HTAUK KYANT WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY

BACKGROUND

In the post war days, the Allies had erected the Allied War Memorial Cemeteries all over the world. There were 3 Allied War Memorial Cemeteries in Burma. One in Htauk Kyant of Yangon Division, another in Thanbyuzayat of Mon State and the other in Yangon.

Built in 1951, the Htauk Kyant War Memorial Cemetery is beautifully kept ground and being the home of 27,000 honorable stone-graves of Commonwealth and Allied Forces Fallen Soldiers in the Myanmar Campaign. It is located in Mingaladon Township, Yangon Division about 32 km from Yangon, on the road to Bago.

Every year, families and relatives of the Allied Forces Fallen Soldiers from different parts of the world visit Htauk Kyant War Memorial Cemetery to pay homage to their loved ones. Though Japan used to colonize Burma, Burmese people never destroyed the graves of the Japanese Imperial Fallen Soldiers with hatred. Throughout Burma, Burmese people kept not only the graves of Japanese Imperial Fallen Soldiers but also all the Fallen Soldiers of different nationalities from heartfelt humanitarian ground.

Among 3 war cemeteries in Burma, Htauk Kyant war cemetery is the largest. It was built in 1951 for the reception of graves from four battlefield cemeteries at Akyab, Mandalay, Meiktila and Bahmaw which were difficult to access and could not be maintained. The last was an original ‘Chindit’ cemetery containing many of those who died in the battle for Myitkyina in Kachin State. The graves have been grouped together at Htauk Kyant to preserve the individuality of these battlefield cemeteries. Burials were also transferred from civil and cantonment cemeteries, and from a number of isolated jungle and roadside locations. Because of prolonged post-war unrest, considerable delay occurred before the Army Graves Service were able to complete their work, and in the meantime many such graves had disappeared. However, when the task was resumed, several hundred more graves were retrieved from scattered positions throughout the country and brought together here. The cemetery now contains 6,374 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 867 of them unidentified.

Htauk Kyant War Cemetery also contains: The Yangon Memorial, which bears the names of almost 27,000 men of the Commonwealth land forces who died during the campaigns in Burma and who have no known grave.

SHOOTING

I was a fine sunny day in OCT 2009. I was with our big shooting gang for portrait shooting. Ma Gu Lu (Crystal Macro Shots), Zaw Latt (Sea Dragon), Wai Thit Lwin, Boothee (Astrophoto), San Ba, Zaw Myint Thu (Nova Creations), Thiha Soul, Htun Nay Win, Naing Naing Tun (Exposure), Nyi Min San (Bagan Nat), Wynn Thein and me. Ko Ne Ne Hlwan Moe (Ko Ei Si) as guest photographer and Phyu Mar Naing & Zin Mar Naing as our models. My notorious friend, San Ba, drove so fast that we arrived there early and I happened to make this series for my blog. Friends, I really miss those shooting days. I truly mean it…

* * * * *

Built in 1951, the Htauk Kyant War Memorial Cemetery is home of 27,000 honorable stone-graves…

It is the biggest war cemetery among 3 similar cemeteries in Burma…

Burmese people take a good care of this cemetery from heartfelt humanitarian ground…

Every year, thousands of Japanese people come to this cemetery to pay respect to their loved ones…

The giant poles engraves the names of the warriors whose names LIVE FOREVER…

It is only an hour drive from Rangoon, the former capital of Burma. Very easy to commute and it is a nice travel spot for foreigners…

Dedicated to those who had invested their lives for PEACE…

It is a perfect granite structure with hundred of giant poles, a fantastic place for photographers…

YePhyo

Wow. Bro. This page shows your composition, perspective are really really superb… shape and pattern. Your skill of using wide lens… soo wow!!
This place really remind me of my childhood. I was there and enjoyed playing around there. When I think about those days, it is like a dream like seeing myself… this place can make me miss my childhood.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ YePhyo >> Thanks a lot for your comment, bro. It is in fact one of the greatest posts I have ever published here. I love everything about this post. Weather on the shooting day, the sky, the weather, the mood, everything makes me satisfied…
၀င္းထြဋ္

အစ္ကိုေရ… ပံုေတြ ေကာင္းတယ္ဗ်။ ဖြက္ထားတဲ႕ပံု ေကာင္းေတြက ထြက္ထြက္လာတယ္။ သံျဖဴဇရပ္ စစ္သခ်ိဳင္းပံု ေတြရွိရင္လည္း တင္ေပးပါဦးဗ်။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

