Never seen again

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 29 May 2005

BY PHILIP GOLINGAI

Kuan Chin has some banana money to remind him of the bad old days but no knowledge of what fate befell his father. - Photo by ONG SOON HIN

THE first time Kuan Chin's father was arrested by the Kempetei (Japanese secret police), he was tortured and then released. The second time they took him away, he never returned home.

The story of the disappearance of his father, then a 42-year-old farmer in Kulai, Johor, starts with a wild boar.

“The (anti-Japanese) communist soldiers shot a wild boar and they asked my father to sell it in the (Kulai) market,” relates Kuan Chin, a 67-year-old owner of a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Kluang, Johor.

“He sold the meat at the market and a Chinese, who was collaborating with the Japanese, informed the Kempetei.”

The dreaded Kempetei arrested Kuan Chin's father and brought him to their headquarters. There, he was tortured in the usual Japanese fashion, having water forced down his throat and then his bloated stomach stomped on.

After a few days the farmer was released, to the joy of his family. His relatives and friends visited him to celebrate his freedom. Their joy was short-lived because the Japanese arrested him again, together with his male relatives and friends.

“Probably, the Japanese freed my father because they wanted to catch his friends and relatives,” speculates Kuan Chin, who was then just four years old.

The second time her husband was detained, his mother knew that she would be a widow.

To this day, his family does not know what happened to his father.

“Probably the Japanese must have chopped off his head. That is what the Japanese did, catch people and chop their heads off,” he says.

To understand what could have had happened to Kuan Chin's father, we can get an idea from history books. “In spite of the loudly-advertised might of the Imperial forces,” wrote the late Chin Keen Onn in Malaya Upside Down, “the Japanese had one chronic obsession - the communists”.

The obsession became “a disease which ate into their pride and wounded their vanity.”

“Exactly what sort of people were these communists? What was their actual strength? Where was their headquarters? What were their activities? Why were the Japanese afraid of them? ” Chin wrote.

“Every time a 'communist atrocity' occurred, the unfortunate people in the neighbourhood were immediately cordoned off and subjected to the most harrowing interrogation. Thousand of innocent men and women were lugged in, and hundreds succumbed to injuries and privations.”

Kuan Chin believes that his father's remains are buried in the Air Hitam cemetery in Johor. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Chinese associations collected the remains of those killed around Johor during the occupation and buried them in a mass grave about 12km from Kluang.

Asked how he felt about never knowing his father's fate, Kuan Chin retorts: “What do you think? Of course, I'm sad. But we couldn't do anything.”

The bride cried for four days

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 29 May 2005

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

THE first time Soh Siew Eng saw her husband, she cried for four days. She cried because she was barely 14-year-old. And the moment she set her eyes on 15-year-old Toh Kim Keat, she was to marry him.

“Tak kena sama dia (I did not like him). Saya tengok dia, saya takut (When I looked at him, I became frightened),” were her explanations of her 96 hours of tears in 1942.

Soh had to marry Toh. “My parents did not have any work during the Japanese Occupation. We did not have any money or food. Life was very difficult. And to ease their burden, I was given away without dowry,’’ she explains.

“Our situation was so desperate that I was to be given away to any Chinese family that wanted me to be married to their son.”

Her parents were also worried that if she remained unmarried, the Japanese soldiers would rape her.

They have much to smile about these days but Soh Siew Eng wept when she first laid eyes on her husband-to-be Toh Kim Keat in the dark days of 1942. - Photo by ONG SOON HIN

“Jepun manyak jahat, manyak busuk hati (The Japanese are very cruel, they have an evil heart),” she says.

Her husband agrees, saying: “During the Japanese Occupation everybody knew that the Japanese raped women.''

Before Soh's marriage, she had to cut her hair short, blacken her face and cover the piercing on her ears so that the Japanese soldiers would mistake her for a boy.

“When the soldiers came to our village near Muar, I would run to the banana plantation near my house to hide from them,” says Soh, who lives in Bukit Bakri, in Johor.

She was packed to Bukit Bakri, about 20 km from Muar, to be married off.

“There was no wedding ceremony, no wedding gown. I entered his house and we became husband and wife,” she says.

On the fifth day of her marriage, she finally stopped crying. And she became a housewife, living with her husband and her parents-in-law, who owned a sundry shop in Bukit Bakri. About nine months after her marriage, she gave birth to her first child.

Asked whether she was delighted when she bore her first child, she says: “I was only 14 then, I did not know what joy was.”

What she knew that time was she had to feed her baby who was fed with yam that was pounded until it became soft. Rice was a luxury.

“I would only feed my baby porridge once or twice a week. None of the adults in the family ate rice as we could not afford to it,” she says. “We had to sacrifice (not eating rice) so that my baby could eat rice.”

By the time the Japanese surrender in 1945, Soh had borne three children.

“I was delighted when the Japanese ran away,” says Toh, who eventually had 17 children.

Does Toh love his wife? “I don’t have any feelings for her,” he declares.

One of his daughters-in-law explains that he is a conservative man who will never profess love for his wife.

“He started to love her after they got married. He really takes care of her,” she says.

And how does Soh feel? “Now that I’m old, I love him very much,” says the woman who wept for four days upon seeing her husband for the first time.

School’s out – forever

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 29 May 2005

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

A FEW months before the Japanese attacked Malaya in December 1941, Sekolah Bukit Soga in Batu Pahat in Johor held a special assembly.

“The teacher told us that our school will be closed because there will be a world peace summit,” recalls Shamsudin Maksa, who is a 75-year-old trishaw operator in Batu Pahat town. “And we would be informed when the school reopened.''

Shamsudin Maksa is philosophical his fate even though he lost a chance for an education and a better life. - Photo by ONG SOON HIN

Recalling the extraordinary announcement, Shamsudin, with the benefit of hindsight, says: “The teacher did not want to tell us that the school was closing because war was approaching, probably because they did not want to frighten the students.”

That day was the primary one pupil's last day as a student. War came, the Japanese defeated the British and occupied Malaya.

“There were Japanese school which were opened but I did not enrol as my mother did not have enough money,” explains Shamsudin, whose father died during the Japanese Occupation.

Out of the classroom, Shamsudin learnt that life was tough and he was forced to be an adult.

“I had to help my mother who had to do odd jobs, like tapping rubber trees or collecting woods in the jungle, in order to feed her six children,” he recalls.

When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Shamsudin did not return to school because he was too old to return to primary one.

He became a trishaw operator and continued to this day, seeing the number of trishaws dwindling from 400 in the 1960s to just 30 now. -

Asked what would have happened if the war in Malaya had not cut short his education, he says, “maybe I would have gone to secondary school and do something better than a trishaw pedaller.”

However, he has no regrets. “It is fated. What could I have done? During the Japanese time, I was not the only one who suffered. Even those who had the money to buy tapioca could not buy any because there was no one selling it,” he says, philosophically.

Don’t mention the war

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 29 May 2005

By PHILIP GOLINGAI

IN the coffee shops of Yong Peng, Johor, the hot topic among elderly Chinamen is the recent spat between Tokyo and Beijing over the new Japanese textbooks that downplay Japan's wartime atrocities in China.

At Kedai Makanan dan Minuman Hua Kee, two friends of 30 years, Er Choon Bok and Wong Chong Ming were deep in discussion. Over Chinese tea, the 70-something men were expressed their views on China versus Japan. And, obviously they were pro-China.

“The Japanese shouldn't change history. If they had killed thousands of Chinese, then write that they killed thousands of Chinese,” says Wong.

