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The War in Vietnam, codenamed Operation ''Masterdom''〔George Rosie and Bradley Borum, Operation Masterdom: Britain's Secret War in Vietnam〕 by the British, and also known as Nam Bộ kháng chiến ((英語:Southern Resistance War))〔(Concert to mark 66th anniversary of the Southern Resistance War )〕 by the Vietnamese, was a post–World War II armed conflict involving a largely British-Indian and French task force and Japanese troops from the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, versus the Vietnamese communist movement, the Viet Minh, for control of the country, after the unconditional Japanese surrender. The wars in Indochina, for about 45 years, had caught the world's attention during the last part of the 20th century. France's unsuccessful nine-year conflict (1945–1954), America's equally unsuccessful involvement, ending in 1973 to the conflict in Cambodia, sparked by the Vietnamese invasion in 1978 have been often referred to, respectively, as the First, Second and Third Indochina Wars. Historically, they are misnumbered by one, for the first war in Vietnam after World War II was a brief but important conflict that grew out of the British occupation of Saigon from 1945 to 1946. ==The French collapse== In July 1945 at Potsdam, Germany, the Allied leaders made the decision to divide Indochina in half at the 16th parallel to allow Chiang Kai-shek to receive the Japanese surrender in the North, while Lord Louis Mountbatten to receive the surrender in the South. The Allies agreed that France was the rightful owner of French Indochina, but because of the fact that France was critically weakened as a result of the German occupation, a British-Indian force was installed in order to help the French in re-establishing control over their former colonial possession.〔Joseph Buttinger, ''Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled'' (New York: Praeger, 1967), p. 244.〕 To carry out his part of the task, Lord Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander Southeast Asia Command, was to form an Allied Commission to go to Saigon and a military force consisting of an infantry division was to be designated as the Allied Land Forces French Indochina (ALFFIC). It was tasked to ensure civil order in the area surrounding Saigon, to enforce the Japanese surrender, and render humanitarian assistance to Allied prisoners of war and internees.〔 As for the Control Commission its concern was primarily with winding down the Supreme Headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army Southeast Asia and also render humanitarian assistance to prisoners of war. Thus Major-General Douglas Gracey was appointed to head the Commission and the 80th Brigade, commanded by Brigadier D.E. Taunton, of his crack 20th Indian Division was the ALFFIC which followed him to Vietnam. In late August 1945, British occupying forces were ready to depart for various Southeast Asian destinations, and some were already on their way, when General Douglas MacArthur caused an uproar at the Southeast Asia Command by forbidding reoccupation until he had personally received the Japanese surrender in Tokyo, which was actually set for 28 August, but a typhoon caused the ceremony to be postponed until 2 September. MacArthur's uproar had enormous consequences, for Allied prisoners of war in Japanese camps had to suffer living in a ghastly state for a little bit longer and also this delay, before the Allied troops arrived, enabled revolutionary groups to fill the power vacuums that had existed in Southeast Asia since the announcement of the Japanese capitulation on 15 August. The chief beneficiaries in Indochina were the Communists, who exercised complete control over the Viet Minh, the nationalist party founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1941. In Hanoi and Saigon, they rushed to seize the seats of government, by killing or intimidating their rivals.〔Marvin E. Gettleman, ed., Vietnam (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1065), pp. 65–66.〕 While the Allies stated that the French had sovereignty over Indochina, America opposed the return of Indochina to the French; but there was no such official America animosity towards the Communist-led Viet Minh.〔Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam (New York. Korton, 1988), p. 25.〕 MacArthur finally had his ceremony on board the on 2 September, and three days later the first Allied medical rescue teams parachuted into the prisoner of war camps. During the following days a small advance party of support personnel and infantry escort from Gracey's force arrived in Saigon to check on conditions and report back; on the 11th a brigade was flown in from Hmawbi Field, Burma via Bangkok. When these advance Allied units landed in Saigon they found themselves in a bizarre position of being welcomed and guarded by fully armed Japanese and Viet Minh soldiers. The reason these soldiers were armed was because six months earlier (March 9) they disarmed and interned the French, for the Japanese feared an American landing in Indochina after the fall of Manila and did not trust the French. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「War in Vietnam (1945–46)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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