၀င္းထြဋ္ >> အားေပးတာ ေက်းဇူး ဗ်ာ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ပံုေတြ ဖြက္မထား ရပါဘူး။ အခ်ိန္မရလို႔ ခဏခဏ မတင္ ျဖစ္တာပါ။ သံျဖဴဖရပ္ဖက္ မေရာက္ျဖစ္ေသးဘူး ဗ်ာ။ ႐ိုက္ၿပီးရင္ တင္ေပးမယ္ ေနာ႔…။
၀င္းထြဋ္

ကိုရဲလြင္ဦး ၊ အခြင့္အခါ သင့္မယ္ ဆိုရင္ ၊ ထိုင္း- ျမန္မာ နယ္စပ္က ေသမင္း တမန္လမ္းကို Project တစ္ခု အေနနဲ႔ လုပ္ေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ လူအမ်ားစုက ၾကားဖူးေပမယ္႔ ေသခ်ာ မသိၾကေတာ႔ဘူး။ သံျဖဴဇရပ္ ဖက္မွာ အဲဒီ သမိုင္း အေထာက္အထားေတြ ရွိေသးတယ္ ဗ်။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ ၀င္းထြဋ္ >> ႐ိုက္ခ်င္တယ္ ဗ်ာ။ အခု အလုပ္နဲ႔က ဘယ္လိုမွ အဆင္မေျပဘူး။ ေနာက္ေနာင္ေတာ႔ ႀကံဳႀကိဳက္လာႏိုင္ ေကာင္းပါတယ္…။ ႀကိဳးစားေနမွာပါ…။
http://www.myohanhtun.com MYO HAN HTUN

ရဲလြင္ဦး .. အဲဒါ ဟိုးတစ္ခါ ေမာ္ဒယ္ႏွစ္ေယာက္ကို ရိုက္ကတည္းကပံုေတြ မတင္ပဲ နဲ႕ အခုတင္တာလား။ ပံုေတြက မိုက္တယ္။ တိမ္ေတြေျပးေနတာ လွေတာ့ ပိုမိုက္သြားတယ္။ အစက မသိဘူး .. ျမန္မာျပည္ ခဏေရာက္သြားတယ္ ထင္ေနတာ .. Comment နဲ႕ စာေတြ ေသခ်ာဖတ္ၾကည့္မွ အခုမွတင္မွန္းသိတယ္။
Su Hnin

Woww amazing shots!!! 1st, 3rd and the last ones are my favorites… I’m very proud to be ur fan bro… :)
Uncle S Win

Dear Wil,
Is that true thousands of Japanese come to this cemetery which buried their foes (Allied soldiers), to pay respect every year? If that’s true, what a kind people they are, to pay respect to whom once killed their love ones. Where are the pictures of two models? For your eyes only?
Sandar Yee Win

Wowwww I cannot find words to describe how amazing. I like everything about this post.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyawzo/ Kyaw Z O

Like all of your photos… Especially 1, 3, 4 and 5… Very nice perspective and compo…
႐ြာသားေလး ၀ိုင္တီယူ

Wow!
It reminds me our school days. We use to play in there. Now we are away from it. Actually I hate the war and cannot accept the killing people each other. But there are so many wars still happening. I saw one Glorious Dead stone at Penang, it makes me very sad as well.
Khaing Thant

OMG… the pictures are so wonderful and eye-catching. Great job and though I’ve been there like twice, I didn’t know this place is as beautiful as now… They should use your pics for pamphlets for this place…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ MYO HAN HTUN >> ဟုတ္ကဲ႔ ကိုတိုး။ ဟိုတစ္ခ္ ေမာ္ဒယ္ ၂ ေယာက္ ႐ိုက္တုန္းက ပံုေတြပါ။ ပုဂံ ပံုေတြခ်ည္း လွိမ္႔တင္ေနေတာ႔ လာလည္တဲ႔သူေတြ ပ်င္းသြားမွာ စိုးလို႔ အေျပာင္းေလဲ ေလး တင္ေပးျဖစ္တာပါ။ အဲဒီေန႔က တိမ္ေတြက အေတာ္႔ကို လွတာဗ်ာ…။

@ Su Hnin >> Thanks a lot for continuous supports, sis… It is indeed a fine shooting day for me.