Wong and Er were animated in their discussion on Japanese atrocities in China.

But, when it came to their personal experiences during the Japanese occupation, both were silent, claiming that they had not talked about it since World War II.

Er Choon Bok (left) and Wong Chong Ming love to discuss the Japanese atrocities in China but not their own memories of occupied Malaya. - Photo by ONG SOON HIN

“This is the first time I'm talking about the Japanese (occupation),” says Wong, when asked to relate his experience. “What's there to talk about? That is old story. There is no point of talking about it.”

Er agrees. “The past is the past. Right now, we have food to eat and we do not want to be reminded of the days when we had nothing to eat,” he explains.

In the next few years, the men, who do not want to talk about the past, will probably have fewer friends to talk to about their days under the Japanese yoke.

“It is difficult ? most of them are dead,” says Wong, when asked if he could recommend friends who can share their experiences between 1941 and 1945.

However, when persuaded that their oral history might hold useful lessons for the generations born after World War II, they relived – just a little bit – the past.

“I do remember when the Japanese attacked the British in Yong Peng,” says Wong. “On that day, we had to run to the jungle because we were afraid the Japanese would catch us if we did not. My father told me that if we were caught by the Japanese, they would hit us until we died.”

Er's memory of the Japanese is that “when they caught a woman, they would rape her. The Japanese were evil. When they came to a house they would definitely look for women and when they got hold of one, they would rape her.”

He recalls, however, an incident in his village where 20 Japanese soldiers caught hold of a young Chinese woman and were about to rape her but, when a higher-ranking officer appeared, he ordered them to release the woman.

“Not all Japanese were evil,” he concludes.

Safe from crime but ...

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 29 May 2005


There was good news – albeit just a little – and there was bad news, plenty of it. PHILIP GOLINGAI talks to old-timers who remember the nearly non-existent crime rate during the Japanese Occupation, and the ever present fear of losing one’s head.

IN 2003, Thye Onn Pajak Gadai, a pawnshop in Johor Baru, was robbed twice. During the Japanese Occupation, however, the owner of the pawnshop, which was then located about 300m away from the present shop, was more worried about faltering business than robbery.

“The Japanese dealt very harshly with robbers. Who dares to commit crimes when they chop your head off for stealing?” says Ho Choo Wing, the now 79-year-old owner of Thye Onn.

“Security cameras were unheard of. We did not have these grills,” he says, pointing to the iron barrier that now separates him from his customers. “In the old days, you just walked in. Nowadays, you dare not take any risk.”

However, when the Japanese chased the British out of Johor Baru in 1942, the pawnshop was looted.

Pawnbroker Ho Choo Wing felt safer, at least from robbers, during the Japanese Occupation. - Photo by ONG SOON HIN

“When the Japanese took over Johor Baru, they ordered the Chinese to evacuate to north Johor because the soldiers were preparing to attack Singapore, so my family closed the pawnshop and moved to Pontian,” recalls Ho, who was then 16 years old.

About three weeks later, his family returned to Johor Baru, only to find that their pawnshop had been partially looted. Pawned items, such as a sewing machine, clothes and musical instruments, which they could not take along on their exodus, had been stolen. Even the safe had been broken into.

However, the Hos were lucky that their loss was only material.

“The first batch of Chinese families that returned to Johor Baru before us disappeared. We never knew what happened to them,” he says.

During the Japanese Occupation, the pawnshop opened for business even though there were few customers.

“Maybe one or two customers a month if we were lucky. People did not have anything to pawn because they did not have any income,” he says. “They were more into gambling games like Chap Ji Ki (a guessing game based on the 12 pieces in Chinese chess) and four-digit.”

His teenage years during Japanese rule were spent helping out at the pawnshop and loitering. And, wondering what was happening to Malaya and the world.

“We did not know anything about the outside world (beyond Johor Baru) since all forms of communication were controlled by the Japanese,” he recalls.

Ho’s face breaks into a smile when asked what were the items pawned during the 1940s.

“Bicycles, frying pans, tapak serih (betelnut paraphernalia), sarongs, sewing machines, guitars, pen, watches ? anything that people could bring to the shop. But no cars or motorcycles as we did not have any space to keep them,” he says.

Transactions were in Japanese “banana money” and after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Ho’s family holdings became valueless.

“When the British returned, I did not go back to school because I had to work in the pawnshop ? we had to start from scratch,” he says.

The Japanese Occupation may have been safe in terms of robbery but, still, Ho remembers it as “terrible”.

“We did not know whether there would be a tomorrow or not. Our lives were not safe. The Japanese could have come to slaughter us at any time,” he explains.

Rumblings of war

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

BY PHILIP GOLINGAI

THE rumblings of war came through the rumour mill in the mosque for the villagers in Serendah, Selangor, as 1941 drew to a close.

The Japanese had landed in the northern part of Malaya early in December and were advancing steadily south towards Singapore.

And soon – according to rumours – the Japanese were coming through Serendah.

A few metres away from the mosque stood the bridge spanning Sungai Serendah. Here, British soldiers were fortifying their defences around the bridge, bracing for the inevitable.

Ismail recalling the way soldiers marched across the bridge at Serendah.

``The story my father heard in the mosque was that if the Japanese came, they would be carry the Japanese flag, they would fire a few rounds of bullets and then continue their march towards Singapore,’’ recalls Ismail Baba, who was seven years old then.

Believing that the battle for the Serendah bridge would be a quick affair and to avoid getting caught in a crossfire since their family house in Serendah town was located next to the road that connected Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur, Ismail’s Baba Yahya, then 50, built a wooden shed about a kilometre away.

A week after the shed was completed, the fighting began. The day before, Baba had dug holes near his house to hide money, rice and other foodstuff like soy sauce so that it would be not be stolen when he abandoned his home to take shelter in the foothills.

At about 7am on the day of the battle, which was in January, 1942, Ismail was playing with his brother and sister in a field near the shed.

“Suddenly we saw a plane swooping. And it was spraying bullets at us. My brother took off his yellow shirt because he was afraid that the Japanese thought he was a British soldier,’’ recalls Ismail, who now lives in Kampung Melaka, Serendah.

They ran to the shed but bullets continued to rain around them. Their father had been mistaken in thinking his family would be safe sheltering one kilometre away from their house, which was another kilometre from the Serendah Bridge.

Ismail’s memories of that day are like snapshots. He remembers his family running further into the jungle to avoid the bullets and mortars. He remembers not knowing fear as they ran further.

“All I knew was that we had to run faster,” explains the Serendah-born man.

He remembers seeing a dead Japanese soldier near in a house in the Chinese village close to the shed his father had built.

The British, he says, lost the fight to defend the Serendah bridge and, in an attempt to stall the Japanese southward advance, they demolished the bridge and retreated.

“The Japanese engineers were quick to repair the bridge. They dismantled destroyed lorries and used the frames to build a temporary bridge,” he says.

A few days after the British’s retreat, Ismail’s family returned to their house to find it looted and soiled with faeces.

He saw several bodies that were war casualties around Serendah town. He also saw a Japanese column – about six tanks and several lorries – rumbling through, heading for Kuala Lumpur.

Ismail does not remember much of the Japanese during its occupation of Malaya.

“There was not many Japanese in Serendah as their administrative centre was in Rasah, about 20km away,” he says.

