Transcript: Episode #310: Apocalypse Then

Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.

---

Host  00:13 

Welcome to the Insight Myanmar podcast. Before we get into today's show, I wanted to let you know that we have a lot more written and video content on our website. If you haven't visited it yet, we invite you to take a look at www.insightmyanmar.org in addition to complete information about all of our past episodes, there's also a variety of blogs, books and videos to check out, and you can also sign up for our regular newsletter. But for now, enjoy what follows And remember sharing is caring. 

Gustavo  01:02 

Like being really been involved with Burma, probably for about 30 years. My first visit there was really in 1990 then over the next 1011, years, I visited about five times. Burma was sort of off the beaten path. You know, I've gone to other countries, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and it was one of those countries that was less traveled by tourists, and my first visit there was it was constrained in 1990 I don't remember whether it was one week, 10 days or 14 days. And during that period time, pretty well, stayed in Rangoon. I didn't run into any foreigners there at that point in time. Then I went back in 92 that time I ventured a little bit further out, went up to be gone, and the same thing happened. Didn't really run into any any tourists there. My wife was a redhead, and she was a subject of great concern because of the red hair. They had not seen people with red hair before. Then my third trip, which was really the subject of this, you know, this topic here. Then I had a a fourth trip. That fourth trip had to do with anthropology, anterol, political expedition up to moe Goenka, trying to deal with find evidence of early primates. And then my last trip was in 2001 where I did a spiritual quest dealing with weiza. And then after that, I didn't visit a country, oh, maybe for about 10 more years until 2013 and 2014 it changed so much, you know. And as I say, there were a lot of suits and skirts there. And so it really almost like Bangkok. And so I really have not been into, into the into the country since, since April. I think 2013 2014 

Host  03:30 

So your experience with Burma is really with the bad old days then. 

Gustavo  03:33 

Yeah, exactly, pre tourist days, yeah, no t shirts. 

Host  03:38 

Right? So you have a wealth of knowledge to pull from a wealth of stories. And I know, after reflecting on what you feel comfortable sharing and what you think would be interesting and safe fodder to put out there, you've landed on one particular story that you'd like to talk about during this session. So give us an introduction into what that story is. 

Gustavo  03:57 

Yes, this story is about a group of soldiers from World War Two. They were the merle's marauders. And essentially what they were was a long range penetration force. And they were used to go from India to to North, through northern Burma into the kna, take the airfield. And I was very fortunate to be able to join that group on their tour. And so really, what my talk is, is really about that, and during that, there's a number of incidents that happen. I was very fortunate through this to meet a lot of people there. A lot of them are not so good people, you know, ton, Suu Monge, General, Kim Newt and the such like that. But also good people. These are some of the Khin rangers who fought the underground during the war, and then also, too going with the veterans to these various locations and listening to their stories, where they went back 50 years and recounted some of the incidences right there. So this is what the story is about. 

Host  04:57 

So to break it down for our listeners, just. There's no confusion. There's two different time iterations you're talking about. One is actually during World War Two, with Merrill's marinators, which we'll get into who Merrill was and what his maritals were doing. And then second is many years later, I believe it was 1995 when they're now veterans, they go back to Burma for a specific purpose, which we'll get into. So we want to make clear to listeners that these are two different time iterations that we're talking about. So perhaps we can set the scene first with World War Two, and maybe you can open with describing in general terms what the Burma front was for listeners that might not be so aware of what was going on in Burma during World War Two, and then how Merrill fit into that, and what this unit was doing. 

Gustavo  05:44 

Okay, especially during the war. Most people think about Europe, to some degree, North Africa and then the Pacific. The Forgotten theater of World War Two was the China Burma, India theater. It was forgotten in many ways. It was sort of the last one to really get resources and everything else but, but because of that, there was a lot of innovations that came out of that environment there, because there was a lack of control. The first use of the helicopter was really in in Burma fly flying supplies from Burma, from India into China, because the Japanese had cut off, had to cut off supplies moving from Rangoon up into China to support Chiang Kai Shek when he was fighting against the Japanese. So the Americans flew supplies to Chiang Kai Shek from India to into China, and that really set the stage for the Berlin Airlift. So they developed the expertise for that, and so they will supply Berlin with the supplies that needed when the Russians, when the Russians cut it off. The other innovation was, was the guerrilla force. You had various guerrilla forces up in northern Burma, both by the British and by the Americans. And they were very innovative in a lot of their work. And today's US Army Special Forces came from from this group. Then you also had the Flying Tigers, which many people have heard about. You know, they initially were volunteers. They started off in Burma fighting against the Japanese there, then slowly were pushed out. Then it went into China, and they fought, flew for the National Chinese, and eventually, when America entered the war, then they became the 14th Air Force, with General Chennault as their head. But they developed a lot of innovative fighter tactics that that later on in the war and the Korean War. They were adopted by the US military. So it's almost like a fighting lab that was there, mainly because they weren't controlled. So it's like, I say it's very interesting. And that had to do with part of my my interest in the country had to do with the World War Two period right there, because of the different things that happened, as well as there were other things that were happening on the Burmese side, with the Japanese support of Aung San and the comrades right there. But going back, really, to the topic, you know, of the talk here, exactly, right? It's really two pieces. We're going back to, really, back to 1941 up through 1944 and then all of a sudden we're going to jump back to 1995 and 1990 1994 1995 and that's when the veteran trip started. But let's go on back to really around 1941 and during 41 US made a decision to provide material support to China in this war of the Japan as the US felt that China was critical to defense of the United States. These supplies came to China through northern Burma.

The objective of the Japanese attack on Burma in early 1942 in addition to taking India from the Burmese and maybe linking up with the Germans in around Iran, was to cut off these supplies. Since the Japanese controlled Moe to Burma, the supplies were sent by were sent to China from India by flights over the Himalayan Mountains. This was called Flying over the home. However, the Japanese control over northern Burma allowed them to interdict these flights from its airfield at Makina, which is in what was called at that time the Khin Hills, which is now Khin state in northern Burma, when the US entered the war, it was important for the allies to secure this airfield from the Japanese. To stop these interdictions. The Allies planned to build a pipeline and a road from India to China through northern Burma as another means to supply fuel and supplies to the national Chinese fighting against Japanese. The main reason they were supporting the Chinese there had to do with put pressure off of Nimitz and and MacArthur that the Japanese would have to keep forces in China and divert those forces from fighting against the American forces in the Pacific. So this was, in a sense, very, very important to keep Japanese tied down. And what happened? In order, we had to the US, had to take that airfield up in, up in Michigan, and also they had to really secure the route from across northern Burma to China, for the pipeline, as well as for the for the road. What it did is it put together a long range penetration force, US Army penetration force. It was called merle's marauders. It was named after its leader, General Frank Merle. And then the name was coined by the press. The Press coined this name. It's like Terry and the Pirates and all. And they were trained. They were trained actually by general word Wingate. Chindig, very famous general, general word Wingate. He was famous for work he did in Palestine and elsewhere. And what he did is is he ended up sending a setting up a long range a British force that act, act behind enemy air. Excuse me, behind enemy lines. And what was also unique, they operated behind these lines with conventional forces, and they were supplied by air from India. So it was sort of a combined operation right there. And so what happened is, is because of wind gates, knowledge and everything else, the Americans took training under wing gate. And also what they did is they work with the the air supply group to learn their various tactics in order to support murals and marauders. To do the same thing, where Americans can operate behind the Japanese lines and to secure Northern, northern Burma, and especially the airfield at Magina. And at the same point in time, they had, would have supplies dropped to them, dropped to them behind, behind the lines.

Now what happened? They were under command, as mentioned, of general Merle, who was under command of General Joseph Stillwell. They called him dinner Joe. He was the deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia. He was under General mount baton. Also. He was an advisor to general Chiang Kai Shek Wingate, excuse me. Stillwell was very unusual because he also had a Chinese army under his control. So there was a Chinese army also in northern Burma, because the Chinese also wanted to protect their supply route into China. So Stillwell also assumed control over them. And when the Chinese, when the Japanese, moved north and started pushing the the British out. And also the Chinese were there. They all went into China. They all went into India. And so the Chinese soldiers were in India, and they were trained in India, and eventually came back with the merles marauders. Now going back to the Merrills marauders, they embarked on their mission in mid February of 1944 to take these various areas in northern myrmal And eventually, to, you know, take the air strip at machina. They ended up taking that Arab strip three months later, in May 1944 then they were tasked to take the city of Mishna. However, it was very difficult. It took them another few months until August in order to take the cities. The Japanese mounted heavy attacks on the airfield and made it very difficult for them just to completely take the airfield and be out of the guns of the Japanese. And eventually they took, they took the city of michino. Now there were 2750 Merrill marauders who left India the in the border in February 1944 only 1300 of it made it to mission. That's less than a half they had endure physical, mental heat, exhaustion, malaria, dysentery, dengue fever, mosquitoes, leeches, injuries, combat, RAID related injuries and deaths, and they had tracked over 750 miles of jungle and rugged mountains and combat with the Japanese, and now taking a very huge toll, you know, on these soldiers, they were disbanded later in August, 1944 after the catcher capture, Miss Gina city has only had 130 officers and men who were combat fit, furthermore, Out of the original 2750 soldiers, only two, only two were left alive who had never been hospitalized with wounds, injuries or major incidences.

