Aung San (1915-1947), the preeminent leader of the Burmese independent movement during and after World War II. Aung San was in the center of Burma's nationalist politics from 1936, the year he led a national student strike. Before the war he was secretary-general of both the Dobama Asiayon, a popular nationalist organization, and the first Communist cell. In 1940, seeking aid against the British from the Chinese Communist Party, he went to Amoy, where he met Japanese agents who offered to train and arm a Burmese nationalist force. Accepting their offer, he returned to Rangoon and gathered twenty-nine others as the nucleus of an anti-British army. After training on Hainan Island, they formed the Burma Independence Army in Bangkok and under Aung San's command entered Burma with the invading Japanese in January 1942.

Aung San became minister of defense and commander of the re-formed Burma Defense Army in August 1942 but grew disillusioned with the Japanese. He took a leading role in the underground Anti-Fascist Organization in cooperation with the Communist and People's Revolution movements and publicly turned his troops against the Japanese on 27 March 1945. From then until his assassination in 1947 he was a leading figure in the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), which was trying to regain Burma's independence from Britain. After signing the Kandy Agreement, which incorporated his forces into the British Burma Army, Aung San resigned from the military and became president of the AFPFL. He was able to supplant the Communist leaders of the league, thanks to his popularity and their mistakes, and to dominate the organization. In 1946 he became, in effect, prime minister of Burma in the Governor's Executive Council, and in January 1947 he traveled to England where he negotiated the Aung San-Attlee Agreement, which guaranteed Burma's independence in one year. His assassination by a political rival made him a martyr, and Aung San is now Burma's major national hero.