Chapter 8
Li Mi’s Army Settles into Burma
As diplomats discussed removing his army from Burma, Li Mi settled into Möng Hsat. For another attack on Yunnan, he would need not just a larger, but a more disciplined and cohesive army. Future efforts would also require a political program to win support of a populace that, to Li Mi’s professed surprise, failed to welcome his army by rising up against the communists. He also faced the challenge of training, equipping, feeding, and controlling an army swollen by thousands of newcomers. Regular CNA veterans and the more disciplined irregulars tended to concentrate near headquarters. The more independent-minded, however, dispersed widely and were under YANSA discipline in name only.
Frequent changes in YANSA unit appellations reflected Li Mi’s command and control challenges. The Twenty-sixth Army, controlled operationally by Li Mi but administratively by the MND in Taipei, remained organizationally unchanged. Although putatively he had both operational and administrative control of irregular YANSA units, Li Mi’s authority was in fact tenuous. The irregulars reorganized themselves, changed their unit designations, and shifted operational areas at the whims of their commanders. Li Mi’s reports to Taipei of YANSA’s organization and numbers were duly recorded in official MND documents. Being official, however, did not necessarily make them accurate, especially because of the ingrained Chinese practice of inflating head counts to increase a commander’s prestige and allow him to pocket benefits for “phantom soldiers.”
In effect, Li Mi had two armies—the regulars and the irregulars. Those at Möng Hsat and nearby bases, primarily regulars, were reasonably well disciplined and, by standards of the time and place, maintained acceptable relations with local residents. Forced labor and taxation notwithstanding, the presence of CNA regulars was not especially onerous and did impose some level of order in an otherwise often lawless area.1 The farther removed they were from Möng Hsat, however, the more YANSA’s ragtag irregulars resembled ill-disciplined brigands. Looting and extorting “taxes” eroded social and political stability, created economic dislocations, and drove refugees to government controlled areas on the Salween River’s western bank. YANSA’s presence east of the Salween was preventing Rangoon from governing large swathes of its territory along the Chinese border. Soon, YANSA’s troublemaking would spread westward across the Salween and into Burma’s heartland.
Li Mi’s forces were generally deployed around six major Shan State bases extending southward along the Yunnan border from Möng Mao to P
ng-yng, Möng Yang, and Möng Yawng (near Laos) before turning west along the Thai border to Möng Hsat and Möng Ton, as seen in Map 4. The bases were linked by caravan trails or primitive motor roads and each controlled lowland rice-growing areas essential for YANSA’s survival. Smaller YANSA groups operated in Burma’s Kachin State to the north and to the south in its Tenasserim Division.2 Although GUB authorities controlled cities and larger towns, YANSA units generally had free run of rural areas and could have occupied urban centers had they so wished.
Yunnan Anticommunist University
On the assumption that his army would eventually reclaim Yunnan, Li Mi established a school specifically to train political and civic action teams to govern that province. During Li Mi’s 1951 incursion into Yunnan, his senior deputy, Lt. Gen. Li Tse-fen, had been at Möng Hsat organizing the Yunnanese Peoples Anticommunist and Resisting Russia Military and Political University—or, more simply, the Yunnan Anticommunist University. As the school’s president, Li Mi presided over the initial class’s October 5 inauguration ceremonies, to which Chiang Ch’ing-kuo sent a personal representative from Taipei. Before several hundred assembled troops on Möng Hsat’s parade ground, Li Mi raised the ROC national flag and encouraged students to seize upon opportunities presented by the Korean War and turmoil in Southeast Asia to recover the Mainland. A banquet and Chinese opera followed.