So that's sort of the background to you, to the the the context for these veterans to go back, and what you did is, among the veterans there, you had the soldiers there, you had mule skinner because they carried their own supplies in. So they use mule so these mules went all the way from India, all the way into Michigan. A lot of the mule Skinners were from Kentucky and Tennessee. You all also had second generation Japanese Nisei. There they were. They were recruited out of internment camps in. And some of them went, went into Europe. One of the famous units, I don't remember it was, I think, the 444 42nd infantry, which was Japanese, that fought in Europe. But other ones were assigned to the Pacific Theater. And among the groups they were assigned to was to Murray's marauders. And then also you had the the air crew. You had a group that flew out of out of India. They flew C 47 and they dropped supplies periodically to the Maryland marauders as they continue their march across northern Burma into the China. So these were the people who wanted to go back to Burma. They had not been back to Burma since the war, since end of the war, really well, many of them since 1944 because of their injuries and everything else. Also, at that point in time and up to 1995 to my knowledge, no American veterans were able to let were allowed to ever visit Michigan, who was a closed city also it was also closed to many, many Americans at the embassy, especially the DEA and the military officials. So when we went up to Michigan, the people were very surprised to see Americans up there. Now the story really starts sort of convergence of really three events during the Second War. My father was a pilot with the Eighth Air Force, and in my town, they had a Veterans Association for the Eighth Air Force. And I would go to some of their meetings. They have presentations by people from from different aspects of the Second War. And one of the people who was there was a Jim Fletcher. Now Jim went into Burma in 1942 he ran a gorilla group up there in the north with kitchens. They're called the famous Khin Rangers. If you go to the American Embassy in Rangoon on University Avenue, you go into the compound, you're going to see a Kachin ranger there. You know the statue of Khin ranger there. Now he went in at 42 he operated, you know, with the Rangers operating behind enemy lines, with sabotage and everything else, rescuing flyers who may have been shot down from flying over the hump. But also he ended up supporting Merz marauders as they were moving in from February, from February 1944 until the city of Michigan was taken in August right there, so his gorilla force helped support them. So after the presentation, I stopped Jim, and I mentioned to him that I'd been to Burma twice and everything else. And we chatted about things. We saw, some things in common. I had a little bit of history of the area. And what Jim did, he invited me to go to the meetings of the veterans of the China Burma India theater. This was called the China Burma India theater Veteran Association.

So I ended up going to these meetings over a period of time. The second event had to do with a reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. His name was Ron March. Now, Ron had run a article in October 1987 about a missing in action US aircraft that was found by the Khin independence organization. And they say they recovered bone fragments and dog tags, and they even had the names, you know, of the on the from the dog tags, there was a lieutenant Wilson and Lieutenant Beeler. And what they're looking for is trying to get some publicity through Ron in order to get the US government to engage, to engage with them. Anyway, Ron knew Jim because he had also attended the the veterans China, Birmingham Veteran Association meeting. And try to get some background from Jim, because Jim had worked with the Khin up there, and also he knew the leaders of the Khin independence army and Khin independence organization and army up there. So Jim provided some background. Then the third event happened. You know, in the fall of 1994 the Merle marauders Veterans Association announced that they were going to have a tour to Burma to visit some of the old battle sites, and they invited Jim to go. And Jim thought it was also a good opportunity to follow up on this 1987 reported crash that was found by the kio and Kia in 1994 the the K O Kia entered into a cease fire agreement with the Burma military. So another reason we're able to go on up there, and hopefully would be able to that, that he would be able to to meet with the the leaders there to deal with the aircraft anyway, Jim could not go. His wife, Janelle, became sick, and then he knew I had been there before, and he asked me to to go off on the trip, to follow up on this, on this plane crash. And I had a friend of mine who had also been to Burma with me before. And. Named Gary. And so what happened is that he sponsored us with the merlton Rogers Veterans Association to go to to go to Burma on this Veterans trip. Then the next we started off in January, like january 1995 Gary and I flew up to Washington, DC. We met the veterans at the hotel there outside DC, and then what happened is, later that night, we're invited the whole group of us over to the Burmese embassy in Washington, DC for an official reception. This is by Ambassador. There are 18, as I mentioned earlier, 18 Murrells, marauders, veterans. And they were three sons and grandsons of veterans who had had passed on. And then there was Gary and I. So there's 23 of us that were there. The group leader was a brigadier general, Robert Castor he had served on general sill well and staff in India. So he was the leader of the group. We mentioned to him about that missing aircraft, and when he went up to Michigan that we wanted to go talk to the kio leaders about that, and he endorsed us doing that at the while we're at the reception, we learned that what was started off as a private visit apparently been co opted by the Burmese military for as a state pond state sponsored visit for propaganda purposes. So day day later, we're on a flight to Rangoon. Ended up in Osaka. They just had the earthquake there a few weeks earlier. And then we're a little bit worried a hotel about that. But then from there into Bangkok, and from Bangkok in the Rangoon, we were met at the airport Rangoon by a the foreign liaison officer from the Ministry of Defense, a major ton Tun. He was to be our handler doing our whole trip. And he had two military media folks there, one still photographer and one movie, one in order. Video, one in order to document our trip.

And periodically, we were put in the the newspaper, the new light of Myanmar, again, for propaganda purposes. Right there. We ended up spending a couple days of tourism in the in the Rangoon area, looking at the usual tour sites and everything else. And whether taking pictures of us doing that. Then we went over the Commonwealth War Cemetery, where a lot of the British soldiers and soldiers from the Commonwealth countries were buried, were never repatriated back. And then the the veterans ended up laying a reef there, of course, again, it was photographed and everything else by the by the Burmese military and put into the newspaper as part of the propaganda. Then we ended up having a couple days of official meetings. They ended up there was two major, two major official meetings at Gary nine and 10. The first one was with the Minister of Trade, Lieutenant General Tun Kyi, and then the second one was with the deputy prime minister, Lieutenant General what? What ended up happening. They split the group, the except for Gary and I. They split the group into two pieces, two groups of them, and they went and visited them when the interesting came out of that. And one of them, when they visited the Minister of Trade right there, Lieutenant General Tun, he was talking about COVID, you know, the high mountain up in northern Burma. And he says it's perfect place to maybe go ahead and and house atomic waste, you know, from nuclear reactors right there, go ahead and buy the atomic waste to generate earnings for Burma. And also, too, it came out that maybe it could be a ski resort. So those are some of the things that came out of that one. Well, as mentioned, we declined to go. And what we decided to do is go visit somebody I had visited before. And this was an Esther POJO now. She had been a nurse with Dr Gordon Seagraves. This is Dr Gordon Seagraves. Was the famous Burma surgeon. He came from a missionary family that, guess, had been in Burma since probably the mid 1800s and then he went into Burma 1920s 1930s as a missionary doctor, he started spending more time on the doctoring and mission than the missionary work. And he he started, he lost support, from the missionary group, but he got support from others, because he felt really what they needed was the medical care. So what he ended up doing is, in the 30s, he ended up training a number of nurses. He sent some of them to America. These were ethnic nurses. Corinne Khin to America for training. They came back. And this is before World War Two, then, and his hospital was in Nam Khan. He opened northern Shawn state, which you hear a lot about now because of the fighting. Then what happened is the war started.

The Japanese started pushing, you know, starting coming in through Thailand, and started pushing north that they wanted to take that airfield Machina, and they were also punching to the West. Head toward India at that point in time. During that period of time, general Stillwell and general Moe were both in myrmal with the Chinese troops, and they were being pushed back north. They ended up a little bit north of Mandalay. They met up with Dr save grave as a nurses, and they all escaped through the notorious Huk Valley. It's sort of a valley of death. Many people with the history of Burma know about that trek. It was almost like the British leaving India, going through the passes there the Kyber pass. So they were they were dying right and left. So what happened Merle general, Merle general Stillwell general still led the group, and then you had Dr Seagraves, and as nervous as they all escaped into all escaped into India. Then So Esther. Esther spent the time in India. And then also Esther came back with merles marauders when they started behind merles marauders, when they started their trek back in February 1944 all the way through to capture a mickina, and after the war, general shimmy Seagraves went back to his hospital. Nom Khan, he stayed there until 1995 when he passed on. Esther stayed at the hospital if it was nationalized by the government there in 1965 and she stayed with them, you know, for until 1981 and retired. Unfortunately, her pension from the Burmese government only went from 1965 to 1981 the Burmese government refused to compensate her for those early years prior to World War Two. So when we went and visited Esther, and we we asked if she'd be willing to go to dinner that night with the veterans, and she said she would. So we went back and we talked to the veterans. They were excited about because some of them knew the sea grave nurse. Some of them were treated by the sea grave nurses, so they were very static about that. So we went back and talked to Esther, invited her to come. So what happened we had a dinner. It was at you had the sweetie going, and as you look, the sweetie going from the south, and you look, you come up to the south entrance, and you look on the right side, there's another pagoda right there that sort of looks like sui Goenka. People called it the slorc, the slurp pagoda, and that's where we had, we had dinner, and was hosted by no other than major 10 Tun. So we're there. Esther came in with her husband, and she was wearing the American Bronze Star. I mean, the she was awarded that by General Stillwell for bravery.

