Ananda Mahidol


Ananda Mahidol, posthumous reigning title Phra Athamaramathibodin, was the eighth monarch of Siam from the Chakri dynasty as Rama VIII. At the time he was recognised as king by the National Assembly in March 1935, he was a nine-year-old boy living in Switzerland. He returned to Thailand in December 1945, but six months later, in June 1946, he was found shot dead in his bed. Although at first thought to have been an accident, his death was ruled a murder by medical examiners, and three royal pages were later executed following very irregular trials. The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have been the subject of much controversy.

Name

"Ananda Mahidol" is one word in Thai and is his given name. King Vajiravudh, his uncle, sent a telegram on 13 October 1925 giving him this name. It is pronounced "Ananta Mahidon" and means "the joy of Mahidol". When he held his birth rank of Mom Chao—the lowest rank of Thai princes—he used the surname "Mahidol", his father's given name. His full name and title was thus, "Mom Chao Ananda Mahidol Mahidol".
With his ascension, he became known as "Somdet Phra Chao Yu Hua Ananda Mahidol". Somdet Phra Chao Yu Hua is the title of a Thai king prior to coronation.
After his death, King Bhumibol Adulyadej posthumously renamed him to elevate his title equal to a crowned king. He was posthumously renamed again in 1996, this time into an auspiciously long name similar to the name of King Mongkut, Chulalongkorn, Vajiravudh, and Prajadhipok. Nowadays, Thais refer to him officially as "Phra Bat Somdet Phra Poramenthra Maha Ananda Mahidol Phra Atthama Ramathibodindara", an abbreviation of his name given in 1996.

Early life

Prince Ananda Mahidol was born in Heidelberg, Germany. He was the first son of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej of Songkla and Mom Sangwan who were studying there at the time. He was the first Thai King to be born outside of the country.
He went with his parents to Paris, Lausanne, and then to Massachusetts, when in 1927, his uncle, King Prajadhipok, issued a royal edict elevating him to the higher princely class of Phra Worawong Ther Phra Ong Chao.
The family returned to Thailand in 1928 after Prince Mahidol finished his medical studies at Harvard University. Prince Mahidol died at age 37 in 1929, when Ananda Mahidol was just four years old. His widowed mother was thus left to raise her family alone.
A revolution in 1932 ended the absolute monarchy and raised the possibility that King Prajadhipok might abdicate. Queen Savang Vadhana, his grandmother, was concerned about Prince Ananda Mahidol's safety, since he was one of the likely heirs to the throne. It was then suggested that Mom Sangwal and her children return to Lausanne, and when they did so in 1933, the official reason given was for the health and further education of the princes.
Prince Ananda Mahidol spent most of his youth in Switzerland. However, when King Prajadhipok's abdication appeared imminent, the prince's mother was approached by a member of the government, asking for her opinion about Ananda Mahidol succeeding as monarch.

