Thai Postal Censorship during World War II
by Al Shumsky

Despite the general interest in World War II postal history and the more limited but lively interest in Thai postal history, there seems up to now to have been no attempt to make a study of Thailand’s censorship of mail during the World War II years. The handiest and most up-to-date general guide –Stich, Stich, and Specht’s Civil and Military Censorship during World War II (1993)—has this to say: "To the best of our knowledge mail within Thailand or mail addressed abroad has not been examined. However, censored covers have become known from the Malayan states…which were annexed by Thailand."

At right, wartime cover mailed from Bangkok on 28 January 1941 to England. Censor two opened it in Bangkok, where it was re-sealed using OX5 official seals. It was again opened and examined in England.

Both the paucity and the desirability of information on this subject were expressed by the collectors who generously responded to my plea for help when I began this study, and I should like to acknowledge them right at the start: thank you, Ian Dyce, Geoff Farrier, John Garner, Andy Hibbert, Don Keen, Wirat Limpaiboon, Angus Munro, Vincent Polizatto, Peter Preuss, J.M.S. Roberts, and Malcom Wade. And special gratitude to H. R. Blakeney, Kitti Damrongvadhana, Herbert Herman, and Nils Ramm-Ericson.

These people have added information and examples to what I could infer from my own collection and glean from other sources such as auction catalog illustrations and dealers’ stocks, so that I think these conclusions about Thai censorship are based on as respectable a sampling of examples as is likely to be obtained, especially of the scanty material from 1942-45.

Thai mail from September 1939 to December 1941 that was censored elsewhere is familiar to collectors because most foreign mail from Thailand transited British ports, where censorship was initiated almost immediately upon the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Thai covers are found that were censored in Hong Kong, Malaya, Australia, Burma, India, South Africa, Palestine, and Canada, as well as in Great Britain. Examples of additional censorship in other destination countries, including the United States, are known but are rarer. Almost all markings from these sources are well documented in other studies, and most of them can be found illustrated in the Stich, Stich, and Specht reference mentioned above.

But one is hard put to find anywhere any reference to, much less illustrations of, Thai censor marks.

Let me note that, for the sake of convenience, any cover bearing a censor mark is here being called "censored" even though in many cases it was just passed routinely by the censor without being actually examined. As for material that was literally censored, i.e. obliterated or cut away, that would be evident only in the contents, which are almost always no longer enclosed in the cover; I have seen no examples of such censorship on the messages of any of the censored postal cards that I have been able to inspect. One cover from Bangkok to Shanghai in 1942 which was opened by Thai censors had the name and address of the sender blacked out, which may or may not have been done by the censor. No examples at all have been reported of mail returned to the sender by the censor or impounded for the duration.

At right, an unusually handsome incoming foreign cover, but typical treatment: from Tumpat, Kelantan, 20 January 1941 to Bangkok. It was opened by censor 8 in Penang and passed by Thai censor two (A 2). (Courtesy of Angus Munro)

PERIOD OF CENSORSHIP

Thailand began censorship of foreign mail more than a year before it began censoring domestic mail too. But no documentary evidence has been found concerning the institution of such censorship. All that Alan Cameron discovered in the archives was the account of the joint meeting between Thais and Japanese in January 1942 (Thai Philately, Vol. 16 No. 2, Summer/Fall, 1999), at which time censorship of foreign mail was already being practiced.

For its beginnings we must look back to the autumn of 1940, when the border dispute consequent on Thailand’s irredentist claims was escalating toward armed conflict with (Vichy) French Indo-China.

On 25 October 1940, the Council of Regency promulgated an Act "controlling communications with foreign countries" (Bangkok Times, 26 October 1940). This certainly sounds like a promising origin for censorship, but the accompanying discussion makes no mention of mail or even information although it does of "material imported or exported." It does point out that the "legislation will come into force on the date of its publication in the Government Gazette," and that "the nature and duration of control shall be in accordance with the Regulations to be issued." Such regulations might indeed provide for the censorship of mail. The newspaper reported on 29 November 1940 that this bill was the first one discussed that day in the Assembly and that "it was finally passed in all its reading stages. Many questions set down on the agenda were not asked inasmuch as the reasons for putting them no longer existed."

