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.