@ Uncle Soe Win >> Even on the shooting day, I saw a big group of Japanese people paying homage. We all gotta wait until they finish paying homage. The model pics are on my facebook page, uncle…

@ Sandar Yee Win >> Thanks a lot, my dear friend. Glad that you like my arts…

@ Kyaw Zin Oo >> Thanks bro… I used Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 Wide Angle and Nikkor AF-S 80-200mm f/2.8 for this set.

@ ႐ြာသားေလး ၀ိုင္တီယူ >> Yes, we all miss our childhood days. Those are memory lane for us…

@ Khaing Thant >> Thanks for your encouraging words, sis. It means I should keep trying to get better pics for you gals…
Ko Phone

အကို႔ လက္ရာေတြ ကေတာ႔ အံ႔မခန္း ပါဘဲဗ်ာ… အခုလို ေလ႔လာခြင္႔ ရတာ အမ်ားႀကီး ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္… ကၽြန္ေတာ္႔ အတြက္ေတာ႔ ပညာေတြ အရမ္း ရတယ္ဗ်ာ…
Zin Mar

It’s so breath-taking by the time I see them after reading narration. I’ve never been there. I can’t help watching them very often. Thank for sharing us!
Keep uploading more, bro…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Ko Phone >> ကၽြန္ေတာ္႔ကို ဓါတ္ပံု သင္ေပးခဲ႔တဲ႔ ကိုေက်ာ္သူရထြန္း (ဓါတ္ပံု သခင္ႀကီး – မႏၲေလး) ဆိုတာ အယူအဆ အရမ္း ေကာင္းတယ္ ဗ်။ ဒီေန႔ ဒီခ်ိန္ အထိ ကိုသခင္ႀကီး ဆိုတာ ဓါတ္ပံု ပညာမွာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္႔ အတြက္ ဘုရား တစ္ဆူ ပါပဲ။ သူ႐ိုက္ တဲ႔ ပံုေတြက ၾကၫ္႔လိုက္တာနဲ႔ သူ႐ိုက္ထားမွန္း သိသာတယ္။ အလင္း အေမွာင္ ႐ွဳေထာင္႔ အစစ အရာရာ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ဟန္ ရိွတယ္ဗ်။ သူ႔လို ျဖစ္လာဖို႔ ဆိုတာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ အမ်ားႀကီး ႀကိဳးစားရဦးမယ္ ထင္ပါတယ္…။

@ Zin Mar >> You have never there? Seriously? So you have been there on my blog… :) I will try my best to share more pics, sis…
Eward

Bro: I do not understand about arts and photos much, but I can feel your photos are very good quality. By the way, in third picture, the girl who standing in front of the cemetery is your model?
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Eward >> Thanks for stopping by and commenting. Well the girl in the 3rd pic is our model, not my model. :D We went there with a big group for portrait shooting…
Ko Phone

ေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္ ကိုရဲေရ… အခါအခြင့္ သင့္ရင္ေတာ့ ကိုသခင္ႀကီး ရဲ႕လက္ရာေတြကို ၾကၫ့္ၿပီး ပညာ ယူခ်င္လိုက္တာ ဗ်ာ…
William Chit-Maung

Loving the composition, especially 4th and 5th pictures. I could imagine framing a model in the middle of 5th pic, at the very center of converging parallel lines. Heck, what good do I know… I’m just inspiring your talent here.
FYI: I’ll be back in YGN between Dec 29th and Jan 17th, together with my gf. Hoping you’d be there as well…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Ko Phone >> You can visit his webpage here. But sadly, he does not update his blog regularly…

@ William Chit-Maung >> Thanks for your comment and visit, bro. It is of course an amazing place to make some shots. I have a series of portrait pictures on my facebook.
Let’s see whether I can take my annual leave in Jan to meet you and your another half… :)
http://www.stanleykay.com Stanley Kay

This is a another good write up about Myanmar places of interest. I like number 3 and I think I had took something similar to this shot in my previous trip.. go to dig them out. Thanks for sharing Bro.
Cheers
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Stanley Kay >> Thanks for the praise bro. It is of course one of the post I like most on my blog. This is a nice place to shoot. The sky seems broader there…
Naing

