Jean Decoux

Jean Decoux (1884, Bordeaux - October 21, 1963, Paris) was the Governor-General of French Indochina from 1940 to 1945, representing the Vichy government.

Decoux’s task in Indochina was to reverse the policy of appeasement towards the Japanese led by his predecessor general Georges Catroux, but political realities soon forced him to continue down the same road.

Decoux reportedly received demands from the Japanese in early August for permission to move troops through Tonkin (later Vietnam) in order to build air bases and block Allied supply routes to China. Decoux cabled his Vichy superiors for help, but when no help was forthcoming signed treaty September 20, 1940 opening Haiphong harbor to the Japanese giving them the right to station troops in the region. [http://www.answers.com/topic/1940]

Decoux worked to improve relations between French colonists and the Vietnamese, establishing a grand federal council containing twice as many Vietnamese as Frenchmen and installing Vietnamese in civil-service positions with equal pay to that of French civil servants. [http://www.answers.com/topic/1940]

Decoux enforced the discriminatory laws against Gaullists and Freemasons, as well as the anti-Semitic Statute on Jews, despite decrying the laws harmful to the Vichy agenda. [Jennings, Eric "Vichy in the Tropics: Petain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940-44" Stanford University Press, 2004 ISBN 0804750475]

In 1945, the Japanese took direct control of the government and ousted Decoux, establishing the Empire of Vietnam.

Arrested and tried after the war, Decoux was not convicted. He was restored to his rank and prerogatives in 1949. He later wrote the book "A la barre de l'Indochine".

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