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As tourists explore the Thai island of Koh Samui, the key setting for the latest season of HBO’s “The White Lotus,” they may pass almond trees, Buddhist bells or a shipwreck. Each of these sights might appear insignificant, yet collectively, they offer hints to a shadowy tale.
Murder mysteries are central to “The White Lotus,” the dramedy that returned on February 16 after two popular seasons filmed in Hawaii and Italy, respectively. But few visitors to its new Thai backdrop will realize they’re surrounded by symbols of this island’s own violent past—one that began with an invasion, peaked with an explosion and still shapes spirituality on Koh Samui.
Jongkol Ormzubsin says she can’t forget the mayhem her family faced 80 years ago. Ormzubsin had fled in terror as a mushroom cloud formed over the sea, southwest of Koh Samui, Thailand’s second-largest island, lying in the Gulf of Thailand. Along with her older sister and younger brother, the 7-year-old Thai girl sprinted inland, through the majestic tropical environment that now lures tourists.
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For three days in June 1945 they hid in a cave, recollects Ormzubsin, now 86 years old. Amid this dark, silent space, the siblings survived on rice balls and pondered what had just happened to their serene home. It is a question she still can’t answer fully, and one that still confounds many Thai academics and foreign World War II historians.
I contacted more than 20 such experts, and no one could untangle all the threads of the fearful incident at Koh Samui. Most popular is a theory that the explosion Ormzubsin witnessed is tied to the aforementioned shipwreck, a sunken oil tanker that tourists can spot reaching out of crystalline waters at Taling Ngam beach in Koh Samui, or casting a shadow in those same seas when viewed from through the window of a plane. But the full story looks set to remain buried in paradise.
What is clear is that “The White Lotus” is already boosting tourist interest in Koh Samui, just as it did for Maui in Hawaii, and Sicily in Italy, where its first two seasons were filmed in and around lavish Four Seasons resorts. Beyond the intrigue of its whodunit plots and its sharp satire of the privileged sphere of wealthy travelers, “The White Lotus” has entranced audiences with splendid scenery.
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Koh Samui is a natural fit. Draped in dense forest, blessed by blissful beaches, teeming with exotic wildlife and surrounded by sublime seas, it embodies the romanticized island. Such natural bounty attracted Koh Samui’s first inhabitants up to 2,000 years ago, says Sunthorn Boonkaew, a tourism lecturer at Thailand’s Walailak University.
For many centuries thereafter, it remained a small, sleepy place. Koh Samui’s tourism industry bloomed in the 1970s, when it became a fixture on Thailand’s backpacker trail, and has since accelerated to the point this island has hundreds of hotels and resorts. In 2023 alone, the island received about 2.2 million visitors. Quieter and more upmarket than fellow Thai beach getaways Phuket and Pattaya, Koh Samui is known for its plush spas and lavish oceanfront resorts.
Now, it’s ready to ride “The White Lotus” wave, says Boonkaew. He believes Koh Samui’s global profile will be greatly boosted by the show, which was filmed primarily on the island, with reported cameos from national capital, Bangkok, and Phuket.
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That latter destination has long overshadowed Koh Samui, says Jasjit Singh Assi, general manager of Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, the main setting for this season. Phuket’s key advantage is accessibility: Its airport has far more international flights. “The White Lotus” is already helping Koh Samui bridge that gap. In January 2025, the island’s luxury accommodation sector experienced “record revenue,” he says. Meanwhile, over the past four months, Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui had significant growth in both website visits and bookings, compared with the same period last year.
As the wave of tourists flows through Koh Samui, a military mystery hides in plain sight. Far less murky are the events that precipitated it. On December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes launched a sneak attack on the U.S. naval base at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, destroying more than 180 U.S. aircraft, damaging or sinking 19 U.S. naval vessels, and killing at least 2,400 Americans.
Just hours beforehand, Japan had invaded Thailand, explains Kanjana Hubik Thepboriruk, a Thai linguist and historian from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. Japanese forces landed at seven locations along the Gulf of Thailand’s coast, but not at Koh Samui, she says. It was a relatively bloodless invasion. After several hours of fighting between Japanese troops and Thai police, military and youth groups, Thailand’s government effectively surrendered.
Thailand agreed to let Japanese forces use Thai territory to advance and occupy British soil in what is today Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar on the proviso that they didn’t attack the Thai military, says John Haseman, author of The Thai Resistance Movement During World War II.
In reality, Thailand had no choice but to accept Japan’s request, Haseman explains. “Thailand did not have the military capability to fight Japan’s forces so chose to accept a peaceful—mostly—military occupation by Japan,” he says.
Thailand soon transitioned into being a World War II ally of Japan. On January 25, 1942, it declared war on Japan’s foes, the Allies, led by the United States and Britain. This decision splintered Thailand’s government and spawned the Free Thai Movement, a local resistance effort that cooperated with the Allies.
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But Haseman says he has very limited knowledge of Koh Samui during the war. This is understandable, says Patrick Jory, an expert on Southeast Asian history at Australia’s University of Queensland, because this history is largely undocumented. “Samui back then was a pretty small place, long before the tourism boom led to development and a population increase,” he explains. “It just doesn’t figure in histories of Thailand, or even of southern Thailand.”