အကိုေရ… ကၽြန္ေတာ္က ေထာက္ႀကံ႕နားမွာ ေနတာဆိုေတာ႔ ငယ္ငယ္ ကတည္းက ေထာက္ႀကံ႕ စစ္သခ်ိဳင္းကို ခဏခဏ ေရာက္ျဖစ္တယ္…။ အကို႔ ပံုေတြထဲမွာ စစ္သခ်ိဳင္းက အျပင္မွာထက္ ပိုလို႔ေတာင္ ၾကၫ္႔ေကာင္း ေနေသးတယ္…။ တိမ္ေတြ ေနာက္ခံ နဲ႔ ပံုေတြကို အရမ္း သေဘာက်တယ္…။ အင္း… ေမြးရပ္ေျမကို သတိရ ေစတယ္…။ လြမ္းသဗ်ာ…။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Naing >> ကၽြန္ေတာ္က အဲဒီ စစ္သခ်ိဳင္းကို ငယ္ငယ္ ကတည္းက ခဏခဏ ေရာက္ဖူးတယ္။ ဓါတ္ပံု ႐ိုက္တတ္လာေတာ႔ အဲဒီမွာ ေမာ္ဒယ္ပံု ႐ိုက္မယ္ ဆိုၿပီး သြားၾကတာ…။ မနက္ ေစာေစာဗ်။ ေရာက္ေတာ႔ တိမ္ေတြက အေတာ္လွတာနဲ႔ ႐ိုက္ျဖစ္ခဲ႔တာပါ။ အားေပးတာ ေက်းဇူးဗ်ာ။
Thant Thant

Very beautiful & clear photos!! I like #3 & #4 pics. But the rest are also nice shots…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Thant Thant >> Thanks a lot, sis… #3 is my fav here…
Thein S Soe

လာအားေပး သြားပါတယ္…။ ငယ္ငယ္တုန္းကေတာ့ အဲဒီ အထဲကို တေခါက္ ေရာက္ဖူးတယ္…။ အေပၚဆံုး ႏွစ္ပံုကို ပို သေဘာက်တယ္…။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Thein S Soe >> အားေပးတာ ေက်းဇူးဗ်ာ။ ကၽြန္ေတာ္လဲ ငယ္ငယ္က ၃ – ၄ ေခါက္ ေရာက္ဖူးတယ္ ဗ်။ ေနာက္ပိုင္း နယ္မွာ ေနတာမ်ားေတာ႔ မေရာက္ျဖစ္ ေတာ႔ဘူး။
Pon Gyi

WOWWW… those r stunning tele shots… when i look at those pics, i remember ur usage of “clear sky blue of Yangon”… now i know it’s not an exaggeration that u miss it a lot… in my opinion, that bluey sky plays an important role in those pics… all pics look really amazing but 2nd, 3rd, 6th & last one most… in 2nd pic, blue sky, green background & small lane all form the perfect match… i luv the amazing sky from 3rd one since u uploaded it at fb… i’ve seen many shots of those gigantic poles by several photographers but the angle u used in 6th one juz makes the difference… i adore the way it looks like the frame inside the pic… & again the perfect combo of the sky & background makes the last pic terrific… well done again bro!!! & wish that u could buy more tele lens to rock… ;D

P.S: actually, there’s one thing left to say ya… i was about to keep it as a secret but i really can’t… guess what??? i juz wanna kill ya whenever i see those Sitt Thin Gyine pics… it’s been sooooo long that i’ve been waiting to go there for shooting with ya… garrr… HATE YA!!!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Pon Gyi >> Yes, sis. I always feel like those blue sky in Singapore is UNREAL and FAKE. It means the BLUE SKY over those greenish field along the countryside of BURMA is the only SKY which makes me smile. I loved, I love and I will love to shoot this kind of SKY though I am not a big fan of those landscape.

P.S. If you blame me like this, I will also blame you who lied me couples of times, giving all those unrealistic excuses. I believe your grandma does not stay at a noisy place called M3 Karaoke shop.
Nick

Terrific – I like 1 & 4 very much! Those are inspiration shots for me (taken with Sigma 10-20mm WA lens)?
TNLin

Bro, I love your photos.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

Nick >> I am afraid I am not level yet bro. I am still learning. Yes, most of the shots here taken with Sigma 10-20mm HSM WA Lens. Only the last pic was by Nikkor AF-S 80-200mm F/2.8 ED lens…

@ TNLin >> Thanks a lot for your visit and comment bro..
Gina Khine

So grand… thumbs up again!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Gina Khine >> Thankie sis… These are my old shots from one year back…
http://www.facebook.com/thkhaing Nick

One more question – Sigma 10-20mm is f/3.5 or f/4-5.6? B’cos I am still thinking to go for f/3.5.
http://www.facebook.com/thkhaing Nick

I think yours is f/4-5.6 as listed in Gears section?
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Nick >> Mine is SIGMA 10-20mm f/4-5.6 DC HSM bro…