Wartime in Burma: A Diary, January to June 1942

April 1942

A P R I L 1 9 4 2 [No entry for Wednesday, April 1, or Thursday, April 2] Friday, April 3, 4th Waning of Tagu—Good Friday A doctor who came in from Mandalay in the evening looking for Dr. Min Sein told us that an enemy bombing raid had caused an enormous fire that is raging in Mandalay. This was confirmed in the evening news from Burma Radio. It said that there have been many deaths and much material damage. At nine in the evening three Indian friends of Dr. Gyan Singh arrived by car from Mandalay. They intend to sleep one night in Shweibo before going on to Monywa tomorrow. They too described the bombing in Mandalay. They said that the fires were still burning fiercely at five in the afternoon when they left and that large parts of the city of Mandalay have been destroyed. We are lucky to have left when we did. In the office there was a discussion with U Htun Hpei, the mill owner, and U Po, the assistant DC, and we arranged to control and regulate the trade in salt: U Htun Hpei undertook to help with any plans that might be made. He said that it is a pleasure to him to do whatever will benefit ordinary people—he is someone who knows just how to arrange things effectively for people’s benefit. About 3:30 in the afternoon U Ba Cho came in with the wundauk U Hpo Lat. We spent our time talking about the war, and I went home at about 4:30. I had only worked for about an hour the whole day. 134 Wartime in Burma: A Diary, January to June 1942 [No entry for Saturday, April 4] Sunday, April 5, 6th Waning of Tagu Because of the wide-scale bombing of Mandalay, all over Upper Burma people have become very scared and fearful. I expected there would be a good many people coming away from the direction of Mandalay and Sagaing, and there are some coming in cars already, but not as many as I thought. Shweibo is looked upon as a center of unrest and lawlessness, so there aren’t many who dare to come here; also petrol isn’t easy to come by, which means that there aren’t many people who can make their escape by car. It’s not a possible journey by bullock cart or horse carriage. Consequently, there aren’t as many as you would expect coming to take refuge in Shweibo. People tell each other that once Mandalay is finished with, Shweibo will be next, and so I have been thinking that if occasion arose I might want to send my wife and children to Kyaukmyaung. Today is Sunday, so we had another reason for setting off in two cars for Kyaukmyaung as soon as we had finished our morning coffee. Dr. Gyan Singh came with us, so no one was left in the house—everyone came along. We found that there are two Englishmen from Burma Oil Company occupying the Kyaukmyaung rest house. They are in charge of about 7,000 of BOC’s Indian workers housed across the river on the bank opposite Kyaukmyaung. I gather that they came here almost a month ago. Those Indian workers are not allowed to come over to this side of the river without special permission. Their position is pretty much like being under house arrest. If you look across from Kyaukmyaung , you can see clearly a large number of huts. On all my visits to Kyaukmyaung, I never imagined that so many people could come to live over on that bank among all those hills. As the Englishmen from BOC are in quasi-permanent occupation of the rest house, we didn’t go into it, but parked the cars in the shade of the tamarind trees growing on the ruins of the wall in front of it. I sent Nyunt Maung to fetch the head man, U Pa O, who appeared almost at once. After some polite conversation, we looked for a place where we could set ourselves up and made arrangements to camp in the April 135 monastery compound to the north of the rest house. After that we went on to the big steamer that was tied up in front of the monastery to have a look. This is the ship that just the...