With few exceptions, the Second World War has been regarded as a watershed in Southeast Asian history, a historical conjuncture that set the course for the region's political future. Much of the existing English-language literature on the history of World War II in Burma has focused on the circumstances surrounding the Japanese interregnum, the experiences of Allied prisoners of war, and the effects of the war on decolonization. Many of these works centered on political elites—British colonial administrators, military officers, Japanese, and Burmese nationalist leaders—whose stories were connected to metanarratives of the Pacific War, the decline of European empires, and the struggle for the nation. As a result, local developments during this period in Burmese history have rarely been interpreted outside the prescriptive frameworks of the war and the nation.

Scholars wishing to complicate these narratives will surely welcome L. E. Bagshawe and Anna J. Allot's editing and translation of U Sein Tin's diary Sit-atwin nei-zin hmattan (published as Wartime in Burma: A Diary, January to June 1942), an important source that reveals the rare perspective of a Burmese civil servant working in the British administration. Beyond his official duties, U Sein Tin was also a noted writer and member of an experimental literary movement, quite common for young “scholar-administrators” emerging during this period. At one level, the diary is very much about the early months of the war and its effects on U Sein Tin's life and Burmese society in general. At another level, however, the diary illustrates the complexities of colonial society in the early 1940s, the importance of Burmese kinship relations, and the differing expectations of communities who would eventually compete for the postcolonial state. U Sein Tin's account provides readers with an alternative “Burmese/local” perspective, one that not only asks us to reconsider what we mean by political “elites” but also a source that can be read to inform continuing debates about local agency, identity, and modernity that Harry J. Benda and other doyens of Southeast Asian studies conceptualized nearly fifty years ago.

Wartime in Burma is chronologically organized by month into six sections based on the surviving entries that were recorded between January and June 1942 before he was murdered by bandits (the sad details of which are represented in an appendix). The volume includes a helpful preface that situates both the memoir and the author into each of their historical contexts. The diary begins with life in Rangoon and continues with the evacuation of the capital and the relocation of the government to Upper Burma. In the account of this journey, U Sein Tin writes about his responsibilities as a government official, his role as a patron of dependents, and the uncertainty of his country's future. Vivid images of “everyday life” in Rangoon, Mandalay, and rural towns are offered through his commentary on the rise in living costs, food shortage difficulties, air-raid shelters, the trauma of bombing raids, public health emergencies, transportation conditions, the breakdown of communication services, and the psychological effects of war. U Sein Tin muses that he and his colleagues were “eating and sleeping war,” so consumed by the administrative challenges of a weakening authority and the personal anxieties facing them and their families.

Read from another perspective, the diary reveals much about class divisions and specifically about the community of Burmese who were educated in English. We find that U Sein Tin enjoyed government housing, owned a car, supported three servants, and was accustomed to the conveniences and status afforded to members of the civil service. His account discloses the worldviews of this important community whose identity was as much conditioned by their education, careers, and leisure activities (playing poker and golf), as those values that stemmed from patron–client relations, Buddhism, and ethnicity. The diary contains many occasions when the author interacted with fellow Burmese civil servants, but relatively few encounters with British colleagues—an indication of the complex realities associated with life in Furnivall's “plural society.”

Wartime in Burma is an important text that will be valuable to a wide range of scholars, students, and readers interested in World War II, colonialism, and social history. Area studies specialists might also find it useful to consider U Sein Tin's experience within the longer history of cultural brokers in Southeast Asia, a framework that would accentuate local historical patterns and interactions while broadening the potential for comparison in other contexts and periods. For those acquainted with Burmese history, they will notice that the diary says little about the Burmese Independence Army, the Thakins, the “30 Comrades,” or his identity as a literary figure. These absences are in and of themselves revealing about the diary and the author. The diary is obviously not reflective of U Sein Tin the writer, but a specific product of his career that was aligned with the concerns and priorities of the colonial government—a perspective that nonetheless deserves consideration alongside the more dominant narratives of the nation.