Circumstances of succession

King Prajadhipok abdicated in 1935 due to political quarrels with the new quasi-democratic government as well as health problems. The king decided to abstain from exercising his prerogative to name a successor to the throne. By that time, the crown had already passed from Prince Mahidol's line to that of his half-brother's when his eldest full brother, Crown Prince Maha Vajirunhis, died as a teenager during King Chulalongkorn's reign. A half-brother, Prince Vajiravudh replaced Prince Vajirunhis as the crown prince. He eventually succeeded to the throne in 1910 as King Rama VI. In 1924 the king instituted the Palace Law of Succession in order to govern subsequent successions. The law gave priority to the children of his mother Queen Regent Saovabha Phongsri over the children of King Chulalongkorn's two other royal wives. The law was enacted on the death of King Vajiravudh in 1925 and the crown passed to his youngest brother, Prince Prajadhipok of Sukhothai.
Offering the throne to Prince Prajadhipok was not without a debate. In doing so, another candidate was bypassed: Prince Chula Chakrabongse, son of the late Field Marshal Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath of Phitsanulok, who before his death had been the heir-apparent to King Vajiravudh. It was questioned whether the Succession Law enacted by King Vajiravudh actually barred Prince Chakrabongse Bhuvanath from succession on the grounds that he married a foreigner. However, his marriage had taken place before this law was enacted and had been endorsed by King Chulalongkorn himself. There was no clear resolution, but in the end the many candidates were passed over and Prince Prajadhipok was enthroned.
When King Prajadhipok later abdicated, since he was the last remaining son of Queen Saovabha, the crown went back to the sons of the queen whose rank was next to hers: Queen Savang Vadhana, mother of the late Crown Prince Vajirunahis. Besides the late crown prince, she had two more sons who survived to adulthood: Prince Sommatiwongse Varodaya of Nakhon Si Thammarat, who had died without a son in 1899, and Prince Mahidol who, although deceased, had two living sons. It thus appeared that Prince Ananda Mahidol would be the first person in the royal line of succession.
Nevertheless, the same debate over the half-foreign Prince Chula Chakrabongse occurred again. It was argued that King Vajiravudh had virtually exempted the prince's father from the ban in the Succession Law, and the crown might thus be passed to him.
However, since the kingdom was now governed under a constitution, it was the cabinet that would decide. Opinion was split on the right to succession of Prince Chula Chakrabongse. A key figure was Pridi Phanomyong, who persuaded the cabinet that the Law should be interpreted as excluding the prince from succession, and that Prince Ananda Mahidol should be the next king. It also appeared more convenient for the government to have a monarch who was only nine years old and studying in Switzerland. On 2 March 1935, Prince Ananda Mahidol was elected by the National Assembly and the Thai government to succeed his uncle, King Prajadhipok, as the eighth king of the Chakri dynasty.

Reign

As the new king was still a child and was still studying in Switzerland, the National Assembly appointed Colonel Prince Anuwatjaturong, Lieutenant Commander Prince Aditya Dibabha, and Chao Phraya Yommaraj as his regents.
In 1938, at age thirteen, Ananda Mahidol visited Siam for the first time as its monarch. The king was accompanied during his visit by his mother and his younger brother, Bhumibol Adulyadej. Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram was prime minister at the time and during most of Ananda Mahidol's brief reign.

World War II

On 8 December 1941, in concert with the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces invaded and occupied Thailand. King Ananda was away from the country, as he had returned to Switzerland to complete his studies, and Pridi Phanomyong served as regent in his absence. From 24 January 1942, occupied Thailand became a formal ally of the Empire of Japan and a member of the Axis. Under Plaek Pibunsonggram, Thailand declared war on the Allied powers. The regent refused to sign the declaration and it was thus legally invalid. Many members of the Thai government, including the Siamese embassy in Japan, acted as de facto spies in the Seri Thai underground on the side of the Allies, funnelling secret information to British intelligence and the US Office of Strategic Services. By 1944, it was apparent that Japan was going to lose the war. Bangkok suffered heavily from the Allied bombing raids. These, plus economic hardships, made the war and the government of Plaek Pibunsonggram very unpopular. In July, Plaek Pibunsonggram was ousted by the Seri Thai-infiltrated government. The National Assembly reconvened and appointed the liberal lawyer Khuang Aphaiwong prime minister. Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, and Allied military responsibility for Thailand fell to Britain.

Post-war

Only after the end of World War II could Ananda Mahidol return to Thailand. He returned for a second visit in December 1945 with a degree in law. Despite his youth and inexperience, he quickly won the hearts of the Thai people, who had continued to revere the monarchy through the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. The Thai were delighted to have their king amongst them once again. One of his well-remembered activities was a highly successful visit to Bangkok's Chinatown Sampheng Lane, which was intended to defuse the post-war tensions that lingered between Bangkok's ethnic Chinese and Thai people.
Foreign observers, however, believed that Ananda Mahidol did not want to be king and felt his reign would not last long. Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the British commander in Southeast Asia, visited Bangkok in January 1946 and described the king as "a frightened, short-sighted boy, his sloping shoulders and thin chest behung with gorgeous diamond-studded decorations, altogether a pathetic and lonely figure". At a public function, Mountbatten wrote: "is nervousness increased to such an alarming extent, that I came very close to support him in case he passed out".

Death

On 9 June 1946, the king was found shot dead in his bedroom in the Boromphiman Throne Hall, only four days before he was scheduled to return to Switzerland to finish his doctoral degree in law at the University of Lausanne.

