Reminiscence of a resistance
Golden Parasol: A Daughter's Memoir of Burma by Wendy Law-Yone
Reviewed
by Bertil Lintner
CHIANG MAI - Golden Parasol: A Daughter's Memoir of Burma is much more than an autobiographical account of a woman whose father was a prominent newspaperman in Myanmar, then known as Burma, before the military seized power in a 1962 coup. Rather, it is a personalized history of modern Myanmar, from colonial days to the present, and reflects the political as well as ethnic complexities of Southeast Asia's most troubled nation.
The author's father, Edward Law-Yone, was the founder and editor of The Nation, one of Myanmar's leading English-language dailies before the 1962 coup. In the absence of any real opposition to the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, then the country's main
political party, the press functioned as a genuine public watchdog, including through its frequent interviews with and critical treatment of pre-coup prime minister U Nu.
The Nation was frequently critical of U Nu's government, even though Edward Law-Yone was a personal friend of the premier. Such were the democratic conditions in Myanmar before the military seized power, stifled the press, and introduced an entirely new authoritarian political order. The Nation's editor was arrested shortly after the coup and accused by military authorities of "hindering the implementation of internal peace".
The author's personal background is a reflection of the complexity of the country her book chronicles. Her paternal grandfather, Tong Chi-fan, was born in China and came to Myanmar as a young man in search of business opportunities. He married Ma Saw Shwe, a local girl from the Shan ethnic minority who was also the niece of a well-known anti-British rebel who fought against colonial power in the late 19th century.
Her maternal grandfather, however, was Eric Sydney Percy-Smith, a British soldier and adventurer. He had spent time in Myanmar and there met a young Myanmar girl, the author's maternal grandmother. This ethnic mix is not unusual in Myanmar, a former British colony at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia. Some Myanmar nationalists today like to revel in the notion of a "pure Myanmar" - as if such a creature ever existed. Myanmar is, and has always been, a multiethnic country - a melting pot where diverse cultures meet, mix and interact.
The author retraces her life as a child in the cosmopolitan capital of 1950s Yangon and how the military takeover she lived through at the age of 15 changed everything. She was briefly detained by the new military government when she tried to escape to Thailand with one of her brothers.
She eventually made it to safety across the border, as did her father and the rest of her family. Edward Law-Yone turned from being a newspaper editor to a rebel who organized resistance against the military regime led by General Ne Win. He also managed to convince the ousted and exiled U Nu to become the official head of the exile resistance.
Wendy Law-Yone provides perhaps the first detailed historical account of those who made up or attempted to infiltrate the Myanmar resistance in Bangkok in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many of the country's national heroes joined the fight, including Bo Let Ya and other members of the legendary 30 Comrades who had led the struggle for independence from British colonial rule in the 1940s.
Cast of characters
There was air commander Tommy Clift, the Anglo-Shan former head of Myanmar's air force, who, together with Thai Air chief marshal Dawee Chullasapya, established the famous Tommy's Tours, which provided rest and recreation services for US soldiers stationed in Thailand or on leave there from the Vietnam War.
Several Thai army officers, the book reveals, also became involved with the resistance, among them deputy prime minister and commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army General Praphas Charusathien and the much younger Prasong Soonsiri, the later head of Thailand's National Security Council.
The book also explores the mysterious Ahmad Kamal, who claimed to be the son of an American mother and a Uyghur from Turkestan. He was widely suspected of being an agent for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who had been sent to keep an eye on the movement that was being launched from Thailand against Ne Win's regime.
Kamal, whose real name is believed to be Cimarron Hathaway, was actually born in Denver, Colorado, and not of Turkic origin. He also appears in the book's tale in connection with a Canadian oil company that at one stage advanced a huge sum of money to Edward Law-Yone's resistance in exchange for exploration concessions after its anticipated victory.
Kamal's true identity remains a mystery. His name also appears in a book called A Mosque in Munich by Ian Johnson, which describes how what he calls "naive CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam" recruited former Muslim soldiers in the Nazi German army for their cause and, indirectly, gave birth to militant and radical Islam.
Unbeknownst to the Myanmar dissidents in Thailand, the CIA was actually much more interested in providing Ne Win's military government with support than dealing with Edward Law-Yone's and U Nu's quixotic resistance movement. Ne Win's spy chief, Brigadier-General Tin Oo, was trained by the CIA on the US-held island of Saipan in the Pacific, as were some of his closest lieutenants.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the main "enemy" of the West in Myanmar was the Communist Party of Burma - and Ne Win's military was seen as the only force capable of resisting the China-backed communist advance into the country. The non-communist resistance led by Edward Law-Yone and U Nu was viewed in the West mainly as an irritant, but it was necessary to keep tabs on its activities and avoid antagonism. Contrary to what some Western historians believe, American interest in the two prominent exiles from Myanmar and their resistance movement was confined to that.
Not surprisingly, the movement fizzled out in the late 1970s and the entire Law-Yone family ended up in the West. Father Edward and his daughter Wendy settled in the United States, and much of the money that had been provided by the Canadian oil company disappeared into other people's pockets. Edward Law-Yone, some of his younger followers thought, "had raised their hopes, then dashed them to the ground, leaving them stranded", daughter Wendy says in her revealing volume.
The author later became an accomplished novelist, moved to London, and has written three other books: The Coffin Tree, The Irrawaddy Tango and The Road to Wanting. This is her first non-fiction work and it represents an important historical portrait of the period and people it covers. Beautifully written with a keen sense of humor, the book is bound to become a classic in the genre of personal books written about modern Myanmar. At the end of her story, the author returns to Yangon, visits her old home and what once were the premises of Myanmar's most influential newspaper, The Nation.
Her father, who passed away in the US in 1980, left behind a manuscript which was never published. There was a note attached to the bundle of typed pages: "Wendy. Don't lose the manuscript whatever you do. Daddy." It was safeguarded, and without Wendy Law-Yone would not have been able to piece together her masterpiece of a book. She has done her famous journalist and rebel father justice in a volume that is a must-read for anyone interested in modern Myanmar history.
Golden Parasol: A Daughter's Memoir of Burma by Wendy Law-Yone. Chatto Windus, London (June 2013). ISBN-10: 0701186119. Price: GBP 17.99; 320 pages.
Bertil Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review and author of several books on Myanmar, including Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy and Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948. He is currently a writer with Asia Pacific Media Services.
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