The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (51 page)

The changes had a big impact. By 1954 the army was able to mount more complex and effective operations, against rebels and battlefield opponents of all stripes. The Chinese Nationalists were at first routed near the Mekong and survived only because they received fresh reinforcements from Taiwan. Another campaign targeted the Karens and forced the bulk of KNDO forces up into the heavily forested limestone hills along the Thai border. Smaller operations pushed back the Communists south of Mandalay as well as the Islamic insurgents in Arakan. Over the months nearly twenty-five thousand rebels surrendered. In October, U Nu was able to say that the civil war, “which at one time seemed likely to swallow Burma, is no longer a menace to the integrity of the State.”
¹⁰
It was quite an achievement.

At the same time, personnel changes altered the balance of power within the army itself, as the group around General Ne Win removed anyone with any possible other loyalty. Those who had come into the armed forces under the British were quietly retired, and senior positions were increasingly reserved for men of the Fourth Burma Rifles, Ne Win’s original (Japanese-trained) battalion. These same men also staffed the new Defense Services Institute, a sort of supercanteen that first catered to the needs of soldiers but then began running its own businesses at a profit. By the end of the 1950s it would be managing the Five Star Shipping Line freighter service, the Ava Bank, and major import-export operations like the old Rowe and Co. department store. This further strengthened the hand of the War Office, both over its commanders in the field and over the politicians and civil servants who would otherwise control the army’s coffers. The army even began funding its own newspaper, the English-language
Guardian
, headed by one of the country’s most respected journalists, Sein Win.

This was at a time when armies throughout newly independent Asia were coming into their own: in South Korea and Taiwan; in South Vietnam, where the army was being built under U.S. assistance; and in Indonesia, where right-wing officers in 1956 first formulated their
dwifungsi
doctrine. In Burma the army was stepping into a huge institutional vacuum, left behind by the collapse of old royal structures,
incomplete or ineffective colonial state building, years of war, and then a sudden colonial withdrawal. And this military machine was slowly but surely coming under the control of just one man, General Ne Win.

NEUTRALISTS

In April 1955 representatives of twenty-nine Asian and African nations gathered in the relaxingly cool Indonesian hill station of Bandung in West Java. The aim was to promote cooperation among the newly independent countries of the world and to resist being drawn into U.S. or Soviet global designs. All the great men of the non-Western world were there: Nehru of India, Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah of Ghana, Nasser of Egypt, and Chou En-lai of China, as well as U Nu of Burma, who was seen as an equal of the others. Meeting in the Dutch-built art deco buildings of an earlier generation, the conference led, seven years later, to the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement, with Burma as a founding member. U Thant was the energetic secretary of the Bandung Conference.

That Burma was held in high esteem internationally in the 1950s is a little hard to imagine these days, given how low it has sunk in the opinions of so many. Even harder to imagine is that Burma was active on the world stage, promoting its views, engaging in international politics through the United Nations, sending soldiers on peacekeeping missions overseas, and trying to play the part of a good global citizen.
¹¹

A big part of Burma’s image and role on the world stage was U Nu. U Nu and U Thant traveled widely together in the mid-1950s and in the process developed a foreign policy that was at once neutral in the cold war while on good terms with as many different countries as possible. A hundred years after King Mindon schemed to enmesh Burma in a web of diplomatic ties as a guarantee of future freedom, U Nu was doing the same. He and Thant visited China and met with Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai in the Forbidden City and later went to Hanoi to visit Ho Chi Minh. They both were deeply committed to the cause of Indonesian independence from Dutch rule and even sent a planeload of arms (at a time when Rangoon itself was under assault) to
Jakarta, accompanied by the home minister himself as a gesture of solidarity. At U Nu’s suggestion, Thant organized in 1954 a meeting of Asian leaders in support of the new Indonesian government, which was attended by India, Pakistan, and Ceylon as well as the Burmese and Indonesians themselves. U Nu also had a soft spot for the new state of Israel, because of the Holocaust and because he saw similarities between his own political views and those of the ruling Israeli Labor Party. Burma became one of the first countries in the world to recognize Israel, and it was only because of opposition from others that Israel was not included in the various forums, like the Indonesia conference, that Thant was busy putting together.

