 By 1944 with the war going against the Japanese after defeats in Burma and the Philippines they then feared an Allied offensive in French Indochina.The Japanese were already suspicious of the French; the liberation of Paris in August 1944 raised further doubts as to where the loyalties of the colonial administration lay.The Vichy regime by this time had ceased to exist, but its colonial administration was still in place in Indochina, though Decoux had recognized and contacted the Provisional Government of the French Republic led by Charles de Gaulle.