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