 Educated at Saint Peters' School (now Basic Education High School No.9) in Mandalay, at 16 he went to work as a clerk in the Burma-China border frontier service.He joined the Burma Railways in 1930 as a probationer and by 1938 was in charge of the rates and commercial section, traveling in that year over the recently constructed Burma Road to survey the route proposed for linking the Burma and Yunnan-Indochina Railways.