Right there. The veterans were very, very ecstatic. And you can imagine how general, excuse me, how major Tun was he was not happy at all. When the photographer started taking pictures, they make made sure that neither she nor her husband were in those pictures right there. So there were pictures, but you didn't see them. So that was the start of a bad relationship with major Tun, right there. Then we went the next night, or next evening, we were invited to go over to the to the house of the US military. I had to show you a return of Lieutenant Colonel Lee. While we were there, there was people from embassy, people from not only Rangoon, but also from our Embassy in Bangkok, but also there. There was a sort of a high ranking officer from defense services intelligence, you know, he was probably number three, one under kin Newt. And then you had, so Joe Wynn. You had Joe Wynn, I think he was number two, and then you had Colonel Joah then. And I approached Joah then, because essentially he was really overseeing this whole trip. So I approached him, and I mentioned to him about this whole thing with wanting to meet these Kyaw leaders up in Makina to talk about this 1987 aircraft. He said that this was just propaganda. By the kya, they didn't find anything, and sort of repeated that this was just a propaganda thing. They just wanted contact with the US government. There were really nothing there. Then what he did is, however, he agreed. He says, Fine, when you're up there, up in up in Michigan, since we have the ceasefire agreement, we'll go ahead and set you up to meet with these leaders to talk about that. Then he surprised us. He said the Burma Army found its own US military aircraft, and this was from 1919 91 and what they did is they were actually looking for the 1987 aircraft is what they were doing. The patrol was up there. It was in the air. It was doing operations against the Ko and Kia, and at the point in time, they were in the general area where the 1987 aircraft was last spotted. So they were told to also be on the lookout for. Anything that would indicate a crash US aircraft up there. Apparently, what happened was, is when Ron wrote this article about that 1987 aircraft, it was read by some of the relatives of the people who were missing in action. And what they did is they put pressure on some US congressmen who put pressure on the State Department pressure on the US Embassy in Rangoon, who then contacted the Burmese military to look into the whole affair. Right there. I think the US government was going through all the motions and everything else, and really didn't expect anything, but just keep people happy.

So that was a reason why, you know, the patrol went out there again. They were out there in the area on patrol against the Khin independence army, but the same point in time in the area right there, anyway, what happened is they found the plane, and what they found, and plane was interesting. They found bone fragments. They found they found bone fragments. They found dog tags, airplane parts, weapons parts, all kinds of things that you associate with a plane crash. They were in a remote area, so all they were able to do is carry back what they could pack out, and that was bone fragments. They brought dog tags. All the dog tags they could find, right there had some weapon parts and some aircraft parts. And they they brought them back. And what happens is, they contacted the US Embassy about that shortly afterwards, and heard nothing back from from the US Embassy. So what happened is, is and said they wanted to return them. They wanted to return all this stuff work with the US government to go back on that site and further excavate it. So then broke away from Colonel fan. I went up to Colonel Lee. This is our US guy, and I mentioned it to him, and he says, All they want is recognition. Says, tell them to drop the duffel bag full of the parts, or whatever they found about bone fragments and the dog tag. Tell them to drop them off in a duffel bag. You know, you know at the at the embassy there, we're not going to give any credit to them again. You know, this is that period of time where, where what happened is, is us. Was 100% on all in with Aung San Suu Kyi, so they didn't do anything at all to give credit, even though we're dealing with the return of American, American dead and what happened was, I went back to Colonel fan, and he was, you know, he was upset. He said, Now you see what I'm putting up with. He says, she says, You folks, you you go to Korea, you talk to the North Koreans and they, you work with them, you get the remains, you have the big ceremony at the airport and everything else. Then you go do the same thing with the Vietnamese. You do the same thing with allow these are the people who killed your people. We didn't kill your people. And all we want you to do is respectfully, take these remains, give us have a ceremony at the airport. And that's all we want, you know, done and and which, to me, sounded very reasonable and didn't look like the US government really cared about.

So what I did, what I and Gary did, we talked to Colonel then said, All right, the next time we're in rain gun when we finish a trip up in the keen to come back down here, give us something that we work with when we come back to the States. And he ended up agreeing, agreeing to do that. Now, the other thing that happened while we're in a discussion, we went off to the side, one of the side rooms at Colonel Lee's residence, right there to talk to, to to Colonel thin. What happened is, is the door opened up and here was, you know, military from Rangoon, and couple of them from from Bangkok, you know, sort of coming in, trying to overhear a conversation, and, you know, with a private conversation, and probably on who these guys talking to, and they're not even veterans. Because the other thing was, we had no association with Merage. She had the actual soldiers and the grandson and Sons of them, the people of Murray didn't even know who we were and but somehow Jim got us, Fletcher got us hooked up the group, so they didn't know anything about us. So here they are, these two fellows that nobody knows anything about is talking with the number three guy in Burmese military intelligence. So they're wondering what we're talking about. And so I ended up getting up and telling that this private conversation to leave. I think they're very shocked about that. Colonel Flynn was impressed with that, though, so we it. I think they felt that we are DEA. The reason and they felt we were DEA Drug Enforcement Agency was because Colonel then was also responsible for the drug program, you know, dealing with drug eradication, working with the armed groups and all trying to get them crop substitution and such like that. And also da probably had a better working relationship with the Burmese government than either the US State Department or even the CIA. And so those folks were very jealous of dA. So the given our age and everything else, because I was 20 years younger than than the folks there on the. Trip. The feeling was that we're by the US, that we're DEA, this is essentially we heard back from grace that there was some talk later on there that we were maybe dia so then we we ended up getting bused up to be gone.

We did the regular tourism, and Tun was there with us, with his his media guys, Grace really conducted the tour. Saw the usual stuff. They gone. I already, twice already, and what I did is I broke Gary and I broke away and I went to New Pagon, as some folks have been there, they had opagon, new Pagon, and they relocated the people from opagonup, made the obeon the tour center. And I met a on a previous trip. My wife had gotten sick, and we visited a doctor in obergon to me in New Pagon. Very interesting doctor. He was Indian, Burmese. He had been in Singapore with the Indian Army, and then the Japanese took Singapore, and he was captured, and he was sent to a beat at POW camp on the in Thailand, right on the border there. So we ended up talking to him and told him about our group invited him coming over to meet the veteran. So we brought him on over there. He got along with the veterans, but Colonel Tun was not happy again, because we interfered with things again. So then we were bused up to Mandalay. We did the usual tourism with, you know, with the MaHA Muni and the such like that. You know, up on Mandalay hill with grace and all. And then just before dinner, hotel up there, and across the tract was a market. So Gary and I had a little market, and looking at some stuff, we ran into two Photo, photo journalists. We're going up to moe. And we they asked why we're there. We mentioned with the Burmese, excuse me, this veterans group, and they were going up to visit the old battlefield up in Michigan. And they said we'd like to come and talk to them. So we said, Come on, follow us. And we went on up there, up to the upper floor, where the dinner was being hosted by General Tun again. And so the photojournalist started talking to the to the veterans. Colonel Ken got very upset about that. He talked to general caster. General caster went to the photojournas told him to leave. So so again, you know, we're starting to get a lot of bad marks with, with with major Tun. So then we ended up taking a flight up to, actually, from this point on, we're under control of the military. We ended up taking a military aircraft up to Michigan, the air crew and aircraft, the particular aircraft, stayed with us until we returned to Rangoon. And what we did is we went up to michina. We were up at the Northern Command. We stayed on the on the military post up there. The General up there was Major General Saul Lynn. We slept on the post. I asked Gary and I asked general Saul Lynn about the Kia. Oh leaders. We wanted to talk to them about this 1987 aircraft. He said, The One of them is in Rangoon for an eye operation, and the other one is traveling overseas, so they're not available. Kind of convenient, you know there. However, what he did is, is he, he offered to help with any missing aircraft, us, aircraft that may have crashed up in that particular area, up in his command area, he says, You give us a crew report, you give us a map in the last long locations, and we have patrols out in those areas there. We'll do a little bit harder looking there to see if we can find anything.

Then we, over the next couple days, we did the usual tourism up there. A lot of it was by almost all of it was by military convoy, and was very unusual. As a convoy went through town and the roads, the people had to stop their bicycles. They had to stand, stand there, and almost like an attention and everything else, intersections were blocked. We tried to say hello to the people and everything else and say, Hey, we're from America. And that got the people angry. You know, the soldiers angry. We did the usual boat on the air, on the Irrawaddy, where the Two Rivers converge, and all that would try to keep us away from everybody. Then the the famous mountain, Jambo mountain, and they went over the Khin Theological College. They are very, very happy to see us. Actually ecstatic to see us. The military was not happy that they were happy to see us, and they got us out of there very quickly, in about 30 minutes. Then they wanted to end the tour. They wanted to send us back to Rangoon. The Veterans got very upset about because the point of the tour was to. Go to the the airfield at Michigan. That was a whole point of the tour. So the veterans, but they ended up they took a stand and said, No way, we're not going to do that. And of course, the Burmese military was caught in between a rock and a hard place, because there's a propaganda thing. This would not look very good when the veterans on the state sponsored visits, saying they were prevented from the objective of their trip. So what happens is they relented. They actually had no choice. And then what we did is we went off to the airfield. It was the airfield that that they took in May 1944 and horrendous time, you know, almost three months under daily bombarding by the by the Japanese, and also there was Esther po and our Dr Steve graves unit. So what happened? We got to the airfield, the veterans broke away in ones and twos, looking for remembrances of the time that they were fighting and everything else. And Gary and I went off with some of them and getting some first hand accounts of some of the the incidences that happened there about I can remember one that had to do with their 30 caliber machine gun. Air, water cooled, run out of water, and they're passing the canteen cups around to get urine to put into the to put into the machine gun. In order to keep firing. Aircraft land on an airfield didn't even slow down. The soldiers had to jump out so the aircraft could take off again. So we had a very, very terrible, terrible fight. And again, these are soldiers who attract 750 kilometers through jungle and through rugged mountains and all. And they were asked to to hold this, this airfield, as mentioned, you know, just barely over 1000 of them made it there. So they were worn out.