Responsibility for the university’s day-to-day operation fell to academic dean Li Tse-fen. Born in Kwangtung in 1905, Li Tse-fen graduated with Whampoa’s fifth class and went on to command a division and then an army. In Yunnan when Lu Han changed sides, he made his way overland and eventually joined Li Mi at Möng Hsat.3 A committee of officers sent from Taiwan managed the university under regulations modeled on those of the ROC’s Central Military Academy. Some of those officers provided strictly military education at YANSA’s three major training camps—Möng Hsat, Möng Yawng, and Möng Ngen. Others taught political subjects at Möng Hsat. Dr. Ting Tsou-shao, after being released from Burmese custody in August 1951, became the university’s director of ideological education. His students included educated young refugees from the Mainland or Overseas Chinese sent by local Kuomintang organizations from Burma, Laos, Thailand, Malaya, and Singapore.4
In April 1952, as Burmese forces pressed toward Möng Hsat, Li Tse-fen moved the University to P
ngpahkyem, closer to the Thai border. A year later, with Li Mi in Taipei and unlikely to return, Li Tse-fen changed the school’s name to the Yunnan Military and Political Cadre Training Group and revised its curriculum to emphasize military training. Tuan Hsi-wen and Li Wen-huan, both subsequently notorious in the Golden Triangle drug trade, commanded Pngpahkyem student brigades until approaching Burmese troops forced the school’s abandonment in spring 1954.5
Taiwan to Möng Hsat Air Bridge
As YANSA prepared for a long stay, the airfield at Möng Hsat became a terminus for support flights from Taiwan. The summer of 1951 saw a sharp increase in sightings of mysterious flights parachuting weapons and other equipment into Möng Hsat. Those were CAT cargo aircraft, primarily twin-engine C-46 Commandos, C-47 (DC-3) Skytrains, and the less common four-engine C-54 (DC-4) Skymasters. For flights transiting Saigon or Danang, pilots filed false flight plans to Rangoon. Cooperative French officials would not notify Burmese authorities of the flights and would later destroy the paperwork. Such subterfuge was unnecessary for similar flights through Thailand, where authorities were less concerned over procedural niceties.6
In his haste to move into Yunnan in early 1951, Li Mi had not bothered to improve Möng Hsat’s primitive airfield that the Japanese army had built during its World War II occupation. After years of neglect, its scarred 4,400 foot earthen runway was unusable. During June through November monsoon rains, water buffalos enjoyed its large puddles of standing water. After being driven back from Yunnan and facing curtailment of overland supply deliveries, however, Li Mi put his engineers to work renovating the airfield. Using locally fabricated tools and conscripted labor, they had by January 1952 resurfaced and lengthened the unpaved runway to 5,000 feet.7
Burmese government reports and press accounts claimed that twin-engine aircraft were landing and taking off from Möng Hsat. The authors, however, have found no evidence that any such flights actually landed there. A C-47 could perhaps have used the airstrip during the dry season or breaks in monsoon rains, but the larger C-46 would have been too heavy for the runway under the best of circumstances. The airfield, however, made an excellent parachute drop zone.8
As Li Mi’s troops rebuilt Möng Hsat’s airfield, political circumstances were changing. The large scale aerial re-supply that they had expected was not in the cards. In keeping with Washington’s 1951 decision to back away from Li Mi’s army, Civil Air Transport’s CIA owners vetoed further supply missions to Möng Hsat. Chiang Kai-shek supported Li Mi’s request for aerial delivery of weapons and ammunition but sided with his air force’s view that such deliveries in non-Chinese territory risked international opprobrium if detected.
As an alternative to using CNAF aircraft, Chiang Kai-shek’s adopted son Chiang Wei-kuo suggested using Fuhsing Airlines, a fledgling company established in March 1951 with covert support from the Ministry of National Defense. At the time, Fuhsing operated a single surplus US Navy PBY Catalina—a twin-engine amphibious, long-range patrol bomber converted for general purpose use. Based upon available documents and the authors’ interviews with Li Mi’s veterans, the only verifiable accounts of multi-engine aircraft landing at Möng Hsat were by Fuhsing’s Catalinas.9
