Cut off clean by a single sword stroke the severed head of 32-year-old Colonel Hata Kawashima of Imperial Japanese Army 15th Corps fell to the ground.
It bounced once and slowly rolled down into a small depression a couple of yards away and rested on blindfolded face. The kneeling body with the elbows tightly bound behind stayed horribly still except for the quiet hissing sound of two spouting streams of blood from the severed neck-arteries. The headless body then slowly fell sideways to the ground and lay there lifeless.
As Captain Htun Hla the 20-years-old CO of the guerilla battalion 108 of the renegade Burmese National Army began to wipe the blood off the ancient steel blade of Colonel Kawashima’s own Muramasa sword, two Burmese privates waiting nearby dragged the headless body by the legs to the freshly dug hole. The body went down the big hole in the ground followed by the head.
Meanwhile a small group of young Burmese officers standing guards over the remaining six captive Japanese officers kneeling together on the ground nearby began to bayonet their bounded prisoners as if the execution of the highest ranking Japanese officer by the CO was a signal to finish the rest as planned.
The Burmese had completed the massacre of seven Japanese officers in less than an hour just after the first light hit the grassy ground of the killing field as the rising sun came over from the eastern foothills of the Pegu-Yoma range. Bodies were thrown into the deep pit and covered quickly with loose soil and rocks. The tall grass amongst the wild banana plants and green bamboo brushes would eventually grow over the mass grave and forever hide the tragic remains of the slain.
The date was 27 March 1945 just a week since the newly formed guerilla battalion hastily left Rangoon on 19 March for the thick jungles of lower-middle Burma as soon as the Great Marching Parade of the Burmese National Army in Rangoon’s vast Cantonment Park was over.
In his parade speech to his army General Aung San commanded them to find the nearest enemy and ruthlessly eliminate them. For the group of senior Japanese officers standing behind the podium the nearest enemy was to be the advancing British 14th Army on the western front. But for the Burmese troops on the parade ground it was a code word for their Japanese masters. The long-awaited rebellion had started and that day of 27 March later became the celebrated Armed Forces Day of the Union of Burma.
The Second World War was almost over as the hopelessly defeated Japanese Army was retreating in disarray from the Burma-India border. The Field Marshall Slim-led British 14th Army had successfully stopped their advance into the Indian sub-continent and were now on an aggressive march into Burma.
The Axis’s grand plan to enslave the world by fully encircling it by the Imperial Japanese Army from the East and the Nazi German Army from the West and then meeting their two mighty forces at the Caucasus was already in tatters. The advancing German army was stopped and then repelled by the Red Army at Stalingrad and the Japanese by the British at Imphal and Kohima on the border.
After reading the prevailing political and military situations correctly, General Aung San, the 30-year-old willing ally of the invading Japanese, secretly met with British Field Marshall William Slim and sold his former masters into the hands of rapidly approaching British 14th Army.
Aung San’s last minute switch would also enable him to become a key player in the future political theatre of Burma rather than to be defeated and prosecuted later as a war criminal by the victorious British keen to get their big hands on him as a revenge for their defeat and withdrawal from Burma in late 1941.
To execute his well-timed treachery Aung San sent all the battalions of his Japanese trained Burmese National Army to the rural areas on the pretext of fighting against the rapidly advancing British Army.
Massacre
To participate in this historic rebellion the guerilla battalion 108 was formed overnight mainly with the 300 odd strong Burmese student cadets and the Burmese staff of the Japanese Military Academy in Mingaladon, the garrison town on the outskirts of Rangoon.
(The predecessor of modern DSA (Defense Services Academy) the wartime Academy established by the Japanese Imperial Army produced many hundreds of Burmese graduate officers who later became the leaders and the backbone of the modern Burmese army. General Tin Oo of NLD fame, ex-army-chief General Kyaw Htin, ex-President Colonel “Butcher of Rangoon” Sein Lwin, and ex-President Dr. Maung Maung are just some of the Academy’s many graduates. Almost everybody who was powerful during Ne Win’s long rule is an Academy graduate.)
Himself an early graduate of the Academy, Lieutenant Htun Hla, the most senior Burmese instructor of the Academy and a veteran of the war of independence for almost four years, was quickly promoted to Captain and appointed the battalion CO.
The nine serving Japanese instructors of the academy including the Japanese Principal of the academy Colonel Hata Kawashima were made the military advisors and the whole battalion quickly marched out to their assigned area at the foothills of Pegu-Yoma. The battalion was under the direct command of General Aung San who was also the divisional CO of the First Military Division.
Apart from the orders detailing the battalion’s assigned duties Captain Htun Hla was also given a special envelope directly from General Aung San with a strict instruction to open only at the designated location in the jungle. Contents were for his eyes only: the envelope bore the special warning on it.
So as soon as they arrived at the jungle location and after setting up temporary arrangements for the battalion quarters, Htun Hla opened the envelope and the contents of the single page letter inside shocked him to the bone. With three lines in a single paragraph in his own handwriting, Aung San ordered young Htun Hla the immediate arrest and execution of all the Japanese officers attached to his battalion.
Only Colonel Kawashima, Aung San’s old comrade since his early Academy days in Japan, must be given an honorable Bushido death but the rest were up to him to be disposed of in whatever ways he fancied.
Htun Hla immediately called all Burmese officers into his small command tent and worked out a plan and issued the orders to arrest the nine Japanese officers. The time was well into the dark night and the Japanese were quickly jolted out of their small beds, tightly bound behind by their elbows, also bound by their shins, and blindfolded.
Once bound and tied two together inside their respective field tents except for the Colonel Kawashima alone in his tent the guards were posted outside each of the five small tents as the plan was to execute them at dawn.