He recalls spending half a year at a Japanese-run school where he learnt basic Japanese. Another memory is of a Japanese soldier who slapped his mother because Ismail’s brother had failed to report for duty to patrol the town. And, of course, a diet comprising mainly tapioca. – By Philip Golingai

Massaging information

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

BY PHILIP GOLINGAI

SANDWICHED between the Chop Kam Woh gift shop and wholesalers Hoong Hing Penjual Borong on Jalan Idris in Kampar, Perak, is an abandoned shop lot.

No. 135 is forlorn now but, 63 years ago, it was a hotbed of intrigue. It was a Japanese massage parlour then. Established in the early 1920s, the parlour was above a Japanese restaurant.

“Under British colonial rule, the town council enactment stated that a ‘prostitute shop’ should be located on two floors with the top floor used for servicing customers,” says 75-year-old local historian Chye Kooi Loong.

Chye Kooi Loong in front of what used to be a Japanese massage parlour cum intelligence gathering effort in Kampar.

“The Chinese, too, had their massage parlours in five cheap hotels in Kampar. They were really brothels if you ask me. But they (the Chinese massage parlours) could not compete with the Japanese one because the Japanese masseurs gave better service and charged cheaper as they were subsidised by Tokyo.”

The Japanese establishment was “very well patronised, from morning to night,” according to Chye, author of The History of the British Battalion – Malayan Campaign: 1941-42.

In 1940, Chye actually visited the restaurant. He was 11 years old when a family friend, a tin miner, told him, “Okay, young man, I will take you to see a Japanese restaurant.”

“What I remember is there were Japanese women singing and male customers drinking heated sake or Japanese tea. There was a dining area where you could eat Japanese dishes, like sukiyaki,” says the Kampar-born historian.

Did he see the massage girls?

“Oh, yes. They behaved very well. They knew we were children and they couldn’t be bothered with us,” he recalls. “Their faces were heavily painted with powder and cosmetics. They wore red lipstick and had Japanese-style hairdos. And they wore kimonos.”

The establishment was popular with British officers as it served “very good Japanese food” and they often took their wives along for dinner. That was on the ground floor.

“If you sought the services of the massage girls, they took you upstairs,” says Chye, adding that Kampar at that time was a big town as it also served the people of Gopeng and Tapah.

Payment for the massage, plus “further services”, was made in Straits dollars; the amount would be equivalent to RM100 today. The clientele ran the gamut from British government servants to tin miners and businessmen.

The Chinese, however, stopped patronising the massage parlour during the Sino-Japanese war that started on July 7, 1937.

“The Chinese hated the Japanese because they had attacked China. No Chinese dared to go into the shop. If you went in, you became a ‘running dog’. You would be stoned by the Chinese waiting outside.”

The parlour, Chye says, was one of the best places to get information.

“You go to a massage parlour, a girl will encourage you to get drunk on sake, and then say ‘marilah tuan, pergi mandi' (sir, let’s go for a bath). That’s how they got information out of you,” he explains.

These Japanese Mata Haris would go through the pockets of drunken British officers, photographing whatever they thought useful.

The officers never suspected they were being pumped for information as the girls were subtle, says Chye.

“For example, they would ask a police inspector, ‘Where are you from?’ and, ‘How many policemen are there in Kampar?’ It was all vital information needed by the Japanese military in planning (the invasion of Malaya),” he explains.

Tokyo was, of course, more than happy to subsidise the parlours as long as the stream of information kept flowing.

The parlour’s Japanese proprietor would also take the girls “fishing”.

“Actually, they were taking photos of the shoreline,” Chye says. “The British were not suspicious, they just thought the Japanese loved photography.”

Two months before the Japanese military launched its attack against Malaya, the massage parlour closed its doors, as did most of the other Japanese-owned shops in town.

Amusement in grim times

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

LIM Liou Wong's face wrinkles with amusement when he recalls the funfair where he used to spend his time during the Japanese occupation.

Sitting on a lazy chair at a sundry shop in Gemas town, Negri Sembilan, the 74-year-old man points towards an empty lot about 100m away says, “There used to be an amusement park there.”

“It had a funfair, wayang (movie) kung fu, bangsawan (Malay stage opera) and Chinese opera. And there was gambling ... all kinds of gambling, except roulette,” recalls Lim, whose family owns a laundry shop next door.

“The Japanese did not disturb the Chinese who operated the amusement park. Probably they hoped that the Chinese would be harmless if allowed to gamble and drink alcohol. The Japanese would only trouble you if they suspected you were a spy working for the communists or British.”

Lim Liou Wong remembers being terrified of the Japanese soldiers.

Gambling went on in full swing in all the amusement parks throughout Malaya, according to Chin Kee Onn in Malaya Upside Down.

“Under the guise of 'amusement' and 'games of skill', open gambling was carried on under the very noses of the authorities,” Chin wrote. “But, of course, the military police and civil police had been bribed.”

Before the Japanese occupation of Malaya, Lim's family lived next door to a Japanese couple who operated a photo studio. At that time (in the 1930s), it was the only Japanese-owned shop in Gemas.

“They took many photographs of Gemas town. Now when you think of it, they were actually spies. They were very interested in the Gemas railway station,” he recalls, adding the town had strategic importance in terms of transportation because Gemas was the crucial railway junction between Singapore, the east coast and the north of Malaya.

“I also remember them taking pictures of me. They were very friendly and polite. And sometimes they gave me Japanese cakes,” he says.

Some months before the invasion of Malaya, the Japanese shop closed.

The Japanese he remembered during the occupation were not so friendly. In fact, they terrified him.

“When the Japanese soldiers caught members of the Bintang Tiga (communist army), they chopped their heads off or lined them up to be shot by a firing squad. Even innocents were not spared,” he recalls.

The laundry shop run by Lim's father was also not spared, financially.

“Business was bad because everyone was poor. People were more worried about putting food in their stomach than whether their clothes were clean,” he explains. – By P.G.

Desperate rearguard actions

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

BY PAUL SI

THE British did not put up a significant fight for Kuala Lumpur because the city was deemed indefensible once the Japanese forces had broken through at Slim River.

Although the British troops actually outnumbered the Japanese nearly two-to-one, the invaders had overwhelming superiority in the air and tanks on the ground. The Japanese troops were also experienced, well trained and highly motivated whereas the defending forces were ill equipped and trained.

Therefore, the only realistic defensive plans the British had were centred on relying on rivers to serve as natural barriers and blocking the Japanese advance at key bridges, such as the spans over Slim River and Serendah.

The Japanese, however, attacked with incredible speed. They overwhelmed many of the under-trained an demoralised defenders in a matter of minutes.

In addition to poor training, the British and Indian defenders suffered from exhaustion because constant aerial strafing and bombing meant rest was impossible.

Furthermore, communications was chaotic because much of the British army's irreplaceable radio equipment had been lost in the retreat from Jitra, Kedah, and telephone lines were frequently cut or damaged. Attempts were made to communicate by sending runners but the situation was changing so fast that messages were often outdated by the time they arrived.

Often, Japanese tanks surprised and shot British troop columns lined up on the road. The troops had not been trained to deal with enemy tanks.

After brushing aside weak opposition at Serendah and quickly rebuilding the demolished bridge, the Japanese took Kuala Lumpur and found many stores of useful materials left intact, although the fleeing British had destroyed some fuel depots and airport buildings.

Lt Gen Yamashita believed the last British defensive line before Singapore would be at Sungai Muar.

He planned to overcome it by sending his main attacking force, the 5th Division, down the trunk road to tackle the British defences. At the same time, the Imperial Guards Division would head from Malacca down the coast to outflank the defences.