Moon Fun Chin was one of Fuhsing’s three founders as well as the airline’s major shareholder, president, and chief pilot. He had moved to the United States as a child and was a naturalized American. In 1933, after flight training in the United States, the 20-year old Moon Fun Chin went to work in China flying for the China National Aviation Corporation. During World War II, he flew transport aircraft across the Himalayan “Hump” and rescued downed American airmen on China’s Mainland. Among those he helped rescue was Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, whose aircraft crashed in China after his famous April 1942 raid on Tokyo.10 During the Sino-Japanese War, Moon Fun Chin trained other Chinese pilots, including I Fu-en, who would later command the CNAF’s 34th Special Operations Squadron (SOS) supporting ROC forces in Burma and Laos. The other two founders were also involved in Fuhsing’s operations. Harvey Toy, a Chinese-American with ties to Chiang Kai-shek’s family, was vice-president while Tai An-kuo, a close friend of Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Wei-kuo, handled Fuhsing’s day-to-day operations.11
Purchased and operated with secret Ministry of National Defense funds, Fuhsing’s Catalina made its initial flight from Taiwan to Möng Hsat in February 1952. Soon thereafter, the MND funded the purchase of a second Catalina. Over the next 17 months, Fuhsing’s Catalinas completed 30 of the 2,900-mile roundtrips between Tainan and Möng Hsat until their final trip on August 27, 1953. Several additional flights were aborted due to weather or mechanical problems. The long-range Catalinas took off from Tainan, Taiwan, at night and flew southwest low over Hainan Island to avoid radar detection. They then crossed Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand to reach Möng Hsat 14 hours after takeoff. Return flights were also at night, passing over the Chinese Mainland in a direct line between Möng Hsat and Tainan. The need to carry extra fuel for the lengthy flights, however, limited payloads to only 1.3 tons.12
In late May and early June 1953, Tai An-kuo went to the United States to seek assistance for Li Mi from the Eisenhower administration and wealthy Chinese-Americans, especially those with ties to Yunnan. People he visited in Washington included “China Lobby” stalwarts Senator William Knowland (R-California) and Congressman Charles J. Kersten (R-Wisconsin). Accompanied by Kersten, Tai An-kuo called on Assistant Secretary of State Walter S. Robertson,13 who had succeeded Allison in that post on April 8, 1953. Fuhsing’s two PBYs had by then made 25 flights between Tainan and Möng Hsat. Tai An-kuo claimed Li Mi was paying for the flights with private funds but US Embassy Taipei confirmed that the MND was covering the bills. Tai An-kuo told the Americans that, as of June 1953, Fuhsing’s PBYs had delivered 30 tons of supplies. Another 150 tons furnished by Chiang Kai-shek’s government were on Taiwan awaiting delivery. Tai An-kuo said the airline wanted to replace its aging Catalinas with a C-87 Liberator Express, a cargo version of the B-24D Liberator four-engine bomber.14 That plan, however, never came to fruition.
As Li Mi concentrated on strengthening his army, he sought allies among ethnic insurgent groups fighting Burma’s government. A key figure in building those alliances was Dr. Ting Tsou-shao, whom the Burmese had arrested in June 1950 when Li Kui-hui sent him to negotiate with the Burma Army during Tachilek fighting. At the behest of US Embassy Taipei, Ambassador Key, in October 1950, passed to the GUB a formal ROC request that the professor be released from detention in Maymyo. Rangoon ignored that request. At Embassy Taipei’s urging, Key again raised Dr. Ting’s case in May 1951. Months of negotiations followed. In August 1951, after Li Mi’s retreat from Yunnan, Rangoon freed the professor. Rather than leave Burma as expected, however, he remained in Rangoon publishing pro-Kuomintang Chinese newspapers. Irritated at Dr. Ting’s presence, the GUB cited his case as partial justification for curtailing its selective release of ethnic Chinese detainees.15
Late in 1951, Li Mi’s confidant Ting Tsou-shao arrived in Möng Hsat and proposed an alliance between Li Mi’s army and the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), the largest of Burma’s several homegrown insurgent armies. Intermittent flirtation with the KNDO and its closely allied Mon National Defense Organization (MNDO) dated from the summer of 1950 when Li Kuo-hui was regrouping CNA remnants around Tachilek. During his confinement in Maymyo, Ting Tsou-shao developed friendships with imprisoned Karen and Mon activists that put him in touch with Ba Sein in Rangoon.