A young cadet officer named Kyaw Htin was assigned as the guard officer for the night. Only 16-years-old he was a lanky boy-soldier who eventually became a tall general and the Chief of the modern Burmese Army in the late 1970s and the whole of the 1980s.
During that long night he was tremendously bothered by his assignment tomorrow to bayonet Lieutenant Itoe Sakura, his allotment of the nine Japanese officers. Diminutive Sakura was almost 10 years older than him and one of the rare breed of wartime Japanese infantry officers for he was a kind and fair-minded person.
Back at the Academy Kyaw Htin was becoming closer to Lieutenant Sakura than any of his other students and now the thought of having to bayonet him to death after the dark night was over was getting totally unbearable as the night wore on. Just a couple of weeks ago back in the Academy Sakura was sharing with him the private thoughts of going back to his university teaching job, marrying his long-sufering sweet heart, and starting a family back in Tokyo once the war was over. Smart Sakura knew very well that Japan was badly beaten and the big war was nearly over.
Now he had to brutally destroy Sakura’s sweet dreams and Kyaw Htin was facing a shocking moral dilemma of whether to obey the brute order and kill him or else to boldly let his dear teacher and close friend escape from the certain death by his own hands. It took him more than four hours thinking while walking non-stop up and down along the line of Japanese tents to make the decision. Finally he bravely decided to do the right thing.
He walked up to the tent where Sakura and another young Japanese lieutenant named Sukuma Kato were kept for the night under guard. Kyaw Htin dismissed the boy soldier guard back to his quarters and immediately opened the flap of the green tent and went inside as the boy walked away with a bayoneted-Japanese-rifle taller than him on his narrow shoulder.
He quickly removed the blindfolds and untied the ropes off two Japanese officers shaking with fear in the small tent lit brightly inside by a kerosene field lamp hanging from apex. “You two have to run now. They’re gonna kill you all at dawn!” he just simply said to Sakura and Kato who were now rubbing their arms hard to get their normal blood circulation back.
“How about Colonel and others? Can you let them go too?” Sakura quietly asked. “No, I can’t do that. I am just letting you and Kato go. They assigned me to bayonet you at dawn. If I have to obey that order I don’t think I can live the rest of my life in peace with your blood on my hands. Now just go, before I change my mind!” He tried to rush them out of his sight and they both stood up and got out off the tent.
“Will you get into a trouble? I think you will!” Sakura aired his genuine concern for his beloved student. He was still inside the tent from the entrance with half of his small body already outside and Kato’s plump frame already well out off the tent.
“Don’t worry about me. I don’t think anything bad will happen to me. Captain’s just following the orders from General Aung San. He will understand my feeling and my conscience. You two just run north and try to surrender to the very first English army unit you meet. They will take you in as POWs and let you live. Avoid the Burmese army at any cost. They will just simply shoot you. Now just go, get out out of here!” Kyaw Htin raised his voice and Sakura quickly disappeared. Then was the last time he saw Sakura till they met again in April 1976 in Rangoon, exactly 31 years later.
The day was almost dawning as Kyaw Htin calmly walked up to the CO’s tent, found him sitting up straight on his small bed unable to sleep, and simply told him what he just did. He was right about Htun Hla though. He placed him under guard inside his tent for only that day as the punishment and nothing else.
Later the execution of the seven Japanese left was done as planned and the battalion tried to forget all about the Japanese officers and bury their inner guilt for brutally killing their former teachers and trusted comrades deep inside their unconscious minds.
Bone Collectors
The year was 1976 and I was still a student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology in then military-ruled Socialist Burma when two members of a Japanese bone collecting team visited our house in downtown Rangoon.
One day in the late afternoon, just back from RIT, I saw two old men sitting in our downstairs living room. One was thin and other one was plump and both were very fair in complexion like Chinese but they were not Chinese.
I had never seen a Japanese person before in my life. So I didn’t know they were from Japan until my mother told me. They were anxiously waiting for my father who apparently was uncharacteristically out of the house for some urgent reason and didn’t come back till very late at night. Conveniently he only arrived back after the two old men had gone back to the Japanese Embassy where they were staying while in Burma.
The next day was the same again as the two old men patiently waited in our dim living room for my father, the soon-to-return, who didn’t even come back that night. This repeated for a few more days and I had to ask my mother about my father’s strange behavior of continuously avoiding the very persistent foreign guests.
She couldn’t enlighten me except that these two old men were his army mates back in the big war, as she hardly knew much about my father’s wartime activities. Like many other hardened and traumatised veterans my father completely shut most of his military past from us as if he was deliberately hiding it.
One thing I didn’t know at that time was that our xenophobic dictator General Ne Win had a sudden wave of nostalgia for his past and impulsively allowed a team of Japanese bone collectors of their war dead for two short weeks into Burma, then tightly closed to the outside world since he violently seized power in 1962.
These two Japanese men were part of that team and they were trying to seek the locations of the war graves of their fallen from my father. They didn’t speak either Burmese or English and also I and my mother didn’t know a single word of Japanese. So everyday they just sat there occasionally drinking tea and nibbling the snacks we provided for them as they patiently waited and waited and waited for my father in complete silence.
But my father deliberately avoided them for the whole 14 days they were allowed in Burma and finally they had to leave Burma empty handed. After roughly knowing the reason for their visits I was seriously baffled by my father’s strange behavior. Later I tried to investigate the reason for my father’s absurd reaction to them.
It took me a while to get to the bottom without his cooperation till I met some of his former soldiers from his old guerilla battalion. From them I knew the whole story and discovered that the two old men patiently and anxiously waiting for my old father’s return in our living room for almost two weeks were the former lieutenants Itoe Sakura and Sukuma Kato. The lucky survivors of the jungle massacre.
