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Thant, U

The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military

Thant, U (1909–1974) a Myanmar educator, civil servant, and third secretary-general of the United Nations (1962–1971), Thant was born in Pantanaw, Burma (now Myanmar) and educated at the University of Yangôn (Rangoon). Because of the death of his father, however, he did not graduate, returning home, instead, to begin teaching at the National High School. In 1931 he became the school's headmaster, and, in 1942, became secretary to the educational reorganization committee of the Japanese government of occupied Burma. In 1943 he returned to Pantanaw and resumed his duties as headmaster at the high school there. At the end of World War II, U Nu, who had met Thant when they were both students at the University of Yangôn, and Gen. U Aung San (leader of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League) recruited him for government service. Before he became the Myanmar (Burmese) delegate to the United Nations(U.N.) in 1952, Thant served as his country's press director (1947), director of broadcasting (1948), and secretary of the Ministry of Information (1949).

After serving as Burma's permanent representative to the U.N. (1957), Thant became vice president of the U.N.'s General Assembly in 1959, and, after the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, accepted the position of acting secretary general of the U.N. in 1961 when the Soviet Union and the United States failed to find a mutually acceptable candidate. In 1962, he was elected again to that position, which he held until his retirement in 1971. In 1974, he died of cancer in New York City. When his body was sent back to Yangôn, however, university students seized it on December 5 and buried it in a hastily constructed mausoleum at the Arts and Sciences University. On December 11, the police took Thant's body back by force, buried him in a secret place, and sealed the tomb with concrete. To quell the rioting that followed these events, the military regime declared martial law.

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© The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001.

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