An unscrupulous right wing politician, Ba Sein was a long-standing U Nu opponent and founder of the Burma Democratic Party. Although not a Karen, he had close ties to certain Karen leaders. Ba Sein hoped to see the KNDO get a share of the weapons that he and the Karens assumed Washington was providing to YANSA. The Karens would then help topple U Nu and pave the way for a Ba Sein government in Rangoon. He, in return, would support Karen self-rule and cooperate with Nationalist Chinese forces in the Shan State.16 In early January 1952, at Ba Sein’s request, Dr. Ting met Li Mi in Chiang Mai and proposed an alliance. Interested, Li Mi sent the professor, a radio, and a company of troops to establish a liaison office near Mawchi, in Burma’s southern Kayah State.17
In May 1952, Li Mi sent additional troops to help repel a Burmese effort to re-capture the Mawchi mines and separate the Karens from their wolfram-based income.18 Karen rebels occupied the British-owned wolframite (iron manganese tungstate—a principal ore of tungsten) mines and smuggled the ore into Thailand. Along with teak, that smuggled wolframite funded purchases of arms, often diverted from Thai military stocks. Karen agents moved the arms from the Thai border town of Mae Sot into Myawadi, on the Burmese bank of the Moei River boundary. After US military assistance to Thailand began in 1950, many weapons reaching the Karens were American, leading some Karens to mistakenly believe that the United States was supplying the weapons specifically for them. Burmese officials shared that belief.19
On Christmas Eve 1951, en route from Bangkok to Taipei, Li Mi was delayed briefly over a visa matter at Hong Kong’s airport. Interviewed by reporters, the general said he was returning to Taiwan to consult with Chiang Kai-shek.20 Further reporting by Western and Burmese journalists, facilitated by the GUB, soon made Li Mi’s activities in Burma known internationally.
The London Observer’s January 20 edition gave a detailed account from its Rangoon reporter that described reinforcements for Li Mi from Taiwan (probably cadres for his Anticommunist University and associated training centers) and “indisputable evidence” of an “independent American agency helping KMT troops and matériel through Thailand to Burma.”21
A senior Observer editor in London was unsure of the accuracy of his reporter’s story out of Rangoon until Dr. Hang Li-wu, the American-educated future ROC ambassador to Bangkok, confirmed it at a London dinner party. From Washington, another Observer correspondent reported that Li Mi had in 1950 attracted the interest of unspecified American agencies as a counter to Peking’s feared expansion into Southeast Asia. The newspaper went on to say that such interest had subsequently evaporated and that Washington had been pressuring Taipei to stop supporting Li Mi’s activities.22
The newspaper pursued the story in a March 2, 1952, Sunday Observer article datelined Bangkok. The story outlined a system in which YANSA provided opium to Phao Siyanon’s police who, in return, facilitated the flow of arms and ammunition to that army. The article described Willis Bird’s Bangkok Trading Company and other Americans in the Thai capital as key middlemen in the arms-for-drugs supply chain. The Observer’s reporter, citing US Embassy Bangkok sources, quoted one American as conceding that “it cannot be denied we are in [the] opium trade” because of involvement with Li Mi’s army.23
Rangoon newspapers in late February carried a series of comprehensive accounts, based upon GUB information, of the history and activities of Li Mi’s army. They described it as operating with near impunity in the Shan State, where much of the large Lahu population was favorably disposed toward them. The articles also described Nationalist propaganda teams staging anticommunist entertainments and medical facilities complete with female nurses and American medical supplies. American diplomats in Rangoon confirmed the press accounts as essentially correct.
The Burmese press also reported Nationalist Chinese troops driving out local Burmese officials and collecting taxes in cash and in kind from villagers. Those depredations contributed to a 60 percent decline in 1951 Kengtung state tax receipts over 1950, with only one-quarter of normal revenue projected for 1952. Spot food shortages were also attributed to Nationalist Chinese depredations. Stories reported pack animal caravans carrying cargoes to Li Mi’s army and returning to Thailand with opium and jade. Rangoon newspapers also printed accounts of the crashed helicopter (origin not identified) sent to retrieve Li Mi, “Major Stewart,” and another Caucasian. Prudently, in deference to PRC sensitivities, Burma’s newspapers made no mention of YANSA’s incursion into Yunnan that preceded the helicopter incident.24
Stirrings at the United Nations
Li Mi’s flurry of press coverage coincided with the sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in Paris. At a January 3, 1952, First Committee (Political and Security) session, the Soviet foreign minister echoed Peking’s charges that the United States was transporting Nationalist Chinese troops and weapons through Thailand to Burma. Ambassador Key, who had completed his Rangoon posting and was by then part of the American UNGA delegation, dutifully denied US support of ROC troops. Presumably, given his earlier efforts to persuade Washington not to support Li Mi’s army, those denials were personally difficult.25