Now over the age of sixty they were still trying desperately to locate the remains of Colonel Kawashima and his six officers. At the War Office they met General Kyaw Htin who deliberately sent them to his former CO’s house as he didn’t really know the exact location of the mass grave.
Apparently feeling guilty as the executioner of his former mentor and his old teachers my father had stubbornly refused to help them by not even meeting them.
With advanced malaria already reaching inside his brain my father had a nasty stroke in 1977 and as a result he suffered total paralysis on the left side of his body for almost 3 years. Painfully bed ridden he finally passed away in May 1980 at a rather young age of 55. He had deliberately taken the secrets to his grave.
I do not think he died in peace. And he might now be in hell for all the atrocious murders he committed during the big war and then the long civil war.
Aung San’s Racist Murder
My father was a very violent man. As the eldest son and a rebellious one I bore the brunt of his physical violence all my childhood till well into my early teenage years. He would use his fists, foot, leather belts, canes, and whatever objects nearby he could get hold of to beat me up at my slight disobedience to his strict orders.
Once I got older and bigger and he couldn’t bash me no more he even relinquished the severe punishment to the army boarding school and its sadist Regimental Sergeant Major. Without really knowing his traumatic past I hated him so much that at one stage I even thought of killing him.
The only people he loved in his life were my mother and his Bo-Gyoke Aung San. He adored and hero-worshipped his Bo-Gyoke so much that in our house we didn’t even dare to mention the name Aung San. We referred to him as just Bo-Gyoke. Everything about Aung San was Bo-Gyoke this and Bo-Gyoke that but not his name was ever spoken. Bo-Gyoke was a demigod in our godless communist household.
Every Martyrs’ Day on 19 July we all put on our best clothes and paid our respects to the late Bo-Gyoke first at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum by the Shwe-da-gon pagoda. We brothers had to fall in at the base of Bo-Gyoke’s tomb and salute him at my father’s command. The mausoleum was always crowded on that day and we boys somehow felt humiliated as everybody was staring at us. We then had to walk to Bo-Gyoke’s former house now the Bo-Gyoke Aung San Museum on Natmout Street to pay further respects. For four young boys it was a boring and tedious day-long affair.
My father would weep in Bo-Gyoke’s dimly lit bedroom after seeing the display of old personal items. We children even felt sad as the items like reading glasses and the open book were realistically arranged on the bedside table as if Bo-Gyoke had just slept on his bed last night. My mother also cried there too with tears rolling down her cheeks.
Later that day during the traditional family picnic in the nearby Aung San Park by the Kan-daw-gyi Lake we had to listen to the repeat of all his wonderful stories about his own experiences with Bo-Gyoke, save the gory ones and the atrocities.
He became a member of the Communist Party only because Bo-Gyoke was the first secretary general of the party. He later became a socialist only because his Bo-Gyoke became a socialist. My father had finished only year 4 from the monastery school of his dirt poor village in drought stricken middle Burma and I do not think he knew that he read much about communism or socialism.
The ending of his stories was always why he and his men couldn’t save Bo-Gyoke from the assassins’ bullets as Bo-Gyoke himself did not allow them to guard him all the time. We brothers didn’t dare say a word and at the end we all dreaded the coming of the Martyrs’ Day next year.
Naturally we Burmese were seriously conditioned or rather brain-washed into worshipping the hero of independence and the founder of modern Burma. School textbooks and all the popular literature portray him in brightly adoring lights. Any literature critical of Aung San or his army was strictly not allowed. But there were many underground writings carrying negative aspects of him while Burmese still had access to all sorts of other forbidden works of writings before the army’s complete takeover of Burma in 1962.
After learning about his secret order to my father to execute nine Japanese officers and the subsequent hush-hush of all his wartime atrocities I started having nagging doubts about our late hero. There was a well-documented case of one of his murders. He was accused of the gruesome racist murder of a staunch pro-British Indian village chief in 1942 near the Thailand-Burma border when he re-entered Burma with his BIA (Burmese Independence Army) after the advancing Japanese Imperial Army.
Our Bo-Gyoke was the judge, jury, and the executioner in that case. Being accused of actively helping the British Army brutally suppress the Burmese peasant rebellion in his territory during the t1930s; the Indian headman was sentenced to death. The victim was brought to the nearby town of Tha-Hton for the public execution by his order.
As per usual Japanese practice the condemned was tied to the goalpost in the town soccer field and Aung San himself bayoneted him first and then ordered a line of his soldiers to finish the victim. The whole town was forced to come out to watch the execution. When the grim spectacle was over the corpse was removed and the blood-stained, bayonet-scarred goalpost was left standing to remind the populace as the only fate for the collaborators and the loyal servants of British colonial masters.
The slain headman’s wife bravely filed a formal petition to the British governor of Burma in 1946 just after the war. “General Aung San should be dealt with according to the law for my husband’s murder as the British laws do not differentiate between rich and poor or powerful and powerless,” she pleaded in desperation as even the colonial police didn’t dare to touch the case.
In response Aung San wrote an article in the newspapers justifying his brute acts as the pressure to arrest him for the murder mounted after many witnesses came out calling openly for his arrest. “Those were days of rough justice. The country was in an absolutely lawless condition. It was a clear case in which the villagers had arrested their own headman for oppressing them, and the offences he committed merit no less a punishment than death. So he must be killed and I myself executed him,” he wrote in defiance.
The British colonial government then tried to charge him and prosecute that racist murder but the former Supreme-Allied-Commander Lord Mountbatten intervened and stopped the case for obvious political reasons. Our Bo-Gyoke by then was too popular among the populace to be dragged into a court for a mere murder. It would start a bloodied rebellion and the British didn’t have the stomach for more prolonged fights. By then the war-wearied British were ready to give up Burma into the hands of Aung San and his patriotic-national-socialist army.
