Empathy from Australia

Dear Everyone

Thank you for your continued contributions. Rest assured that we will keep up this work, and keep you updated. Thank you also, for helping us to publicise our work.

We would like to share an email we received from Mr & Mrs J from Australia. It just shows how much all of you have helped us in reaching out to more people. And we are very touched by outpouring of support and empathy from everyone from Yangon to Australia. It inspires us to keep on.

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I am an elderly British ex-serviceman who visited all delta towns in May 1945. My wife was brought up by her parents on Sookalat Rubber Estate, Twante. Left Burma 1948.

We are now aged pensioners, living in Australia, but would like to help.

I served on a small wooden Royal Navy gunboat that took part in the recapture of Rangoon on 3rd May, 1945. We operated against Japanese forces from Rangoon to Myaung Mya and up the Irrawaddy as far as Prome. As well as severe war actions at Kokkowa and Yandoon, we delivered balesof clothing to Delta towns and were made very welcome by the people.

When I was in Burma in 1945, I met a British rubber planter who had the same surname as I. I later met his wife and daughter, H., who at the time was aged 11. I was aged 19. Our families kept in touch and we were married in 1954. We are now retired and live about one hour north of Sydney. We have many contacts in the Burmese Friendship Association in Sydney. H., whose only playmates during the War were the local village children around Sookalat Rubber estate, speaks fluent Burmese. She returned to Rangoon with me in 2004 but now has difficulty in walking.

She visited Nuns and schools in Rangoon and we got over to Mawlamyine where she had been a boarder at St Josephs.( She had also been at school in St Johns in Rangoon and St Josephs in Maymyo) We also visited the War Graves at Thanbuziat. This was her only visit to Burma since leaving for the U.K. in 1948, 56 years previously.

She was too unwell to return to the rubber estate and so I went back in 2006 and with the help of the Old Boys of De La Salle school, Twante, I was able to visit the Estate. This entailed driving to Kawmhu where we hired a Jeep.

I have also been up to Mandalay, have done the ferry trip down to Bagan.

I think you are all doing wonderful work at this terrible time.