Capable of filling holes in Koh Samui’s World War II timeline is Paul Chambers, an expert on civil-military relations and democratization in Southeast Asia at Thailand’s Naresuan University. He says Koh Samui was used by Japan as a small base of operations, managed jointly with the Royal Thai Navy. A Japanese vessel was reportedly stationed there during the war.
“Japanese oil tankers from the Dutch East Indies heading to and from Japan were in many ways the lifeblood of Imperial Japan,” says Chambers. “They could use Thailand as a transit. Samui could be a stop-off point for these vessels. Controlling Samui was also important because the Japanese did not want the Allies to use Samui as a base of operations to harass Japanese tankers. In fact, the Allies had been using submarines throughout the region to destroy Japanese tankers.”
As a result, the shimmering sea surrounding Samui is likely swollen with World War II shipwrecks, says Chambers. He believes a huge Japanese tanker was bombed alongside the island on June 15, 1945, causing the explosion that had Ormzubsin taking refuge in a cave.
Chambers, Thepboriruk and Boonpisit Srihong, an independent researcher who did his dissertation on Thailand’s World War II history at Chulalongkorn University, are among the few who have found evidence of this attack happening. Chambers says oral history, passed on by Koh Samui locals, states the tanker was torpedoed by a submarine. Thepboriruk adds that official documents from the Japanese military and Britain’s Royal Air Force include map coordinates of a Japanese tanker sunk on that same June date near Koh Samui. Toho Maru was the vessel’s name.
An aerial photo, which claims to show a Japanese tanker in smoke after being bombed near Koh Samui on June 15, 1945, is displayed on an Australian government website for the Australian War Memorial. Its caption states the ship was attacked from the air by the No. 356 Liberator squadron of Britain’s Royal Air Force, which only further muddies this tale.
Japanese military responded to that ambush by shooting down six of the Allies’ B-24 bomber planes, according to research by Srihong. One of the pilots of these planes parachuted to safety. Named Edward Thomas Durtnall, he was then captured on Koh Samui and sent to a POW camp at Thammasat University in Bangkok, Srihong says.
All the while, residents of the island remained in fear, says Thepboriruk, referencing oral accounts. “Locals escaped inland up the mountains and hid along crevices of the mountain and in caves,” she says. “After Toho Maru was sunk, dark oil washed up along the shores for two to three days, but no bodies.”
This mirrors the memories of Ormzubsin. For months previous to the explosion, she’d watched Japanese tankers cruise by, disturbing the crystalline waters of Taling Ngam beach, where she lived with her family. World War II had affected but not terrorized her community, Ormzubsin recalls—until that day, when the trees shook, her ears rang, and flames towered near Koh Samui.
“Two to three days later, we started to see black oil stranded on the beach, and I could see a ship mast emerging from the sea,” she recounts. “That’s when we figured there was a sinking. After that explosion, every time I was at the school and there was a plane sound, the teacher told us to evacuate to the temporary bunker.”
Chambers finds Ormzubsin’s account, which was translated for Smithsonian by her granddaughter Petra Chuenarrom, a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to be credible, because reports of the Japanese tanker sinking place it at Taling Ngam, where Ormzubsin grew up. “[The shipwreck] can still be seen from Taling Ngam beach,” Chambers says. “The mast has been protruding above the sea for many years.”
Nowadays, this tranquil stretch of sand in southwest Koh Samui is lined by tourist accommodations, including the lavish InterContinental Koh Samui Resort. Foreigners bathe in Taling Ngam’s azure waters or rest beneath its almond trees. They could not know this tall, shady species is tied to the terror of World War II, according to Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui front office manager Pimlalana Mankong, who has lived on the island for a decade. During the war, many Koh Samui residents sought solace in Buddhist rituals, she says. Praying to its almond trees gave them calm and hope.
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In Thai Buddhist lore, these trees, thousands of which spike Koh Samui, are home to benevolent spirits, says political scientist Pavin Chachavalpongpun, from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Japan’s Kyoto University. “Because of its strength and size, [the almond tree] is often considered very spiritual in terms of providing protection from evil,” he explains.
So, too, are the bells tourists can see at Koh Samui’s Buddhist temples, three of which are actually rusty World War II bomb covers, says Boonkaew, the tourism lecturer at Thailand’s Walailak University. One such bell is attached to a tree at Wat Na Phra Lan, a picturesque Buddhist temple on the island’s northeast coast, just four miles from the latest resort setting of “The White Lotus.”
Buddhists believe there’s merit in turning items associated with negativity, like a bomb cover, into a worshipped object like a temple bell, says Neeranooch Malangpoo, a cultural anthropologist at Thailand’s Chiang Mai University. “A sacred place such as a temple can also tame evil energy of the objects,” she says.
Each time Koh Samui’s bomb cover bells are rung, memories of World War II float across the island. Whereas tourists drawn by the glamour of “The White Lotus” may hear just a gentle, pleasant sound, many locals understand the deeper, darker significance. Some Thais, like Ormzubsin, even recognize its link to the Japanese tanker explosion.
Meanwhile, tourists who visit picturesque Wat Na Phra Lan will walk past its bomb bell and peek into the prayer hall, where they can find another clue to this little-known history. There, hanging on the wall, is a photo of a tanker, the Toho Maru.
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