After his assassination on 19 July 1947 General Aung San became a martyr and nobody even dared whisper any negative comments of him. He was the national hero after Ah-naw-ya-hta, Ba-yint-naung, and Ah-laung-pha-yar, the founder kings of the first, second, and third Burmese empires respectively. He was made the undisputed father of independence and the sole founder of modern Burma. The well established villains in his assassination plot are always the shady British agents and their power-hungry Burmese collaborator, U Saw.
Another line we’ve been fed forcefully and constantly is that if Bo-Gyoke were still alive we wouldn’t have this brutal civil war and Burma would be heavenly peaceful and prosperous like in the colonial time without the British overlords and the hated collaborators. And his army is the sole defender of our race, our religion, and the union. All the Burmese swallow those lines including the hooks and sinkers.
But for me that blind belief and trust in our hero slowly vaporised as I left Burma for a university in Bangkok and started having access to all sorts of books in English about Burma from the university library. Books like George Orwell’s Burmese Days and other essays were real eye openers for an information-starved Burmese like me. They taught me to see the difficult things objectively without a racial bias and also without the emotional filters.
Then one day I had a rather very long and heated discussion with a visiting Indian Professor who had a very strong blood connection with both pre-war and post-war Burma. His many uncles basically grew up in Rangoon and they were summarily kicked out of Burma by the army in the 1960s and they lost everything. I still remembered the exact wording of his angry remarks about our national hero.
“The real villain is not just the Burmese Army but also their founder Aung San. He gave them the super-inflated-legitimacy and the totally-misguided-purpose as a sole patriotic national institution. A bad institution that is violently-racist, narrowly-nationalist, left-wing army continuing the old marshal tradition of the empire-building brutal Burmese kings from the distant past well before the arrival of British.
He was almost an exact replica of our own Nazi, Subhas Chandra Bose. If the British didn’t stop the Japs on the border in 1944 we Indians would now have Bose’s Indian National Army terrorising us exactly same as what Aung San’s once Burmese National Army is doing now in Burma!”
Even though I was seriously upset at him at that time his angry remarks have forced me to dig deeper into our country’s past to discover more about our Bo-Gyoke. My main question is why Burma is in limbo for so bloody long and still gripped by more than 60 years of hellish civil war since 1948, the year of independence from Great Britain.
I really want to know who our Bo-Gyoke really was and what is his long-lasting legacy over our little country now called Myanmar, the pariah of the civilised world and one of the poorest countries on earth. A true hellhole still burning since the English left Burma and her people to their own devices after the century-long British colonial rule since 1826.
Why has the patriotic-nationalist army he and his famous Thirty Comrades built with the noble intention of serving Burma and her people turned so nasty and so brutally dictatorial now that their own people hate them with unbelievable disgust?
Why are we Burmese as a long suffering people still fearful of this fearsome Burmese army?
Out of all former European colonies in Asia, why has only British Burma ended up rather like Belgian Congo from faraway Africa while British Malaya came out nicely from the long colonial rule and then total Japanese occupation exactly like in Burma and has prospered so much that hundreds of thousands of poor Burmese men and women are now slaving there?
The answer basically lies in the obvious fact that the systemic violent rule of the military class which pervasively controlled every aspect of Japanese society for many, many years till the very end ofthe Second World War was brutally transplanted onto the innocent populace of Burma through Aung San and his army!
The primary fact is that Aung San and his so-called Burmese nationalists and self-proclaimed patriots willingly wearing that Japanese yoke did not foresee the dire consequences for Burma and her people even long after the militaristic Japan was twice nuclear-bombed onto her knees and abruptly turned into a civilian-ruled democracy at gunpoint by the United States!
The fundamental fact is that the rule of law established by the highly-civilised British for over a century of stable colonial rule that made Burma once the most prosperous nations in southeast Asia was abruptly replaced by the rule of force and violence in 1942, the year Japanese Imperial Army overran British Burma!
The very year Aung San’s army came into existence and started the killings which have kept on going till today by Than Shwe for more than 20 years and before him Ne Win for almost 30 long years!
(For privacy reason the Japanese names have been changed.)
20 responses so far ↓
1 Moe Aung // Jul 29, 2010 at 8:38 am
At first glance Hla Oo’s own traumatic childhood and past army experience appear to have coloured and confused his view on Aung San and the army he did found but never lived long enough to have shaped and moulded it.
True, the Japanese training and legacy made a lasting impact including the brutality and execution of POWs. Aung San did what he had to do in executing the Indian headman, as the leader of a new national liberation army in the early days of spearheading the Japanese invasion of Burma. He typically never denied that he committed the act.
Hla Oo’s father’s hero worship and the lack of ideological conviction appear to play a major part in his becoming the first high ranking commander of the CPB to surrender to the Tatmadaw not long after the communists were forced to take to the jungles by the Socialist government of the newly independent Burma. He and his family were taken under the wings of his erstwhile comrades in the army.
Aung San’s own paramilitary organisation of demobbed veterans (PVO – People’s Volunteer Organisation or Pyithu Yèbaw) split into two factions , one of which – Yèbaw Pyu – was the first to join the communist rebellion just a few months after independence, followed by three of the five Burma Rifles regiments that called themselves the Revolutionary Burma Army (RBA) led by communist officers.
The army had since remained in the hands of the Socialist commanders led by Ne Win who became the sole architect of the modern Burmese army now called the Bama Tatmadaw. The rest as they say is history.
To apportion the lion’s share of blame on Aung San, who died at the age of 32 having led the fight for independence since his university student days but who remained at the head of the national liberation army under the Japanese for just over 3 years, and who has been sainted and martyred by the Burmese nation as their national hero and father of independence, for the sins of those who had proclaimed his legacy and mantle in the first instance in order to consolidate their grip on the country but now for obvious reasons trying to distance themselves from the name Aung San smacks of a deliberate smear campaign in support of the current military dictatorship.
