TT has had a stellar career and even at the age of 91 he continues to chair the wood processing company, Greengold Industrial Company Limited he co-founded in 1997.
TT talks about how the country was run by foreigners during his childhood - not just the British - and the years during WW2 when the Japanese were in Myanmar. For me, one of the most interesting stories from those years is that, when the British left, there were very few technically trained people in the country - the Scottish engineers dealt with the engines on the river craft and at the equipment at the oil producing areas, Indians ran the railways and Bengali ran the river craft. In TT's view Burma immediately on independence became one of the least developed countries in Asia!
He went to high school where the father of one of our other subjects, K T Lwin was the principal. He takes us through his career since then which involved a scholarship to the Naval College at Dartmouth in England in 1949 to study mechanical engineering. These scholarships flowed out of the Burma Defence Agreement under which the UK agreed to provide training to young citizens post independence. He returned to Rangoon in 1953 as the only mechanical engineer in the country (!) and spent the next four years training naval servicemen on the basic elements of mechanical engineering - he was, of course, only 22 and far younger than his students.
In 1958 the U Nu civilian government handed power to General Ne Win for 1 1/2 years. During that time TT was assigned to work in the office of Ne Win but ,when Ne Win handed power back to U Nu in 1960, he returned to his naval responsibilities and by 1961 had been appointed a Chief Engineer, which role he continued until 1965 when he was appointed to develop a shipyard .
TT's late wife, Daw Mya Aye (Polly) joined the Burmese Navy in 1958 and was one of the first six female officers. She spent time being trained at Maryland in the US but was required to resign when she married TT in 1963. She then worked in the Trade Department.
In 1970 General Ne Win asked him to leave the Navy and take over running the shipyard as a commercial operation. As he was only 39 TT felt it was too early to retire from the Navy and Ne Win allowed him to remain in the navy and for the next 8 years TT was of Commander rank responsible for repairing and building new naval vessels. There were many issues facing the country at that time and in 1980 Ne Win persuaded TT to take over as MD of the shipyard (which was by then a commercial business ) whilst maintaining his Commander rank. In accordance with the rules after 3 years in a commercial role he was required to retire from the armed forces.
In 1983 he was called to a meeting with Ne Win, the heads of the Armed Forces and a number of Ministers. This led to an exciting new role for TT.
He mentions how he played golf with Ne Win a number of times and how early in his career the strange occasions when he made up the fourth so Ne Win could play bridge when he was traveling to visit naval operations.
The uprising of 1988 and the takeover by General Saw Maung and General Than Shwe led to all foreign loans to be suspended or terminated. This brought to an end his Phase 3 project to build ocean going vessels. This first of two interviews with U Thein Tun finishes at that point.
Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.
Thank you for listening .
Peter Church
