On 22nd August 1969 a column of 7th Infantry Battalion attacked the jungle camp of CPB’s Southern Shan State HQ on the mountain range west of Inle Lake. Among the killed was a Central Committee member of CPB Bo Pu.
When his corpse was searched the Burmese soldiers found an old photo of young airforce corporal in his shirt pocket. The Burmese major heading the army column was shocked when he saw the blood-stained photo.
The young man in the photo was one of his classmates from his OTS (Officer Traning School) batch and he then was also a major in the army. The photo and the story went all the way to the War Office in Rangoon and the major was called in to explain.
He just said, ” Yes Bo Pu was my father. He met my mother during the big war and I was born. He was in the Japanese revolution when my mother died and he couldn’t look after me at all. So I was adopted out to my aunty and uncle. It was in 1945 and I was 2 or 3 years old. I didn’t remember it at all.
He was in Rangoon as a member of the CPB team during the 1963 peace talks. He came to our house and asked my father and mother about me. I was then in the airforce. They pointed him to my photo on the wall and he took it down and never returned.
I’d never met him in my life. He did what he believed and I did what I believed by serving in the airforce first and then in the army.”
The Burmese army had taken no adverse action against the major.