Events of 9 June 1946

, pathologist to the British Home Office and founding chairman of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Guy's Hospital in London, performed a forensic analysis of the king's death and recounted the following sequence of events on the morning of 9 June 1946:
An initial radio announcement on 9 June surmised that the king was accidentally killed while toying with his pistol.
Soon after the death, the Democrat Party spread rumours that left-wing prime minister Pridi Banomyong was behind the death.
Following the change of prime minister, in October 1946, a Commission of Inquiry reported that the king's death could not have been accidental, but that neither suicide nor murder was satisfactorily proved.
In November 1947, Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram staged a coup against the elected government of Pridi, appointed Democrat Party leader Khuang Aphaiwong as Prime Minister, and ordered a trial. King Ananda's secretary, Senator Chaleo Patoomros, and the pages, But and Chit, were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder the king.
The trial began in August 1948. Prior to the trial, Pibulsonggram admitted to U.S. Ambassador Edwin F. Stanton that he was doubtful that the trial would resolve the mystery of Ananda Mahidol's death. The prosecution's case was supported by 124 witnesses and such voluminous documentary evidence that defence counsel asked for an adjournment to give them time to consider it. When this was refused the counsel resigned, and new counsel was found. Later, two of the defence counsel were arrested and charged with treason. Of the remaining two, one resigned, leaving only a single young lawyer for the defence, Fak Na Songkhla. Towards the end of the case he was joined by Chaleo Patoomros's daughter, who had just graduated.
The lengthy trial finally ended in May 1951. The court ruled that King Ananda had been assassinated, but that Chaleo had not been proved guilty and that neither of the pages could have fired the fatal shot. However, they found Chit guilty of being party to the crime. The charges against Chaleo and But were dismissed and they were released.
Chit appealed against his conviction, and the prosecution appealed against the acquittal of Chaleo and But. After fifteen months of deliberation the Appeals Court dismissed Chit's appeal, and also found But guilty.
Chit and But appealed to the Supreme Court, which deliberated for ten more months before finally upholding both convictions, and this time convicting Chaleo as well.
The three men's petitions for clemency were rejected by King Rama IX on 17 February 1955 and they were executed by firing squad the next day. King Bhumibol Adulyadej later said that he did not believe they were guilty.

Alternative explanations of the death

The king's death is still seen as a mystery. The subject is never openly discussed in Thailand, though numerous books have been written about it in Thai. All the principals known to be related in any way to the death are now deceased.

Bhumibol Adulyadej

On 15 June 1946, American Chargé d'affaires Charles Yost met with Foreign Minister Direk Jayanama, who had just had an audience with the new king, Bhumibol Adulyadej. In his report to the US State Department, Yost noted,

King Bhumiphol... informed the Foreign Minister that he considered the rumors absurd, that he knew his brother well and that he was certain that his death had been accidental... What the King said to Direk does not necessarily represent what he really believes, it is nevertheless interesting that he made so categorical a statement to the Foreign Minister.

In 1948, Pinit Intaratood, who had just been appointed as the police officer in charge, went to the Villa Vadhana in Lausanne to question King Bhumibol. During the inquiry, the king looked gloomy, so Pinit decided to ask for forgiveness. The king was smiling and says:
However, in a 1980 BBC documentary, Bhumibol stated that although the court ruled that the death was 'proven' not an accident, "one doesn't know." He noted in English:

The investigation provided the fact that he died with a bullet wound in his forehead. It was proved that it was not an accident and not a suicide. One doesn’t know.... But what happened is very mysterious, because immediately much of the evidence was just shifted. And because it was political, so everyone was political, even the police were political, not very clear.
I only know when I arrived he was dead. Many people wanted to advance not theories but facts to clear up the affair. They were suppressed. And they were suppressed by influential people in this country and in international politics.

Sulak Sivaraksa

, a prominent conservative and monarchist, wrote that Pridi's role in the event was he protected a wrongdoing royal, and prevented an arrest of a person who destroyed the evidence. He wrote a Facebook post in 2015 claiming: "in truth, the murderer of King Rama VIII is not Pridi Banomyong. That person is still alive, even though not intending in doing so."

