Sir Josiah Crosby

[airlana]

Sir Josiah Crosby, British Minister in Thailand in the years preceeding and during the 1941 Japanese invasion, seems by all accounts to have been at odds with much of the 'establishment' including FECB and most if not all of the British military commanders at the time.

Much has been written about British-Thai relations of the time and the involvements of Sir Josiah and references such as:
"an enigmatic figure, the British minister, Sir Josiah Crosby, a pedantic bachelor whose cultivated appreciation of the pleasures of Bangkok led British military commanders to conclude that he had gone 'completely native'."
and
"saw everything Thai through rose coloured glasses"
suggest a rather interesting character.

Sir Josiah was still in Bangkok for a few days after the 7th December 1941. It's after then I'm confused.
Was he really interned by the Japanese as one reference states? If so when and where and for how long? Was he released or escaped? How did he get back to England?
Another reference says "a lecture given in London by Crosby in 1943" seems as odds with the above.

Perhaps someone can assist with more information.

Would be appreciated, thanks

airlana
.

[Wisarut]

Well, since Sir Josiah Crosby is a diplomat, he got an option to go back home through diplomatic ship .... in exchange for being interned in IJA camps ...

[Pkv]

Crosby was not immediately detained on December 8 - it was only on the next day that Japanese guards surrounded the British and American embassies (Crosby was quick to protest to Direk, the Foreign Minister, that the Japanese had no right to act in such a way).

While I don't know the exact details of Crosby's return to London, there's a good chance this might have occurred in the fall of 1942, around the same time that Peck, the American minister, returned home aboard an exchange ship.

The speech in question took place at Chatham House on July 1, 1943. In it Crosby advocated refusing China a prominent role in postwar Southeast Asia, although many Americans present tended to concentrat on his suggestions for the establishment of some sort of international tutelage in postwar Thailand to guide the country's political and economical development - ostensibly to avert the recurrence of the army's prewar rise.

The statement was seized upon by the Anglophobic Seni as evidence of British designs on Thailand's independence (Crosby's proposal contrasted starkly with the State Department's advocacy of "full independence and sovereignty"). Interestingly enough, in a memo submitted to the Foreign Office, the ex-Minister suggested that such a task would have to be undertaken by the United States, rather than Britain.

[airlana]

Thanks for the replies and information.
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More details from author Peter Elphick in his book “Singapore – The Pregnable Fortress”

Thailand was the only independent country in South-East Asia, but had had very close links with the British Empire. Three-quarters of her exports passed through British ports in the area. She relied on Indian gunny for the sacks in which rice, her major export, was shipped. Her foreign debt was held in London. Many of her businesses were in British hands and many of the advisors to Thai ministries were from Britain. It is possible that, had Britain been able to convince Thailand of her power to protect Thai independence, the eastern kingdom would have been wholly inside the Western camp. But Britain had no such power, especially after the war in Europe began in 1939.

Field Marshal Luang Pibul had been Thai prime minister since 1938. (Pibul’s surname is sometimes anglicised as Phibun, or Phibul, and even Bipul. The spelling used here is that used in the British Foreign Office files of the time.) Despite a continuous stream of messages to London from Sir Josiah Crosby in the years before the Pacific War began — which indicated that he thought he had considerable influence over the Thai prime minister there were many indications that Pibul was not wholly to be trusted. Apart from anything else he was not a man of high probity. In 1937, when Minister of Defence, he had been caught up to his ears in a scandal over the sale of certain Royal lands at vastly undervalued prices, and had been forced to resign. However, it was not long before he was back in government, and soon after that he was leading a military dictatorship.

On the surface Pibul was pro-British. The ultra pro-Thai Crosby, definitely thought he leaned in that direction, and Crosby thought he had Pibul at least partly in his pocket. But many British residents in the Far East, and some officials in London, believed that Crosby’s views on all things Thai were coloured by the circumstances behind his appointment to his post.

Crosby had spent many years in Thailand. By the time of his retirement in 1943, no less than thirty-five of his thirty-nine years in the Foreign Service had been spent there. He had arrived in 1904 as a twenty-four-year-old cadet, and apart from two brief periods, spent in Batavia and Saigon, and a three-year stint as Minister Plenipotentiary to Panama 1931-34, he had remained there ever since. This must be something of a record in Foreign Service appointments.

His return to Bangkok as British Minister on 22nd May 1934, was made at the behest of the party which had come to power after the 1932 revolution in Thailand, a party then led by Pibul and Luang Pradit who jointly led the revolution which had reduced the powers of the Thai king. This request from a foreign government for a particular official representative may not have been unique but it was highly unusual. Dorothy Crisp, a British political commentator with contacts in high places at the Foreign Office, writing in 1943, considered that this must have affected Crosby’s judgement. She wrote of Sir Josiah’s situation, Now it is not in human nature to believe that those who have asked for one’s appointment are they who are the whole time working against one, and the interests one represents.’ She accused Crosby of having been blind to the real motives of Pibul. She went on, ‘there were Englishmen in Malaya and Singapore who were certain that Luang Pibul, head of the militarist element who eclipsed Pradit, had been in the hands of the Japanese from 1934 onwards and that he had a pact with them’.
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And from the only bio I can find on Crosby:-

Sir Josiah Crosby 1880-1958
OBE 1918, CIE 1919, KBE 1928
Interned by Japanese December 1941.
Was part of exchange of diplomatic personnel at Lourenco Marques [Mozambique] August 1942
Author of “Siam: The Crossroads” 1945
and “Siam” 1945 Oxford Pamphlets No.26
There was also an obituary in the “Times” 5th December 1958
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Regarding the ‘exchange of diplomatic personnel’, may be some details here.

http://www.salship.se/mercy.asp

Any more info on Crosby would be welcome, especially a copy of the "Times" obituary.
Thanks in advance

airlana
.

[dokbua]

On page 125 of his book Siam: The Crossroads Crosby states that he was interned by the Japanese for 8 months prior to his repatriation to England in August 1942.

[The Enforcer!]

Seems not to have been particularly good in his work ... read http://www.burmastar.org.uk/bangkok_escape.htm ...

"One must remember of course that Sir Josiah was an old man. He had put all his faith in the Thais, much as Chamberlain did in Hitler. He was too late to help us at this stage."

The Enforcer!

[Pkv]

Not quite relevant, but interesting nevertheless:

"Events at the time of their repatriation in July and August 1942 alerted American and British diplomats to this Thai disenchantment with the Japanese. When it was learned that as a courtesy Ambassador Tsubokami had sent a parting gift of two cases of beer to Minister Peck, the Thai Foreign Ministry, in a classic effort at one-upmanship, hastened to dispatch three cases to his ships. Phibun offered a gift of 70 baht to each of the repatriates, and he sent Minister Crosby a brief note expressing regrets and wishing him bon voyage. Pridi, meanwhile, made indirect efforts to alert Crosby to the continued existence of an anti-Japanese element. A crowd of Thai and Europeans from neutral nations turned out to say farewell to the departing diplomatic and civilian internees."

- Thailand and Japan's Southern Advance 1940 - 1945, E. Bruce Reynolds