The Burma Legacy

by Geoffrey Archer

  The prison officer was in his uniform and appeared to be about to go to work. He spoke no English, but the alarm their request created was evident on his thin, light brown face. An Englishman arriving at the jail would stand out like a sore thumb. There’d be questions from above. Reports would be filed to Military Intelligence. No. It would be very hard to arrange – Harrison understood his drift even before Tin Su translated.

  Then he produced a fifty-dollar note. Tin Su had told him not go above twenty but the situation was desperate. The man’s eyes doubled in size at the sight of the money. He pocketed it quickly and told them to come back the same time the following day.

  Harrison twitched with frustration. There was a clock ticking inside him whose spring was about to run down. He suggested Tin Su remain in Rangoon until tomorrow, fearing that if he let her go she wouldn’t come back. He offered her a room at his hotel, but she begged to be allowed to return to her home alone.

  In fact he was relieved. Conversation in the car on the journey to Yangon had been a strain. Than Swe had been right. Forgiveness was not in Tin Su’s gift. After the initial confused emotions of seeing him again, she resented his presence here, telling him there was nothing he could do to make amends for having abandoned her. And she wanted nothing from him. Not even the belated benefit of his money.

  He got Saw Lwin to arrange for another student friend to drive her home, with instructions to collect her again early the following morning. Then Than’s grandson took him back to the Inya Lodge Hotel. Inside the lobby there were still three people behind the desk and still no sign of other guests.

  He retired to his room and lay on the bed, telling Saw Lwin to wait for him. It wasn’t the pain that was troubling him this morning but a feeling of impending failure. In his bones he knew he would not be allowed to see his son, and even if he were, Khin Thein would probably be embarrassed to see him rather than glad. And as to the other purpose of his journey, without the physical assistance of Rip it seemed impossible that he’d be able to complete it.

  He rested for thirty minutes then forced himself to get up again. There were things still to do, because however deep his despair he had to press on. And hope for a miracle.

  Back in the car again, Saw Lwin drove him beyond the northern outskirts of Yangon. Nondescript industrial sprawl gave way to agricultural land, orchards and water buffalo. Then, coming up on the right, Harrison saw a denser, darker patch of ground. Trees had been planted in an orderly way, surrounding a compound bounded by a perimeter wall. Emotions welled up. He began the measured breathing tactics he’d learned years ago, to keep them under control.

  Saw Lwin pulled up outside a wrought-iron gateway. There was one other car there, its driver waiting patiently for his passengers to return.

  ‘Not quite sure how long I’ll be,’ Harrison mumbled as he eased his legs out of the car.

  ‘I wait here. No problem.’

  Straightening his painful back and placing a soft bush hat on his head as protection from the sun, he stepped across the threshold, then stopped to catch his breath. He’d forgotten how large the cemetery was, line upon line of stone tablets set out in the grass, the morning light glinting off their polished granite. Twenty-seven thousand Allied soldiers who’d died in Burma and Assam were commemorated here, including several Harrison had counted as friends.

  Fighting for self-control, he began moving between the rows. The orderliness of the place struck him as a terrible deceit when he thought of the vile circumstances in which the men had met their ends.

  He faltered as he read the names, ranks, regiments. He’d been twenty-one years old. Picked because he knew Burma. A lieutenant in charge of men much older than himself. And a couple of them lay here in front of him. He could smell the jungle again. The damp earthiness, and the pungent mix of stale rice, sweat and human waste that he’d come to know as the whiff of Jap.

  The date on the stones, 29 March 1943, was etched in his memory as deeply as into these pieces of polished granite. That day their infantry column had been picking through dense thorn to avoid a swamp not marked on maps. They’d been exhausted when the ambush happened, their spirits frayed by eight weeks of short rations and long marches. Two men cut down beside him.

  These two, in front of him now. Corporal Dent.

  A smiling face, a heart of gold,

  No dearer one this world could hold.

  And Private Billings.

  Beloved Tom. Forever in our memory.

