Thailand was in a tough position, officially allied with Japan but with a strong Free Thai resistance movement secretly helping the Allies. Many Thais risked their lives to support the Americans and British. Closure for the family is the most important thing here.

14 hours ago, Geoff914 said:

So you suggestion was to do what exactly? "Chiang had those two divisions eaten up and annihilated for nothing" Were it not for the Atom bomb isn't that exactly what would have happened once Japan was invaded?

The Burma theater, in which context this original post takes place, stalemated. The loss of this pilot, in fact, illustrates as to how the campaign had stagnated until the very end. An air campaign interdicting Japanese airbases such as the one in this original post, and Japanese troops, while sending supplies to China via air. Why? Because the Burma Road was cut off. And the entire reason the two Chinese divisions, newly elite formed and one the very first outfitted ROC mechanized division, were sent was to prevent the closing of that road. Alas the British front collapsed, the British retreated towards India without informing the Chinese, who were surrounded and annihilated with their retreat cut off. Two divisions lost that the Allies pressured Chiang to send to Burma and then didn't tell them when they decided to skedaddle back to India. Useless. Fiasco. And while it may have been the British who skedaddled back to India leaving the Chinese to die, it was the American general Stilwell who pressured them into being deployed into Burma in the first place. Stilwell and Marshall undermined Chiang during the entire war. Stilwell died before but Marshall undermined him afterwards, insisting Mao was a genial land reformer.