Meanwhile the Assembly had passed on November 21 a "Safeguarding of Official Secrets Act," which was Gazetted and came into force on December 6. But this act was concerned with copying, drawing, duplicating, or photographing the objects or sites specified as "considered secret." This would seem to define some material that would be censorable (to say nothing of punishable), but it seems unlikely that a regulation instituting censorship would emanate from this act.

Mail censorship would seem a more likely consequence of the act "controlling communication." Unfortunately there is no further reference to this act in the newspaper. I think we can assume that it was Gazetted and implemented, but it would be more satisfying to know just when and how, and exactly what the Regulations were.

The only references to mail censorship (press censorship is a different matter) in the newspaper are incidental comments by the writer of the "Weekend Diary," a sort of chatty commentary on miscellaneous events and subjects. On 21 December 1940 he noted that "we have reports of letters to both Rangoon and Calcutta…being censored both in Bangkok and at destination." Apparently senders of foreign mail didn’t know that their mail would be censored in Thailand until they had return mail from abroad to inform them of the fact. So apparently censorship of outgoing foreign mail was instituted with no advance notice to the public.

It was not just outgoing mail that was censored. On 31 January 1941, the paper reported that the reason why airmail arriving the night before was not available by noon was that "These mails have not yet been passed by the censor."

(On 22 March 1941 the weekend diarist described an airmail letter from Hong Kong to Bangkok which took 23 days in transit, compared to the normal 18 days for surface mail, because it was censored by the British in Hong Kong, by the Japanese in Canton, by the Chinese in Chungking, by the British again in Rangoon, and by the Thais in Bangkok. –Does anyone have that one in his collection?)

No known international cover emanating from Bangkok before December 1940 bears a Thai censor mark; the earliest reported such cover bearing a Thai mark is 7 December 1940, and that one was actually opened. Given the available evidence, I think we can be confident in assuming that Thailand began censoring foreign mail in the first week of December 1940.

But for the first few weeks, either the system wasn’t fully functioning yet or censors had not yet begun the habit of marking all foreign mail whether or not it had been opened, because several covers from December 1940 and early January 1941 do not bear censor marks. From then on, however, almost all foreign mail originating from or transiting Bangkok bears a Number Circle censor mark. The rare exceptions are probably accidental.

The censorship of domestic mail appears to have been precipitated by the arrival of Japanese forces as allied occupiers. As reported by Alan Cameron in the article mentioned above, a joint Sub-Committee on Communication Matters, composed of Japanese and Thai officials, first met on 12 December 1941—just four days after the first Japanese troops arrived in Thailand—and continued meeting until 16 January 1942. It is in the notes to this final meeting that a statement apparently requiring censorship of domestic mail occurs, but the earliest reported instance of domestic censorship predates that: a 12 January 1942 letter from Ban Don to Bangkok that was actually opened in Ban Don. It appears that no time was lost after the arival of the Japanese in bringing domestic mail too under surveillance. Understandably: the Japanese had good reason to suppose that they were not entirely welcome in the country and that there might well be—as indeed there were—subversive elements among the population.

I think that we can safely conclude that Thai censorship of domestic mail began in early January 1942, or conceivably late December 1941

When Thai censorship of mail ended is more problematical. It depends on the nature of the circled number mark listed here as Type C—the one I think of as "the Fancy Two." I originally assumed that this one was, like the other numbered circles, a censor mark. But I am beginning to question that assumption. To begin with, it appears that only the number "2" appears in this style. And none of the nine covers I have seen with this mark was opened for inspection.

The mark was clearly applied in Thailand, and most likely only in Bangkok. It occurs not only on foreign letters but also on domestic and even on registered official mail. The latest seen use of a Type B number circle is 11 January 1946; this fancy Two is known only from late January to early April 1946.

So I am tentatively prepared to conclude that the regular Thai censorship of mail ended in mid-January 1946, and that this mark represents some other kind of control which ended mid-April 1946; covers from 15 April 1946 on do not bear the mark.