And on this point, any of you all like movies, learn more about merles marauders. There's a movie that came out in 1965 they named merles marauders. And it with Jeff Chandler, I think is the actor. It's a really good portrayal of that whole track, you know, from from India into the airfield of machina. It didn't go very much into the fight of Machina, but through the struggles in northern Burma right there, and also where at the airfield, we met some of the chin Rangers. These are the Kachin who fought in the guerrilla groups to support the Allies up there. And some folks know, familiar with Burma, some of the kitchen Rangers, the very young ones, formed the core of the chin independence organization, Kachin independence army. There. Then also we visited the site where Dr Seagraves and his Seagraves nurses set up a a field hospital site to support the murals marauders during the during the siege at the airfield and the taking of michino. Then we flew out the next day for day trip to ba Moe. We visited with a tactical tactical area commander and did some local tourism, and then went on and flew out that same day into LA show. We spent a couple days in LA show, again under control of the military. There slipped on the post. This was the Northeastern, or my northeast, their Northeastern or triangle command. And this was under a Major General, Aung Joah. There we had, each of us had when we ventured off the post in a group. We each had our own bodyguards. What they told us? I don't Well know if this is true. They told us that they they felt that there was threats against us to embarrass the Burmese military by Kun SA and again, I don't know if that's true, but we had, we had our own bodyguards also, too, whether we were in the marketplace, we went off to a hot springs, again, the bodyguards with with us. Then on our last and we did the usual tourism and everything else, as I mentioned, the hot springs, the markets and the such like that. Then we had a performance on the last day on the military post right there. And they had Sean and Lisa and different performers with cultural performance. And they had a couple kitchen that came out. And they they had the Burmese swords called the DA DHA and they did a performance with the DA. And I was familiar with the DA from from other experiences right there. And then, when they went off stage and went in the background, Gary and I went back there with them, and they showed us some of the techniques with the dog. And I've had experience with it with a dog too, with the Burmese martial arts.

So I also showed some what I knew with the dog. So we had a very good exchange that we then all of a sudden, major Tun noticed we weren't there, so we sent a soldier to come and get us, fetch us, to bring us back. We told them, we're interested going back. You know, we were joined ourselves here, exchanging techniques and all with the with the Khin. Then he sent Dave Richardson, one of the group there, veteran group, veterans from the group there, to come and fetch us back. And we couldn't say no to to Dave. And so what they did is they put us right in the front, right next to where the performers were. They were. They could, essentially they go ahead and keep an eye on us. Then we ended up flying out. And we flew out the out of the the airport. There all the bunkers and everything else were manned by soldiers and everything else. So I don't know if that was the usual situation or again, we were expecting an attack on us by Kun saw. We flew into we flew back into Rangoon. We were bused on from the airport over to the Ministry of Defense compound while they're sort of resting and taking lunch. Colonel thin, who you remember from over at the military, us, military. He pulled me aside, and he gave me five pages of documents about the 1991 missing action, us, aircraft that the Burma Army found. And in there it. It mentioned that that it was found in late July 1991 near Lake and al G in Khin state, between the chinwood and Irrawaddy River. And what they did is, is it was a very remote area, and then what they're able to do is just carry out some, some, again, bone fragments and dog tags and aircraft parts, aircraft parts and weapons parts, right there. Those parts were brought back to Rangoon and were 72 forensic examination, the bone fragments were determined to be from occidentals, the aircraft parts from a C, 47 and then to the dog tags. You look at the dog tags. They were real dog tags. They were photographs of dog tags, and they were listed there. You know, they typed out the listing on but you could read it on a dog tags. And there were, there were four, there were four names before the four names on the dog tags. There's a pilot Lieutenant heist, pilot, Lieutenant heissner, Lieutenant Reynolds. Heist was a pilot. Co pilot was Lieutenant heist you had a radio operator named torbit and an engineer, Corporal Leiden. All this information again, this this information was, was found, you know, in July 1991 brought back to Rangoon, and then later in september 1991 just a few months later, this information was conveyed to the US charge day affairs at our embassy right there to for some type of follow up on this thing. Nothing at all, completely quiet from the US Embassy again. I think it's one of these things. They didn't want to give the Burmese military any type of credit. But again, these are American dead, American soldiers dead, who we always promise we never leave our people behind, but we will leave our people behind for politics, right there. Okay, so what happens is finish with then the veterans finished lunch, and then we had a meeting with General Kim Newton. He was a slur Secretary number one, and he was head of Burmese military intelligence.

And what he did is he sort of gave us a State of Union with rebels and all that stuff with the ceasefire agreements of fighting. You know the fighting against the Khin, you know, the fight of mana poor and the such like that he gave us that I had remembered him sort of overseeing the situation of the four eights back in August 8, 1988 when you had all those students were murdered and everything else. And so I'm sitting there in the back listening to drone on, and I wanted to go over there and just choke the hell out of him. I was hoping he couldn't read his he couldn't read my mind. And it was a big worry, because what happened was, as many folks listening to this may know, the Burmese leadership is very much into mysticism and everything else, and they have their own bow downs. These are folks that do the connection between this present life and then some other dimension right there. Ken Newt has his own bow down. And I was worried that somehow he may have some type of connection right there where he could read my mind, and if he was I was dead me. So anyway, we finished with him, and I didn't choke him. Luckily for me, I didn't choke him at all. And then we went into a ceremonial Hall. And that we had in there general Conway, who was head of the country, Monge, he was head of the military commute was there. And then we had 505 other berm army generals here. And what they did is, is for the veterans and the sons and grandsons of veterans, they presented them with the star liberation medal. Gary and I, since weren't veterans, we didn't get that. Then they gave everybody a beret, a Burma army beret. Gary and I got the beret, though, so we had a photo opportunity with them outside, which was very memorable. And then we ended up flying. To out to Thailand, then back the states, then winter back in the States, Gary and I jumped on this thing because again, we talked to Colonel thin about this. He gave us this information. We felt duty balance to follow up on it. So the first thing we did is contact the Burma desk at the US State Department, and we wanted to work with them on this thing. They gave us a run around. They says, Oh, the their relatives are dead, and everything else. And we're dealing with missing in action and recoveries in Korea, in Vietnam, and allow us and all. And also, we're not giving credit to the regime. Is it? What we're not going to do. Then we said, All right, let's go talk to the Air Force. And so we tried to deal with the Air Force at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama that kept the records. They were not cooperative. They wouldn't cooperate with us all. We wanted the crew reports, anything they had on any mission, missing US aircraft in northern Burma got nowhere.

Then on our trip, there was a man named Leroy Fisher. Leroy Fisher was part of the air group that supported the Murrells marauders. They dropped supplies and everything else to Murrells marauders that are penetrating deeply behind behind Japanese lines. So we talked to to him, and he ended up contacting a couple of veterans groups. One of them was a hump pilot Association. These were the group of veterans who flew over, you know, who flew over the Himalaya Mountains and supplied the Chinese with supplies. But also they helped support the Murrells marauders and the chindig and what they did is they were able to identify, actually identify, the aircraft. The name of the aircraft was the Phyllis high C 47 so probably one of the crew members had a Phyllis in her in their family, and named it as they do in World War Two. And it was flying out to din up in northeast India, there were four US crewmen. There was two lieutenants, a pilot, James hice, co pilot, Fletcher Reynolds. There was a radio operator, Roy Torben, Sergeant Roy Torben, an engineer, Corporal, Harry Leiden. But also there was three British kickers on there. These British kickers were from the chindig So who is general wind gates column? Because again, the same time Earl marauders was was heading toward Mitch na just south of them, the British long range penetration forth, the chindig were also coming in. And so the air cargo group was supporting both groups. And like, say, the three kickers there, there was a sergeant McGee and two privates, Edwards and Coopers. So we got that information. Then next, we still needed more help, so Leroy contacted his congressman, very powerful congressman from Texas. Anyway, he ended up sort of kicking ass go with the Air Force. We ended up getting crew reports, mission, mission missing in action reports. We saw that that mission for the Phyllis high C was to support one of the wind gates columns that was operating south of Murrells marauders. And what they did is they were dropping medical supplies. After they dropped the medical supplies, they were lost, and this was in the end of June in 1944 and then what happened, what we're able to do is we found out some names of the next at Khin, then we contacted and that we Leroy contacted Veterans Administration, and through that, we're only locate one of the relatives, and that was the wife of the radio operator Harry Lydon. And what happened was she had remarried. Her husband did not know he she had been married before, so she appreciated the information, but didn't really want to pursue it. We were hoping, by getting the relatives involved, that we can pressure the US government to bring the remains home. And she was the only one that we have a contact, and she had a personal situation with very valid about that.

