UK attitude to Siam's role in WWII was vindictive
Re: "Slight against WWII-era Siam was imagined", Letters, December 2.
David Brown did not refer to the fall of Singapore, but in his letter “Thailand’s WWII neutrality is a fiction”, he pompously declared: “It is rewriting history to suggest that Thailand was neutral during World War II.”
That was mean, given that US Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and the US State Department concluded that Thailand had been neutral in the war, not an enemy, as Winston Churchill and other Britons maintained. I attribute the viciousness of the Britons in dismissing the American stance as a means of punishing Siam for allowing the Japanese army to use Siamese territory in its invasion of Singapore. Siam’s position was similar to that of France when it was overpowered by Nazi Germany.
In life and in crime, it is not only the words that count but also but the motive behind them. As management guru Peter Drucker once said: “The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.” And I heard what David Brown did not express – disgust with Siam for Britain’s shaming in Singapore.
Songdej Praditsmanont
