaned by their defeated metropolis.
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