  Harrison’s chest quivered. He clamped a hand to his mouth. He’d shut out these feelings for so long, but he needed to experience the pain of them again, if he was to have the steel to achieve his goal.

  He walked on, reading more inscriptions. Then he stepped up to the colonnade in the centre of the cemetery and stared at the huge stone tablets. Indians, Australians, New Zealanders were listed there, their remains lost forever. Also reading them was an elderly Sikh. For a moment the two men’s eyes met in mutual acknowledgement. Then they bowed to one another and continued with their sad and solitary business.

  At the end of the colonnade Harrison stepped onto the lawn again. The air was heavy with scent. Beneath the trees that edged the cemetery, two young girls in white shirts and dark longyis were making garlands from fallen blossoms. They were laughing. This solemn place had becometheir playground. Harrison felt a rush of anger. He wanted to tell them of the awful things he’d experienced in their country in a bygone age, but knew they wouldn’t want to hear. He turned away, shutting them from his sight.

  He felt desperately alone. Wished he’d died in the jungle with the others. Been laid out here, with his suffering flagged for the world to see, instead of it staying buried in his soul.

  He faced the plaques again and saluted, then headed back to the road. Saw Lwin helped him into the car.

  ‘Where you want to go now, Mr Harrison?’

  The old man took in a deep breath. It wasn’t where he wanted to go, but where he had to.

  ‘The Japanese Embassy, Saw Lwin.’

  Twenty

  It took them twenty minutes to reach the north side of Kandawgyi Lake where the Japanese government had its mission, by which time Harrison was in a cold sweat. The war had not only left him with an undying hatred of the Japanese, but a fear of them too. He knew it was irrational. They couldn’t harm him now. But ever since his release from internment, the sight of a Japanese face could send him into a panic.

  ‘I wait around next corner,’ said Saw Lwin, drawing up in front of the building. ‘Not allowed to park here.’

  When there was no response from the back he turned round. The pallor of his passenger alarmed him.

  ‘You want go back hotel?’

  Harrison didn’t answer, preoccupied with trying to control his stupid terror. In a burst of determination he reached for the door handle and tugged. Saw Lwin swung himself out from the front to help.

  ‘How long you stay here?’

  Perry put a hand on the roof for support. ‘Not very long, I can assure you of that.’ Feeling unable to move, he focused on the entrance. ‘This is ridiculous …’ With a supreme effort he willed his legs across the pavement and reached for the buzzer. The lock clicked and the embassy’s entrance door swung back automatically.

  He froze again. ‘Ridiculous,’ he repeated, forcing himself to step into the small lobby. On one side was a window with a guard behind it and at the far end a door with a swipe-card entry system. There was a grille in the glass to his left. He steeled himself to look beyond it, expecting to see the kind of eyes that haunted his dreams. But the face was Burmese.

  ‘I … want to talk to someone about the war.’

  He heard his own words as if they’d been spoken by someone else. And realised how nonsensical they’d sounded.

  ‘I mean I want to talk to someone about the memorials in Myanmar to Japanese soldiers who died in the war.’

  Not much better. The Burman stared uncomprehendingly, then replied in Japanese.

/>   The harsh sound of the language made Harrison shudder. He remembered the barking of the guards, the chanting of ichi, ni, san, shi, go … numerals learnt so you could shout your prison number at roll-call. He gripped the counter beneath the grille. This wouldn’t do.

  ‘Can you find me someone who speaks English please?’

  The man at the desk picked up the phone and dialled. His conversation with the person at the other end was brief. ‘Please to waiting,’ he said, when he’d finished.

  There were two straight-backed chairs in the little lobby, black lacquered and upholstered in green. Harrison lowered himself onto one of them.

  He’d come here out of necessity, not choice. There was no other way he could think of to get the information he needed. The location of remote Japanese war memorials in Burma was not something the government-controlled tourist information centres in Yangon were likely to know. And he suspected that any out-of-the-ordinary enquiry from a foreigner would be reported to Military Intelligence anyway, a risk to his plans that he couldn’t afford to take.

