{"id":5722,"date":"2015-08-01T15:32:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T21:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5722"},"modified":"2015-08-01T15:32:11","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T21:32:11","slug":"this-week-in-the-war-26-july-1-august-1943-ba-maw-assumes-the-leadership-of-burma-and-declares-war-on-britain-and-the-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=5722","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 26 July–1 August 1943: Ba Maw assumes the leadership of Burma and declares war on Britain and the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ba<\/a>

Ba Maw (extreme left) at the Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo, 5 November 1943; Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo is in the centre [Public domain, wiki]<\/p><\/div>This week in the war, on 1 August 1943, the French-educated Burmese political leader, Ba Maw<\/em>, was appointed Head of State and Prime Minister of the newly formed State of Burma (effectively a puppet state, supported by the Japanese authorities). His first act was to declare war against Britain and the United States.<\/p>\n

The Japanese had already promised to grant Burma independence, but\u00a0they reasoned that granting independence early would further motivate the Burmese into supporting the war effort.<\/p>\n

Thus Burma joined Thailand and other Asian states under Japanese control to become part of the \u2018Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.\u2019 It controlled 95% of the world’s rubber and all of the world’s production of quinine (used to treat malaria).<\/p>\n

The Allies were working hard to create artificial substitute for both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in the war, on 1 August 1943, the French-educated Burmese political leader, Ba Maw, was appointed Head of State and Prime Minister of the newly formed State of Burma (effectively a puppet state, supported by the Japanese authorities). … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[903,661,905,904],"class_list":["post-5722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-ba-maw","tag-burma","tag-quinine","tag-rubber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5722"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5726,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions\/5726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}