Photo: Google Map showing present day Kalaw/Loikaw motor routes In 1950, while serving as commander of the 1st Emergency Kachin Battalion at Myitkyina, I received orders to take up command of the newly formed 4th Light Infantry Brigade at Kalaw. The War Office had dragged its feet about making official the local rank promotion that Prime […]
Category: Archives
Moments with Independence Hero Bogyoke Aung San
Photo: Kachin Leaders with the Frontier Areas Committee of Enquiry (FACE); Maymyo, April 1947. (Illustrated London News) I had the privilege of close personal encounters with Bogyoke Aung San on three separate occasions. All of the meetings were unscheduled but nonetheless significant, as they took place in the crucial pre-independence years of our nation, and provide […]
To the Tender Memory of Judson College (Judson Chapel Golden Jubilee Magazine; 1982)
Liveth there a Judsonian with a soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my Alma Mater. It was the first morning of the first week of June 1929, the official opening day of the new term at Judson College. Approximately 800 students were gathered at the assembly hall of […]
Sinlum Kaba: Origins and Glory Days
Photo: The great Padang Manau at Sinlum Kaba March 1945 (CC Naw Ja) Clan oral history has it that Duwa Zau Bawm was the Gauri Lahpai chief who founded Sinlum Kaba, one of the many villages that dotted the Sinlum hills overlooking Yunan, China. The Sinlum hills were part of the domain of the Lahpai Gauri […]
Kachin Sports Greats of Yesteryear
Photo: Shingbwi Gam (center left) & Myitung Naw (extreme right) Myitung Naw, Shingbwi Gam and Ah Hpu were three outstanding Kachin athletes who represented Burma in international marathon and long distance events in the early years of the country’s independence. They were all discovered while serving in the army, in the now defunct all-Kachin infantry […]
First Kachin Woman Collegian Lahpai Htu Raw
Lahpai Htu Raw, like her pioneer educator mother Nangzing Hka Jan, was a trailblazer. The 9th child, and 4th daughter of the Pangmu Duwa Rev. Lahpai Lahpai Zau Tu and Nangzing Hka Jan, she was the first Kachin woman to receive a college education. A bright child, Htu Raw learned to read even before she started school. […]