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2 Suzie Wong // Jul 29, 2010 at 1:02 pm
I find Hla Oo’s writing reflects deep passion for progress and profound love for Myanmar Burma and her people. At the same time, I also understand Moe Aung’s point of view about Aung San. I think we need to put the event in the context of Southeast Asia at the time.
During that time, nationalist sentiments intensified throughout Southeast Asia and the leaders collaborated with Japan’s Southern Expeditionary Forces to gain independence from the European colonial powers. In Indonesia, Sukarno collaborated with Japan to drive out the Dutch East Indies. In Vietnam, the Axis overthrew the French authorities and installed Bao Dai. Ho Chi Minh led the independence movement from 1941 onward and defeating the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu. In Thailand, Plaek Pibulsongkram signed a military alliance with Japan when the Japanese Blitzkrieged their way through Malaya. Pibulsongkram declared war on the allied powers. In Malaya, Japanese invasion during World War II ended British domination in Malaysia. I think it would be fair to say that we need to consider Aung San’s collaborated with Japan in this context.
In addition, the political philosophy of Southeast Asian countries at the time seemed to be leaning toward leftist ideology. Sukarno’s political philosophy was mainly a fuse of elements of Marxism, nationalism and Islam. Plaek Pibulsongkram was nationalist socialist. Ho Chi Minh was Marxist Communist. The Malayan Communist Party took up arms against the British. I think this was where Burma began to make mistake by having internal conflict at the top leadership over political philosophy when the country was still weak and couldn’t afford such a conflict.
Lastly, while others took side during the Cold War era, Burma remained a non-aligned country. The disadvantage was Burma got nothing while Vietnam and the Indochina received aids from USSR, and the U.S. provided aids for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. So this was another long period of no-growth in Burma.
That’s the past and we can’t change history. I hope we work together, look up, not down. Ahead never back. When we work together, we all win together.
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3 Moe Aung // Jul 30, 2010 at 4:28 am
Suzie Wong
Thank you for putting it in its historical and regional context. Nationalist feeling was at its zenith in Burma at the time, and the Socialist government of U Nu decided to stay out of the British Commonwealth and subsequently embraced the Bandung Conference of non-aligned states. Later even Ne Win would have nothing to do with SEATO given the hand of the CIA in the KMT invasion of eastern Burma. Relations with Mao’s China improved further after signing the five principles for peaceful coexistence and later the border demarcation treaty.
The leadership split within the AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) was not over political philosophy as all of them were left wing, but over more practical matters , the principal bone of contention being the defense agreement where a British military mission would remain for three years after independence, in addition to undertaking full compensation for British business concerns, in particular the BOC (Burmah Oil Company).
The communists, even though they had been in the forefront of the national liberation struggle, were not the dominant group unlike in Vietnam or Malaya. They got thrown out from the AFPFL, whose first general secretary was the chairman of the CPB Thakin Than Tun, by Aung San (who was the CPB’s first secretary general as Hla Oo pointed out, though not common knowledge in independent Burma for obvious reasons) and the Socialists who later seized control of the country after Aung San and his cabinet were assassinated a few months before independence.
Like you said that’s the past. However, your next premise for all to work together is easier said than done. It’s all very well in the Western liberal setup, but if you really understand Burma, you will find that we have a further uphill struggle.
Whereas in the developed Western world they have managed to tone down the class divisions and the inevitable struggle by means of continual liberal reforms that go hand in hand with economic and technological advances, the struggle is so much sharper and acute in countries like Burma and not at all helped by blatant exploitation and repression going hand in hand with an ever widening gap between the ruling class and the rest.
Polarisation of society and increasing conflict with no desire for genuine political solutions on the part of the powerful become a lethal formula, and there seems no way out except through popular struggle no matter what it takes and how long it takes. We live and struggle in hope. The people will win through in the end.
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4 NM Reader // Jul 30, 2010 at 7:03 am
I am proud of the author for having the courage to speak up on the matter. There is no evidence that Aung San was not a brutal killer. There is little evidence that he did not begin the process of what some refer to as the ethnic cleansing of the Karen people.
Because of Aung San’s public efforts to unite Burma and Ethnic Burma, and because of time’s passing with the self-sacrifice of Daw Suu – it is difficult for the Western mind (I am a Westerner) to be open to the realities of what likely happened as opposed to what we would like to have happened when reading Burmese history. The unspeakable crimes of the junta distort the realities of war.
We look at Burma and like to think there is a point where the distortion began and where it would end. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Thank you to the author
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5 aiontay // Jul 30, 2010 at 9:20 am
Am I reading Hla Oo, Shelby Tucker, or Mika Rolly?
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6 Stephen. // Jul 30, 2010 at 2:32 pm
NM Reader, you said:
Are you suggesting that a lack of evidence supports a claim that Aung San initiated a process of ethnic cleansing against the Karen?
WWII saw intercommunal Karen-Burma riots in the Irrawaddy Delta between civilians from neighbouring villages. This violence was the result of a variety of factors. The violence included Karen (and later KNDO) attacks against ethnic Burman civilians, as well as vice verse. There were also efforts by some Burma Independence Army leaders to halt this communal violence (such as Bo Mo Kyo’s Peace Declaration). These riots have had the tragic effect of fueling six decades of disastrous civil war. Claiming that Aung San (whose wife was Karen) initiated a process of ethnic cleansing against the Karen pays scant respect to these facts and undermines reconciliation efforts based on a balanced reading of history.
