Thus, in a mere five months, the Japanese-French colon relationship had gone from one of collaboration, to a war in which Japanese troops had suddenly either slaughtered or interned their erstwhile French allies, to a peace in which the surviving French prisoners of war were released to help round up the defeated Japanese, to another war in which the French freed their Japanese prisoners of war to fight alongside them against the Viet Minh—and 1945 wasn’t even over yet.