Bitter memories, sweet revenge

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 22 May 2005

Last week, Revisiting WWII talked to people who remembered the hard times as the Japanese army swept southward through Perak on their way to their ultimate objective of Singapore. PHILIP GOLINGAI follows events as the invaders marched across Selangor, first as conquerors and then as occupiers.

HASHIM Salleh longed for revenge against the Japanese, whose brutality during the war years still fill him with bitterness decades later.

As a 10-year-old boy, he spent just 20 days in a Japanese-run school because “the only thing I learnt was to sing Japanese patriotic songs.”

Asked if he remembered any tunes, Hashim sang something that sounded like mi yoto kiano with a marching beat. Although he still remembers the lyrics after 60 years, he never learned what they meant.

Hashim (right) showing how Japanese soldiers used to slap anyone who failed to bow to them.– All photos by ONG SOON HIN

But the songs stuck in his head, along with the thirst for vengeance in his heart.

In the 1970s, as a taxi driver, he hummed the tune when driving a middle-aged Japanese man from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur.

“The Japanese passenger laughed heartily when I sang,” he says.

When he reached Rasah, half way between Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur, Hashim pulled into a petrol station for a brief stop.

“The Japanese man asked 'Kuala Lumpur?’ and I just nodded ? he got out of the taxi, thinking that he had arrived,” Hashim recalls with glee.

Not only did he let the passenger make the mistake but Hashim also charged the man double the normal fare.

Asked why he did that, Hashim said, “He (Japanese) did worse things to me in the past, so I took my revenge. But at least my revenge was not that cruel.”

What Hashim remembers about the Japanese reign in Malai (ma-rai-ee, the Japanese name for Malaya) is cruelty.

“What do I remember? My father, Salleh Ali, urging a Japanese soldier to shoot him when he could no longer bear their torture,” says Hashim, who is from Kampung Kurnia, Slim River, Perak.

Japanese soldiers had earlier seized a double-barrelled shotgun from Salleh during a mopping-up operation in their village. “A few days later, another group of soldiers came to our house and demanded that my father hand over his gun,” recalls Hashim.

“My father told them that he had already surrendered it,” Hashim continued, “but the soldiers did not believe him.”

They dragged Salleh off to the Slim River headquarters of the dreaded kempetei (Japanese secret police).

They pumped soap water into the 60-year-old man's stomach using a hose through his mouth. And when his stomach became bloated, a soldier placed a plank on his abdomen and then jumped on it, causing water to squirt out of Salleh's ear, eyes, nose and mouth.

Then a soldier placed Salleh's head on a washbasin and threatened to chop it off. That was when he broke down and pleaded with the soldiers to finish him off with a bullet. Eventually, he was sent to Tanjung Malim police station and later released.

To this day, Hashim has not forgiven the Japanese.

“Benci, cukup benci (I hate them, I really hate them),” says Hashim, who was 10 years old when the Japanese overran the town of Slim River.

The Japanese victory in the battle for the Slim River bridge opened the gateway to central Malaya and Kuala Lumpur.

Other examples of the Japanese cruelty that linger in Hashim's memory include a Japanese soldier slapping his 30-year-old brother, Idris, until blood spewed from his mouth.

Idris failed to bow when a Japanese soldier marched by him.

During the Nipponisation of Malai, bowing became an institution. According to Chin Kee Onn in Malaya Upside Down, there were several types of bows - Rei (ordinary bow), Saikeirei (deep bow) and Kokumin Girei (deep obeisance by the entire assembly).

Holding the fort

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 8 May 2005

Back in Alor Star, things were tense, too. TUNKU ISMAIL JEWA, grandson of the Sultan of Kedah at the time the Japanese advanced into the town, shares his memories of those troubled times.

THE first indication the people of Alor Star had that war had broken out was when Japanese planes bombed the Alor Star aerodrome on the morning of Dec 8, 1941.

After the bombing, civil and military authorities in Kedah began to step up air raid precautions and people in town were advised to seek shelter in rural areas.

On Dec 11, news reached Alor Star that Japanese troops had attacked troops stationed at Changloon, near the Kedah/Thai border.

By then, most Government officers in the north, including the Chief Secretary to the Government, Haji Mohammad Shariff, had left Alor Star to seek refuge in Kulim District in south-east Kedah. Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra was the District Officer in this area at that time.

Meanwhile, the ailing Sultan of Kedah, Sultan Abdul Hamid, and the Regent, Tunku Badlishah, had already been accommodated in Kulim by Tunku Abdul Rahman when they arrived the previous day.

Tunku Ismail Jewa points to what is believed to be remnants of the concrete structure of the Wan Mohammad Saman Bridge, which was blown up by retreating British troops. In the background is the present bridge.

However, my father, Tunku Mohammad Jewa, also of the Kedah royal family, refused to leave Alor Star as he believed strongly that he should remain with the people.

I remember well the day the Japanese Army entered the town: it was on Dec 13, and my parents and other members of my family were stranded on the southern side of Sungai Kedah at Simpang Kuala.

My father got up early as usual that morning and pretended nothing had happened although he knew that the Japanese Army had already entered Alor Star. He decided to go for a walk in the coconut plantation with Pai Rat, an ex-convict of Punjabi and Thai parentage who had earlier asked my father for asylum after all the prisoners from Alor Star prison were released ahead of the Japanese Army’s advance into Alor Star.

During the walk, my father and Pai Rat were suddenly confronted by two Punjabi soldiers and one of them levelled his rifle at my father. Luckily for my father, Pai Rat intervened and told the soldier in Punjabi that my father was the son of the Sultan of Kedah. The soldier apologised before he and his colleagues left to join British troops in Gurun.

After that frightening incident, my father decided that we should leave Simpang Kuala for his mansion at Bakar Bata in northern Alor Star. After we heard that the Wan Mohammad Saman Bridge across Sungai Kedah had been blown up by the retreating troops – and when our driver, Pak Man, did not turn up for work – my father decided that we should all walk to Bakar Bata.

When we arrived on Sungai Kedah’s bank near the present Sultan Badlishah Bridge on the Seberang Perak side, my father had to pay several people to ferry us across to Jalan Pekan Melayu (now renamed Persiaran Sultan Mohammad Jiwa) in their sampan.

As we reached the street, I saw many people running helter-skelter carrying bales of cloth and other items they had looted from shops. Apparently, they had been frightened by the sight of Japanese soldiers aiming rifles at them from the road.

From Jalan Pekan Melayu, we detoured to Jalan Raja where I saw a British soldier in his khaki uniform lying dead on the five-foot way outside a toy shop near the former Royal theatre. He had been bayoneted to death. On the other side of the street, at Jalan Nagor, which was then an open space, I saw a young Chinese man lying dead on the ground. Gruesome sights, indeed....When Japanese military leaders arrived in Alor Star on Dec 13, they found conditions chaotic as there was no law and order. There was widespread looting of shops, private homes and offices by both civilians and Japanese soldiers.

The next day, my father received a visit from Maj-Gen Manaki, commander of the battalion that first entered Kedah; Major Iwaichi Fujiwara, head of the Japanese Intelligence Corps; and K. Shiba, the manager of a toy shop in town and also a secret agent of the Fujiwara Kikan or Intelligence Unit. They had come to seek his co-operation to restore law and order in Alor Star.

My father took the opportunity to complain to the Japanese leaders that his home had been ransacked by their soldiers and expressed shock at the barbarous behaviour of the soldiers.

Fujiwara ordered an immediate investigation, which resulted in the arrest of three soldiers. They were ordered by Fujiwara to commit hara-kiri (ritual suicide) in front of my father. Their bodies were later buried in a plot of land on which the Holiday Villa now stands.

