In recent studies, attentions has been drawn to the fact that in Japanese occupied Burma, the Ba Maw government resisted Japan head-on, and the Japanese military made concessions. Japan at that time regarded ‘independent Burma’ as a trial newly ‘independent’ countries in the Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, and these studies are important to understand Japan’s later policy towards the Sphere. Meanwhile, however, Ba Maw and U Nu (Foreign Minister) left reminiscences that implied Japan did not make concessions and considerations in the legal action on the attempted assassination of Ba Maw. In these reminiscences it was written that Japan did not put the attackers (Japanese and Burmese) into prison, but also refused to have Burmese jurisdiction applied to the Burmese accomplice. In this research, the processes involved in the occurrence and outcomes of the incident were investigated in order to reveal what actually happened. By doing so, this research aimed to comprehensively illuminate the relations between Japan and the Ba Maw government.
The Army Ministry of Japan at that time actually was eager to establish responsibility for supervising the incident. They switched from a court-martial system (軍法会議) to trials by military law (軍律会議). However, this meant that they did not intend to apply Japanese municipal laws to judge the incident. Also, despite the fact that they could have brought the Burmese accomplice to justice by the court-martial or military law conference, they tried to leave him under Burmese jurisdiction instead.
The Japanese Burma Area Army then did not accept fully such requests from the Army Ministry. However, they were conscious of treating the incident as exceptionally important, and accepted part of what the Army Ministry requested. Then, they ruled to put the Japanese attackers into prison, and they were actually confined. The Burmese accomplice was not prosecuted, as he neither broke into the residence of Ba Maw, nor was he a central figure of the incident.
Consequently, Japan was actually making considerations to the Ba Maw government to a certain degree. There simply was a discrepancy in the ideas of the degree of considerations and concessions between the Army Ministry and the Japanese Burma Area Army.
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