Aung San Suu Kyi by Jesper Bengtsson Page A

Kai-shek would increase and thereby also its possibilities of gaining control over the whole of Asia.
    The Burmese right-wing nationalists and Suzuki had together formulated a plan, the gist of which was that the Japanese army would take on a group of young nationalists and give them military training. When Aung San and Thakin Hla Myaing had made contact with the Japanese in Amoy, they were then transported to Tokyo to meet Suzuki. It is impossible to determine whether Aung San had any misgivings when faced with cooperating with the Japanese. Several years later in the light of hindsight, he asserted that he had been doubtful right from the start. The stay in Japan was “not as badas one could expect,” as he said, but he also stated that he was horrified over the totally inflexible social hierarchies and the way in which the Japanese army treated women. And he was shocked when Suzuki explained that the only way to get rid of the British was to kill men, women, and children indiscriminately. Aung San knelt before the imperial palace of course, when the 2,600th anniversary of the empire was being celebrated, but only out of politeness, not because he had any ambitions to be the emperor’s subject.
    In practice it was probably Aung San’s pragmatic side that took the upper hand. He saw Japan as a lever: the enemy of an enemy that with its mighty military power and imperialistic self-interest could help drive the British into the sea.
    Aung San returned to Burma in February 1941 disguised as a Chinese seaman. With him he had an offer of money, weapons, and military training. Several of the radical nationalists in Rangoon were skeptical. They mistrusted Japan’s ambitions, but Aung San convinced them that it was strategically right to trust the Japanese. A group of young Burmese were later chosen to travel to Hainan and receive military training from the Japanese security service.
    They traveled there in three groups, and later on there suddenly appeared a fourth group, consisting of nationalists from the fascist faction. Its leader was Thakin Tun Ok, but among its members was also Ne Win, who was to become Burma’s dictator. Already at that point it was obvious that the Japanese did not trust Aung San, that they wanted to complement the group of left-wing nationalists with a more loyal, right-wing group. The young men who were given military training on Hainan later came to be called the thirty comrades.
    Before Hainan it had still been an open-ended question as to which of the young nationalists would become the leader, but now Aung San came indisputably forward as the driving force. In her book
Aung San of Burma
, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote, “And for all the charges of ‘poor human relations’ which had been leveled against him, it was he who rallied the men when their bodies and spirits flagged, showed special concern for the youngest ones and counseled self-restraint when feelings ran high against either camp life or the Japanese.”
    At the end of 1941, Colonel Suzuki and the thirty comrades gathered in Bangkok, where they formally founded the Burma Independence Army (BIA). They were able to move about freely in Thailand—formally a neutral country that for a long time had been squeezed between the warring powers. However, in the end the country’s prime minister, Phibun Soggram, held up a finger in the air and felt that the war was blowing in the direction of Japan. He therefore gave a verbal promise that Japan could use Thailand as a way to occupy both Malaysia and Burma. He had also received a vague promise that the Shan state in eastern Burma would be incorporated into Thailand after a Japanese victory in the war.
    When Aung San and Suzuki established BIA in Bangkok, the city was always flooded with Japanese agents and officers. BIA served as an embryo for what would later become Burma’s regular army. To start with, it consisted of the thirty nationalists who had been