As an initial step towards maintaining law and order, Manaki appointed my elder brother, Tunku Nong Jiwa – then 23 years old and a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Kedah civil service officer – as Commissioner of Police.

Later, when Lt Gen Tomayuki Yamashita, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces, arrived in Alor Star, he appointed my father as Officer Administrating the State during the absence of the Sultan, the Regent and the Chief Secretary to the Government from the State capital.

By Dec 14, all troops under British command had left Alor Star and the Japanese forces were in full control of the urban centre.

After his appointment, my father addressed a large gathering of people near the Zahir mosque. He appealed to the people not to leave their homes, to remain calm, and to carry on with their normal duties.

A new State Council was formed with my father as its President. The other members of the council were Tunku Kassim, Tunku Abdullah, Tunku Aizuddin, Syed Omar Shahabudin and Syed Ali. Colonel Ohyama was appointed the Japanese Occupation Governor.

When conditions began to improve towards the end of December, my father requested Tunku Abdul Rahman to bring back the Sultan from Kulim.

Once the Sultan was back in Alor Star, my father formally handed back the administration of the state to the Regent, Tunku Badlishah, before resuming his position as Superintendent of Monopolies and Customs.

Alor Star did not suffer much damage during the Japanese invasion. Except for the destruction of the beautiful Wan Mohammad Saman bridge and a couple of shophouses along Titi Batu, opposite the Central Police Station, as well as the disappearance of all the cannons displayed at the Balai Besar, everything remained intact.

War-time memories

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 1 May 2005

Written by: Bulbir Singh, Seremban

THERE were interesting tales in Revisiting WWII (Insight, StarMag, April 24). There is always some good and bad in any event!

I was five years old during the war but I can vividly remember watching several Japanese men on horseback riding through my parents' wooden house, from the kitchen to the main door. My mum had to grab me from their path. Had she not, I might not be telling this today!

They did not harm anyone but my mum scolded them in Punjabi. Luckily, they did not understand.

My late dad told me about the need to salute the Japanese soldiers as they passed by and if one did not, he would be in hot water.

Dad also told me that he picked up the rudiments of the Japanese language. He had to because he was a bus driver and had to interact with them as he ferried them about.

When the Japanese were about to leave Malaya, my dad tried to purchase a van from them. When they saw he had so much Japanese currency, they beat him up! Dad lived with the marks till his dying day.

I recollect the sad face of my dad when former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad showed his keenness for Japanese work ethics in the Look East Policy.

It was not that my father does not like the Japanese but he abhorred the way they treated many innocent people during the war. He said that was unwarranted and brutal.

Fan of a hero

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 1 May 2005

HAROLD Speldewinde’s tales of World War II are often tributes to the late M. Saravanamuttu, former editor of the Straits Echo, who took charge of restoring order in the aftermath of the Japanese bombings of Penang in December 1941.

A former student of Penang Free School, Speldewinde had completed his Senior Cambridge examinations when war broke out.

He was then boarding at the home of the Quays, a Eurasian family that lived on Barracks Road while his Dutch Burgher parents from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) were in Taiping, Perak.

“After the bombings, I joined E Company of the Straits Settlement Volunteers Force (SSVF),” the 81-year-old president of the Penang Veterans Association reminisces while visiting the Penang War Museum in Batu Maung.

In the initial pandemonium after the wave of bombings, rotting bodies littered the streets of George Town and looting was rampant as the British retreated from Penang.

The Straits Echo’s was one of the few offices that remained open under the leadership of Saravanamuttu, affectionately known as Uncle Sara; the editor had been a classmate of Speldewinde’s father back in Ceylon.

Harold Speldewinde in the War Museum Penang looking over a torture chamber used by Japanese to break prisoners they interrogated during their Occupation of Penang.

Sara set up the Penang Service Committee comprising elected members from Penang’s different communities to run the town on Dec 16; he also made the hefty Speldewinde, then 17, his personal bodyguard.

The E Company Eurasian volunteers who gave up their arms after the British retreat were called into service as Volunteer Police to keep peace and prevent looting under the leadership of a Eurasian, Lieutenant Willweber, who was later asked by the Japanese to become manager of Penang Hill Railway.

“Armed but not in uniform, I took part in preventing looting,” remembers Speldewinde. “Confiscated loot, comprising mainly food and clothing, was kept at E Company’s headquarters at the Francis Light School on Perak Road and was later distributed to the needy,” says Speldewinde who accompanied Sara on welfare visits.

Even after the British had evacuated by Dec 16, the bombings continued and the committee that met twice daily at No. 10, Scott Road, decided that the Union Jack at Fort Cornwallis had to be taken down and replaced with a white flag of surrender.

“As there were no volunteers, Sara and R.S Gopal, his sub-editor, carried out this mission,” says Speldewinde.

Local Japanese who had been imprisoned by the British before the war were released; with the help of one of them, Sara broadcast an appeal on Dec 19 from the Penang Wireless Station, urging the Japanese air force to stop bombing the island because the British had left Penang.

“Tribute must also be paid to a young Penangite by the name of Ivan Allan who bravely went to Sungai Petani on Dec 18 with a Japanese named Izumi to convey the news that the British had evacuated Penang,” says Speldewinde.

When two companies of Japanese troops arrived in sampans at the Church Street Pier at 4pm on Dec 19, Sara, as the committee chairman, appealed to the Commander not to molest the local population.

“The next day, the Japanese Civil Administrator, Hiroyasu, arrived and formed four different committees comprising Malays, Chinese, Indians and Eurasians. These committees were known as the Peace Preservation Committee.”

While the Japanese troops put up temporarily at the Convent Datuk Keramat, several British officers who arrived from the northern states were secretly put up at the Residency (now the Yang di-Pertua Negri’s residence, Seri Mutiara) and fed for three days by Sara.

Speldewinde’s hero, M. Saravanamuttu, meets Lord Louis Mounbatten, South-East Asia Supreme Allied Commander, at the Bayan Lepas aerodrome in 1945. In the centre is Straits Echo chief reporter Chia Po Teik.

Speldewinde recalls the dangerous mission to help the officers escape under the cover of darkness: “Together with another SSVF volunteer, Oswald Foley, who was driving the truck, Sara and I went to pick up the British officers and take them to the mouth of Sungai Pinang where a tongkang (boat) was waiting to take them to Singapore.

“Had we been caught, our heads would have been chopped off,” says Speldewinde grimly.

Sara’s committee was disbanded on Dec 23 when the Japanese-elected Penang Preservation Committee began functioning. Sara himself was jailed on Christmas Day; he ended up spending nine months incarcerated. Speldewinde left to work on his family’s tea plantation in Cameron Highlands, Pahang, returning to Penang in May 1943 to marry Molly McIntyre, a relative of the Quays family whom he had met before the war.

The couple returned to Cameron Highlands before moving to the Gunung Batu Puteh forest near Tapah, Perak, to join a band of orang asli in a guerrilla resistance. Dressed like the natives, the armed Speldewinde and his men patrolled the area and met fighters from the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army and, later, the famed Force 136. Due to his association with the communists who smuggled food to his family, the Japanese put up a poster offering a $500 reward for Speldewinde’s capture on the suspicion of him being a communist. The war ended without any combat in the jungle.

As for Sara, the post-war period saw his meteoric rise in diplomatic service as Ceylon’s Commissioner in Singapore and Malaya from 1950 to 1957, Ceylon Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to Indonesia from 1954 to 1957, and Honorary Consul-General for Ceylon in Bangkok from 1958 to 1961.

