Indochinese Occupation

After years of fighting for his people's freedom, Nguyen Tat Thanh once again finds his nation under the rule of a tyrannical colonial regime. The brutal loss at Hanoi left the Indochinese government essentially in exile in Saigon as the Japanese pushed ever south towards the new capital. As the Japanese Occupation spread across the country, so did the cruelty of the new regime. With the fall of Indochina so close, Nguyen Tat Thanh organized a new guerrilla war, confident that his people would never lose hope for their freedom. 

The Fall of Saigon

After the crushing defeat at Hanoi, Nguyen Tat Thanh, and what remained of his government and war cabinet had regrouped in Saigon, treating it as the temporary capital of Indochina. With the exception of the reprieve of supplies granted to them by the selfless sacrifice of the Canadians at Haiphong Harbor, the Indochinese had been almost completely cut off from the rest of the Communist International since the beginning of the war due to the constricting Pact blockade around the country and the closing of their border with Siam due to the conflict. With the capital under Japanese occupation, and no end to the blockade in sight, Nguyen Tat Thanh knew in his heart that the invasion of Saigon, and full occupation of Indochina, was all but inevitable. The pact’s blockade became increasingly aggressive as the Japanese seized more and more victories in the northern parts of the country, with warships from the mainland gathering like sharks around the city, making even fishing along the coast a dangerous prospect. It was clear that maintaining Saigon as a permanent capital would be unsustainable. 

Nguyen was never one to lose hope or give up the fight; if the Japanese were to occupy his land, he would make them pay dearly for every atrocity they committed. As the Japanese continued their advance towards the south, Nguyen and his government began organizing the evacuation of its officials and the reestablishment of his guerrilla cells. Nguyen himself planned to stay in Indochina to keep up the fight, but wanted to ensure the safety of the bureaucrats and politicians who would rule the government once he had won their freedom. In addition, they would be instrumental in pleading the case to the Communist International of the desperate need for support for the Indochinese front. 

The initial plan to extract the officials was for them to be given fake documents and smuggled across the Siamese border, where they would board ships headed to Madagascar. This plan ultimately did not pan out, however, as Siam had only continued to tighten its border restrictions as thousands of civilians flocked to the border seeking asylum. Instead, Nguyen managed to arrange a special operation in collaboration with the Americans, whereby the politicians would be placed in a simple cavorite pod floating at low altitude, where the American air force could extract it, while evading detection. In order to successfully evade the ever-growing naval blockade, American pilots were forced to violate Siamese airspace, a move that technically violated their neutrality. Despite this, the Americans pushed forward with the plan, arranging the operation date with the conclusion of a Siamese diplomatic meeting scheduled for January 15th. The operation was risky but went off without a hitch, with the American pilots explaining their brief detour into Indochina after the diplomatic mission as a technical malfunction in their navigation systems. 

 With the politicians safely in American hands, Nguyen Tat Thanh and his war cabinet headed west, deep into the jungles of Kampuchéa setting up command in Phnom Penh.  Saigon was no place to run a guerrilla operation, and he wished for his military not to be sitting ducks trying to defend a city from overwhelming forces as had happened in Hanoi.  When the Japanese launched their foreseeable naval invasion against Saigon on February 3rd, 1940, they found a city devoid of enemy forces, with the full might of the Indochinese armies spread out across the countryside in guerrilla units waiting for their moment to strike. 

Japanese Occupation

With Saigon in hand, the Japanese had captured three of the most crucial locations in the country, making them the de facto rulers of the territory. With this victory, the military got to work in utilizing their newly acquired lands to serve them in their fight against Joseon. The Japanese leadership put in charge of the new region had not learned from the mistakes of the Bonapartist regime before them and sought to rule Indochina with an iron fist. Civilian populations across the region were under constant pressure from their new overlords to give up the locations of the remaining rebel cells and to prove their loyalty to their new Emperor. 

