Saw Spencer Zan
Life's Journey in Faith is a true story of an ethnic Karen family during Burma's transition from riches to rags, spanning a period from the British colonial days through the Japanese occupation of Burma during World War II into the chaotic political years after iindependence and General Ne Win's coup of 1962 and to the escape of the Zan family into Thailand in 1964. The book takes the reader back to Good Friday in 1942 when Mandalay was heavily bombed by the Japanese, the battle for Katha further north between the Chinese and the Japanese and the carpet bombing of Rangoon toward the end of the war.
Spencer Zan was born in Paan, Burma. He was attending Judson Collge in Rangoon in 1942 when the Japanese invaded Burma. He and his older brother Dempsey supported the family during the war while still in their teens. After the war he joined the British Navy as cadet and rose to the rank of lieutenant after independence. At the onset of the Karen inssurection he was imprisoned for several months and later transfered to a detention camp, and released after three years. He worked for a Britiash shipping firm, United Liner Agencies, for ten years as manager, Import Department, then joined Let Ya Company as manger. He was tailed constantly by army intelligence for working for Let Ya. After having been tipped off by a grape vine of his imminent arrest by the intelligence for his involvement in Let Ya's attempt to stage a counter coup, he secretly smuggled his family across the border into Thailand, where he taught in Thai schools, and later with his wife, became house parents to American children attending the International School in Bangkok before he migrated to the U.S.A. with his family.
I looked up the sky and saw the unmistakable formation of Japanese bombers gleaming bright in the sun and I shouted to every one to get into the trench.........“My baby, my baby. She’s still in the house.”.......I got out of the trench and jumped over Uncle Albert’s twisted bike and almost landed on a bloodied body next to it. I ran up the house which was already ablaze and found the nanny with the year old baby crouched in the far corner of the bedroom.......... I stood up and took a look again outside the trench............. There were bodies all over on the ground before me, the dead and the dying and scores of men and women crying and running in panic in every direction, screaming and calling out names.
Then I saw it. We had to get out of here. It's tail was sticking grotesquely out of the ground at an angle and less than ten feet from our trench. It could go off at any time. It was either a time bomb or a dud.......".Every body follow me. Hold on tight to each other" ............ were literally stepping over wounded men and women and dead bodies as we made our way out of the trench…… difficult for us to keep together because every so often someone would be running right through our group and for a moment we would get separated…………we had to count our numbers or call out names to make sure every one was accounted...
He was lying on the floor in the corridor. "Please give me a cigarette," he begged, "I need to have a smoke before I die." Another was pleading with us to go and tell his mother that her son was dying. Still another ……“We need help. Come on in,” a nurse cried out to us…… Dr. San Khin in a ward working over a woman who had a long piece of shrapnel lodged in her thigh.....
Then all hell broke loose as machine gun fire reverberated throughout the forest, burst after burst after burst. Everyone rushed into the gully for cover leaving everything behind.The exchange of fire continued with more intensity during the next couple of hours…… later mortar fires were now added to the exchanges with both sides lobbing shells ….... As we looked up in the darkening daylight we could see tracers as bullets raced back and forth. Sometimes shots hit tree trunks or rocks and ricocheted with ear splitting twang that echoed throughout the forest.....
This is a raid," he told us. “They are robbing the village..... Get your guns,” he ordered. He indicated trees, and rocks behind which we could take cover to ambush the B.I.A. soldiers as they rode back.
“Get your guns, quick.” he ordered.
We ran to where we had hidden our guns....
From the high seat of the helmsman the entire scenery was totally different. It was extremely beautiful. I could see a distant village set beyond the lush green rice field in the foreground. Tall coconut palm trees and flame of the forest trees with their bright red leaves and flaming red flowers in and around the village plus the back drop of a blue hill with a white pagoda delicately sitting on top......
........the discussio