Before his death in 1970 at the age of 75, Sara wrote and published a book on his life’s experiences entitled The Sara Saga that includes accounts of life in Penang during the Japanese Occupation. The book also describes the role of the short-lived Penang Service Committee in keeping peace, saving rice from looting and distributing it, clearing and disposing of corpses, safeguarding petrol and issuing it only to those involved in essential work, like doctors.

“Uncle Sara was a newspaperman who expressed his opinions freely and was the bravest man I have ever met,” concludes Speldewinde. – By CHOONG KWEE KIM

When barbers became police chiefs

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 1 May 2005

AS a volunteer with the 3rd Battalion of the Straits Settlement Volunteer Force (SSVF), Mushir Ariff was called to arms when the bombing of Penang started in December 1941 – but the island was lost without combat.

“Those of us from the transport section were on standby at two expatriate officers’ residence at No. 1, Wright Road, awaiting orders. The officers then told us to go back – and the British just scooted off without telling anyone and with no goodbyes,” recalls the now 87-year-old Datuk Mushir at his home in Batu Feringghi, still sounding indignant after all this time.

The volunteers disbanded and Mushir’s family evacuated to Air Itam.

After the late M. Saravanamuttu, former editor of the Straits Echo, conveyed to the Japanese that the British had left, Mushir says the invaders arrived and proceeded to organise community leaders to head the Peace Preservation Committee that met with the Japanese once a week to deal with local issues of governance.

Datuk Mushir Ariff and his father, the late Sir Dr Kamil, were on the Peace Preservation Committee that dealt with local issues of governance during the Occupation.

The Malay community was headed by Mushir’s father, Dr Kamil Ariff (later Sir Dr Kamil); other members on the committee included Mushir’s father-in-law, C.M. Hashim (later Tan Sri Hashim), and his uncle, A. Carrim. Also on the committee were Capt Mohd Noor, Yusoff Izzuddin, Datuk Haji Ali Rouse, and Haji Murshid, among others. Mushir himself was on a sub-committee.

He recalls that the Chinese community was led by Heah Joo Seang, the Indian by Dr N.K. Menon, and the Eurasian by Lieutenants Willweber and Shelly (he doesn’t remember their full names), among others.

Mushir’s father and Willweber were also on the earlier Penang Service Committee that Saravanamuttu had set up; it was taken over by the Peace Preservation Committee.

The latter’s leaders were based at Convent Datuk Keramat to record the local population’s reports on break-ins, arson, theft or loss of title deeds of property.

“We just took down notes for further action but nothing came of it until the committee was dissolved after two or three months. That’s when the Japanese brought in their own High Court judges, civil servants, and officers to form a civil government,” Mushir says.

He remembers vividly that a Japanese barber called Ando-san who had a barbershop in Argyll Road later became the Chief Police Officer!

As for Mushir, from the rank of a private in the SSVF, he later became the first Malaysian to become the national president of the Ex-Services Association after taking over from Brigadier-Gen I.C.C. Lauder in 1959. – By C.K.K.

History preserved

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 1 May 2005

THE mighty British military fortress at Batu Maung was rendered impotent when the British retreated in the face of advancing Japanese troops that arrived from the northern part of Malaya during World War II.

Upon their arrival in Penang in December 1941, the Japanese soldiers found the fort abandoned and used it as an interrogation camp for prisoners of war and civilians.

This is where the Japanese used to chop people’s heads off at the Batu Maung fort that has now been converted into the War Museum Penang.

The 1930 fortress in south-east Penang, now turned into the War Museum Penang, was equipped with two 15-inch Howitzer guns that could swivel 180°. According to museum founder Johari Shafie, the guns had a range of 30km to 50km, which them to cover the Mata Kuching Royal Air Force base in Butterworth (now a Royal Malaysian Air Force base) in the event the base was attacked.

“But the British dynamited the guns before leaving Penang because they did not have time to remove them for use in the defence of Singapore,” he says.

Johari adds that the British spent £40mil to construct its defence system in Penang at the Batu Maung fort, Fort Auchery in Batu Feringghi, the mobile base observation tower in Tanjung Tokong, and at the Swettenham Pier; they were all incapacitated during their retreat.

The Batu Maung fortress, abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle after the war, was rediscovered by Johari who applied to lease 7.8ha of land around it to develop it into an outdoor living war museum; the museum opened in 2002.

It features underground military tunnels, an ammunition store, observation tower, an intelligence and logistic centre, a generator room, halls, offices, canon firing bays, sleeping quarters, cook houses and a medical infirmary.

Johari Shafie standing where one of the Howitzers had been positioned facing the sea at the British fort at Batu Maung.

Johari says a Col Kobayashi’s battalion of the Japanese 5th division stormed in from Muka Head in small boats in the early hours of Dec 17.

“According to the late Malay volunteer Datuk Capt Mohd Noor, the Japanese troops first entered from Muka Head camouflaged as fishermen and bandits. That was before the official arrival by ship at the Church Street Pier,” he explains.

When the commander of the Malayan campaign, General Tomoyuki Yamashita – the famed “Tiger of Malaya” –arrived, Johari says Col Kobayashi was instructed to turn the Batu Maung fortress into a camp for prisoners of war.

Johari says the Tiger of Malaya was a brilliant military commander who instantly took swift and severe action when he learnt of Japanese troops plundering and raping.

“Three Japanese soldiers convicted of rape by a court martial were executed by a firing squad at the Penang police headquarters,” adds Johari.

After the war, Yamashita himself was convicted by an American military commission in Manila for atrocities committed by soldiers under his command.

He was hanged on Bataan Island in the Philippines on Feb 23, 1946, and an exact replica of his gallows is recreated at the War Museum Penang.

The museum, offering night tours and dormitory stays, is open daily. For details, call 016-421 3606 or 04-626 5142. – By C.K.K.

Living through hard times

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star- 1 May 2005

In the second and final part of Revisiting WWII’s look at life in Penang during the Japanese Occupation, CHOONG KWEE KIM unearths more interesting tales about learning to say arigato and finding dead bodies in bizarre poses...

HE tried to warn them, but nobody listened. J.R. Ramajayam was, after all, only 10 years in 1941 when he saw Japanese military planes flying over his home at Jalan Sungai Dua on British-occupied Penang Island.

It was the school holidays but the Hutchings School pupil remembered enough of his lesson on military aircraft emblems to identify the single red dot on the wing as the sun emblem of Japan.

“It was Dec 8 and I saw three Japanese planes flying in formation southward. My parents didn’t believe me and no one knew war was coming, otherwise, we would have stocked up on food,” recalls the 73-year-old retired government servant now living in Gelugor, Penang.

In the evening of that historic day, he saw partly damaged British military lorries returning to the nearby Minden Barracks headquarters (now Universiti Sains Malaysia), little knowing that the Bayan Lepas military airfield had been crippled by Japanese warplanes.

In this rural part of Penang, there was still no sense of urgency among the civilian population until days later, when word spread that free food was available at Minden Barracks.

J.R. Ramajayam certainly didn’t enjoy the monotonous daily fare of ikan bilis and rice he had during the Occupation – but who’d complain in a time when food was scarce?

“Residents in the surrounding areas trooped down to Minden Barracks to find all Europeans had left, the gates were wide open, and lots of foodstuff such as beef, chicken and potatoes in cans, butter, jam, dried bread, sugar, salt and sacks of rice, abandoned.

