Photo By Lori Stewart | 2d Lt. René Défourneaux (center, standing) with Ho Chi Minh on right and other OSS...... read more read more
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by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian
2D LT. DEFOURNEAUX MINGLES WITH FRENCH REFUGEES IN CHINA
On May 17, 1945, 2d Lt. René J. Défourneaux, a French-speaking member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), completed his infiltration of French colonial refugees at the China-French Indochina border. His ability to blend in with the refugees allowed him to identify those with the greatest potential to provide intelligence about the Japanese in Indochina.
Défourneaux was born in France in 1921 and, when World War II began in Europe, immigrated to the United States with his family. At the age of twenty-two, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and, because of his French language skills, was sent to interrogation training at the Military Intelligence Training Center, Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Overseas, he trained with the British Special Operations Executive as a saboteur and guerilla organizer. Assigned to the American OSS but under the operational control of the British, Défourneaux was commissioned a second lieutenant and spent several months assisting the resistance movement in German-occupied France.
In the spring of 1945, the OSS ordered Défourneaux to the Far East. By early May, he had arrived in Kunming, China, about one hundred miles from the border with French Indochina (which included current day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). The situation in the French colony had changed dramatically in the previous two months. Since mid-1940, Indochina had been administered by the Vichy French in Saigon but was under Japanese military control. Following the liberation of Paris in late 1944, the French colonials in Indochina began supporting the local resistance against the Japanese. To quash this movement, on Mar. 9, 1945, the Japanese staged a coup that ended the French administration.
More than 2,600 French officials and troops were killed during the coup, while more than 31,000 civilians were interned in camps or designated quarters. Roughly 2,500 French and 3,000 native Indochinese troops—along with many civilians and families—fled to the Dien Bien Phu airfield, where they requested American assistance to cross the border into China. With air support from Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault’s Fourteenth Air Force (the “Flying Tigers”), the refugees walked the one hundred miles to the border, many dying on the journey.
The survivors reached Lao Caï in the first week of May and, crossing into China, were joined by Lieutenant Défourneaux and 28-year-old Virginian Burley Fuselier, an intelligence specialist with the Fourteenth Air Force. Their task was to circulate among these former enemy collaborators to collect information about the Vichy government, the resistance, and Japanese forces. Putting his French language skills to use, Défourneaux easily mixed with the refugees and recalled, “rapidly I gained their confidence and learned a great deal more than I would have as an American.”
As Défourneaux mingled with the French, he identified individuals he believed had important information to share and quietly removed them from the refugee compound. After being plied with food and drink, the refugees were taken to the Fourteenth Air Force headquarters in Kunming. There, Army Air Forces intelligence officers gave them a more thorough debriefing focused on the effects of American aerial bombing efforts against Japanese positions and the locations of enemy camps holding downed pilots. Following their debriefings, these refugees were held in separate camps to prevent them from sharing the Allies’ interests with the other refugees.
Défourneaux kept his identity as an OSS agent secret for two weeks, but gradually the refugees noticed the individuals he spent time with often disappeared. Accordingly, on May 17, he was ordered back to Kunming and detailed to a new team for a new mission: cross the Chinese border into Indochina to reestablish the intelligence network between communist Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh and the Fourteenth Air Force that had been destroyed by the Japanese coup. Additionally, the OSS agents were to train young Viet Minh soldiers to conduct guerrilla operations with American supplied weapons against Japanese forces. These activities would keep Défourneaux occupied for the remaining months of the war in the Pacific.
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| Date Taken: | 05.09.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 05.09.2025 16:50 |
| Story ID: | 497559 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 25 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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