HONORING THE BRAVES
Half an hour's drive north of Yangon , is a cemetery for fallen
Allied soldiers of World War Two. This large and beautifully
landscape cemetery of 27,000 graves is under the care of the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Hanthawaddy War Cemetery
There is a small cemetery in Yangon for Allied soldiers
not far from the Shwedagon Pagoda called the Hanthawaddy War
Cemetry which was first used as a burial ground in May 1945. In
1948, the graves of 36 Commonwealth servicemen who died in
Yangon during the First World War were moved into this cemetery.
Thanbyuzayat
About 18 miles (29km) south of Mawlamyine, Thanbyuzayat, which
literally mean ‘A shed of iron sheet’, is named after a
structure which existed when it was the western terminus of the
Death Railway built by prisoners of the Japanese during World
War Two. Thousands of Allied prisoners-of-war as well as Myanmar
and other Asians died building the railway, which had its
eastern terminus at Kanchanaburi in Thailand. Thanbyuzayat
symbolized the horrors of war and has a cemetery under the care
of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Mausoleums of General Aung San and U Thant
The two mausoleums lie at the opposite sides of the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda with the former
including 7 other cabinet Ministers and a police body guard.
The latter, at the southern side of the Pagoda is also adjacent
to the mausoleums of two other prominent figures.
Bahadur Shah Zafar
The last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah, better known as Bahadur Shah
Zafar, was placed on the throne in 1837.
He was a poet and most of his poetry is full of pain and sorrow
owing to the distress and degradation he had to face at the
hands of the British. He was a great patron of poetry and
literary work and some of the most eminent and famous Urdu poets
like Mirza Ghalib, Zauk, Momin and Daagh were of his time.
Bahadur Shah, who had been proclaimed as an emperor of whole of
India, was overthrown and was arrested in Delhi, with his three
sons and a grandson. His sons were killed and their severed
heads were brought before him. He was exiled in 1858 to Rangoon
(now Yangon), Burma (now Myanmar), where he lived his last five
years and died at the age of 87.
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