Background
Aung San was born to U Phar, a lawyer, and his wife, Daw Suu, in Natmauk, Magway District, in central Burma on 13 February 1915.
Aung San was born to U Phar, a lawyer, and his wife, Daw Suu, in Natmauk, Magway District, in central Burma on 13 February 1915.
San became secretary of the students’ union at Rangoon University and, with U Nu, led the students’ strike there in February 1936. After Burma’s separation from India in 1937 and his graduation in 1938, he worked for the nationalist Dobama Asiayone (“We-Burmans Association” or “Our Burma Association”), becoming its secretary-general in 1939.
While seeking foreign support for Burma’s independence in 1940, Aung San was contacted in China by the Japanese. They then assisted him in raising a Burmese military force to aid them in their 1942 invasion of Burma. Known as the “Burma Independence Army,” it grew with the advance of the Japanese and tended to take over the local administration of occupied areas. Serving as minister of defense in Ba Maw’s puppet government (1943–45), Aung San became skeptical of Japanese promises of Burmese independence, even if an unlikely Japanese victory were to occur, and was displeased with their treatment of Burmese forces. Thus, in March 1945, Major General Aung San switched his Burma National Army to the Allied cause.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the British sought to incorporate his forces into the regular army, but he held key members back, forming the People’s Volunteer Organization. This was ostensibly a veterans’ association interested in social service, but it was in fact a private political army designed to take the place of his Burma National Army and to be used as a major weapon in the struggle for independence.
Having helped form the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), an underground movement of nationalists, in 1944, Aung San used that united front to become deputy chairman of Burma’s Executive Council in late 1946. In effect he was prime minister but remained subject to the British governor’s veto. After conferring with the British prime minister Clement Attlee in London, he announced an agreement (Jan. 27, 1947) that provided for Burma’s independence within one year. In the election for a constitutional assembly in April 1947, his AFPFL won 196 of 202 seats. Though communists had denounced him as a “tool of British imperialism,” he supported a resolution for Burmese independence outside the British Commonwealth.
On July 19, the prime minister and six colleagues, including his brother, were assassinated in the council chamber in Rangoon while the executive council was in session. His political rival, U Saw, interned in Uganda during the war, was later executed for his part in the killings.
While he was War Minister in 1942, Aung San met and married Khin Kyi, and around the same time her sister met and married Thakin Than Tun, the Communist leader. Aung San and Khin Kyi had four children.
Their youngest surviving child, Aung San Suu Kyi, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, currently serving as State Counsellor, the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs, and leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD). Their second son, Aung San Lin, died at age eight, when he drowned in an ornamental lake in the grounds of the house. The elder, Aung San Oo, is an engineer working in the United States and has disagreed with his sister's political activities.
Their youngest daughter, Aung San Chit, born in September 1946, died on 26 September 1946, the same day Aung San got into Governor's Executive council, a few days after her birth. Aung San's wife Daw Khin Kyi died on 27 December 1948.