Seni Pramoj and the Democrat Party

and the Democrat Party spread rumours that Pridi was behind the death. Yost noted in a US State Department communication:

"... Within forty-eight hours after the death of the late King, two relatives of Seni Pramoj, first his nephew and later his wife, came to the Legation and stated categorically their conviction that the King had been assassinated at the instigation of the Prime Minister. It was of course clear that they had been sent by Seni. I felt it necessary to state to both of them in the strongest terms, in order to make it perfectly clear that this Legation could not be drawn into Siamese political intrigues, that I did not believe these stories and that I considered the circulation at this time of fantastic rumors un-supported by a shred of evidence to be wholly in-excusable. The British Minister informed me this morning that he had also been approached by several members of the Opposition to whom he had stated that he accepted the official account of the King's death and that he would not be drawn into any further discussion of the matter.

Pridi Banomyong

On 14 June 1946, Yost met with Pridi Banomyong and made the following report to the US State Department:

" very frankly about the whole situation and ascribed the King's death to an accident, but it was obvious that the possibility of suicide was at the back of his mind. was violently angry at the accusations of foul play leveled against himself and most bitter in the manner in which he alleged that the Royal Family and the Opposition, particularly Seni Pramoj and Phra Sudhiat, had prejudiced the King and especially the Princess Mother against him."

Plaek Pibulsonggram

After overthrowing Pridi Banomyong in a coup, Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram told US Ambassador Edwin Stanton that he "personally doubted whether Pridi was directly involved for two reasons: firstly,... Pridi is a very clever politician and secondly,... he has a 'kind heart'." Pibul concluded to the Ambassador that "he did not think would cause anybody to be murdered. Pibul's wife, present in the meeting, seconded her husband's observations. However, Pibul noted that it was possible that Pridi had covered up or destroyed some of the evidence to protect the successor, Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Keith Simpson

, a forensic pathologist who investigated the king's death, found it highly unlikely that the death was due to suicide, noting that:
An account of the death is given in William Stevenson's The Revolutionary King, written with the co-operation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. This account exculpates those executed and suggests that Ananda Mahidol was murdered by Tsuji Masanobu. Masanobu was a former Japanese intelligence officer who had been active in Thailand during the war and, at the time of Ananda Mahidol's death, was hiding out in Thailand for fear of being prosecuted for his war crimes.
Stevenson's account is that Ananda Mahidol could not have killed himself, either by suicide or by accident. He was found lying on his back in his bed, not wearing his glasses, without which he was almost blind. He had a small bullet wound in his forehead and a somewhat larger exit wound in the back of his head. His pistol, an M1911 given him by a former US Army officer, was not nearby. The M1911 is not especially prone to accidental discharge; it will fire only if considerable pressure is applied to the safety plate at the back of the butt at the same time as the trigger is depressed. It is a heavy pistol and awkward to use by an untrained person. It would have been almost impossible for Ananda Mahidol, a frail 20-year-old, to lie on his back and shoot himself in the forehead with such a weapon. Had he done so, the impact, according to forensics experts, would have blown his skull apart, not caused the small wounds seen by many witnesses. Stevenson writes that no cartridge case was found, and subsequent inquiries ordered by King Bhumibol, but suppressed by later governments, found that the Colt had not been fired.

Rayne Kruger

Another account, which concluded that Ananda Mahidol's death was the result of suicide, was explored by journalist Rayne Kruger in his book, The Devil's Discus. The book is banned in Thailand. However, a website by a Thai writer has provided a summary of Kruger's arguments, and it links to other material about the death. Kruger, who had unprecedented access to members of the inner circle of the Thai royal family, drew the conclusion that Ananda's death was most probably an 'accidental suicide'. Thus, said Kruger, it appears the sad, most likely accidental, death of the young king was exploited for the purposes of a political vendetta, and that three innocent victims were executed to maintain the façade.

Paul Handley

Paul Handley, author of a biography of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, wrote that either suicide or an accidental shooting by Prince Bhumibol was responsible for the king's death: "I have no idea whether Ananda shot himself or was killed by Bhumibol, the two possibilities most accepted among historians. If the latter, I clearly term it an accident that occurred in play".

Tributes to King Ananda

Ancestors