On January 8, new intelligence prompted Burma’s acting foreign minister to tell US Chargé Day that Peking believed Washington was plotting with Chiang Kai-shek to renew attacks against Yunnan through Burma. The GUB was considering taking the matter to the United Nations to calm Peking’s threatening tone. As instructed, Day assured the Burmese that, thanks to previous USG approaches to Taipei and Bangkok, “the supply of arms and equipment to these [Nationalist Chinese] troops has been entirely eliminated or reduced to insignificant quantities.” He explained that the State Department had been unable to find any US citizens involved with Li Mi and conveyed Taipei’s assurances that the general was on Taiwan and would not be allowed to leave. As such, Day claimed that further USG approaches to Taipei or Bangkok would be unproductive and give greater importance to the ROC remnants than was appropriate from a country “not directly involved.”26
The Burmese were unmoved by Day’s presentation. At the UNGA First Committee meeting in Paris on January 28 they formally accused Chiang Kai-shek’s government of aggression and threatened to raise the issue with the Security Council. Predictably, Thailand’s delegation denied that military supplies were passing through its territory while chief ROC delegate Dr. T. F. Tsiang insisted that Li Mi’s forces were “independent” and not subject to Taipei control.27
When the dust settled, to Washington’s relief, the Burmese decided against appealing to the Security Council. They knew the Americans and Thai were supporting Li Mi’s army but did not want to alienate Washington. Yet, failure to evict that army would leave U Nu’s opposition with a political issue. Asking the United Nations for help would be ineffective and harm Rangoon’s relations with both the PRC and the Western democracies. It was better, the GUB concluded, to wait until its armed forces were in a stronger position. That would be at the onset of the dry season in October 1952, when Rangoon anticipated that the worst of Burma’s domestic insurgencies, the Karens and the communists, would be controlled. The Tatmadaw could then deal with Li Mi’s army.28
Long before Li Mi’s army arrived, the opium trade thrived in the highlands of Burma’s Shan State, where it was often the only cash crop grown by ethnic minorities known collectively as “hill tribes.” Merchants advanced money and seed for planting and farmers would repay the loans after shipment of the opium to markets in Burma or abroad to Thailand or Indochina.29 Seventy percent of Burma’s opium exports went overland to Thailand, with the remainder going by sea from Rangoon. Burma’s ethnic Chinese population dominated opium marketing and in 1950 had invested an estimated $10 million in opium-related enterprises, dwarfing the million invested by that community in all other businesses.30
Arriving Nationalist Chinese soldiers in 1950 found an established Shan opium trade and many armed mapang groups successfully transporting that opium without outside help. The new arrivals, however, were more numerous and better armed than even the largest of the indigenous mapangs and they quickly gained control of major caravan routes. Caravans under KMT escort could be relied upon to deliver their goods safely. Mapangs choosing not to use those caravan services were nonetheless responsible for Nationalist Chinese–imposed “taxes.” Evasion invited seizure of one’s opium by placing it outside the protection system worked out between Thai police and Li Mi’s agents. Individual YANSA commanders competed for caravan contracts from merchants seeking the lowest fees from reliable military escorts.31
Selected mapang groups received informal YANSA military commissions and moonlighted as auxiliary transportation units for Li Mi’s army. Although they were at times called upon to fight, their primary function was moving weapons, supplies, and opium. Astute business dealers, the mapangs simultaneously pursued private commerce. Once an opium shipment was delivered to the Thai or Lao borders, the caravans would return north with military and civilian goods. Ironically, many of the items carried north were destined for smuggling into communist-controlled Yunnan.
Li Mi’s Möng Hsat headquarters served as a major entrepôt for opium en route to Thailand. Large quantities were nearly always present there and at nearby Pngpahkyem, from where an unpaved track led through the mapang center of Möng Hang to Chiang Dao, Thailand. From there, an all-weather road led to Chiang Mai and then south to Bangkok. The Tachilek–Mae Sai area and Doi Tung were also important transit routes. During Li Mi’s tenure, the opium was frequently turned over to Thai police at Möng Hang and other locations just inside Burma. Police then assumed the mapang role of protecting the opium and transporting it to destinations in Thailand.32 Regardless of how the opium entered Thailand, the police under Phao Siyanon were its largest recipients, followed in order by the Royal Thai Army and Air Force.
