 On September 22, under heavy pressure from Germany, Decoux signed a treaty giving Japanese forces free movement through the area, effectively ending resistance against them.Although the Vichy regime continued to administer Indochina, the Japanese, which stationed a garrison of 8,000 troops in Cambodia, were the true masters of the region.However, because France was officially, at that time, an ally of Japan, Cambodia temporarily avoided the violence and disorder that was tearing apart so much of the rest of the world, and the life of the French colonists, although more isolated from the outside world, went on more or less as before.