Additionally, we had the three British kickers that were involved in this. So then we contacted the British Burma star organization. The British Burma star organization had to do with the veterans who had British veterans, 14th army and the chindig who had fought in Burma during the Second War. And we gave them the information they have so they can go ahead and follow up. You know, follow up with the with the relatives there. Then what I did is actually Gary and I did we, we contacted the White House. This was President Clinton. Have contacted his staff. We wanted to do is get a a sea graves, nurses day. You know, in America, they have, like, egg growers days, or like, one day a year, only one time forever, you know. And the corn growers day. And all we want to do is get a sea Grover's nurse a day to honor these nurses who took care of these Americans and went through them all this horrendous trek across northern myrmal. And what happened is Clinton minced. Refused to do that. They said that the Seagraves nurses were not American, so they could not name a day after them. Again, it was just one day during that one year. It wouldn't be that same day every year. They wouldn't do it. They said again, they weren't, they weren't part of a US unit. They were, and it was documented in our request, they were a part of Dr Steve Gray's hospital unit, which, that's what it was called, and it was under command of Lieutenant Colonel Gordon see gray. He was commissioned in the US medical corps. However, nothing at all happened with respect to that. Then what happened is, heard, nothing at all. You know, you know, from, from all that stuff. And then two years later, in latter around the third week in December, I was back in Burma again to do another trip up to moe go. Do a trip up to moe go. And I stopped by the US Embassy to find out if there's any news with respect to the 1991 missing aircraft recovery. They had new military, you know, at a Shay there, Don Moran, Colonel Don Moran, and he had heard about this from from the previous colonel, about the the situation. And he said, you know, that could have been my father up there, and I would want him recovered. And so what he ended up doing is, is he waited for the right Americans to come there to push the issue, because there are a lot of congressmen and that would visit there on different types of trips, mainly because of the Aung San Suu Kyi situation. Then the one person that came there was instrumental was John McCain. Senator John McCain, as many folks know, was a POW in North Korea. What, what Colonel Moran did is he got Senator McCain and General Kim Newton together. He put him together, right there. Kim Newt, you know, told him the whole story and everything else. Kane got back the states and really pushed things back in the States. And a few months later, in December, matter of fact, two weeks before I got there, there was a ceremony at the government guest house. There were all the remains and artifacts and everything else were passed on over to the to the American charge, the affairs, the Marines were there as a honor guard and everything. So what the Burmese had requested, which is very reasonable request, you know, finally came to fruition, mainly through the efforts of Colonel Moran. The other interesting thing is, is, is he said, You're not going to believe this, but in the next room, before you, while you were here, there's a group in there who are from the from the US military's Joint Task Force for pow, mission, action accounting, from the US Embassy in in Bangkok. And what you're here to do is to set up plans to go ahead and look for missing US aircraft and crews up in northern Burma, and work with Burmese military intelligence to do something like that. And what happened is, is the the they ended up starting in 1919 98 with that and and that actually went from 1998 until 1994 and what happened was, some of listeners may recall that 1994 Jerome Kim Newt and his DSA DSI group were rolled up. He was planning a house arrest and everything else, and everything stopped with respect to the recovery of the of the remains, right there. Now, one thing sort of as a postscript, everything. It all started with this 1987 aircraft that the kitchens supposedly, allegedly found. Well, during this period between 1998 and 2004 I'm not sure when, but what happened was, there were the recovered. There were recoveries of of the the site was found, and their actual recoveries there. There were three air crew. You know, there was a pilot, a co pilot and radio operator, co pilot, a lieutenant Wilson, a flight officer, my long go, radio operator, Beeler. And then there were four drop crews. And these were the droppers. And they were supporting Murrells, marauders, is what they were. You had a staff sergeant Parker and three PF C's a moss, Owen B and Jones. And they, you know, there's mentioned. They were covered sometime between 219 98 and 2004 and I have not heard anything as far as any more recoveries. The other thing too is, is 1998 there was a book put out by a woman named chick Quinn. It was called aluminum trail at that point in time. In 1998 she had sort of listed 700 military air. Craft that we're still missing in action in India, Burma and southwest China, even today, they're found in some of these remote areas in northeast India. We have some American volunteers who have gone into those valleys and look for them. And they've run out a lot of trouble from the from the Indians about this, because of very sensitive with respect to Chinese in the area, right there, no help at all, really, from from the American government. There is all privately supported right there.

So even even in China, I can remember, back in the early 2000s Jim Fletcher mentioned to me that he was contact with somebody who had found a crash US aircraft in in China, just across the border from from Burma. So this was, again, in the early 2000 so there's probably still other aircraft they're lost in this area, from these flights that were supporting these army units that were going to northern Burma, and then also the flights that were going from from India to China. I'll give you one incident. It reminded me an incident. They were on one of these flights, one of the crew, one of the people who was on the tour with us. He was talking that Madam Chang wanted to fly a piano from India that she bought in Britain, got shipped to India, and wanted to fly it over into into China, which really didn't make the people happy. You know, the air crew happy about this thing. As many folks know, the Himalayas are pretty high even over that area in northern Burma and and they lost a lot of planes by just crashing into it. So what the story went is, is, as they got in here, over the Himalaya Mountains, they dropped her plane out, and he told when they landed there in in khming, they said that they were unable to get sufficient heist to clear the mountains, so they dropped madam Chang's piano on the mountain. Maybe sometime a Chinese PLA patrol, or else Kia, or even a Burma army troll will find that piano. So that's sort of the story. Very interesting. I enjoyed it. I received very first hand accounts of the war there, firsthand from these people who had experienced it. They're lucky to get involved in some small way with the dealing with the recovery of, you know, of US aircraft. I, in some ways, I was fortunate or unfortunate. I want to look at it. I met the leadership of Burma at the time the slurp leadership. So I got a sort of got a sense of who they were. You know, these people who've been murdering Burmese, you know, since, really, 1962 this same click that had done it.

So just another experience among the many experiences I had in my, I guess, eight, nine trips that I've had to Burma. So that's sort of the story of of the travel of World War Two, Merle marauders. And return of these Merle these Moe haras who were US Army Rangers, are all inducted. Most of them are inducted in the US Army's Ranger Hall of Fame. One the Nisei there that served there, he's also inducted into the US military's intelligence Hall of Fame, because they also This is Roy Matsumoto. Roy Matsumoto went all the way to Michigan at before the war ended, he was seconded to the OSS agency in China to work with Chinese guerrillas. Then he was sent into Japan, and he worked with the war criminals in Japan, and they also put him under cover against a CUSA and against the communists. So he had a very storied career. That's why there was this intelligence aspect to him. So the Japanese Americans, not only the ones that were the 4/42 I think was 4/42 over in in Europe, deserved respect, but also you had those other ones that fought also with the Americans in in Burma as China as well as the Pacific Theater. 

Host  1:04:09 

What a story. Thank you so much for coming on to share that. And you mentioned meeting the leadership of slorc. And I mean the years you're talking about in the early 90s are so fascinating, because this is and when you're speaking about the American leadership that is not wanting to acknowledge or have any publicity or propaganda related to the regime in order to get the soldiers. It's also important here, I think, to set the context of 1991 this is just a year after the 1990 elections and the failed 88 democracy movement, the the military coup over Ne Win as he resigns, that then sets the regime on this the second path after 1962 and so, you know, this is, this is a very charged political time, as they're also then dealing with something historical from. A lost era. So quite a number of different themes that are intersecting that you're finding yourself in the middle of this, this overlapping history as well. But I'm also just curious, when you What impressions did you have of being in the same room with these individuals? Because you you mentioned how you hope they couldn't read your mind. And I mean, that tells something about how you must have felt about them, but did you get any sense on a personal level, of energetically, the vibe of who they were? 

