Burma under occupation

In April 1942, my uncle Eddie was seven years old. His father, my grandfather Archibald, was the superintendent of stores with the Burma Oil Company. When the Japanese advanced on Rangoon, Archibald oversaw the demolition of the port and the oil refineries at Syriam. As the last of the company men to leave, he escaped by launch down the Irrawaddy under a sky lit with explosions. Where the river met the Andaman Sea, he and a small group were picked up by one of the final departing British liners. They were forced to cut loose a scuttle of provisions before boarding—a grim detail, because news later reached the family that the scuttle had been found adrift. Many assumed Archibald had gone down with it.

Eddie, meanwhile, had fled north with his Burmese mother and three siblings—one of them, my mother, a sickly infant. They crammed into a single room shared with another family, separated only by a cloth curtain, near the Chinese border. Racial prejudice and the threat of violent robbery eventually pushed them to seek other shelter.

That was where Eddie first saw a Japanese soldier. Marching down the street, they forced civilians to raise their hands and shout Banzai! Enthusiasm was expected; anything less could earn you a slap.

In time, the family decided to return to their house. Two older male relatives went ahead by sampan to scout a path. They avoided roads, which were overrun with dacoits—bandits robbing their own countrymen as the Japanese consolidated control. By some stroke of fortune, the house was found intact.

The family’s return was harrowing. They travelled by river again, knowing it was marginally safer than the roads. Other refugee families made the same journey. By night, the sampans clustered midstream to avoid shore-bound danger. Babies were hushed, and children were warned to be silent. The men raised their voices loudly and confidently to give the impression they were a large, armed group. In truth, they carried no weapons.

When they reached the jetty at Syriam, Japanese soldiers were in full occupation. They could not disembark without permission. A Japanese officer boarded their boat. Eddie’s mother had hidden Mary’s reddish hair beneath a scarf, afraid that her part-European features might expose them. The officer surveyed them all. Then, in an unexpected gesture, he shook his head and murmured dokha, dokha—“the suffering, the suffering”—in Pali. And he let them land.

The war ended. Eddie remembered the sound of bagpipes and the sight of Gurkha troops arriving in their turbans. Others felt unease about the British return, but for Eddie’s family, it meant safety