ABSTRACT
The Second World War for Thailand virtually started when the Japanese army started invading at the dawn of December 8, 1941. While Thailand had allied with Japan and became one of the countries in the Axis, it established “official” contact with the Allied powers behind the scenes. Although its diplomacy became two-faced at the end of the war, Thailand not only maintained the alliance with Japan and escaped any substantial armed conflict with the occupying forces, but also gained sympathy from the Allied powers so that it could escape being classified as a defeated country. This study aims to construct an overall picture of the incidents/accidents related to the Japanese army during the war based on Thai records of incidents/accidents and also to analyze their background and their influence toward Thai–Japanese relations. To achieve these objectives, I set three topics as follows: (1) the construction of the overall image of the incidents/accidents related to the Japanese army; (2) the analysis of their backgrounds; and (3) the elucidation of the relations between Thais and Japanese that can be interpreted from an understanding of them.
