Colonial powers beat the Japanese but lost their empires... "...while the Pacific War marked the beginning of the end of colonialism, it had another, more severe impact on Burma. In the beginning, Aung San and his Burman nationalists had sided with the Japanese. His Burma Independence Army was armed and trained by the Japanese, while the Allied powers armed and equipped hill peoples such as the Karen and Kachin to fight the occupiers. Centuries of mistrust between the Burmans and the hill peoples resurfaced, and those wounds have not yet been healed. Even today, many Karen talk with bitterness about atrocities carried out against them by the BIA during the Japanese occupation, and the Kachin are proud to point out that they already had celebrated their victory manau in Myitkyina by the time the Burman nationalists in March 1945 turned their guns against the Japanese. The arming of the hill peoples, and vast quantities of weapons left behind by the Japanese, meant that Burma?s ethnic conflicts from the very beginning turned violent..."