In addition to the mistrust held against the civilians, the new regime sought to seize the industrial capacities of Indochina and turn them against Joseon. Munitions factories were the first to be seized by the military, with their employees under strict surveillance. Since the occupation was too fresh to ensure a fully Japanese colonial workforce, these seized factories were employed mostly by natives, who were closely scrutinized but paid well for their service, in an effort to buy their loyalty. Most other civilian industries had to deal with the regular “inspection” of their property and goods by the Japanese military, whose rank and file soldiers took advantage of their newly acquired positions of power to plunder what they wished from the locals. Life for citizens in the countryside was not much better, as small villages were constantly ransacked in search of Nguyen and his rebels, often leaving small villages with little supplies after the soldiers left.

The cruelty of the Japanese in the first months of occupation predictably radicalized the population against them, leading to a widespread terror campaign across Indochina, which was only in part caused by the resistance. Stories of Japanese officers being found stabbed to death with kitchen equipment, vehicles siphoned of gasoline, or storehouses in flames became a daily occurrence in the occupied provinces. In a particularly bad example for the Japanese, soldiers on the Wuhan front in Joseon found themselves imperiled by sabotaged ammunition coming from an Indochinese munitions plant. The operators of said plant were publicly executed to make an example of their betrayal. 

The Kampuchéa Militarized Zone

As the people organically grew the resistance, Nguyen Tat Thanh sought to organize the discontent felt by so many. Guerilla operations were extremely limited in the early months of occupation, as President Nguyen wished to focus on reorganization, luring the Japanese into a false sense of security. By the end of May, the network he had assembled was staggering, having hundreds of small cells across occupied Indochina waiting to activate. Their adversaries had enjoyed a spring of occupation relatively uncontested, but were about to face a campaign of sabotage the likes of which the world had not yet seen. While Indochina had been defeated on military maps, the spirit of its people had not. 

While these cells would bring about continued sabotage across the occupied territories, the main bulk of the Indochinese army was stationed in the Kampuchéa region around Phnom Penh, spread out throughout the surrounding jungles and mountains. The mountains to the south shielded the new temporary capital from artillery fire from the Naval blockade on the Southern Coast, and the dense rainforests made it difficult for the Japanese to mount a meaningful assault. So treacherous was the terrain that the Japanese army made the decision to forgo their pursuit of the Indochinese army in early June, due to the intense summer heat, brutal terrain, and constant ambush. Instead, the Japanese sought to completely isolate President Nguyen’s armies by choking their access to the more productive parts of Indochina. They sought to achieve this over the next few months through the massive construction project of what would come to be called the Kampuchéa Militarized Zone, a massive undertaking that would envelop the Kampuchéa region with thick military defenses. Miles of barbed wire, sandbags, mines, and bunkers were built by naval and army engineers alike along the border of the region. These constructions, and their subsequent occupation, became the source of much of the fighting in the summer of 1940, with skirmishes across the borderlands and constant sabotage by guerrilla cells. 

Although the construction of the militarized zone was under constant pressure by Indochinese forces, the progress of its construction was not stoppable with the resources available to the Indochinese army. Ammunition shortages were becoming a real concern, making it difficult to properly challenge the Japanese military. Even though small arms ammunition was running low, the Indochinese army had an abundance of the specialized anti-aethership shells used by the Carnots, which had successfully managed to deter the Japanese Aetherforce from taking action against their position in Kampuchéa due to the hidden positions of their batteries. 

A solution to these shortages presented itself in late July, via American intervention. This control over their airspace would prove auspicious as the Americans began a logistics campaign via their aetherfleet to smuggle in supplies to the desperate soldiers, providing them with a plethora of equipment. Although these operations were frequent, the scale of supplies that could be smuggled in was limited as the Americans constantly risked engaging the Japanese Aetherfleet in orbit, or the might of the Pact's naval blockade. Despite this limitation, the supplies were much needed and put a thorn in the Japanese plan to strangle the Indochinese resistance via the militarized zone. 

The Japanese were particularly surprised on August 25th when their forces were pushed back by Indochinese soldiers operating American Jackrabbits along the border. This defeat sent shockwaves through the command structure in the region, which feared that continued support from the Americans would undermine their efforts to finally put the death nail in Nguyen's resistance. Something had to be done about the Americans, and soon, so the Japanese military began turning its attention to America's closest asset in the region. If the Americans were going to continue to feign neutrality while supplying the enemy, then perhaps a Kessen, or decisive victory, in the Philippines would deter further interventions.