Aung San left Burma in 1940 and established contact with Japanese army intelligence officer Suzuki Keiji. In early 1941, the PRP leadership embraced Aung San's plan for an armed uprising supported by the Japanese intelligence unit Minami Kikan . Kyaw Nyein and other PRP members selected and sent young nationalists -later to be known as the Thirty Comrades- to Japan for military training. In February 1942, he recruited over 200 Burmese soldiers of the Burma Rifles and took them in pilfered trucks to Tharrawaddy where they were supposed to foment a local rebellion together with Ne Win and Bo Yan Aung of the Thirty Comrades before the Japanese troops arrived. The plan failed, and Kyaw Nyein and Ne Win reportedly had to walk back to Yangon by foot.