Ne Win's date of birth is not known with certainty.

The English language publication Who's Who

in Burma published in 1961 by People's Literature House, Rangoon, stated that Ne Win was born
on 14 May 1911. Dr. Maung Maung stated in the Burmese version of his book Burma and
General Ne Win, also published in English, that Ne Win was born on 14 May 1911. However, in
a book written in Burmese titled The Thirty Comrades, the author Kyaw Nyein gave Ne Win's
date of birth as 10 July 1910.

David Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel and General Ne Win as Prime Minister of Burma
in 1959
Kyaw Nyein's date of 1910 can be considered as the more plausible date. First, Kyaw Nyein had
access to historical records and he interviewed many surviving members of the Thirty Comrades
when he wrote the book in the mid-to late 1990s. (Ne Win was one of the Thirty Comrades who
secretly went to undergo military training in Japanese-occupied Hainan Island in the early 1940s
for the purpose of fighting for independence from the British). In his book published around
1998, Kyaw Nyein lists the names of the surviving members of the Thirty Comrades whom he
had interviewed, although Ne Win was not one of them.) Secondly, when Ne Win died on 5
December 2002, the Burmese language newspapers that were allowed to carry a paid obituary
stated the age of 'U Ne Win' to be '93 years'. According to Burmese custom, a person's age is
their age upon their next birthday. Since Ne Win turned 92 in July 2002, when he died in
December 2002 he was considered to be 93 years old. Most Western news agencies, based on the
May 1911 birth date, reported that Ne Win was 91 years old, but the obituary put up by his
family (most probably his children) stated that he was 93 years old, which most likely stems
from East Asian age reckoning.

Early years
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Ne Win, born Shu Maung ( ), was born into an educated middle class Burmese Chinese
family in a small village near Paungdale about 200 miles (320 km) north of Rangoon.[2] He spent
two years at Rangoon University beginning in 1929, and took biology as his main subject with
hopes of becoming a doctor. In 1931 he was expelled from the university after he failed an exam.
[3]
Ne Win eventually became "Thakin Shu Maung", or a member of the nationalist organisation
Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association). Other members of the group included Aung San
and U Nu. In 1941 Ne Win, as a member of the Ba Sein-Tun Ok (Socialist) faction of the
Dobama, was one of thirty young men chosen for military training by the Japanese operative
Colonel Suzuki Keiji. Their leader was Aung San and they formed the Burma Independence
Army (BIA). During military training on the Japanese-occupied Hainan Island, Shu Maung
chose a nom de guerre, Bo Ne Win (Commander Radiant Sun). In early 1942 the Japanese Army
and the BIA entered Burma in the wake of the retreating British forces. Ne Win's role in the
campaign was to organize resistance behind the British lines.
The experience of the Japanese occupation of Burma worked to alienate the nationalists as well
as the population at large. Toward the end of the Second World War, on 27 March 1945 the
Burma National Army (successor to the BIA) turned against the Japanese following the British
re-invasion of Burma. Ne Win, as one of the BNA Commanders, was quick to establish links
with the British attending the Kandy conference in Ceylon and taking charge of the antiCommunist operations in the Pyinmana area as commander of the 4th Burma Rifles after the Red
Flag Communists and the Communist Party of Burma went underground to fight against the
government in October 1946 and on 28 March 1948 respectively. Burma obtained independence
on 4 January 1948, and for the first 14 years it had a parliamentary and democratic government
mainly under Prime Minister U Nu, but the country was riven with political division. Even
before independence, Aung San was assassinated together with six of his cabinet members on 19
July 1947; U Saw, a pre-war prime minister and political rival of Aung San, was found guilty of
the crime and executed. U Nu as leader of the Socialists took charge of the Anti-Fascist People's
Freedom League (AFPFL) formed by the Communists, Socialists and the BNA in 1945 now that
Aung San was dead and the Communists expelled from the AFPFL.
Following independence there were uprisings in the army and among ethnic minority groups. In
late 1948, after a confrontation between army rivals, Ne Win was appointed second in command
of the army and his rival Bo Zeya, a communist commander and fellow member of the Thirty
Comrades, took a portion of the army into rebellion. Ne Win immediately adopted a policy of
creating Socialist militia battalions called 'Sitwundan' under his personal command with the
approval of U Nu. On 31 January 1949, Ne Win was appointed Chief of Staff of the Armed
Forces (Tatmadaw) and given total control of the army, replacing General Smith Dun, an ethnic
Karen. He rebuilt and restructured the armed forces along the ruling Socialist Party's political
lines, but the country was still split and the government was ineffective.
He was asked to serve as interim prime minister from 28 October 1958 by U Nu, when the
AFPFL split into two factions and U Nu barely survived a motion of no-confidence against his
government in parliament. Ne Win restored order during the period known as the "Ne Win

caretaker government".[4] Elections were held in February 1960 and Ne Win handed back power
to the victorious U Nu on 4 April 1960.