Victory Monument

This guide to Victory Monument in Bangkok follows Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram's calculation in late 1940, as France sat occupied by Germany and its Indochina colony looked exposed, and the brief war he launched into Cambodia and Laos that January. It traces the fighting, the Japanese mediation that followed, and the five bayonets and 656 names Bangkok raised in celebration soon after. Listen for the sculptor Corrado Feroci's private verdict on the monument he was asked to build, delivered under his adopted Thai name Silpa Bhirasri.