Thakin Nu and the Pied Pipers
TRAGER, FRANK N.
Thakin Nu and the Pied Pipers Burma Under the Japanese. By Thakin Nu. St. Martins. 132 pp. $3.00. Reviewed by Frank N. Trager Former Point Four director in Burma; research associate, MIT Center...
...The Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League reversed the trend of cooperation with the Japanese...
...The Burmese nationalists, struggling against the white man's domination, avidly welcomed Japanese aid...
...Asia for the Asians," the "Co-Prosperity Sphere," the outstretched hand of the Japanese as liberators from the hated colonialism of the West?these were powerful motivating forces in the acceptance of the Japanese...
...In it, he indicates why the Burmese?like other Asians—first accepted and then rejected the Japanese...
...Burma Under the Japanese helps us understand why...
...Up to 1943, the Japanese made occasional efforts to redeem their propaganda...
...After that, it was too late...
...Burmese Premier U Nu ("U" is a title of respect) wrote this volume between August and November 1945, during the first months of the British postwar reoccupation...
...the local currencies were debased...
...the outstretched hand frequently slapped the indigenous people...
...research associate, MIT Center for International Relations This is an intimate little book by a great Asian anti-Communist leader who is too little known in this country...
...U Nu is speaking of Soviet imperialism, which his Cabinet colleague, U Kyaw Nyelin, recently characterized as "more ruthless, more systematic" than any previous form of colonialism...
...After Japan entered the war, she was accorded a warm welcome throughout Southeast Asia...
...Yet, even now it seems that many of us have not learned the lesson...
...U Nu (he dropped the prefix "Thakin" when he became the constitutionally designated Prime Minister in 1952...
...Before the war, so many Burmans were so ready to follow the seductive piping of the Japanese...
...Thakin" means master: the members of the Thakin group resolved that they, not the British, would be masters in their own land...
...And it led to the Japanese occupation and oppression...
...All over the world, pipers are chanting new tunes that open up entrancing visions of imaginary wonderlands that would only bring ruin...
...The reference is clear...
...The Burmese under U Nu have learned this lesson well...
...Her promises were empty ones...
...The Burmese nationalist leadership, known as the Thakin group, formed a new resistance movement...
...It was composed primarily of Burmese patriots (except for the Communists, who were originally part of the coalition but later launched an insurrection) whose unchanging objective was Burmese freedom and independence...
...Having erred with the Japanese, they gave their support to the British and Americans—never forgetting their basic aim of Burmese liberation, which was achieved on January 4, 1948...
...school teacher, novel-ist and playwright, devout Buddhist, and able political leader of the most hopeful country in South and Southeast Asia, writes this account of the Japanese occupation in dramatic autobiographical style...
...As U Nu writes, the Japanese "train up pupils, but they remain masters...
...They sent their young leaders to Japan for military and political training prior to Pearl Harbor...
...The moral of the tale, as he points out in the preface to the English edition, is: "Beware of Pied Pipers...
...the local economy was tied to Tokyo, as it had previously been to the Western imperialists...
...The rejection of Japan followed swiftly upon her initial successes...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 29
