Thailand's Secret War: OSS, SOE, and the Free Thai Underground during World War II (review)

Thailand's Secret War is the most detailed work yet published on the intricate political and strategic issues intertwined with Thailand's participation in World War II. Bruce Reynolds used as his primary sources a wealth of recently declassified American and British intelligence and diplomatic files. These records provide striking details on the Allies' strategic and political goals concerning Thailand and show the direct influence of Thailand's underground movement on American and British postwar policies. Most importantly, Reynolds's research sheds new light on the incredibly tangled web of national policies, military strategy, war-making priorities, and huge personal egos of the key players in the region.

Thailand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and China had different strategic objectives for postwar Southeast Asia. Thai politicians were pursuing personal and national goals that were often in conflict, but the Thais were united in striving for the continued sovereignty of the only country in the region not colonized by Western powers. U.S. and British intelligence agencies had competing priorities and objectives, which resulted in a patchwork of cooperation and competition as their respective organizations and national leaders debated policy. Reynolds has skillfully untangled the skein of tangled threads by following a chronological path that begins just as World War II spread to Thailand in 1941 and ends with the surrender of Japan and the immediate postwar outcome in Thailand.

Reynolds's exhaustive scrutiny of newly declassified documents and records, interviews, and analysis allows the reader to see verbatim the reports of British and American field intelligence officers, policymakers, and military commanders. He also used communications between Thai field intelligence assets and their British and American sponsors to depict the determination of the Thais, mostly young military and civilian students who were studying abroad when the war started, to make a difference in their country's future. Those reports make clear that Thailand's underground anti-Japanese structure—which was late in coalescing and never entered combat against the Japanese—was a critical component in the formulation of postwar allied polices. Both the Thai underground leadership in Bangkok and U.S. policymakers in Washington, DC saw the resistance movement as the key element of support for a sovereign postwar Thailand, whereas British leaders consistently downplayed the intelligence and political importance of the Thai underground.

The personal reports and opinions expressed by American, British, and Thai diplomats and intelligence personnel in Bangkok, Washington, and London enrich the book, which follows in detail the training and dispatch of Thai trainees destined for long and frustrating waits before being able to infiltrate back into Thailand. At the national level, the policies and objectives of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States can be traced in now-declassified memoranda, diplomatic demarches, and informal instructions and reports that passed back and forth between national capitals, military headquarters in Asia, field intelligence outposts, and royal palaces in Bangkok.

Previous authors who wrote about this topic without the benefit of declassified records outlined the basic issues of Thailand in World War II. Thailand's wartime leaders, pressured by Japan to allow its forces to use Thailand as the stepping stone to an invasion of Malaya and Singapore, declared war on the Allies. Luang Pridi Phanomyong, the regent for the absent and underage king of Thailand, began to create an underground movement against Japan. Marshal Phibun, the military ruler of Thailand at the time, played both sides of the issue. M. R. Seni Pramoj, the Thai minister in Washington, contacted the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to start putting together the first contingent of underground agents from Thai students in the United States. A similar operation began in the United Kingdom under the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

The huge benefit of Reynolds's book is the well-written synopses of a wealth of documentation to reveal the details behind the drama. He follows the...