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.