  Coming to the Japanese Embassy also risked drawing attention to himself, he realised, particularly if he failed to keep a grip. But there was no other way.

  The space where he sat was horribly claustrophobic. He examined the ceiling for evidence of ventilation and was relieved to see a grating. After a few minutes he heard the inner door click and turned to see a young woman standing there. Straight black hair and small spectacles. Very oval-eyed. Neat dark skirt and white blouse. Flat chest. She bowed to him, holding the door open in case of the need to dash back inside.

  ‘Can I help you?’ She pronounced ‘help’ as if the ‘I’ was an ‘r’.

  Harrison gazed at her. She looked so fresh and innocent, this girl. Straight out of the box. She would know nothing. Nothing of what her forefathers had done in this country.

  ‘I … wanted to find out about Japanese war graves in Myanmar. For reconciliation.’

  She looked at him without blinking.

  ‘Scuse me?’

  Harrison felt incapable of explaining things coherently, despite having rehearsed what to say. He stuffed his fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out the photocopy of the Newsweek press cutting which he’d brought from England.

  ‘I saw this in a magazine,’ he blurted out, handing it over. ‘Made me realise we have something in common.’

  The girl took the piece of paper from him and studied it. Her face was doll-smooth. Expressionless.

  ‘This is Japanese Embassy,’ she told him, looking up again.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Could you please explain me what you want?’

  ‘Information, girl. Information.’ Anger surged, but he controlled it quickly. ‘I want to know where that place is.’

  ‘Ohhh,’ she sighed, understanding him at last. ‘Where this memorlial is in Myanmar?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you please to tell me why you want to know this?’ She said it as if she were dealing with a mental case.

  Perry told himself he had no need to fear her. She was only a girl. And yet and yet – she was Japanese.

  ‘I was in the war. A prisoner of your army.’ He pointed to the cutting. ‘Seeing that made me realise we do the same things, them and us. We honour our dead.’

  Her expression remained quite detached, as if he were relating events of no importance to her which had taken place a very, very long time ago.

  ‘I’ve come to Myanmar to pay my respects to my own comrades. The ones who didn’t survive. They’re buried here. And I thought I’d try to meet some Japanese doing the same thing. So we could each express our regrets about the past. D’you see?’

  ‘Mmm. You want to go to Japanese memorlial?’

  ‘That’s right. At the same time as some Japanese. So we can pray together.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You want to pray with Japanese people.’ She still seemed puzzled.

  ‘Only, first I have to find out if any Japanese veterans are in Myanmar at the moment. You understand? That article talked about a party coming here every January.’

  ‘Tetsuo Kamata,’ she murmured, reading.

  ‘Doesn’t have to be him,’ Harrison lied, desperate to conceal his purpose. ‘Do you know if any old soldiers are here at the moment?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She became inscrutable again. ‘I ask someone. Wait here please.’

  He feared he might have set alarm bells ringing. The terrors gripped him again. She was going higher up the ladder. To the level where they took decisions. Decisions that could wreck a man’s life. His instinct was to run. To put as much space as he could between himself and those unsmiling eyes before they plunged him back into the past. But he sat down again, not having the strength to go anywhere at that point. He sensed the man behind the glass watching him. Watching in the cold, incurious way the Japs’ Korean guards had done as he’d lain out in the sun, chained to a post, half dead after a beating.

  It took five minutes, then the girl returned.

  ‘Please to come inside.’ This time she smiled. And even looked interested. He fought off the suspicion that he was being drawn into a trap.

  As he stood up, he staggered, groping for the wall to support himself. ‘I’m not well,’ he mumbled.

  A man had appeared at the woman’s side.

  ‘May I?’ He took Harrison’s arm to steady him.

  They led him to a reception room furnished with a dark veneered table and four chairs.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ The man had short, straight hair, pale cream skin and a prominent beard shadow. The same age as the woman or a few years older.

  ‘Yes. Yes I would.’

  As the woman went to organise it, the man introduced himself as the cultural attaché and said he’d acquired his American accent as an exchange student in Los Angeles.

