Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the recently returned Governor of Burma, entertains a range of Burmese dignitaries aboard the Royal Navy's County Class cruiser HMS Cumberland, moored in the Rangoon river, Burma.

Various shots of British and Burmese dignitaries in conversation, including John Keswick (a Political Liaison Officer on Lord Mountbatten's staff), Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith (British Governor of Burma) and Major-General Aung San, commander of the Burma National Army (also know as Burmese Patriotic Forces).

Notes

The fact this meeting was held aboard a Royal Navy warship is significant as Dorman-Smith had no authority or jurisdiction in a country that was still under military administration.

Before the war Aung San had been for the British a charismatic and troublesome nationalist agitator who later sided with the Japanese following their invasion. A member of the 'Thirty Comrades' he led various Japanese-sponsored Burmese forces until switching his allegiance to the Allies during 1944. He led the Burma National Army in an anti-Japanese uprising in March 1945 and after the war emerged as a key personality in the Burmese independence movement but was assassinated on 19 July 1947 by political rival U Saw. He remains a popular national hero and his daughter, only two years old when he was assassinated, is at the time of writing the imprisoned Nobel Laureate and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyii. In this film Aung San is seen wearing a uniform similar to that of a Japanese major-general and in an apparently jovial conversation with Dorman-Smith, who points at the camera, and Aung San (grinning broadly) briefly turns towards it.

Bayly and Harper name some of the dignitaries as including Sir Paw Tun (pre-war Prime Minister), Htoon Aung Gyaw (adviser to Dorman-Smith) and U Ba U (high court judge) in addition to Aung San and Than Tun (general secretary of the Anti-Fascist Organisation).