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7 john francis lee // Jul 31, 2010 at 5:41 am
NM reader joins the criminal US Secretary of War who defended his invasion of Iraq, speaking of his imaginary WMDs using similar rhetorical trickery in double negative : The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I think that Hla Oo is like his father; so brutalized by his own past that he now lives in a twilit, fantastic world of events which allows him to continue. As we all do to a greater or lessor extent.
This essay is not seriously about Burma, it is about Hla Oo’s construction of Burma as the background of his own personal life. It is a work of fiction.
The only difficulty in placing such fiction in the context of the New Mandala is that NM purports to be a portal of Social Science, and publishing such stuff demonstrates only too clearly how ridiculous is the claim that there is such a thing as social science.
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8 NM Reader // Jul 31, 2010 at 9:19 am
Let me rephrase for those lacking a proper education.
If we read Burmese history objectively,…… we can see a blatant pattern of very specific periods (down to the time of day) in the life of Aung San where there are suddenly no (reliable) witnesses, no journals, no historians who can say without a doubt what really happened.
In each of the instances we ask the same questions; where was Aung San at the time, how involved was he, what were his ‘official’ feelings on the matter, who and how many were killed?
It’s nothing personal. However, it is a little ironic that a blog comment becomes propaganda when it doesn’t fall in line with the bold, beautiful, perfect image of the icon Aung San. Its not a matter of hero-worship, its a matter of needing hero’s.
This same vain concept derives from nothing short of a personality cult and is the same social ill that has allowed Daw Suu to be portrayed as the idea victim in Western media – she is petite, pretty and honorable, and we forget she is a competent and elected politician.
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9 aiontay // Aug 1, 2010 at 4:14 am
My original comment was off the cuff, and maybe a bit unclear, so I’ll clarify it, in part because it is relevant to NM Reader’s last observation.
What Hla Oo says regarding Aung San’s faults is not really that new, or original. Shelby Tucker, in his book “Burma: the Curse of Independence” goes in to much greater detail about Aung San’s actions during WWII and comes to much more negative conclusions. As for whether Tucker’s analysis is right or wrong, I’ll leave to for others to decide, but it isn’t substantively different than Hla Oo’s basic point.
As for Mika Rolly, I’d have to check through my back issues of the Karenni Journal, but I believe he at one point made rather similar observations. I’d tend to agree in general with John Lee Francis’ point about Hla Oo’s writing largely being a work of fiction, although I’d be more inclined to apply that to some of his previous writings. With regard to Aung San, if it is fiction, it is a fiction believed by some of the ethnic minority people I’ve dealt with.
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10 Moe Aung // Aug 1, 2010 at 8:17 am
NM Reader
Conceit and patronising other NM readers is rather unbecoming of any NM reader.
You seem to be talking through your hat if in your opinion very specific periods in anybody’s life without a log of some sort or an alibi must necessarily be not only dodgy but positively sinister. Guilty until proven innocent?
Hero worship and needing heroes, though part of human nature, is completely beside the point. Nobody forgets ASSK is a competent and elected (by her followers as their leader, not in the 1990 elections) politician, not even the foreigners. There never was a personality cult in Burma, not of Aung San the hero or even Ne Win the dictator. Heroes we have plenty, but we know them warts and all.
Besides, Aung San was never portrayed as perfect to us. It is common knowledge that he was the awkward unsociable type and his idea of naming his children was considered quirky and even weird. Dagon Taya, the famous author and his contemporary, wrote very early on about “Aung San the Untamed”, the man he knew.
So it is nothing personal either to say that Hla Oo has an agenda.
a. He has been consistently peddling the line of the Burmese being inherently violent if you read all the threads he is involved in past and present, either as a guest contributor or in the comments. From U Thant’s funeral riots of 1974 through the 8888 Uprising to now Aung San, the first two allegedly ‘eye witness accounts’.
b. By his own admission, he’d had contact and shady business dealings with the Burmese Military Intelligence after he’d left the country and having lived abroad for several years.
c. He does have something unique to offer to both Burmese and non-Burmese readers. He happens to be an ex-Tatmadaw man with so many tales to tell, most of what he has to tell unknown to most of us until now.
d. He is a very good story teller with a vivid imagination and delivers a ripping yarn, supposedly factual, but in truth fiction based on fact (faction), such as the execution of the Japanese officers. His father, by his own admission, would never have told him the real story in such graphic detail.
e. He often contradicts himself and takes liberty with the chronolgy of events to suit the ‘moral’ of his story line.
f. He has been at pains to convey the message that the Burmese generals today are really only so many chips of the old block, a violent race that cannot help being brutal and ruthless.
It’s in the genes. Just look at the murderous students during U Thant’s funeral. Look at the mob violence in 1988. Look at their national hero Aung San who brutally committed a ‘racist murder’ of an Indian headman allegedly for his crimes of repression in collaboration with the colonialists, and left this sort of legacy to the army.
Strangely enough, today’s members of the Burmese junta, who cannot possibly claim to be Aung San’s protégé but actually Ne Win’s, appear to have got away scot free.
At least the people are just as violent as the rulers. So it’s all right then. They deserve each other, a match made in heaven or hell if you prefer.
It is worth noting that it is not only Aung San but Ne Win that the junta is distancing themselves from thus disowning their true father figure who had transformed what was left of the national liberation army that Aung San founded to the modern Burmese army which instead of defending its own people embarked upon a path of blatant exploitation, brutal repression and above all interminable bloody wars against both Burmese and ethnic minorities, of which Hla Oo has been a youthful and willing if ignorant instrument. There’s no way he can plead youthful ignorance today.
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11 Ko Htay // Aug 1, 2010 at 8:24 pm
“After reading the prevailing political and military situations correctly, General Aung San, the 30-year-old willing ally of the invading Japanese, secretly met with British Field Marshall William Slim and sold his former masters into the hands of rapidly approaching British 14th Army.”