Burma’s opium laws in the early 1950s were outdated and complex. The 1923 Shan States Opium Order prohibited opium cultivation within “Burma Proper” (as the British colony’s majority ethnic Burman areas were known) but allowed its cultivation and use in the Trans-Salween jurisdictions of Kengtung, Kokang, and the Wa states. The effect of that law was to ban opium cultivation where there had traditionally been little but to leave it unimpeded in well-established growing areas. Regulated by the colonial government’s opium monopoly, Trans-Salween opium supplied licensed dens throughout Burma. When the League of Nations called for eliminating opium cultivation and use, the British instituted a policy of “progressive control” with a stated long-term goal of total suppression. In practice, that goal was ignored. Shan saophas continued to deal in opium while taxing growers and retail opium dens. Colonial administrators avoided control efforts in inaccessible and generally lawless Trans-Salween areas because suppression would have required a major military effort.
Britain rejected Shan proposals that the colonial government’s opium monopoly purchase their crops for licensed opium dens and export the excess for medicinal use. The stated reason for the British position was the difficulty of separating Shan from Yunnanese opium and of preventing diversion into illicit channels. Perhaps a stronger reason was the prospect of Shan opium undercutting India’s legal production and exports. Deferring to Indian producers, Britain allowed extensive sales of Indian opium to Burma’s opium monopoly while placing strict limits on the latter organization’s purchase of Shan opium. Without a legal outlet for the Shan State’s large surplus over local demand, smuggling flourished and illicit profits filled the treasuries of local saophas and merchants alike. Most of the smuggled opium found its way to Thailand, where state-licensed dens operated until 1959, and illegal ones thereafter. Violating international convention, Thailand’s opium monopoly purchased directly from individual Shan State governments rather than from central authorities.
At independence in 1948, the U Nu government called for elimination of the opium trade within five years but took no meaningful action to that end. To have done so would have incited unrest among ethnic minority opium growers and added to the several insurgencies already besetting the new nation. In signing the 1961 United Nations “Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs,” Rangoon asked for and received a 20-year exemption for continued opium production in its Trans-Salween states. After seizing power in 1962, Ne Win’s revolutionary government requested UN authorization to grow and export medicinal opium. Recognizing that Rangoon could not control its growing areas and prevent diversion of opium into more profitable, illicit channels, the United Nations denied its request. Finally, in 1965, the Ne Win government outlawed all opium sales in the Shan State, a move targeting the major income source for anti-Rangoon insurgents and Nationalist Chinese remnants alike. Criminalizing Trans-Salween opium, however, did not make it go away.
Former Nationalist Chinese officers disingenuously claim that their opium dealing did not break Burmese laws because it was legal to produce, sell, and transport the drug within the Trans-Salween states. Setting aside the blatant disregard for anti-smuggling statutes, those veterans have a point—at least during the pre-1965 period. Nevertheless, once they moved the opium out of Burma’s Trans-Salween area, as they did routinely, it became contraband and they became smugglers.33
Until a 1959 law prohibited opium use and commerce, the RTG’s Excise Department purchased, processed, and sold opium to licensed dens throughout the country. Unlicensed dens, however, were numerous and even those with licenses preferred to deal in contraband opium because it was cheaper and of higher quality than that of the Excise Department. In 1953, an estimated three-quarters of all opium sold in licensed dens was obtained on the black market. Diversion of excise opium was another problem. Dens were required to return opium cinders to the Excise Department to compare quantities purchased to those consumed. Operators, however, routinely returned bogus cinders and sold real ones as a low-grade drug to street addicts. While consumption in licensed dens was legal, a 1951 Thai law enacted under United Nations pressure had banned opium cultivation within Thailand. The heavy fines and tough prison sentences on the books for cultivation, smuggling, and illegal sales, however, were only selectively enforced. Arrests were few and sentences mild.
The Excise Department generally did not need to import opium34 to supply its licensees because it could use “seized” opium, which was always plentiful thanks to carefully arranged “seizures” by the police and, to a lesser extent, the armed forces. Authorities would arrest low-level couriers and confiscate their opium, after which charges were dropped or the prisoners managed to “escape.” Opium confiscated from couriers often came from stocks previously seized by authorities and recycled onto the black market. Opium taken in such sham “seizures” was turned over to the Excise Department, often after being adulterated to replace quantities siphoned off for black market sales. Those “seizing” the opium would receive rewards from the Ministry of Finance, some of which they kept but most of which went to their senior officers.