Travels continued later to Israel itself, Yugoslavia, Great Britain, and the United States. In London the two met Winston Churchill, then eighty. “Let us bury our old animosities,” said the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, Thibaw’s vanquisher, as he offered a whiskey to the teetotaler U Nu. Impartially, they also went to see Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow. In all these trips it was U Nu’s winning ways that helped cement Burma’s relationship with key countries. But sometimes Thant had to make sure that Nu’s honest and open style didn’t go too far.

During the Moscow trip, for example, U Nu decided to take with him a letter from his friend Prime Minister Moshe Sharett of Israel to Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin. He was concerned about the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union and was determined to help. He didn’t tell anyone in the Burmese Foreign Office because he knew they would come up with all kinds of objections. At the Kremlin, just as soon as formal courtesies had been exchanged, U Nu produced the Israeli letter and then blurted out that he understood that there were Jews in the Soviet Union, that they wished to emigrate to Israel, and that he hoped Bulganin would change his policies and let them go. In U Nu’s own words, “the Soviets were speechless with surprise.” It was politely pointed out that this was something for the Israeli embassy in Moscow. U Nu pressed the issue. Afterward the Burmese ambassador in Moscow reproached U Nu, telling him he should not have done what he had just done. “I know that,” snapped U Nu, but the next day he continued to say what was on his mind. At a lunch with party first secretary Khrushchev, U Nu gave a speech on the history of the Communist rebellion in Burma, saying that “a certain foreign power” had caused the Communists to rebel and had almost brought the government to the point of
collapse. “But we fought back … and the Communists are on the run!” he told the members of the Soviet Politburo. Back at their guesthouse, a peeved Thant asked, “Did you see Khrushchev’s face during your speech?”

“Why do you ask that? Of course. I was looking at him all through lunch.”

“Then you must have seen how his expression changed!”

“I don’t believe I did that. He seemed very quiet.”

The other Burmese officials chimed in to back Thant up. U Nu replied, “I can’t help that. It was because of these Russians that our country was reduced to dust and ashes … I think these Russians should thank me for not coming right out and saying that they fomented the Communist rebellion in Burma.”

The next day there was another speech, this time at a dinner hosted by the mayor of Moscow. U Nu continued with his anti-Communist theme. The next morning the Soviet ambassador to Burma, who was back in Moscow for the visit, called on Thant and explained, politely, that more similar speeches would not be very useful for Soviet-Burmese relations. Thant finally had a one-to-one meeting with his old Pantanaw friend. Afterward he missed all of the day’s scheduled events, rewriting all of his old friend’s speeches.
¹²

The following summer U Nu and U Thant went on their first visit to America. It was the year Disneyland had opened its doors in Anaheim, Marlon Brando had won an Oscar for
On the Waterfront
, and
I Love Lucy
was enjoying its fifth fun-filled season. America was leading the world in practically everything, and the cold war was at its height. At his meeting with President Eisenhower Nu presented the erstwhile Allied commander a check for five thousand dollars for the families of U.S. soldiers killed in Burma during the Second World War.
¹³
“Burma and America are in the same boat—we fight the same evils,’’ he said adroitly, and reminded his audiences in Washington of what he had said in Peking to Chairman Mao, that the Americans were a “brave and generous people.” At the National Press Club, U Nu pressed forward his vision of friendly neutrality, quoting George Washington’s Farewell Address on the need to steer clear of entangling foreign alliances, while also underlining Burma’s and America’s mutual commitment to a democratic way of life.

It was then on to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Philadelphia
and Independence Hall, and finally the far West. In Pasadena, California, he was treated to a performance of his own play,
The People Win Through
. Both he and my grandfather were more than impressed with what they saw of the new superpower. At a Ford factory they watched in wonder as a car was assembled for them in less than a minute, and in Knoxville, Tennessee, they listened awestruck as a waiter at a small hotel told them that he owned two cars, one for himself and one for his wife, and that his salary was more than that of the Burmese prime minister! Perhaps what impressed U Nu the most was what he saw of American charity. At San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins Hotel the hotel barber told him that he had raised and donated sixty-five thouand dollars for his church. U Nu was so moved he gave a hundred dollars of his own money to the same church.

