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Dr Maung Maung and the Tatmadaw
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
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355 Section V DR MAUNG MAUNG AND THE TATMADAW Despite Dr Maung Maung normally being identified in his later life as the pre-eminent civilian in the post-1962 governments of Myanmar, his four-year career in Myanmar’s armed forces, the tatmadaw, was a formative period in his life and one that he often recalled. He is not unusual in that, as many men look back on their military experiences as very significant in shaping their subsequent careers. But in the case of men who served in the Burma National Army, later renamed the Patriotic Burmese Forces (PBF), before becoming the eventual nucleus of the Myanmar national army, given their crucial roles in the achievement of the country’s rapid post-war independence as a consequence of their fighting first the British, and then the Japan, they have claimed to have assisted in the creation of the new independent Myanmar. In later years, indeed, the story of the army at independence became glossed with the founding of independence itself. The first of Dr Maung Maung’s publications in English is reprinted below. The Forgotten Army1 was published originally with a foreword by Dedok U Ba Cho, a famous Myanmar writer and the editor of The Dedok Weekly, dated 21 March 1946. It described the book “as a narrative told in an abrupt way as becomes a solider, by 2nd Lieutenant 05DrMaung.indd355 1/24/084:06:50PM 356 DR MAUNG MAUNG: Gentleman, Scholar, Patriot Maung Maung, a member of the P.B.F. in the recent resistance against the Japs.” It concluded with a short note written on 7 August 1945 by an anonymous British officer of the Indian Army’s Observer Corps who served in Myanmar. He wrote: On March of this year, 1945, the Burma Army, with the consent of the Nippon authorities who thought that they were going to fight against the Indian and British forces, deployed themselves in various areas across the country. The stage was set, and the curtain lost no time in going up on one of the most thrilling adventures of this war. The people’s League2 declared war on the Japs. Things began to happen so fast that it is difficult to place them in their correct chronological order. Jap lines of communications were constantly harassed. Villagers downed their tools and refused to do any more work for the Japs. Guards had to accompany all parties of troops who were on the move. Not a night passed but there was the crack of rifle shots and the chatter of hidden machine-guns. The Japanese began to panic. They dared not follow the guerrillas up into the hills and the jungle, for that way lay certain death. They did not know who or where the enemy were. And to add to their confusion the glorious Fourteenth Army was hacking its way through Burma with a frightening speed. It is no exaggeration, however, to say that the sweeping advance of the British and Indian troops owed more than a little to the valiant uprising of the Burma patriots. Like their counterparts in Europe they died willingly for their cause and their country. Future historians will rank their deeds with those of the legendary heroes of old Burma. The Burma Army, which the British were then referring to as the Local Burma Forces, armed itself, as did its irregular indigenous colleagues, with arms taken from dead and captured Japanese. Then 2nd Lieutenant Maung Maung was initially stationed in the vicinity of Henzada in the delta and fought with troops under the command of then Colonel Maung Maung from there across to the Sittaung River there they established a base at Penwegon, about half way between Yangon and Nay Pyi Taw (Pyinmana) on the main road to Mandalay. They were there when the Japanese surrendered. This first hand account of the events from 27 March to 14 August 1945 is one of the few by a Myanmar written in English so soon after the events it describes. For that reason, it was very popular at the time it was published; it subsequently 05DrMaung.indd356 1/24/084:06:50PM [3.81.222.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:47 GMT) Dr Maung Maung and the Tatmadaw 357 became a resource for English-language historians of Myanmar during last phases of the Second World War in Southeast Asia. “The Resistance Movement”,3...