It is a great story, and well known that in January 1942 Thailand’s ambassador to the United States refused to deliver Thailand’s declaration of war to the U.S. government. As a result, there was never a state of war between the two countries. But that is not exactly how things happened. Thailand declared war on Great Britain and the United States on January 25, 1942. The British responded by declaring war on Thailand; the U.S. government ignored Thailand’s declaration of war.
In Thailand’s Secret War, his definitive history of the OSS, SOE, and Free Thai in World War II, Professor E. Bruce Reynolds cites a January 1942 State Department document that explains the reasoning behind the U.S. decision that “the USA not dignify the action of the present Japanese-controlled government of Thailand by a formal declaration of war, but treat Thailand as an occupied territory.” That decision had far-reaching consequences for Thailand when the war ended and for both Thailand and the United States for the rest of the 20th century.
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