Gustavo  1:05:29 

No, not really. Tun Suu did not really talk very much. You know, he did the obligatory, obligatory talk. I think a lot of the talk on the ceremony was about Mung a but still couldn't get a sense of them. The one that did most of the talking of the three of them with Kim new I mean, he went on and on and on. You know, about things again. They just had that operation against the Khin and Manipur. And I think of either, think, matter of fact, they, they kicked him out of Manipur late 1994 right there. So he seemed to be more the talkative one, you know, compared to it the other generals, I think the general up in the Northern Command he was, he was really very talkative, very friendly, and everything else. But again, they're putting a good face on, you know, it's like, sort of like when you're, you're dating the women, the first time, everybody puts their good face on, and this is propaganda. This was for propaganda purpose, which was a good leverage that we had. You know, I got a major Tun irritated many times, but there's nothing he could do about it. And I knew that, and knew there was nothing at all that he could do about I mean, I hadn't made other trips into Burma before that, and and and I had talked to people in stores and all and, and they were reluctant to talk about politics, but they would pull me in the back and talk about it. And I was always worried that something would happen to hotel. They put drugs in my suitcase or something else like that. You hear things like that and all. So I went up in a lot of cases, up to the line, but didn't cross the line, and didn't cross the line with them. But again, they put on their best face, because this was for propaganda purposes, right there with all the photographs and everything else. And actually, I'll have to say, most of the veterans did not care. They were there for the experience of Michigan and everything else, General, General caster. He sort of towed the line and all, he sort of bought in to some of the propaganda they're putting out. He put out some statement that veteran signed, Gary and I refused to sign the statement, you know, complimenting regime, you know, for the trip and all we were, we refused to do it. But it didn't really matter with us, because we weren't part of the we weren't Moe related to the Murdo one way the other, right there. Yeah, yeah. So and they were, they were worried about us, because they they had thought we were da DEA all along, right there. And so a lot of cases, they sort of kept a little bit of little bit of distance, little bit distance with us as sort of an aside without getting into it. By some chance, I met General Kim Newton Bo Dao, his mystical advisor, by by one of my trips by, by an instant and when he got rolled up night in 2004 his bow down was all put in jail with things. So this is the person that inner mates here. Mate intermediates between the present environment, the present reality, and this reality on another dimension, right there. That is sort of like a psychic that Kim new went to, you know, right there, and was sort of a meeting that was sort of unexpected right there. This is a years later that that happened right there, yeah. 

Host  1:08:49 

It’s also interesting to think that there's all these different groups you're having to navigate, the embassy officials, the American officials behind them, State Department in DC, the slow the new slorc regime leaders, the ethnic leaders and armed forces and then the veterans. And you're, you're not in either of these groups. You're, you're not a member of any of these groups, and yet you're being an intermediary. And in some sense, I guess, that gives you a kind of freedom to be able to be this bridging content, connective tissue, but in other ways, it might remove you of certain kind of agency or access, because it's like, well, who are you trying to navigate and do all of this?  

Gustavo  1:09:30 

Well, I don't know if it really I think they tried to constrain our agency or access, but I had been there twice before. I mean, they put us at a hotel on the fringes of Rangoon. But no, no problem. I knew how to get into Rangoon, a very comfortable game. I've been there twice before, and I had met a lot of people there. I knew Rangoon. I mean, I first time I was there, I spent seven days in the city. I didn't go out. There was enough to see there, so I knew, I knew the city. And then again, I. Yeah, I knew there was nothing they could do to me. See, that was the key thing. There was nothing they knew were a state visit, and there was absolutely nothing they can do. So I could really, you know, skate on, you know, skate on the lines, skate on the lines there. But also it provided perspective, because on one side you had the slorc regime or the military regime. On one side, on the other side you had the democracy forces, and on the third side you had the ethnic forces, right there. So it put a lot of that into context right there. I think really, before that trip, I didn't really connect at all with the democracy forces or even the ethnic forces. And then I woke up a little bit to that as a result of the trip. That was my third, my third trip there, and I think that one there is where I became a little bit more aware of politics. 

Host  1:10:52 

Right? Yeah. And you mentioned on a separate incident meeting the BA Dao of Khin junta. Is there anything you could say about that? 

Gustavo  1:11:01 

Well, it it had to do with another trip, because then maybe a sub for another talk, but that had to do with their two strands of Buddhism in Burma, you know, the conventional Buddhism, which has to do with the Dhamma Vipassana meditation and rebirth, then you have another path called the wayza, yeah, the ways of path. The ways of path you proto, prolong your life. You engage in concentration meditation to get into certain states in order to contact with other dimensions and all. And the book you follow is a book of purification, and the Bao. And what other followers there, because he's part of the ways of group. They follow this path. This path can be either good path or bad path, and many times the path is a bad path, you know, that's over there. And anyway, I had, I had a meeting with him, was incidental, and what happened I had and as a story, I had gotten initiated into a ways, a group, and I was given various artifacts as part of my initiation. One of them was the DA lon, which is an alchemic stone, which is silver and mercury. And I met the BA Dao. I talked about my initiation ceremony into the ways a gang. And I mentioned that I had, you know, that was given a a dalung, and I carried the dalam with me all the time. And so what happened is he asked if, if he could question the DA loan. And then he sent somebody out, and they brought a woman in, and she held the DA loan. And then she went into a trance, and he started asking questions of, what would the DA loan? I won't go into the thing right there. So that was sort of essentially, sort of my interaction with him and and he gave me some advice as far as furthering my, my journey on this ways up path, which is a path I'm on right now. I've been on now since 1997. 

Host  1:13:13 

Yeah, fascinating, and definitely a reason to have you on back. If that could be another topic you open up to, and what I mean, what different topics they are really. 

Gustavo  1:13:23 

Yeah, it was, it's, it's, uh, unfortunately what's happening is, is, as Burma becomes very modernized, this whole ways of phenomena is being lost. Because you have, you have the people that create these da loans. They can take up to two years to do it. Then you have the ins and Samas. These are the magic inscriptions. You have these masters who do these things, and they're not young people to take it up. And what happens is that people think it's superstitious and all the rest of but it's a belief system that some people believe in, and some of them believe in it in order to get wealth or power or protection and everything else. But then there's another side of it, which has to do with maybe it works. Maybe, maybe there's things that are out there. It's like in the Christians have angels, the angels can help them. There's maybe things that are out there are another dimensions that can help people there. And there's people there, Taman ya, who was in PA Aung, who passed on early 1990 Right? And, you know, good, good example. There's people in Popa, you know, that also involved this, who were up a Bowman Kong, who was a famous weiza He hung out at so there's good people out there, and not the charlatans. I've ran in charlatans there that won money, and then they'll protect you. And one of them said, I'll protect you from sword cuts. And I said, well, in America, I don't worry about sword cuts and everything else like that. So there's this whole dimension, you know that that's, that's, that's really out there, and you're dealing with past lives you come. Back into this life from a past life, and being connected with people from another life, and you come back into this life with them, you know, as well. And connections with Burma. Why? Why? Why? Why you come to Burma? Is there something that, in one of your paths lives, that there is a connection, you know, I was told that, you know, and everything else, whether it's a delusion or not, it doesn't really matter, but, but so there's Burma. I mean, we have all this conflict and everything else going on, but there's a lot of stuff on the ways of thing, people who they were at the NAT level, you know, for God, decades and decades.

And finally, some researchers in the late 90s and first part of 21st century, started getting into the weza, started investigating that, but, but they're outsiders. None of them were insiders. To really understand what what it takes to be a weza, and what authentic ways it can do right there. Yeah, so it's a it's completely and it's dying. The whole thing is literally dying, which is really sad, because you have tools in your life that can help you. You have physical tools where you can do something, but then you run at a point where it can't finish it this way, then you use your brain and say, I'm going to approach it a different way. And even that doesn't work, or I'll push harder beyond my physical then you need something else. And some people will be philosophy. It'll be religion, it'll be help from wherever. The third thing, it's like a hammer screwed iron pair of pliers. With those three things there, you can almost fix anything. And with the physical, the mental and this philosophical, religious or whatever, you can solve any problem in your life through one error combination of any of them. And so that's the other thing I learned in Burma, that Buddhism and the ways away our tool to help you every day, not just praying to monks and giving them alms. This is a tool to help in your daily life and being an outsider and not being born in Buddhism, where I made the choice to become a Buddhist. I made that choice right there, as opposed to this is I go to the temple every day and all so Buddhism has another subject, but Buddhism is a tool that's helped me work and through these trips to include, you know, this one right here. You know that that I made in 1995 so each trip, you know, tourism, you know, did the usual tourism bit. You know, did this one here. Then I got involved with Buddhism and other things. It kept building a building networking. It was about people going to Burma. Was about people. I went up to northern Burma to deal with this, this issue with the plane crash. But along the way, I networked, and the network and the other two, I ended up networking. And these networks is kept growing each time I visited the country and was able to get deeper into the country. Now, I'm not trying to be Burmese, because I'm not. That's not the point. But the point is, is I better understand the Burmese people. It gave me a way. I wouldn't call it a religion, a tool to help me. So my contact with Burma has been, really been life changing. 

Host 1:18:19 

I'm fascinated by where these worlds come together, not just in your story, but my multi decade relationship with Burma, something I've I've tried to imagine, understand, part of what this platform is about is trying to tear down some of these artificial walls that I feel we build in the west and as outsiders to Burma, where we try to segment and silo different Burmese information and and look at when it's actually operating in the country, you see that there's no, there's no real walls anywhere, that all, all of these things are just all flowing freely in ways that when you start to separate and segment them, you're to try to understand them better in an isolated way. You actually understand them worse, because you're, you're biasing towards certain ways of understanding and not others. And so your story is quite remarkable in the sense that, on one hand, you're, you mentioned this involvement with World War Two history with a concern for veterans. And one did you write by that there's a whole other part of your story that we can't go into and won't go into here, but just to talk about it in general terms, you have a your you have quite a deep understanding of the current conflict and the current actors in the conflict, to the extent that you're often consulted by rather important people and institutions for your knowledge and your expertise, And at the same time, you are also coming from a background of this Buddhism and weitsaw and this very personal, not superficial exploration of theories and books and authors, but actually, as you have said many times just now, a life path, a life choice, whether. Say, you call it a spirituality, a religion, a belief system, a practice, but these, all these different worlds that are really coming together for you and at this moment, and we can look at this moment, or we can look at other moments of conflict, but where there is conflict that's occurring, I think is very interesting to be able to look you could look at it in, you know, socio economic, historical terms, political, ethnic, religious, certainly geopolitical, certainly, you can look at it in all of those perspectives and understandings. And you do, and you're involved in, as you said, you have definitely have some on the ground inside information of analysis and expertise there, and yet one can also look at it in other other forces and fields and protective powers and and Bodas and waits and other planes of existence. And kind of traditional Theravada Buddhist for passion, a meditation, samatha and Jonna and and deep stages of concentration outside of that waits and animist and other, really other planes and magical powers, supernatural powers, and divining and traveling into different worlds and planes of existence and so and so it's, it's really interesting to be able to Talk to talk to someone as you, who has seems to have kind of a foot grounded in these and experientially as well in these different planes and modes of existence.

