Thailand’s Military Youth Movement (01)

 Thailand’s Military Youth Movement (01)

Under the first administration of Thai Premier Phibunsonggram (between1938 to1943), Thai youth were brought up in an atmosphere of militant patriotism, which finally fostered hostility towards all foreigners. Phibunsonggram was responsible for having devised an insidious means of ultra-patriotic propaganda through the “Yuvachon” (in Thai ยุวชนทหาร) or the Youth Movement, which was created in 1935, by him, as Minister of Defense.

Premier Phibunsonggram

The movement was founded among the male students in the schools throughout the country and in the two universities in Bangkok (Chulalongkorn University and the University of Moral and Political Sciences now Thammasart). There was in addition a movement for girl students, known as “Yuvanari” units. The “Yuvanari” (in Thai ยุวนารี) were supposed to qualify for duty as nurses in time of war. The aim of these organizations was to give the young intellectual class a pre-military training so as to fit them for military service and to provide reserve officers.

It also engaged in the indoctrination of children from an early age in accordance with the views and aspirations of the military party that the nation had to be from top to bottom a nation of soldiers and that in time of war the whole nation would engage in fighting field.

The Director of Yuvachon Department in the Ministry of Defense was Colonel Prayoon Phmonmontri, the son of a Thai father by a German mother, who had visited Nazi youth organizations