On 26 December 1941 Aung San received instructions from Suzuki to begin recruiting the descendants of Burmese settlers in Thailand, and by the time of the Japanese invasion of Burma was he successful in recruiting approximately 3,500 Burmese volunteers from the Siam-Burma border to serve in their army. On 27 December 1941 Aung San first suggested that the group adopt their pseudonyms in order to protect their families in the event that they were captured by the British, and "to give pride and confidence and sense of mission". All thirty of the men took pseudonyms beginning with the word "Bo", meaning "officer", which had become a title used by Westerners in Burma. Aung San took the nom de guerre "Bo Teza" ("Teza" means "fire"). The event involved the "thwe thauk" ("blood drinking") ceremony, a tradition inherited from the Burmese aristocracy. In this ceremony participants collected their blood from a cut in their arms, mixed the participants' blood together with alcohol in a silver bowl, and drank it while pledging eternal comradeship and loyalty. On 28 December 1941, Aung San and the rest of the Thirty Comrades formally inaugurated the Burma Independence Army in Bangkok. On 31 December the Burma Independence Army took part in the Japanese "leaving the front ceremony" in a parade through Bangkok, marching towards Burma behind the invading Japanese Fifteenth Army. Aung San was ranked third in the organization of the BIA, as a major general, behind Suzuki and another Japanese officer named "Kawashima".