EDWARD MICHAEL LAW YONE was born February 5, 1911 at Kamaing, Myitkyina District (now Kachin State), Burma. Educated at St. Peters? School, 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.