I would suggest Hla Oo to read Thein Pe Myint’s “Wartime Traveller” and “Allied Forces and a Burmese Messenger” sequel to understand how our young Burmese Thakhins, including Burma Independent Army (BIA) commanders, scrambled to get rid of the Japanese they invited soon after the invasion. Thein Pe Myint travelled to India to seek British assistance. BIA headquarters in Mandalay created an Internal Auditor post for Capt. Tin Mya (Thakhin Tin Mya – still lives today in Yangon) to escort Thein Pe Myint to Arakan border. Thein Pe Myint recorded that Tin Mya and Soe (Communist leader) went back to mainland Burma in 11th July 1942 (read this timing).
According to Thein Pe Myint, in October 1944, Force 136 of British army trained dozens of Burman and Arakan youths in Peshawar for an advance mission. Among them was messenger Maung Kyi, a Burma Defence Army (BDA) soldier, who later parachuted near Pegu to convey a detail plan stored in a micro film.
Note: English language readers could find these sources in Robert H. Taylor (ed.), Marxism and Resistance in Burma 1942-5: Thein Pe Myint’s Wartime Traveller (Athens, Ohio Univ. Press, 1984) and Thein Pe (Myint), What Happened in Burma (Allahabad, 1943), both cited in Martin Smith. Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (White Lotus, 1999)
Another first hand account is Brigadier Kyaw Zaw’s auto-biography . Kyaw Zaw was a member of Thirty Comrades and a BDA commander who was later to become a communist and now lives in Kunming. His record reveals that in 1944 (August ?) , Soe and Aung San secretly met for three days at his house in Pegu to finalize plans for anti-fascist movement. Kyaw Zaw also confirmed that it was Aung San who earlier ordered him to make arrangements for the meeting as well as to escort Soe in and out of his hiding place.
So when Aung San and Slim met at latter’s headquarters at Meiktila in 15th May 1945 (cited in Shelby Tucker, The Curse of Independence), both sides, Aung San in particular, had already prepared for what to expect and what to bargain. That is, all the groundwork leading up to that meeting were laid long ago. It was never a last minute switch as Hla Oo alleged.
For accusations of bayoneting a village headman in Thaton in 1942, Aung San had never denied that he carried out the execution. I believe Mountbatten saw more than a political reason for him to declare “[I]n the unsettled conditions which must have existed, it was only to be expected, I suppose, that summary justice would rule, and that old scores would be paid off” (Tucker, p- 114) . Perhaps Aung San’s case was not the only misdeed committed among the ranks of BIA commanders during the heights of Japanese militarism spell. Kyaw Zaw has admitted one for himself. Those atrocities were more to do with juncture of wartime urgency than systematic human right abuses.
Hla Oo’s illuminative story that his father received three line letter from Aung San to kill their Japanese teachers will remain as one of WWII personal tales among many. Hla Oo’s father no longer lives to verify these accounts. Neither a written note was cited with regard to that claim. Kyaw Htin passed away in Yangon in late 1990s. Perhaps in one day, the story will be made into a movie in Burma for our children or grandchildren’s cinema outing.
While we shall learn to expose prejudice of our heroes, as much as we do of their pride, one must be mindful to recognize importance of “local settings” that existed in the backdrop of these events. An argument without any effort to empathize indigenous representation simply lacks essence of originality. Like many “Burma debates” today, at best they offer “deadlock” or “limbo” in Hla Oo’s word.
Lastly, why independent Burma is not a prosperous country? In fact Burma has never been prosperous under the Western measures (save Harvey and Hall for being British, read Dijk’s “Seventeenth-century Burma and
the Dutch East India Company” ). And so called the claims of “having the best potential to be prosperous in post WWII Southeast Asia” is far from being prosperous. Until both sides (in the present conflict) come to acknowledge such realities to forge a common ground, Burma is set to remain in the realms of poverty and turbulence as it has been for centuries.
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12 plan B // Aug 3, 2010 at 4:09 am
U Aung San is among other accusation racist because he executed an Indian collaborator and numerous Japanese.
Ko Hla Oo
Need to seriously look inside himself and stop self denigration through past atrocities of a Martyr.
1) No where in this long recounting is British racist treatment of Myanmar citizenry then and now mentioned. or even suggested.
2) The Japanese government “moving forward” policy towards its behavior during brief occupation is conveniently omitted.
These are just 2 points indicating this author sentiment.
Blaming one side only, in a complex multiple parties as participants that result in unspeakable atrocities and tragedies, at best diminish their contributions at worst exonerate their sins that continue to affect to this day in Myanmar.
Self examining to correct mistake is good.
Unwarranted Self denigration in times such as the present, when USA and EU policies reflect a Banana Republic approach to Myanmar, is unacceptable.
What U Aung San did is not uncommon during “Sit Oo Balue” situation in any conflicts.
By denigrating a Hero Ko Hla Oo has allowed other to continue policies without regards to the plight of the citizenry.
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13 Moe Aung // Aug 3, 2010 at 7:55 am
I agree with Ko Htay. Dead men tell no tales and are in no position to defend themselves. Memoirs and diaries may be taken as a primary source though they are still someone’s version of events unless you can glean from others corroborative evidence.
Hla Oo’s tales will definitely make good movies. I have already acknowledged that in the past and wished him book and film success. A fictionalised account of facts still has good propaganda value as Hollywood has proved so often. Of course propaganda is what the other camp does and never us, although it used to be an honest respected term until after WWII. Now even PR has become more neutral ‘communications’ in a world ruled by what the adman has to say.
