page_title: Aung San
section_title: During the Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Aung San / Biography / During the Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: Colonel Aung San and Daw Khin Kyi after their marriage in 1942.
context_page_description: Aung San was a Burmese politician and revolutionary. He served as the 5th Premier of the British Crown Colony of Burma from 1946 to 1947. Initially he was a communist and later a social democratic politician. He was known as a revolutionary, nationalist, and as the founder of the Tatmadaw, and is considered as the Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar. He was one of the co-founders and first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Burma, one of the armed revolution group during post-colonial Burma after his death.
  He was responsible for bringing about Burma's independence from British rule, but was assassinated six months before independence. During World War Two, he initially collaborated with Japan following their invasion of Burma before swapping sides to the British. He is recognized as the leading architect of independence, and the founder of the Union of Burma. Affectionately known as "Bogyoke", Aung San is still widely admired by the Burmese people, and his name is still invoked in Burmese politics to this day.
context_section_description: Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 Aung San helped to found another nationalist organization, the Freedom Bloc, by forming an alliance between the Dobama, the All Burma Students Union, politically active monks, and Dr. Ba Maw's Poor Man's Party. Dr. Ba Maw served as the "dictator" (anarshin) of the Freedom Bloc, while Aung San worked under him as the group's general secretary. The group's goals were organized around the idea of taking advantage of the war to gain Burmese independence.
  In March 1940, he attended an Indian National Congress Assembly in Ramgarh, India. However, while he was in India the Burmese government issued a warrant for his arrest due to Thakin attempts to organize a revolution against the British, at least partially with Japanese support. On August 14, 1949 Aung San and another Thakin colleague, Hla Myaing, boarded on the Norweigen cargo ship Hai Lee to Xiamen, China. Different sources have gave different interpretations for their trip: Dr. Ba Maw claimed that the trip had been organized by the Japanese consulate; the Communist Party of Burma said that they had left to seek the cooperation of the Chinese Communist Party; Aung San stated that his goals of the trip were open-ended. After they arrived in Xiamen they found that the city had already been occupied by the Empire of Japan. They wandered the city for several weeks with no precise plan and little money, until they were intercepted by Japanese secret police who convinced them to go to Japan instead. The pair left for Tokyo via Taiwan and arrived in Japan on September 27, 1940, the same day that Japan signed its military alliance with Nazi Germany.
  In May 1940 Japanese intelligence officers led by Suzuki Keiji had arrived in Yangon posing as journalists in order to gather information and to seek the cooperation of local parties for the intended Japanese invasion of Burma, occupying an office at 40 Judah Ezekiel Street for that purpose. Among their network of local collaborators they made close connections with the Thakins, an organization which Aung San was a leading member of. The familiarity of Japanese intelligence with the prominent political actors in Burma ensured that they were aware of Aung San's activities by the time he arrived in Japanese-occupied China.
  Aung San spent the rest of 1940 in Tokyo, learning the Japanese language and political ideology. At the time he wrote that he was opposed to Western individualism and that he intended to create an authoritarian state on the model of Japan and Nazi Germany, including only "one state, one party, [and] one leader". While in Japan he dressed in a Japanese Kimono and adopted a Japanese name, "Omoda Monji". While studying in Japan at this time the Blue Print for a Free Burma was drafted. This document has been attributed to Aung San, though its authorship is disputed.
  In February 1941 Aung San, working with Japanese intelligence, secretly re-entered Burma and began recruiting efforts to contact and recruit additional Burmese agents to work with the Japanese. He entered the colony secretly through the port of Bassein, changed into a longyi, and booked a train to Rangoon using a pseudonym. Within weeks he had recruited thirty of his old revolutionary colleagues and smuggled them out of the country via Japanese intelligence networks. These "Thirty Comrades" were taken to the Japanese-occupied island of Hainan for further training. Aung San was twenty-five, the third-oldest of the group. While training on Hainan all thirty of the men took pseudonyms beginning with the word "Bo", meaning "officer", which had become a title used by Westerners in Burma. Aung San took the nomme de guerre "Bo Teza" ("Teza" means "fire"). The Thirty Comrades trained for six months on Hainan with Suzuki Keiji and other Japanese officers. Aung San, Ne Win, and Setkya all received special training, since the Japanese intended to place them in senior positions in the Burmese government following the Japanese conquest of the territory.
  On December 28, 1941, Aung San and the rest of the Thirty Comrade
caption: Aung San in Burma Defence Army uniform with Daw Khin Kyi after their marriage in 1942
exif: {}