The nine-month period from the end of the war until May 1946, when Thailand was re-integrated into the international postal system, is a very hazy period in Thai postal history, full of expedient ad hoc arrangements necessitated by not only the normal destruction found in the wake of war, but by the presence of now-liberated Allied POW’s and now-confined Japanese military and civilian personnel. We do know that both the British and the Dutch carried mail out of the country in the Fall of 1945 and the early Spring of 1946, mostly from military personnel and foreign civilians, and that this mail was not censored.

In fact, one wonders why any mail would have been censored once hostilities ceased. Perhaps it was merely bureaucratic momentum; no civil servant would take it upon himself to alter procedures until directives came from above, and the national government was at the time pretty much in disarray as well as under intense pressure resulting from the British occupation. And while, as noted, Thai mail bears censor markings until at least January 1946, I have seen no example of mail actually opened for inspection later than August 1944. Granted that covers from 1945 are very scarce, I still hope that some collector can provide evidence of actual inspection being practiced until closer to the end of the war in August 1945.

And if anyone has any idea how the Fancy Two fits into the 1946 picture, it would be a real contribution to the postal history of the period.

PRACTICE OF CENSORSHIP

A comprehensive system of mail censorship is a considerable undertaking, necessitating a sizeable bureaucracy, with all its policies and procedures and concomitant choosing and training of personnel. For some countries, detailed documentation exists of the process of creating and operating a national censorship system, but all that has so far surfaced for Thailand is the information contained in the article be Alan Cameron.

That article makes clear that up until the arrival of the Japanese in December 1941, the Thais actually inspected only some foreign mail, chosen at random. This certainly accords with the observed examples. Almost all foreign mail from December 1940 to December 1941 bears a censor mark, indicating that it passed through a censor’s hands, but only a small proportion of these covers were actually opened in Thailand; most of them were inspected in transit or at destination. (It is interesting to note that covers that were inspected in Thailand were generally not opened in transit ports, bespeaking some confidence in the Thai censors.)

While random sampling can be valuable for descriptive purposes, it would seem an ineffective method for increasing security or gathering helpful information. It is easy to infer that the Japanese did not consider it adequate: an agreement was quickly reached that "The censorship room must be accommodated in a secret place, away from the public eyes, and all letters and telegrams other than those of the Thai and Japanese governments and their allies shall be opened by the censors" (emphasis mine).

This is the statement that would seem to make official the censorship of domestic mail as well as remedy the inadequacies of random sampling as a censorship technique. But opening all mail is surely not a practicable procedure, and indeed, the evidence is that this was not the practice. The censors must quickly have abandoned that goal in favor of the kind of profiling that would single out possibly suspicious items from the mainstream of commercial and routine correspondence. Very few foreign covers after 1941 are available for examination since mail could go only to destinations controlled by the Japanese, and most of these letters were opened, but there are even examples of these that were merely passed along unopened by the censor. And the domestic cover that has actually been opened is the exception rather than the rule—though, again, like the 1941 foreign covers, domestic covers nearly always bear a mark showing that they passed through a censor. With postal cards, of course, one can’t tell whether the censor actually read the message. I expect, in most cases, not.

Nearly all mail from January 1942 through December 1945 bears a censor mark, but there are some exceptions. Official mail was, as agreed, exempt from censorship, and I have seen only one example that was, probably inadvertently, censor-marked. There are also enough New Year’s Greetings postal cards and envelopes that are unmarked to suggest that the censors decided that it was not worthwhile to even touch that seasonal glut of undoubtedly innocent mail.

Other examples are more problematical. The very few examples of non-Bangkok local mail or domestic mail that did not have to transit Bangkok are unmarked. This does not necessarily mean that they were not scrutinized before being passed; most offices outside of Bangkok seem not to have had a routine censor handstamp and manuscript-marked only the mail that they actually inspected.

