Invasion of Vietnam 22nd September 1940

On the 20th of August, 1940, the Japanese foreign office approached their French counterparts with a treaty that would allow Japanese troops to be stationed in Indochina. Negotiations began on the 3rd of September of the year, in Hanoi, between the supreme commander of the French-Indochinese troops, Maurice Martin, and General Nishihara of Japan.

Three days later, on the 6th of September, 1940, troops from the 22nd Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), would crossover from Nanning, in Guangxi, one of the two southernmost provinces in China, into Vietnam, close to the French fort in Dong Dang.

The French protested the intrusion, but it was to no avail and on the 22nd of September 1940, troops from the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Vietnam.

Their objective was twofold. The short term objective was to close the supply route from Vietnam to China. There was an ongoing war between the Japanese and the Chinese at the time, the Sino-Japanese war, and supplies were being ferried by sea to the port-city of Haiphong, and from there by rail to Hanoi, and from Hanoi to Kunming in Southern China.

The Japanese Imperial Army, intended to seize the port-city of Haiphong and thereby stop supplies from being loaded on to trains to Hanoi, and from there to Yunnan in Southern China.?

The other objective, or the bigger objective was to pave a land route into Thailand, Burma, and Malaya that would facilitate infantry movement.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on the 7th of December, 1941, troops from the Imperial Japanese Army, would march into Thailand on roads, that were already built, meeting with little or no resistance.

Japan at the time had visions of creating a greater East Asia alliance that facilitated trade and cemented military ties.

The alliance, if successful, would ensure that Japan had an adequate supply of raw materials, something the nation desperately needed, to fuel its industrial furnaces, and ensure that the IJA had a stronger presence in the region.

The route that the Japanese Imperial Army took to invade Vietnam was fairly straightforward. Troops from the 22nd IJA bolstered by troops from the 5th Infantry Division, under the command of Lieutenant-General Aketo Nakamura, walked across the border that separated Vietnam from the adjoining Chinese provinces of Yunnan, and Guangxi.

France was in no position to resist, and it needed most of its troops, in France (France was invaded on the 10th of May, 1940), to defend the nation, and it had at that stage almost nothing to spare in terms of men, arms, or resources, and that together with rising anti-French sentiment not only in Vietnam, but also in Indochina as a whole, would allow the IJA to move freely in Vietnam, and eventually take control of the country, with minimal casualties. ?

The war, if one could call it that, was short, it started on the 22nd of September and ended on the 26th of September, 1940. There was some sporadic fighting that occurred between Japanese troops and troops stationed in Indochina but it was brief. The war lasted a mere four days.

The Japanese would continue to occupy Vietnam, until the end of the Second World War, and it would be used as a conduit that allowed troops from the IJA to move into Thailand, Malaya, Burma, and eventually India.

Copyright ? 2025 by Kathiresan Ramachanderam