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.