Senior military officers used their individual services’ facilities and personnel for their personal opium commerce. In addition to their official functions, military personnel transported the opium, stored it at their bases, and provided security for it. A principal RTA opium depot was Suan Chao Chet, in Bangkok near the Royal Palace. Troops of Lt. Gen. Sarit Thanarat and Maj. Gen. Thanom Kittikachon, who would both become prime ministers and maintain close relations with the United States, controlled the shipments of opium from the north, stored it, and arranged its onward movement to Hong Kong or Singapore. Sarit reportedly maintained a factory in Bangkok’s Bangsue District for converting opium into morphine. Air Marshal Fuen Ronnapakat, another prominent Coup Group member, exclusively used RTAF facilities for his modest share of the trade. In fact, each of the services used only their own facilities. His aircraft would move opium from Chiang Mai to military airfields in Thailand’s upper south and then ship it by sea to Hong Kong and Singapore.
Phao Siyanon used police facilities for his opium business, keeping a large number of policemen on his private payroll. During his many trips abroad, Phao reportedly attempted to arrange narcotics shipments to the United States and Europe with the collusion of employees of Thai Airways, the national air carrier at the time controlled by RTAF officers. Official Americans in Bangkok and Washington were fully aware that senior RTG officials were complicit in the opium trade. They concluded, however, that trafficking by members of the Coup Group was for their own personal gain, that it did not represent RTG policy, and that the drug profits did not go into RTG coffers.35
1. Taipei to DOS, Des. 287, 12/9/1954, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
2. Kuomintang Aggression Against Burma, p. 11.
3. An accomplished classical Chinese poet and historian, Li Tse-fen eventually authored a series of books on Chinese military history. Interestingly, he appears to have written nothing of his years in Burma with Taipei’s army.
4. T’an Wei-ch’en, History of the Yunnan Anticommunist University, pp. 72–75, 78–80, 87–88, 94–97, and 129–131. Catherine Lamour, Enquête sur une Armée Secrète, p. 103. Ironically, some of the students recruited from Malaya eventually ended up with Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) insurgents. Chen Peng, My Side of History (Singapore: Media Masters Pte Ltd, 2003), p. 327.
5. Li Mi to KMT Party 2nd Department, Tel., 5/6/1953; “Review Conference of the Work of Yunnan Branch,” File No. 2-1-5-31, KMT Party Central Committee Archives, Taipei, ROC. T’an Wei-ch’en, History of the Yunnan Anticommunist University, pp. 142, 173, 271, and 376.
6. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 406, 11/2/1951; Rangoon to DOS, Des. 466, 11/20/1951, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File 1945–52, Box 10, US National Archives.
7. Today, Möng Hsat’s civilian airport has a 5,000-foot runway.
8. Chen Ch’i-you int. by the authors, 12/14–16/2004, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chang Kuo-chee and Ba Yao-chong int. by Richard M. Gibson, 2/2/1998, Ban Yang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. T’an Wei-ch’en, History of the Yunnan Anticommunist University, p. 101.
9. Taipei to DOS, Des. 287, 12/9/1954, RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
10. In 1995, the United States awarded Moon Fun Chin the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal and credited him with US military service from 1941–45. “Chinese American Hero: Moon Fun Chin,” Asian Week (7/13/2009), at http://www.asianweek.com.
11. It was widely rumored on Taiwan that Chiang Kai-shek was actually Tai An-kuo’s father and that his mother was the servant believed to have given birth to Chiang Wei-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s recognized son. Popular belief is that Chiang Wei-kuo was actually the son of Chiang Kai-shek’s best friend.
12. Taipei to DOS, Des. 287, 12/9/1954, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives. Dr. Chin Yee Huei int. by the authors, 9/21/2006, Bangkok.
13. Taipei to DOS, Des. 287, 12/9/1954, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Classified General Records 1953–58, Box 11, US National Archives.
14. DOS, Memo., 6/2/1953; RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File Box 39; Taipei to DOS, Tel. 1310, 6/19/1953; RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Top Secret General Records 1954–58, Box 2; and Taipei to DOS, Des. 676, 6/26/1953, RG 59, US National Archives.