For the next many years Thant served as Nu’s adviser and aide, writing many of his speeches, translating Burmese ones into English, meeting visiting dignitaries, and talking to foreign correspondents. Thant had taken a trip up-country early on and had successfully mediated between rival political factions; he had proved very good at intraparty diplomacy, and Nu asked him to do this more often. But he thought this was the work of politicians and declined. Other work piled on. He traveled more and more overseas, both with Nu and on his own. Nu even asked him to write a comprehensive history of the first few years of Burma’s independence. Eventually the work became too much. Thant’s health deteriorated, and despite daily walks and swims, he developed insomnia and lost weight. He asked Nu to be allowed to resign. But Nu would not let him go.

Then, on a baking hot Saturday afternoon in March 1957, Nu told Thant that he should consider moving to New York as Burma’s permanent representative to the UN. It was a shock. Thant had been to New York before, in 1952, as part of the Burmese delegation. He had also kept a keen eye on the progress of the world body. If he thought about a diplomatic assignment, New York and the UN would certainly be his first choice. But he hesitated.

One reason he hesitated was that he assumed my grandmother would be against moving so far away. But she was, much to his surprise, more than willing to try for a new life in New York. She was equally unhappy with the pressures of his job and even more with the atmosphere surrounding recent divisions in the ruling league. Thant had managed
to stay friends with both sides, but how much longer would this last? “Don’t take a few days; U Nu tends to be mercurial,” she said. “Accept while the offer is there.” The next morning Thant told Nu that he would go to the United Nations. Four years later he was elected the organization’s third secretary-general, succeeding Dag Hammarskjöld. He served until 1971.

DEMOCRACY’S DYING DAYS

The 1950s are often looked back on as a golden age for the Burmese middle classes. To many these were the years of freedom and progress and at least a sense of hope for the future. They now occupied all the top civil service posts once the preserve of Europeans, lived in the pukka houses of Rangoon’s Golden Valley and Windermere Park, and entered occasionally lucrative business ventures, sometimes on the coattails of their Indian and Chinese compatriots. These were also the days of an animated and unrestrained media, with hundreds of newspapers and magazines, like the lively
Nation
newspaper set up by Edward Law-Yone, the iconoclastic part-English grandson of a Yunnanese muleteer who had served with the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) during the war.

There was also progress in education. As King Mindon had done exactly a hundred years before, U Nu’s government sent hundreds of young men and women to universities abroad as state scholars. The majority went to the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, but a good number went to the United States. My father, Tyn Myint-U (U Thant’s future son-in-law), was one of these new America-bound students. Soon after the British takeover of Mandalay in 1885, his great-grandfather, who had been Thibaw’s privy treasurer, had retired to their ancestral villages at Dabessway, next to Ava, together with his extended family, returning to the royal city only years later. As was the case for many of the old Court of Ava, the following years were a period of deep bitterness and ill feeling toward the Raj, combined with nostalgia and vain attempts to keep up the old ways.

Some mementos of the old court—the golden
salway
worn by the nobility, a fading photograph of my great-great-grandfather in court dress, now retouched with color—were kept, but very soon there would
be little to distinguish my father’s family from anybody else’s. It was a big family. His father was the youngest of eleven children, including nine boys. In the 1920s one of his great-uncles, Mandalay Ba U, had set up a passionately nationalist as well as monarchist newspaper, the
Bahosi
, formed an ultraconservative party, and then won a seat in Parliament. For a short while he had been a minister in Dr. Ba Maw’s 1937 government. My father grew up around that time and was old enough to remember the destruction of Mandalay and his family’s panicked flight by bullock cart in early 1942 to a little village up north, where they waited out the Japanese occupation.