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Asian leaders activities

50 years back

HONG KONG: When Japan's Imperial Army surrended to Allied Forces on August 15, 1945, bringing an end to World War Two, many of Asia's current leaders were at school or university.

The youngest was Sri Lankan President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who was just seven weeks old when the war ended in the Pacific.

Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten was one-year-old.

Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa was a 12-year-old schoolboy in his home town of Suphanburigg, 150 km northwest of Bangkok.

South Korean President Kim Young-sam, 67, was a secondary school student when Korea was liberated from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. Like all Korean students during the period, he was educated in Japanese until independence.

Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui studied at Japan's Kyoto Imperial University during the war. He graduated in 1945.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was in school when the Japanese Army invaded and occupied Malaysia in 1942.

The only schools allowed to operate in the country at the time were Japanese-language schools.

Vietnam Communist Party General Secretary Do Muoi, born in 1917, was arrested by the French colonial government and sentenced to 10 years in jail in 1941. But he escaped in March 1945 and took part in an uprising south of Hanoi that followed Japan's surrender.

Indonesia's President Suharto, 74, was a member of PETA, a military organisation set up by Japan during its occupation.

PETA was an armed force designed to allow Indonesians to defend themselves if Allied troops attacked the territory.

PETA, or "Defenders of the Motherland", was established on October 3, 1943, and was wholly Indonesian in composition.

A spokesman for Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao said that during the war Rao fought the British and the Nazam of Hyderabad, ruler of that princely state, which was folded into India in 1947. Rao was 24 on August 15, 1945.

Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, born in 1941, was an infant during World War Two. However, his long-serving predecessor and now senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was 19 when Japan evicted the British in a whirlwind campaign in early 1942.

Many educated young ethnic Chinese men were among thousands executed by the Japanese early in their occupation.

In an interview many years later, Lee recounted how he barely escaped that fate by making up an excuse to get away from a group the Japanese had selected for execution.-Reuter