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).