There are even some foreign covers from 1941 that bear no Thai censor mark. Although the Thai official at the meeting with the Japanese said that there was no other port besides Bangkok where letters and telegrams to foreign countries could be dispatched, which may have been true by then, I think that it was not true prior to the arrival of the Japanese. The unmarked covers in question are mostly from towns in the extreme south of Thailand and addressed to go to or through Malaya. Since south Thailand had direct railroad connections to Penang, it would have been absurd to route mail all the way back to Bangkok and then back down over the same route to point of origin before carrying it on south. (And the foreign community, always anxious for speedy mail, would surely have howled if their letters were subjected to such pointless delay.) These covers, I am convinced, bear no censor mark because they did not transit Bangkok. Whether they were handled by the censor at the provincial office we have again no way of knowing since mail from these offices was generally not marked unless it had actually been opened.

We do not even know how many provincial offices had a censor. From Cameron’s article, we have the Thai official quoted as saying "there is only one censorship room for all mail or telegrams from foreign countries in Bangkok. Local censorship rooms are, however, provided at provincial head post offices for checking local mail."

Note that he says mail from foreign countries, with no mention of mail to foreign countries. But we probably should not lean too legalistically on the language here since the minutes were kept in English (!), presumably the only common second language of the Japanese and Thai officials. It would appear, however, that there was already some provision for "checking local mail." This would seem to be contradicted by the evidence: no domestic mail prior to January 1942 shows any evidence of censorship. Here is one of the many little mysteries of this period that remain to be solved. An accompanying one is which offices other than Bangkok censored mail.

So far, locally censored covers have been reported from Ban Don, Chiang Mai, Chonburi, Lampang, Lopburi, Nakhon Ratchasima, Pichit, Phetchaburi, Phuket, Prae, Ranong, and Uttaradit. Such covers are very scarce, but it is hoped that more will be reported. Surely other sizable offices such as Udon and Ubon and Nakhon Si Thammarat and Songkhla would have rated a censor room, too.

(There is a January 1948 postal card from Nakhon Phanom that bears a manuscript censor mark, but I believe this is a case of a later and limited district censorship due to this far northeastern area’s being at the time a hotbed of Communist insurgency. Since the "Communist problem" persisted there into the 1970’s, one itches to know more about this aspect of Thai postal history and how long it lasted.)

The foregoing summarizes what I have been able to learn so far about the practice of Thai censorship in World War II. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone uncovered some official memo describing what kind of mail ought to be inspected, or, at the personal level, some veteran censor’s memories about his days slicing open selected envelopes at the G.P.O.?

CENSOR MARKS

Type A

10 mm diameter - Sans-Serif type

Type B

11 mm diameter - Serifed type

Type C

Probably not a censor mark

The most familiar Thai censor marks are the Number Circles, of which there are two types, illustrated here as Types A and B. These appear to have been used only in Bangkok, and they are occasionally struck in black, but usually in a purple that can vary from dark to pretty pale, depending on how freshly inked the censor’s ink-pad was (or perhaps how many strikes he was trying to get from one inking). Both types A and B apparently include all numbers from one through 10; all ten have been recorded for Type A, and all but number four for Type B. I have not, however discovered a way to distinguish the "6’s" from the "9’s" except by the orientation of the strike, which in many cases is thoroughly ambiguous.

As with the color, the measurable size of the marking can vary, depending on how carefully or how carelessly the censor executed the strike, how worn the stamp was, and/or how heavily inked it was. These may even have been rubber stamps rather than metal, which would increase the normal variation in strikes. I am convinced that there are only two basic types: strikes from Type A, the smaller, are 10 mm in diameter, plus or minus ½ mm; strikes from Type B are 11½ mm, plus or minus ½ mm. This difference in size, coupled with the fact that the numerals in Type A are sans serif and those in Type B are serifed, makes quick visual identification of type quite easy, even with very blurry strikes.

The questions, for which we have no answers, are: 1) is there any particular significance to the numbers? And 2) why are there two different types?

The 100+ examples that I have seen of Type A are distributed about as evenly among the ten numbers as could be expected in a sample that size, and I discovered no correlation with type of mail, language of letter, or destination. My inference is that there were ten different censor stations at the Bangkok office and that mail to be passed was distributed evenly at random among them. The distribution is different with Type B: of the 50+ examples seen, a full half is number ones. But again, there is no apparent reason for this skewed distribution.