Burma will know no peace until the powerful undergoes a Damascene conversion to seek a genuine political solution for national reconciliation which must include both the majority Burman and all ethnic minorities, instead of consistently demanding an unconditional surrender and unquestioning acceptance of ‘what’s good for them’ in the name of the union.
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14 plan B // Aug 4, 2010 at 10:05 am
“Burma will know no peace until the powerful undergoes a Damascene conversion to seek a genuine political solution for national reconciliation which must include both the majority Burman and all ethnic minorities, instead of consistently demanding an unconditional surrender and unquestioning acceptance of ‘what’s good for them’ in the name of the union.”
“Saul to Paul road to Damascus conversion” involved a divine interdict of sort.
Neither GOD nor Angels are at work in the case of Myanmar citizenry plight!
In Myanmar case the seed of disharmony has long been sown and perpetuated by the outside none ethnic western forces that is ongoing.
Nurtured by subsequent Bamar administrations desire to dominate that translated to atrocious suppression in ways imaginable only to dictators.
Devil advocates? May be but still all human causes.
There may be more moral lessons in History yet to be learned.
A simple “will take as long to reverse a 3 decades of detrimental effect of ongoing policies” approach need to be acknowledged.
Self flagellation and denigration of own heroes, heritage and culture in a time when a civilization that practice these values are constantly being projected as worthy of its present unworthy fate by the same detractors.
Myanmar citizenry plight is LARGER than the sum of all that is said and done so far.
Only through diligent human effort in true engagements and diplomacy, by all parties involved will the not so well future of Myanmar-DPRK allliance be avoided.
Myanmar quagmire is human induced.
This article here show some way out:
http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=19096
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15 AKS // Aug 22, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I just read the article below written by Ko Hla Oo. It came
into my mind what might have motivated Gen. Aung San to
execute that village chief. I think it was a deliberate act of
leadership, to start the baptism of fire, to christen his new
reborn Burmese army. A social engineering effort, act to
reshape the mind of a peasant army to rekindle new spirit.
It is understandable, Burmese army would fight alongside
Japanese army – samurai inspired officers with of the spirit
of Bushido. The old Samurai way of helping a disgraced
enemy whom they have conquered, whom they respected
is help chopping head. In that way who’d commit harakiri
will be dead fast without long suffering. To raise fighting
(fighting is killing) spirit of men is – who as a race oppressed
for decades, who were denied from sacrificing for, serving
their colonial master’s army till WWI – to lead by example.
That village chief had to executed and the executioner is
no other but the leader of new army. The mold was cast,
the stage was set. If he did not do that, BIA would not have
a chance to reconnect with ancient warrior history of Burma.
Japanese imperial army did not keep POW and BIA, and
being a new rag tug army, Japanese officers and NCOs
attached to BIA units and Burmese officers would ask
new recruits dirty job of executing POWs, ritualistic acts,
training, christening of new recruits. Wars were to destroy
enemy, annihilate them, subdue them, afterall BIA was
not formed as peace corps to show mercy. Also Burmese
might be proud themselves of martian race (they have even
dreamt of conquering India) but Buddhism have softened
their hearts. Inevitably, a short cut for them to teach how
to kill another man was to assign them executing POWs.
Or BIA men will be ridiculed by Japanese soldiers and
officers alike.
I think Gen. Aung San have had no choice but he had to
take that disciplinary action, made an example of killing
that village chief who happened to be from another race
- Imperialist British’s divide and conquer rule for subjects.
The legitimacy (even if that verdict was reached in military
tribunal or you can accuse as kangaroo courts) was there
everyone except British will think that man rise to that petty
position of power by suckering British bosses, terrorizing
killing Burmese. British had left no choice for those young
men and their leaders who might have wanted to pursue
literature or law instead.
I think Gen Aung San did the right thing by executing victim,
although the accused might not have received a fair trial. But
they were at war. British did not act fair towards Saya San or
followers by cutting their heads and putting servered heads
on spikes to scare of others. Just to share some thought….
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16 Moe Brown // Mar 19, 2011 at 9:59 pm
To Hla Oo.
You are defaming Burmese Leader. You must have proof otherwise the reaction from the folks who love Gen Aung San will be very great and will come to you soon.
Take care and watch what you say and write.
Moe Brown
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17 IP // Mar 20, 2011 at 1:12 am
It is very interesting that Hla Ooo does not identify himself clearly.
Was Htun Hla his father? Who was Htun Hla.
Hla Oo was mentioning that he was studying at RIT in the 1970′s.
Is he trying to make the readers confused as if he was the son of Capt Hutn Hla the PA of Gen Aung San. Need more time to analyze.
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18 IP // Mar 20, 2011 at 1:27 am
Hla Oo think that he was too smart to write this defamatory note to the General at the smae time insulting Burmese. But he is rather stupid. I would ask Hla Oo to come out of from where he is hiding in “hta-mee=lady’s longyi”. So that we all can see clearly if he is a monkey who dance at the colonialist/imperialist musics.
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19 Aung // Apr 29, 2011 at 12:51 pm
@IP
It is you who show your intelligence or lack there of.
Capt. Htun Hla (Tetkatho Ne Win) has graduated from
a mission school – that made him English educated and
not graduated from venacular school or nationalist high
schools (Burmese educated), that made him wrote that
Nehru advised him (Capt. Htun Hla) to teach Gen. Aung
San about table manners and ethiques to deal with English
man. Captain Htun Hla also went to University College at
Rangoon University. Hla Oo has discriminated his father
from that Bo Htun Hla in part 4.
He may be an Anglophile, he may have stated incorrect
facts from his point of view. Still his work, this series is
a contribution to contemporary Burmese history and
the evolution, metamorphosis of Burmese armed forces.
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20 Aung Moe // Jan 14, 2012 at 1:59 am
Hla Oo, Is Burma out of Limbo now?
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