nch version of the 'white man's burden' was largely a smokescreen to cover an especially vicious brand of imperialism. France exploited Vietnam ruthlessly."
After Japan occupied military bases and ports in southern Indochina in June 1941, the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies lay exposed. The United States then restricted the export of high octane gasoline to Japan which Fall said "hardened the Japanese Navy's insistence upon an attack on Southeast Asia before its petrol supplies were completely exhausted." According to the historians of the Pentagon Papers, "ambivalence characterized U.S. policy [toward Indochina] during World War II." President Franklin Roosevelt opposed the return of French colonial control over Indochina. On January 24, 1944, FDR said: "France has had that country . . . for nearly one hundred years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning." However, Winston Churchill and Charles De Gaulle vigorously opposed FDR's plans to place Indochina under international trusteeship so Indochina's postwar status was left unresolved. In lat
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