The only noticeable correlation is between Type A’s occurring on foreign mail and Type B’s on domestic, but I am sure that this is purely an accidental result of timing that coincided with the virtual ending of foreign mail out of Thailand and the concurrent beginning of domestic censorship. There are domestic covers from early 1942 with Type A marks, and the few available post-1941 foreign covers bear Type B marks.

It would appear that Type B simply supplanted Type A. But why and how are nagging mysteries. Why change the style? While fairly obvious, it is not after all a very big change. And it was certainly not needed in order to distinguish the Type A number circles from any other similar markings. If the reason was somehow to mark a change in practice or administration, one would expect a clear-cut change-over point from Type A to Type B. But such is not the case. The earliest reported use of a Type B mark is 1 December 1941; the latest example of a Type A (except for a few exceptional covers described below) is 3 August 1942. So there seems to have been at least an eight-month period when both types were in use.

Possibly each number was supplanted separately. Certainly we have no examples of any number being used in both Type A and Type B at the same time. But so few covers from that period are available that absence of evidence can not be considered very conclusive.

Whatever the reasons for the change, it isn’t that Type A handstamps wore out: some of the latest strikes are as crisp and clear as the earliest.

At left, a domestic cover mailed at Chiang Mai on 14 September 1943 to Bangkok. It was mistakenly identified as foreign (the deleted word reads "foreign country" and was obliterated using a red pencil, either by a clerk in Chiang Mai or by Bangkok censor 10, who bucked it to censor 6 (or 9). Although this is a letter card, there was no message written on it. It was probably used as an envelope as paper supplies were short and the letter card paid the regular rate for a domestic letter, so there was no prohibition against enclosures.

The exceptional late uses of Type A mentioned above occur on six covers associated with foreign mail: One is incoming from China, postmarked there 24 June 1943; three are all from the same correspondence, Bangkok to Indo-China, in August 1944; and two are a domestic pair from Chiang Mai to Bangkok in September 1943, but these two have both been manuscript marked "ต่างประเทศ" (foreign country), apparently by a postal clerk misled by their being addressed in English script to someone with a Polish name. The Type A mark on all of these seems to be the "6" (or "9"), but some of the marks are almost indecipherably blurry.

At right, a wartime foreign cover mailed at Bangkok on 26 August 1944 to Indo-China. Apparently Bangkok censor ten (B 10) bucked it to censor six (or nine) for inspection. This is an anomalously late usage for a Type A number circle. (Courtesy Herbert S. Herman)

All but the incoming cover were opened, and four of these five also bear a Type B mark, "8" or "10" or "blur." The Type A "6" is always tying the sealing tape, and the only other covers seen that bear two different number circles are also ones that have been opened. My conclusion is that the first censor into whose hands they came passed along these covers to a different censor proficient in the language of the letter. But why it is a Type A "6" and not some Type B mark that appears at this late date, I have no idea.

At left, a typical 1941 foreign cover. Mailed from Bangkok on 28 June 1941 to New York. It was passed by Bangkok censor nine (A), opened in Singapore by censor 42, with route markings H 31 applied in Singapore. (Courtesy of Don Keen)

(A note: the Type A marks should not be confused with the paired letter/number circle marks applied in 1941 in Singapore. These are, according to Ian Dyce, probably routing marks to help clerks there sort the mail. The number circle of these pairs is very similar to the Type A, but since, during the period of Thai censorship, it is always paired with a letter circle, there is no difficulty distinguishing them.)

At right, an unusual example of war-time airmail. Mailed at Ban Don on 31 March 1942, to Bangkok, with Verbal Handstamp of the Ban Don censor.


Ban Don	Chonburi		Lampang		Phetchaburi

Unidentified		"C M" for Chiang Mai		Chiang Mai

The Number Circles are the only censor marks found from Bangkok, but various provincial offices had Verbal Handstamps of their own design. These are much scarcer than the Number Circles, and no two are quite alike. Probably there are more to be discovered; The ones seen so far are illustrated here. One other has been reported but not seen: from Uttaradit, its regular Swiss circular date stamp struck in red and initialed by the censor.