And so as you're trying to understand the country, you understand the conflict, understand the peoples. To what degree are you relying on an understanding of are you pulling on this background of this supernatural, spiritual knowledge, and to what degree are you taking the worldly and the analytical and the and what you can study and talk to people? And where are you seeing that? Then also, I don't want to by asking this question. I don't want to pretend that I'm siloing this into well, this is this category. This is this. I know that these categories are also interlocking and interacting and connected with each other. So it's not it's not an either or. It's not a black or white. But to what degree are you calling upon these different, vastly different fields of knowledge that most people just even in Burma, have just are are more exposed to one side or the other? To what degree or when you're looking at your analysis and trying to understand what's going on, what has happened, what could happen, are you bringing in these very different fields and ways and modes to understand it yourself?  

Gustavo  1:22:34 

Well, big question. I think that it's almost go back to and again, I don't know very much about this called dynamical systems theory. It's almost like acupuncture, that I can I have a problem here in my heart, and I push a point in my arm, and maybe in order to increase the flow of energy here. But because of that, what's happening over here with this, you have these side effects there, and that's the issue with respect of Burma because of very heterogeneous country with language and authenticity, on and on and on. And you you do something here to fix this problem, then all of a sudden, this one comes out. It's sort of like I got five Jack in the boxes, and I put them all in this one pops up again. So this is the thing, and it makes it very difficult. Where do you intervene, you know, in this situation here, to men, you know, to deal with this thing. Make choice. We're gonna deal with this thing, but not cause a problem over here, you know, and this is speaking. I'll give you an example here. I don't agree with this, but this is Aung San Suu Kyi. She dealt with the situation with the Rohingya very negatively. And she did that very negative because she wanted to get the votes of the burmas. She went to the International Court of Justice. She wanted the Burma vote. So she did, you know, did things like that and all. So you're right, it's very complicated, but you have to see that, you know, a lot of the actors is the whole thing with this mysticism. It's part of who they are. They believe that dealing with nines and things like that and all, and you had people, maybe like generation wave, you know, that was back in the 2000 you know, 2010 2012 earlier on that, you know, we're playing around with, with doing in San Sama, the negative ones toward new win and toward tan Suu. It was part of their non violent struggle thing, yeah. So what happens is, is, is, when you're dealing with any regime, any place, you know, you have to look at the whole picture right there to understand the whole body. And where is the best place to, you know, to to intervene in the body, right there, and all and so, so you're right. It really, really, very, very complex. Cated. But the other thing is, is, you know, going back to the weza, they can give you insights. The weza. Know the situation, Burma, some of your, some of your listeners, are going to say this guy is crazy, man, no, go on. No. But you can get into meditative estates. They have certain knowledge, or give you certain insights you cannot get elsewhere. They can put pieces together, the connections together that you would would not have. 

Host  1:25:32 

You're talking geopolitical.  

Gustavo  1:25:35 

Anything, any anything at all in this and and they put things together that you see things that you would not normally have seen right there. And it's not like you have certain information your head and sleep and all of a sudden it pulls together. This is completely something new that comes into your head there. You know, you know from that. So I'm probably advertising for the ways of but as any other animus, there's truth in the animism, and you can use it to complement your other religions, right there. So that that has helped me, that has helped me make sense. And then to, you know, you feel past life connections, you know, I feel past life connections with the tongue. You know the tongue. You know the tongue. And I feel, I don't feel, I've been told in the past life, I was one of them. I was to Aung and, you know, died, died and born in third world country, first world country, come and help my people. Wow. So again, that made the delusion. But even this delusion is not a bad delusion. You know, if it is a delusion, I was really not tongue in the past life. I was not reborn in this life to help the tong people. But if I'm helping the people, how any of the people there? How can that be bad, even if it's a delusion of something like that? 

Host  1:26:54 

So if you feel comfortable sharing, have there been if you personally had experiences where you've had some interaction with awaits, or in a supernatural state with animus, where you have gained information about Burma in some very analytical, methodical, geopolitical way through these higher meditative states. 

Gustavo  1:27:14 

But there's been other things where I've pondered on something like, how, how can I approach this thing and and all of a sudden, you're the answer answer constantly. And it's a perspective that usually other people don't see. And may not be a correct perspective, but it is a perspective on things that others may not see, because you recently had this Burma studies conference right here, and it had to do with assemblages, and it had to do instead of what was and what should be, is what is and what can be. And unfortunately, too much was on what what was and what should be. You know what can be. You know what what is and what can be. And that's what Lord Bucha says you need to look at things today in order to deal skillfully with the future. And so I would say, with the people there, you know, any of the listeners there involved with politics or anything else but Burma, look at the way it is today. You get all get out of the box. You know, with the thing, there is no box. This is a matrix. There is no box right there. Get out of them. Get out of the unhook. Unhook yourself. And look at a new way of approaching things inside the country and everything else. Don't look don't the past should be a guide, but it should not be the only road you know, to to the solution is something else like that, and this is something that's opened up. And just open your mind up when you meditate. When you meditate, meditation is a tool, you know. Just sit there and be calm. It's selfish. You're selfish. You're helping yourself out. You know, concentration meditation, I'm nice and calm. I feel good. I sit on that learn all this stuff happening in my body. How does anybody benefit by that? That your job is to prevent suffering, that when you do concentration meditation, how you take it off mat and help people when you do Vipassana meditation, now all of a sudden you meet somebody. Do you feel all this stuff arise in you, the anger and all and what you learned on the mat? Do you help? So there are these tools, and you got to get out of the boxes with meditation, get off the mat and and, but when you're on the mat, you let your your thoughts slow down. You're not getting rid of them. And then let insight come in between the spaces. It's there if you let them, and you're not gonna agree them. But things come inside there, if you're awake in this state, wonderful information will come to you. Insights will come to you for anything you know, whether it's political or anything else like that. And again, this is, this is like, say, my my opinion and my experience and and I found it. It works for me, if it's a delusion, it doesn't matter. It works. 

Host  1:29:45 

These are just a lot of different threads that are coming together in the Burma experience. And your relationship with Burma, do you feel that if you kind of tap under the surface, under the the ground level of. Enough countries and enough societies, you're going to find a number of these kind of threads coming together and coinciding. Or do you think there's something about Burma that's just a little bit special or different or unusual?  

Gustavo  1:30:10 

Well, you know, that's very hard there, because Burma is very unique, because it has so many different ethnic groups, religions, languages and everything else, and it was ministered separately by the British each of the groups have their own agenda, political, economic and social right there. The life of me, I don't any other country in the world that's like that. But that's what makes it interesting, is a very complex situation, which is interesting. But what happens is, is the, you know, at the conference, they said, Oh, it's very complex. It is, but you can, you can look you there. You can find a way to look at it and work your way a little bit through the complexity. In some cases, you have to, you have to fix part of the thing. Maybe part of it. I will fix this. Put it off here. I don't worry about it. Then I can deal with what's left. I have to take slices. I cannot fix the whole thing. Every time I go over here and put my acupuncture here to do the heart effect something here, it is not working. I cannot do this. Acupuncture, not working. What happened? I have to do an amputation. I'm going to amputate now. I have, in a sense, this problem I can put over here, and it can take care of itself, then I can deal with what's left. I almost have to slice pieces off of it there, and there's going to be pain. There's going to be pain. I cut this part off. There may be pain here, but they'll get over the pain. With respect to Yugoslavia, dealt with this. They cut off, they broke the thing into pieces to deal with it, is essentially what they did. But this is, this is not a way people want to look at it. It's, it's not going to politics. You had Kim Omar. Kim Omar, not Kim Omar, Moe. Moe. Karen leader, she says, instead of talking about all this politics and writing stuff down, he says, let's sit down the table see if we want to live together, if we want to live together, if we don't want someone don't want to live here, okay, but we don't want to do that. We don't want to to do something like that. And what you have is a country is a dysfunctional family. People don't want to recognize they want to fix a dysfunctional family. It's dysfunctional. The bottom line, that's what it is. It's dysfunctional. And the question is, can you fix a dysfunctional family? Make it harmonious? Given all the agendas, the differences at all there, one would question that it was something like that, you know, and make it this.

