Burma National Army
The Thakhins were credited for the formation of the Burma Independence Army. In 1940, a Japanese army officer, Colonel Suzuki Keiji, took thirty Thakhins including Aung San for military training at Japanese schools in Formosa (Taiwan) and Hainan. These thirty Thakhins, known as the Thirty Comrades, were the founding members of the Burma Independence Army, which would later number around 8000 men. When the Japanese invaded Burma in late 1941 and early 1942, the BIA marched with the Japanese to expel the British. On 1 August 1943, the Japanese granted Burma a kind of independence. The BIA was renamed the Burma National Army (BNA). Recognising that the Japanese had merely replaced the British rather than providing the independence they sought, in March 1945, the Burma National Army turned on the Japanese as the British Fourteenth Army advanced on Rangoon.