• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 4417 0

‘gloomy’. The British civilian services were on the whole in favour of independence, but were now concerned about the welfare of their wives and children and their own future employment. In Burma Laithwaite said that he thought racial animosity was not too bad, but noted that there was still a diehard element in the Pegu Club which wanted to exclude the Burmese.74 Basically, ‘there is no alternative to the AFPFL’. Of Aung San he concluded: ‘I think business could be done.’ Besides, the momentum towards independence was now unstoppable. Churchill had already picked up the signals. On 20 December, after Attlee had made his statement, he rose to remind the House of Commons that in the days of Lord Chatham’s administration in the mid eighteenth century ‘you had to get up very early to keep up with the accession of territory’ to Britain. The opposite was now true: ‘The British Empire seems to be running off almost as fast as the American loan.’75 Privately, Churchill was furious that a British government was even considering parleying with someone whom he regarded as a ‘quisling’ and a ‘fascist’ such as Aung San.

For his part, Aung San knew that he had one last chance to get a complete independence package from the British. He could barely control his own supporters who were gearing up for civil disobedience, while he knew that the communists were regrouping in the delta and the Irrawaddy valley. Devastated Burma could afford no more war. But the spectre of Asian civil war in Indo-China, Indonesia, China and India hovered gruesomely before his eyes as he set off on his journey to London on a British Overseas Airways Corporation flight on the second day of 1947 .

The Burma that Aung San left behind could afford no more killing. The thought appalled even the hardest of fighters in 1946. The partial peace brought by the atom bomb had allowed time for reflection. There were plenty of reminders. For one thing large numbers of Japanese POWs continued to work on the roads and act as skivvies around the countryside. In June 1945 more than 35,000 of these had been repatriated to Japan through Moulmein and Rangoon. The same number, however, remained behind and they were increasingly used as strike breakers and guards as the internal situation deteriorated. By the autumn their morale began to sag seriously; it was now fourteen months since Japan’s surrender. In a token concession to their individuality, the British allowed them to make curios and art objects for sale to Allied and Burmese troops. But it was not forgotten who they were. On one occasion a fracas broke out when they tried to sell their trinkets to the civilian population and their goods were seized.76 Several Japanese were shot dead. Sympathy for them was limited.

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Shortly before Aung San and his party prepared to fly to Europe to avert civil war, a ceremony was held to commemorate some of the millions of victims of the war just ended. On 18 December 1946 a multifaith memorial service was held at Thanbyuzayat, near the Thai border, for the many thousands who had died working on the Burma–Siam railway.77 Nearly 5,000 British, Australian and Dutch POWs lay buried there in marked graves. Hundreds of American bodies had already been repatriated through India. The graves of more than 8,000 Thai labourers could also be identified. But alongside these 15,000 known victims were the unmarked graves of anything from 30,000 to 80,000 Burmese, Chinese, Indian, Malayan and Indonesian labourers. Most of them had been forced into service. They had died of disease, starvation or as a result of Japanese brutality. In the prevailing swirl of ethnic, religious, political and racial conflict a short moment of perfect peace spread through the jungle. At one end of the commemoration ground a Buddhist tent had been erected over the officiating monks. It faced a flagstaff in the centre on which the Burmese and Allied flags flew. At the other end units of the British, Indian and Burmese armed forces were drawn up in solemn parade. In a rare display of racial and religious