You know, one of the insights that that certainly I've gotten is is I question that seriously, question that something like that, that it the the country is broken into me, we'll never get back together again, as it was before Humpty. Dumpty fell off the wall, all the king's men, all the king horses, all the INGOs and Asian and Westerners, Chinese, not gonna put it back together again the way it was, but, but they're going to try. They're going to do everything they tried. They've been doing it for 70 years, and they're going to keep doing the same thing again. There is what they're going to do. And Western democracy model. Of course, Western countries have all these ethnic groups, have all of these languages, have conflict. So Switzerland, they have all the conflict. They have all these ethnic groups. And also they do the study trips here. How do you learn anything in Switzerland with with things like that, you got to go to India. India has almost the same situation. But India is not Western, so it's not cool going to India. So I don't know. I'm very, very pessimistic. You know, in something like the country is, is rich, it has all kinds of riches and everything else. And richest country with the poorest people in the world is, essentially, is what it is, and it's sad and sad. It's sad to see that people spend years in a refugee camp, 20 years in refugee camp, then to resell to a third world into a first world country. And then after generation two, the kids don't want to go back. They become part of that particular country. The culture gets lost there. Then the IDPs. And nobody talks about they talk about the refugees and all, but not the couple million IDPs, you know, they're in the country right there, then the CDMS and everything else. So what happens is, is, when does it stop? When? When? When? When? When does it stop? How many generations that go on and on? On and on. It's the Lord Buddha, you know, talks about the circle of suffering. And what happens is, we're going through it because we don't see reality as it is. And act skillfully. Going back to the sandwiches again, we see it, and then, based upon what we see, then we make, we make skillful decisions. Is what we do. So again, you can see Buddhism influences me, on, really, on, on every plane. This is what it does. And Buddhism is another way of dealing with this particular issue. Because the bottom line the Lord Buddha message was, was one thing stop suffering. This is bottom line. And the Burmese have been suffering for 70 years and 70 years. What does it take to do that? And some of it may be radical, extremely radical, but the bottom line is peace. 

Host  1:35:43 

Right? Just to close out, you've talked a bit about the problems that Burma has been facing and the possible solutions and the way to, in your words, fix it or help resolve it, make it better. That's going in one direction, going going from outward to inward to try to help or heal the country, looking the other direction in terms of not the problems that Burma presents that need to be solved, but the riches, however you want to define that word, the riches, the wisdom, the beauty of the country, that it has to teach and inspire and help humanity, from someone who spent so much time there. How would you describe what these riches are, in whatever way or form they come? 

Gustavo  1:36:24 

Oh, I certainly have to go back to Buddhism, because, you know, next to Sri Lanka, you know, when it comes to sharavada, Buddhism, right there, they still have it meditation. I mean, meditation basically is housed there and everything else. So I think that's there again. You have a lot of history, you know, going back, you know, 1000s of years. And even the situation with China now and access to the Indian Ocean, you know, China, historically is intervened, has gone, excuse me, term has gone into, into Burma and everything else, because they see it's strategically located. You know, one of the most strategically located countries in Asia, right there, between India and Thailand, India and in and China, a trade route, you know, from India all the way through to the South China Sea, you know, through, you know, through the area, so economically, that it can be really a it can really be a great country. The people tend toward education. They have been very educated people in Burma. I mean, you had issues where English was stopped and you couldn't wear long pants and everything else there. But the people are really very, very educated. A lot of them are hard workers. Look at their entrepreneurs. Look at the entrepreneurship that they have done and everything else. So what happens is, again, I would say Buddhism. But the thing is, is, how do they resolve this problem, if they can resolve this problem, show the world how you resolve a problem like this. You can't get any more complex than this. If they can resolve this thing and see reality as it is and deal with that, then they can show other countries. You have Eastern Congo, which is a basket case. You got this Libya with the things there, you got Iraq and and all that have all of many of these same differences right there. You can provide a model how you fix this thing, a model of how you can solve conflicts elsewhere that have these many ethnic groups, that that have different aspiration, economic, social and political aspirations right there. So I think on on that side, how they solve this conflict, can be a model for the world. So, so that's two everybody's living together. You have, again, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Hindu the Christians, the Animus, all of them living in one, one place, and all, many of them living in the same state. And all how to get together. But they they just need to sit down and say, We want to live together. How can we do it? And everything else. So, so, you know, I would say something like that. Then the other thing is, is, is, is this that, you know, there's San and I don't know how it's true, if it's a myth or not, how women have always been a leadership in the country, throughout history. I'm a little bit questioning that you have somebody lying on so she she's up there because of her father, Sapporo. She's good leader, but a lot of it had to do with her father and all. So the question is, where is this? Where are the women that the conflict in Burma is between men. It's men trying, whether it's the Burma men through the NLD, it's a Burma military it's ethnic group. It's three groups of men fighting each other for dominance. Is it what it is in the end, women will go back to wherever they were, back down here at the bottom, gender equality. And so the question is, is this spring revolution also for women? Should they now be can they become equal at all, at all? And certainly you saw in the CDM, the women were out there on the front lines. They didn't say, can I come out there? They just went out there and assumed leadership. Joah San a good example, Angel when she died in March of 2021 now what happens is, they go in the jungle and and what happens is they're they're being held back, both by the men but also by their his Lord Buddha would say, by their conditioned mind, our place is not on the front line. Jolson didn't say that. The other women did not say that. Now they were maybe city men, but city women, but you have city women in here. So then there's a question, is, if we can bring true women into the leadership role, and I'm not talking about health and education, I'm talking about, you know, security sector, everything else, can that change things? You know, Aung San Suu Kyi didn't change anything. She actually made things worse, in many ways, from my particular opinion there. But we don't need these intellectual women who are sitting here in Thailand writing all this stuff and everything else. We need the revolutionary women who were in the jungle that are fighting out there and all those are the ones and the CDM ones that are back in the jungle, that are fighting, not intellectualizing and having these concentration meetings, that it's the ones that are who in the jungle. Those are the ones in the me brought together. They are the leaders and all, even though they don't have the master's degree and the PhDs, they should be the leaders right there, because they know what it is to bleed and die and suffer going wrong. The ones here with the degrees, all the they've suffered a lot, but the other ones right there, there they they starting to assume men's roles. I'm equal to you here. All they do is talk about the gender equality there I wanted, and I'm willing to put my life on the line for here in Chiang, Mai and other places. No, we're just going to talk about it and all. So I think that's the other thing that needs to change. The women need to get out. It's education, the health and all the rest of this stuff here, and get in the front lines as a CDM women did in the cities right there, though, then maybe turn off some of your viewers there, but that's what my opinion. I'm very, very, as the Turkish PKK leader said, you know, AZN, we have to destroy the dominant male. 

Host  1:42:33 

Powerful words. Thank you so much, and really looking forward to being able to have continued conversation on your other, past threads of involvement with Burma as that comes to light. 

Gustavo  1:42:44 

See things as they really are, and then act with skillful action. Stop you. You have colored glasses on, through a conditioned mind, and you're making wrong decisions about Burma and everything else and what you are, Myanmar. And so we have to do is clear those, those that conditioned mine and see things as we are and deal with things right there. This should be the last generation. No more refugee camps, no more resolvments, no more IDPs, no more rapes, no more beatings, no more say enough. It didn't happen after 48 you know, grandfathers didn't do it, the fathers didn't do it. And what happened to this? They out there, they fight and they fight and fight. Nothing has changed because they're not they haven't been serious about it. So it's this generation going to be like their fathers and grandfathers and what happened? More IDPs, more dead, more rape, more churches, Mun bond, more people resettled. Are they going to be like that? And what happens? If they're Buddhist, they're going to be reborn back into the same thing again. You know, this is what Lord Buddha said. You'll be reborn back in it. So you want to reborn back in it. After you escape to Thailand, you die, and you're gonna be born back into it. If you don't care about your children, what about you? What about you and all. So what happens is, is people need to see things as they are. I would say that, and then deal with Burma. Deal with Burma as it exists, not as they want it to be. So that's how I'll leave it. 

Host  1:44:22 

And I'll be honest, not only is asking for donations, my least favorite thing in the world to do, I find it pretty uncomfortable as well. Yet it is an unavoidable but necessary task in order to ensure that our platform can continue to bring you stories from post coup Myanmar and unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that there is a basic minimum cost to keep our engine humming. So please allow me to take a moment for that least favorite and uncomfortable thing to do and ask sincere. For your generosity in supporting our mission. If you found value in today's show and think others might as well, we ask that you take a moment to consider supporting our work. Thank you for taking the time to hear our spiel, and with that, it's off to work on the next episode. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form, currency or transfer method, Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need it. Host. Donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDM, families of deceased victims, internally displaced person, IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries, education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies, COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission, Better Burma, any donation you give on our Insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the Better Burma website, betterburma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites, except credit card, you can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/betterburma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon, Venmo, GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search Better Burma on each platform, and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info@betterburma.org. That's Better Burma, one word spelled B, E, T, T, E R, B, U, R, M, A.org. If you would like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artisan communities across Myanmar, available at alokacrafts.com any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofit wider mission that's Aloka Crafts spelled, A, L, O, K, A, C, R, A, F, T, S, one word, alokacrafts.com, thank You so much for your kind consideration and support.