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THAILAND'S SECRET WAR: OSS, SOE and the Free Thai Underground During World War II. By E. Bruce Reynolds. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. xx, 462 pp (B&W photos, maps.) US$85.00, cloth. ISBN 0-521-83601-8.
This congenial study untangles the history of Thai resistance to Japan during World War II and provides glimpses of Anglo-American rivalries in Southeast Asia and elsewhere at the time. Because so few shots were fired in anger in the "secret war," since Thailand was always a side-show and because the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) dealing with the Thai spent more time feuding with each other than they spent fighting the Japanese, there are stretches of comedy and a good deal of huff and puffin Professor Reynolds' otherwise absorbing book.
On December 8, 1941 (US time), Japan invaded Thailand by sea and from French Indo-China. The Thai surrendered in five hours. Bangkok's minister in Washington, M.R. Seni Pramoj, placed...