“After the food was all taken, people returned for furniture, mattresses, blankets, bed sheets and others,” Ramajayam says, recalling those early days of blissful plundering, far away from the chaos of heavily-bombed George Town – till Japanese soldiers in loincloths showed up about a week later in his peaceful neighbourhood.

“For the first few days, the Japanese soldiers acted ‘loosely’, each carrying a sword and wearing only a green cap with the red sun logo, no shirt and no pants on, wearing just a loincloth, a green military belt, and sandals like those that rickshaw pullers used to wear.

“The soldiers went from house to house shouting kura! and gesturing for drinks but when they saw girls, they went wild,” he says.

Within days, residents had swiftly dug secret burrows under their houses to hide the womenfolk from the marauding soldiers. Whenever the soldiers’ commanding officer – clad in green tunic, pants and armed with a revolver – arrived on his motorcycle, though, they behaved and wore their uniforms.

“When the chief was around, we felt protected and only in his absence did we feel afraid because the soldiers walked in whenever they liked,” says Ramajayam.

The people established an “early warning system” of sorts by banging on an empty kerosene tin whenever a soldier was spotted nearby. Hearing the signal, residents stopped digging their tunnels and hid the girls while those outside the house smeared cow dung on their bodies to keep the soldiers away.

In time, some locals became middlemen or interpreters, a role often viewed with suspicion by others who felt betrayed when information leaked to the enemy that loot from Minden Barracks was hidden in secret tunnels.

“Soldiers would knock the floor with sticks to check for hollowness.

“Once a tunnel was discovered, the house owner was whacked and asked to dig out the tunnel and return the loot to the barracks,” he says, adding that the tunnel in his home’s kitchen went undetected.

Food was scarce and rationed, with each family given a metal tag bearing Japanese script that probably indicated the size of the household; this had to be produced to buy items like oil, sugar and others using Japanese banana currency. Staples like rice and fish were available only once a week.

Villagers were made to plant vegetables, particularly the fast-growing tapioca, on every piece of vacant land to supplement the food supply.

One night, Ramajayam attended an Indian wedding at a small temple and was following a foot procession led by a man with a hurricane lamp on his head towards the bride’s house when they bumped into several soldiers.

“A soldier slapped the chap with the lamp causing it to fall and break. Everyone ran off into the darkness and that was the end of the wedding ceremony,” he says, feeling amused in retrospect.

Ramajayam ended up spending most of the Japanese Occupation digging tunnels – for what use, he never discovered – into a hill behind USM on Jalan Bukit Gambir. Early every morning, for over two years, he hacked the earth with a pickaxe and shovel, stopping only for a lunch of a ball of rice filled with salt in the middle and fried ikan bilis (anchovies) prepared by a local.

The ikan bilis was cooked on a piece of corrugated zinc propped on stones and set over a rubber wood fire.

“Everyone had to line up and receive the rice ball only with the left hand and ikan bilis with the right. We had this every day and there was no such thing as a change of menu,” he says, grimacing.

After the war ended in August 1945, Ramajayam rejoiced but also felt a little pity as vanquished Japanese soldiers were rounded up and made to squat down in submission just as the locals had been.

Once again, news was slow to spread and the Allied reoccupation of the island was not widely known in rural areas. This time, though, the lack of news was a godsend: Ramajayam’s grandfather hastily pressed a sum of Japanese money into his hand to dispose of at a sundry shop in rural Relau and, “I bought a kati of dried chillies before the notes became void,” the survivor says with a satisfied grin.

Amidst war, a wedding

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star-24 April 2005

Revisiting WWII takes a detour from tracing the Japanese invasion route down the peninsula to look at Penang. While not a vital objective in the push towards Singapore, the island was still a strategically important element in protecting the invaders’ flank, so they had to hold it. The three-year-long Occupation certainly left its mark on the lives of Penangites, some of whom share their stories with CHOONG KWEE KIM.

WHILE World War II wrecked countries and homes, the exigencies of war also brought together families. Dr Kamil Ariff was C.M. Hashim’s doctor and close friend. When war, with all the potential for atrocities it held, threatened Penang, Dr Kamil and Hashim decided to protect the latter’s daughter, Zubaidah, in the best way they knew how: by marrying her to Dr Kamil’s son, Mushir.

It was a wise decision that the late Sir Dr Kamil and Tan Sri Hashim made in those troubled times. And it turned out to be a decision that has stood the test of time, for the young Mushir and Zubaidah remained together after the war – and are still together more than 60 years later!

In December 1941, when the Japanese began bombing Penang, Mushir was a 23-year-old articled clerk (law student) at Messrs Hogan, Adams and Allen above the Barkath Store in George Town’s Union Street. Zubaidah was then a student at St George’s Girls’ School, though her education was abruptly curtailed when war broke out.

“After the bombings, many people evacuated to the more rural districts, including my family who left our home in Hutton Lane to seek shelter in my future father-in-law’s mansion in Air Itam,” recalls the now 87-year-old Datuk Mushir at his home in Batu Feringghi.

Datuk Mushir Ariff and his wife, Datuk Zubaidah Hashim were brought together by the war. – Photo by K.T. GOH

Although Mushir’s family moved into Zubaidah’s home, Penawar, there was no opportunity for romantic courtship prior to their wedding in October 1942: “I was only 14 and too young for romance,” says Datuk Zubaidah with a smile.

There wasn’t much room for privacy either: “There were so many relatives, about 80 of them, who evacuated to our house to stay for about two weeks,” she says, recalling the chaotic exodus of evacuees who walked to Air Itam with children in tow after the December bombings.

In Penawar, every available nook and cranny, including the kitchen, lounge and gardener’s house, was occupied while tents were also set up on the lawn. There was no electricity for the first few months, and candles had to be lit every night.

Zubaidah remembers traipsing down the back stairs to play by the river together with relatives, all girls, when an alarm rang out that a Japanese truck had stopped at a house next door.

“All the mothers in the house yelled for their daughters to get in while my father took out his gun and prepared to shoot should anything happen to any of the girls, regardless of his own fate,” she says.

This was why Zubaidah’s father was prepared to marry her off as soon as possible; it was a good move for parents to pair off their children to safeguard young girls from predators among the Japanese soldiers in the early days of the invasion.

Life was unpredictably dangerous in those times. Zubaidah once witnessed from a window an identification parade with Japanese soldiers accompanying a hooded informer. People were lined up in front of the hooded man; those he singled out were herded onto lorries and, oft-times, never seen again, so they were probably sent to their deaths.

The young couple’s big day has been carefully preserved.

There were other frightening moments, moments that involved that most basic of needs, food.

As supplies became scarce, the Japanese began a campaign to grow more food, so all the available space in the garden surrounding Zubaidah’s father’s house was planted with vegetables such as tapioca and sweet potatoes.

Food supply was rationed, but those who had the means could get more on the black market; Mushir and Zubaidah’s families got their additional supply from friends in Balik Pulau who stored fish, chicken, beef and eggs for them.

The couple remember a frightening incident when both their parents set out in two cars to get their supplies only to be stopped by Japanese sentries in Balik Pulau who had probably been tipped off by informers.

“The two drivers were slapped, the officers confiscated all the food, then gave a stern warning but, thank God, nothing else happened to our parents,” says Zubaidah.

At their wedding on Oct 31, the food supply was still good and they could afford to invite close friends and relatives to a dinner that comprised the usual kenduri fare of nasi minyak and curries. Later, when food became scarce, wedding celebrations held by locals were simpler, consisting only of tea and cakes.

