Free Thai Movement

Free Thai Movement (เสรีไทย)
Participant in World War II
Free Thai logo.
Active	1940–1945
Allies	Allies of World War II
Opponents	Phibun regime and Imperial Japan

The Free Thai Movement (Thai: เสรีไทย; rtgs: Seri Thai) was a Thai underground resistance movement against Imperial Japan during World War II. Seri Thai were an important source of military intelligence for the Allies in the region.

In the aftermath of the Japanese invasion of Thailand on 7–8 December 1941, the regime of Plaek Pibulsonggram (Phibun) declared war on the United Kingdom and the United States on 25 January 1942. Seni Pramoj, the Thai ambassador in Washington, refused to deliver the declaration to the United States government. Accordingly, the United States refrained from declaring war on Thailand. Seni, a conservative aristocrat whose anti-Japanese credentials were well established, organized the Free Thai Movement with American assistance, recruiting Thai students in the United States to work with the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The OSS trained Thai personnel for underground activities, and units were readied to infiltrate Thailand. By the end of the war, more than 50,000 Thai had been trained and armed to resist the Japanese by Free Thai members who had been parachuted into the country.

Phibun's alliance with Japan during the early years of war was initially popular. The Royal Thai Army joined Japan's Burma Campaign with the goal of recovering part of the Shan states previously given to the United Kingdom by the Treaty of Yandabo. They gained the return of the four northernmost Malay states lost in the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, and with Japanese mediation in the Franco–Thai war they also recovered territory lost in the Franco-Siamese War of 1893.

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