Examples of Manuscript censor marks

Offices that did not have a handstamp employed Manuscript Marks. These vary widely, of course, depending on the handwriting (and temperament) of the censor. But the format is generally similar: in three lines, first the word "Censored," seconds the name or initials of the censor, and third the date in day-month-year order. Examples have been seen so far from Lopburi, Nakhon Ratchasima, Phuket, Pichit, and Ranong.

We should note that the Thai term "ตรวงแล้ว" is broader in meaning than the English terms "censored" or "passed." Most literally it would translate as "check already," and it can be found right up to the present time in various handstamp and manuscript styles on free-franked mail from military and police personnel on frontier or foreign service. In this usage it does not imply censorship but simply certification that the sender is entitled to free franking.

SEALING TAPE


An inspected domestic cover from Prae, posted in May 1943 to Bangkok. It was opened in Prae and re-sealed using both a OX5 (lower) and OX6 (upper) official seals tied by the normal Prae CDX. It was also passed by censor 6 (or 9) in Bangkok. (Courtesy of Nills Ramm-Ericson)	An unusual cover posted at Lampang on 10 February 1943 to Bangkok. If the boxed "C M" handstamp really is a censor mark, which it appears to be since it is struck to tie the seal, then this cover was inspected in Chiang Mai, which is peculiar since Lampang also had a local censor and mail from Lampang could go directly South to Bangkok. (Courtesy of Nills Ramm-Ericson)

Envelopes that have been opened for inspections are usually re-sealed with the standard Post and Telegraph "Officially Sealed" labels. The usual one is what is identified as OX5 (using Traditional Thai spelling) by Adam Perkal in the October 1984 issue of Thai Philately (Vol. 6 No. 4), but he does illustrate an example of OX6 (Using reformed "Phibun" spelling for the Thai text) from Phayao, dated 30 June 1943.

The Bangkok censors generally used however many of these seals as was necessary to completely cover the opened end of the envelope; provincial censors frequently felt that one was enough.

The only other sealers that I have seen are a thin pinkish-purple paper from Ban Don, and from Ranong a makeshift strip of paper cut from an old printed form.

At left, an opened domestic cover, from Ranong, 23 April 1942, to Bangkok. The Ranong censor made do with a strip of paper cut from an old form to re-seal the envelope. There is a manuscript censor mark over the tape on the reverse.

FURTHER RESEARCH?

I believe that what I have offered here is a dependable overview of Thai censorship during World War II, but there are obviously many questions still unanswered and quite likely some conclusions to be revised should new evidence be forthcoming.

Should anyone have any ideas, information, or examples that would add to or alter anything here, I hope that you will communicate them to me, or, better yet, write them up for the Journal.

FOREIGN CENSOR MARKS FOUND ON THAI MAIL 1939-1946

These are merely typical examples of the more common markings found. In most cases there are many minor varieties of the basic types. There are less frequent marks of quite different styles, usually identifiable by destination or by other markings.

GREAT BRITAIN. Since all foreign mail was examined, there is usually no other British marking than the pre-printed re-sealing tape.

PENANG. Re-sealing tape is plain white or brown paper, or pre-printed "crown" style tape.

Handstamped

Transmission Marks

SINGAPORE. Usually plain brown re-sealing tape, handstamped. Covers that have been opened usually bear an additional marking of a pair of circles, struck in purple, that resemble the Thai circle markings. These are now believed to be routing marks.

Transmission Mark. Covers that have been opened usually bear an additional marking of a pair of circles, struck in purple, that resemble the Thai circle markings. These are now believed to be routing marks.


SOUTH AFRICA. The bi-lingual re-sealing tape is self identifying.	HONG KONG. One of Hong Kong’s is also named accompanied by a handstruck small square with number of censor.


AUSTRALIA. Re-sealing tape usually printed in red (many varieties of types and sizes), plus handstamps.