Despite the troubled times, the newly-weds still found the opportunity to go downtown for movies.

As petrol was also rationed and issued only to those providing essential services such as doctors, others had to ride bicycles. For the young couple, the bumpy bicycle rides downtown on hard rubber tyres were memorable ones, although far from comfortable. Pneumatic tyres and tubes were then out of supply.

When they did make it to town, the young couple went to their favourite cinema, the newest in town, the Rex in Burmah Road. Other cinemas open at that time were the Queen (later Cathay and now the Mydin Emporium) and Odeon cinemas in Penang Road.

“The first English movie we watched after we got married was Ben Hur in November 1942,” recalls Zubaidah fondly, adding that, “After about two months, all the cinemas stopped showing English movies and screened only Japanese, Malay, Hindi and Chinese movies.”

She still remembers the tune and lyrics of a popular Japanese love song called Shina No Yoru (China Night) about a Japanese soldier who falls in love with a Chinese girl.

Shina no yoru,
Shina no yoru yo.
Minato no akari,
Murasaki no yo ni,
Noboru janku no,
Yume no fune.
Aa wasurarenu
Kokyu no ne.
Shina no yoru,
Yume no yoru.

(What a night in China,
What a night in China.
Harbour lights,
Deep purple night,
Ah, ship,
The dreamship
I can’t forget.
The sound of the Kokyu.
Ah, China night,
A dream night.)

Even in the midst of war, love can bloom ...

Adventures and adversity

Source: "Lifestyle"-The Star-24 April 2005

By CHOONG KWEE KIM

JAMES Tait was watching a movie in the Queen cinema (later Cathay cinema, now Mydin Emporium) in Penang Road one fine day in December 1941 when a notice abruptly interrupted the show: Army volunteers, wardens, fire-fighters and first-aiders were all required to report to their posts immediately.

Thus began the perilous war adventures of Tait, a volunteer in the Eurasian E Company of the Straits Settlement Volunteer Force who was tortured by the Kempetai (Japanese secret police) and imprisoned in Thailand, Penang and Singapore during the course of the three-year-long Japanese Occupation of Malaya.

But all was not darkness and pain: Private Tait, who was otherwise a regular electrician with the Penang Municipality, also met his future wife during the war.

After a hard stretch as a prisoner of war, Tait came back to nothing – except an introduction to pretty Nancy Browne, an Eurasian neighbour living several doors away.

Searching through his large collection of old photographs at his Tanjung Bungah home recently, the 87-year-old veteran retrieves several pictures of E Company volunteers. His thoughts flit back to the early days of the war when volunteers were transferred south to Bayan Lepas after a short stint standing guard at the northern coast of the island in anticipation of a northern attack.

James Tait with his collection of old cameras and photos from World War II.

At Bayan Lepas, from a small hillock east of the airfield, they witnessed Japanese planes bombing and strafing the apron and hanger area that was guarded by a mixed company of Gurkha, Indian and British soldiers.

“The Japanese planes flew so low that I could even see the pilots with scarves tied around their necks. But not even one round issued from our position since there was no order to shoot,” Tait recalls.

The E Company’s captain then said he had orders to evacuate and he gave them three choices: continue fighting, demobilise, or follow him south. The volunteers dispersed.

Though the British left the island, daily Japanese attacks continued until local leaders stepped forward to take charge. They set up a committee representing the different communities that lived in Penang; it was led by the late M. Saravanamuttu, a former editor of the Straits Echo who was fondly known as “Uncle Sara”. Once Uncle Sara took down the Union Jack at Fort Cornwallis and replaced it with a white flag, Japanese troops arrived on boats that tied up at the Church Street Pier.

A civilian again, Tait took out his Kodak camera and went around town capturing the early scenes of devastation and fire that raged for days after the bombing raids.

Taking pictures in front of the Goddess of Mercy Temple in Pitt Street (now Jalan Mesjid Kapitan Keling), he noticed a peculiar pattern of destruction that had left the temple untouched. In fact, a bomb that had landed in the back seat of an Austin parked beside the temple failed to explode. If it had gone off, there was no doubt the temple would have been badly damaged.

In later years, he heard of an account by a Japanese airman who claimed he saw a lady “fanning” bombs away from the temple; this tale was related to him by a senior citizen who had heard the bomber pilot’s story during a Japanese propaganda lecture.

A post-war photo of Tait and his future wife, Nancy Browne, on Gurney Drive.

According to the story, the pilot said he was targeting several handcarts parked along Pitt Street that looked like anti-aircraft guns (their upturned handles created that impression) when he saw “the lady fanning the bombs away”. (Similar sightings of fan or flag-wielding saviours, said to be resident deities of the temple, have become the stuff of urban legend in Penang.)

Tait also recalls a bombing raid on the Penang Hill Railway; supposedly, some British soldiers were hiding there but the attack killed only a hilltop bungalow caretaker’s son and injured a stationmaster. Weeks later, a Japanese officer turned up at Tait’s house with Tait’s colleague from the Penang Municipality: Tait was summoned to restore the hill railway’s damaged cables.

Upon completing the job, Tait fled Penang on a lifeboat, and his adventures truly began. After sailing to the mainland, Tait bought a bullock cart-load of pots and, in the company of an old sailor, he embarked on a new life as a seafaring pot-seller, travelling as far north as Thailand and Burma (now Myanmar).

From Satun in Thailand, he brought dried foodstuff back to Weld Quay in Penang where he unloaded at the Tan clan jetty and sold his goods from a rented shop lot at the Acheen Street/Victoria Street junction.

“I bought kha kin (towels in Hokkien) from looters (in Penang), which were in great demand in Thailand,” he says, adding that the lifeboat was later sold, and he bought a bigger boat.

But trouble arose during one of his trips to Satun: he was arrested by Thai police on suspicion of being a spy and was imprisoned for over a month in the penal island of Tarutao before being released unharmed.

Some time after that, he was again suspected of being a spy by the Kempetai in Penang and was taken away in handcuffs by local detectives upon his return to the island from one of his trips. He was locked up in Penang Prison and taken frequently to the Penang Road police headquarters where he was interrogated, kicked and his fingers burned.

One month later, he was released. He faced the world as a badly injured man with no means of making a living since his boat and travelling papers had been confiscated.

It was in this darkest hour of his life that he was introduced to his future wife.

Then came more hardship. In March 1945, the Japanese rounded up all Europeans and their immediate descendants; among them was Tait, as his late father had been Scottish while his mother was Thai.

The Europeans’ possessions were confiscated and stored in the rice godown (later the Federal theatre) in Jalan Datuk Keramat. Tait, his sister, and a niece were sent to the Penang prison, then to Singapore where they were interned for six months in the Sime Road Internment Camp. He remembers being liberated by the Allied head of the South-East Asia Command, Lord Mountbatten, who autographed Tait’s blue inter-camp pass used for visiting his sister in the female camp.

Upon Tait’s return to Penang, he went to the rice godown to salvage his confiscated belongings – a wardrobe, chest of drawers and bed – only to find most items looted and many of his photo negatives in the drawers strewn on the floor and damaged.

“I was very sad at the loss of my negatives and Kodak camera but I thanked God for surviving the war,” says Tait who had expected to die in the Singapore prison camp.

After all that he had been through, life could only go uphill: Tait married in 1949 and has two children and one grandson. He’s one of the oldest surviving members of E Company and the Penang Veterans’ Association. Some of his war photographs hang in the War Museum Penang in Batu Maung – and he still has many more war stories to tell.