  ‘You were a British soldier in Burma during the Second World War?’

  ‘A POW.’

  ‘My grandfather was also a prisoner. Of the Americans.’

  Harrison wanted to say there was a world of difference between the ways they’d been treated, but restrained himself.

  ‘We think we’ve been able to identify the memorial in this picture,’ the man said chirpily. ‘It is near the town of Mong Lai in the Shan hills.’

  ‘Mong Lai …’

  The town where he’d met Tin Su. Not far from the ruined shrine where he’d been captured in 1943. And where hundreds of Japanese troops had fought to the death rather than surrender to the advancing Allies two years later.

  ‘And are there some Japanese veterans in Myanmar at the moment?’ he queried, trying not to sound too eager.

  ‘Such visits are private. At the embassy we wouldn’t know that.’

  The young woman returned with a Burmese servant carrying a tray. She set it on the table, poured tea into small cups and left again.

  ‘You would have many things to talk about, if you can meet with Japanese soldiers,’ the cultural attaché suggested.

  ‘Yes. But first I have to find them.’

  ‘Maybe you can try some travel agents. Ask if they’ve arranged any visits by Japanese parties to Mong Lai. We can give you some names.’ The young woman immediately set off to find the information. ‘This is the first time you come to Myanmar?’

  ‘Since the war, yes.’

  ‘It’s very backward.’ The diplomat laughed. ‘No Internet!’

  ‘So I’ve discovered.’

  Within a minute the woman returned with a piece of paper.

  ‘I find these two companies,’ she told him. ‘They are better than the others, I think. More efficient.’

  Efficiency wasn’t what concerned him. It was who they dealt with that mattered. He thanked her and got to his feet. The walls were closing in.

  The two Japanese stood up and bowed.

  ‘We hope you find what you’re looking for.’

  The attaché bowed again, took his leave and disappeared. Then the woman showed H
arrison back to the entrance lobby.

  ‘Enjoy your stay in Myanmar,’ she said, bidding him goodbye.

  Outside, the sweat began to pour off him. He spotted Saw Lwin crouching in the shade of a large tree, and waved to him. The young man stood up languorously, refastened the knot of his longyi and turned towards where he’d left the car.

  Harrison sank onto the rug-covered rear seat and closed his eyes, shaking from his ordeal.

  ‘Saw Lwin …’

  ‘Yes, Mr Harrison. Where we go now?’

  ‘The hotel. I need you to make some telephone calls for me.’

  For the next twenty minutes Perry lay on his bed, listening to his driver babbling on the room phone. Eventually the boy put the receiver down for the last time.

  ‘These travel agents don’t know anything ’bout what you ask. They never hear of Mr Kamata.’

  Harrison despaired. Without confirmation that his tormentor was in Myanmar he was stumped. He became aware of Saw Lwin studying him with something like pity.

  ‘If you like I can take you meet my aunt,’ the young man mumbled awkwardly. ‘Maybe she fix something for you.’

  ‘Your aunt?’ Harrison’s despair deepened, imagining she’d be some quack herbalist who claimed miracle cures for cancer.

  ‘She know all about tourism in Myanmar.’

  Harrison blinked.

  ‘And she speak Japanese,’ the boy added.

  Harrison swung his legs off the bed and sat up. ‘I don’t understand. What exactly does she do, this aunt of yours?’

  ‘She make vacation for peoples.’

  ‘You mean she works for a company, like the ones you’ve been ringing?’

  ‘No. Work alone.’

  ‘Well … can you ring her? Ask her the same things you’ve been asking the other agencies.’

  ‘Better we go to see her. Her phone not working at home. I see her last night and she make big noise about it.’

  The car passed beneath the gleaming bell of the Shwe Dagon and on to a township where the houses were smaller and more densely packed than in the area around his hotel. Tall, grey-barked trees gave shade to the busy streets. It was midday. Shiny-haired children in green longyis and gleaming white shirts were pouring from a school, their day’s study over. Dilapidated buses scooped some of them up for transportation to remoter parts of the city.