15. Rangoon to DOS, Tel. 295, 9/19/1951; RG 84, Rangoon Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File 1945–52, Box 9; US National Archives. Cheng Kai-min to Li Chün-chieh (Li Mi), Tel., 9/12/1952; “Diplomatic Cases, June 1951–April 1954,” MND Archives, Taipei, ROC. Ting Tsou-shao to Huang Shao-ku, Letter, 10/20/1951, “Ting Tsuo-shao’s Detention in Burma, October 13, 1950–May 9, 1953,” MFA Archives, Taipei, ROC.
16. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 730, 2/25/1952; Rangoon to DOS, Des. 98, 7/30/1952; Rangoon to DOS, Des. 338, 10/13/1952, RG 59, US National Archives.
17. Tseng I, History of Guerrilla War in the Yunnan and Burma Border, p. 265. Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense (IBMND), Mainland Operations Department, The Record of Withdrawal of the Guerrilla Force on the Yunnan-Burma Border, pp. 65–66. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 730, 2/25/1952; Rangoon to DOS, Des. 98, 7/30/1952 and Rangoon to DOS, Des. 338, 10/13/1952, RG 59, US National Archives.
18. Bangkok, Memo., 5/18/1951, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File Box 26, US National Archives. CIA Database, CIA-RDP79T01146A000900040001-9. Chiang Mai to DOS, Des. 13, 10/3/1952, Rangoon to DOS, Des. 1214, 6/16/1952, RG 59, US National Archives. Rangoon (British Services Mission) to Ministry of Defence, Des. 8/8/1952, DEFE 7/868, UK National Archives.
19. While individual Americans may have been involved, the authors have no reason to believe there was any official involvement by agencies of the US government.
20. Li Mi initially stayed at the army guesthouse in Taipei, but eventually purchased his own residence near the main railroad station.
21. London to DOS, Tel. 3162, 1/21/1952, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File, Box 32, US National Archives.
22. London to DOS, Des. 3531, 2/8/1952, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File, Box 32, US National Archives. Full text of the 2/2/1951, Observer article is available in RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File, Box 32, US National Archives.
23. London to DOS, Tel. 3801, 3/3/1952; Bangkok to DOS, Tel. 1895, 3/11/1952, RG 59, US National Archives.
24. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 738, 2/26/1952, Rangoon to DOS, Des. 735, 2/26/1952, RG 59, US National Archives.
25. Full text of the NCNA 1/2/1952, report is in FO 371/101173, FS 1041/1, UK National Archives. New York Times, January 4 and 5, 1952. FRUS 1952–54, Volume XII, “United States Political and Economic Relations with Burma; United States Concern with the Presence of Chinese Nationalist Troops in Burma,” p. 1.
26. FRUS 1952–54, Volume XII, pp. 1–3. Rangoon to DOS, Letter, 1/18/1952, RG 59, PSA Officer-in-Charge Burmese Affairs, Box 1, US National Archives.
27. New York Times, January 30 and February 1 and 2, 1952.
28. Rangoon to DOS, Des. 163, 8/15/1952, RG 59, US National Archives.
29. Richard M. Gibson, “Hilltribes of the Golden Triangle,” Drug Enforcement, Vol. 6, No. 1 (February 1979), pp. 27–37.
30. An official 1955 Kuomintang party report placed Burma’s ethnic Chinese population at 150,000 (of whom two-thirds were refugees without GUB residency permits), but it may have been as high as 360,000 or even one million. Kokang’s population alone, perhaps 100,000 in 1950, was essentially all Chinese speakers. KMT Party 2nd Section to National Security Bureau, Letter (24-5939), 6/15/1955, “Investigation Report of Guerrilla Bases in the Border Area of Yunnan-Burma-Thailand-Laos,” KMT Party 2nd Section Archives, Taipei, ROC. Commemorative Collection for the Late Governor of Yunnan Province General Li Mi, p. 132.
31. Huang Yung-ch’ing int. by Wen H. Chen and Richard M. Gibson, 12/9/2004, Bangkok.
32. Huang Yung-ch’ing int. by Wen H. Chen and Richard M. Gibson, 12/9/2004, Bangkok. Bangkok to DOS, Des. 699, 3/10/1953, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File, Box 42, US National Archives.
33. Renard, The Burmese Connection, pp. 36, 38–39, 42, and 49–50.
34. That department had traditionally purchased its opium from China, India, and, briefly, Iran.
35. Bangkok to DOS, Des. 699, 3/10/1953, RG 84, Bangkok Embassy and Consulate, Confidential File, Box 42, US National Archives.