Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945
二战期间的吉隆坡（1939-1945）
Andrew
Barber
关于二战时期日军占领下的吉隆坡的书籍。它讲述了1939年到1945年间吉隆坡和雪兰莪州各族人民在战争中的经历，包括马来人、华人、印度人以及欧洲人的不同视角和遭遇。书中结合了档案资料、口述历史和地图等多种来源，展现了战争对吉隆坡社会、经济和政治的深远影响，以及各族群在战争中的复杂互动和命运。
- 战前吉隆坡社会的多元化和对战争的不同态度
- 马来亚的防御体系及战前准备
- 日本占领期间对吉隆坡的影响：恐怖统治、社会生活、经济和政治变化
- 不同族群在日本占领下的经历和反应
- 英国军事当局接管后的社会状况及挑战
一、战前多元社会与战争阴影
- 多元族群与不同立场：
战前的吉隆坡是一个多元化的社会，包括马来人、华人、印度人、欧亚人和日本人等。他们对战争的态度各不相同。一些人支持英国，另一些人则对日本抱有同情，还有很多人只关心自己的生活和生意。
- “他们的忠诚和愿望使他坚定地站在英国一边，尽管他只在殖民环境中了解他们，中欧正在发生的事件会让他担忧，但对他来说却是遥远和陌生的。” (描述一名欧亚裔文员对战争的态度)
- “他的注意力集中在家庭、营业额、利润率和未偿债务上。” (描述一名日裔牙医对欧洲局势漠不关心)
- 马来民族主义兴起：
一些马来民族主义者，如马来青年联盟 (KMM) 成员，希望借日本之力摆脱英国殖民统治。
- “到 1940 年，KMM 的一些成员，特别是其领导人 Ibrahim Yaakob，更进一步，秘密地与日本人建立了秘密关系，同意在日本入侵马来亚时充当第五纵队来支持他们。”
- 英国的防御准备：
英国意识到日本威胁的加剧，开始加强防御，并在马来亚部署更多军队。他们也招募当地人加入志愿军。
- “随着来自日本的威胁增加，但为时已晚，英国人意识到了自己的愚蠢，并呼吁当地社区做出‘爱国行为’。”
二、日军占领与恐怖统治
- 沦陷与恐慌： 1942 年 1 月 11 日，日军占领吉隆坡，市民陷入恐慌。
- “在日本闪电战向马来半岛推进的过程中，吉隆坡的主要英语报纸却在反思英国荣誉制度的细微差别。” (战前报纸的报道反映出人们对局势的误判)
- 宪兵队的暴行：
日本宪兵队对当地居民实施残酷的统治，制造了恐怖气氛。
- “实际上，它是日本的盖世太保，令普通士兵和平民都感到恐惧。” (描述宪兵队的性质)
- “战俘在审判前被关押在 B 座，也被称为地狱座，他们每月只允许洗澡一次，不允许锻炼或晒太阳，生病时也不允许进入监狱医院。他们被留在牢房里等死。” (战俘在监狱遭受的非人待遇)
- 社会生活巨变：
日本占领给吉隆坡的社会生活带来了巨大的变化，包括宵禁、物资短缺、货币贬值、文化灌输等。
- “由于‘灯火管制’，从 12 月 9 日起，受欢迎的食品店 Cold Storage 宣布将从下午 5 点开始关门。”
- “唯一可以悬挂的旗帜是日本国旗，可以通过各种和平委员会以及该市的许多印度人拥有的布料店获得。”
三、不同族群的经历与反应
- 马来人：
一些马来人与日本人合作，希望在新的秩序下获得权力和地位。
- “在英国人统治下担任低级公务员的马来官员发现，晋升和升迁的机会大大增加了。”
- 华人：
华人被视为日本的主要敌人，遭受了残酷的迫害和屠杀。
- “马来亚和新加坡由日本军政府管理。最初，它由第 25 军副司令土桥勇逸将军领导，他公开表示，华人将受到严厉对待。”
- 印度人：
日本人利用印度民族主义情绪，招募印度人加入印度国民军 (INA)。
- “日本人善于描绘日本统治下亚洲的积极愿景，这与英国的殖民主义形成鲜明对比。”
四、英国军事当局接管与重建挑战
- 权力移交与混乱：
1945 年 9 月，英国军队回到吉隆坡。权力移交的过程并不顺利，社会秩序混乱，治安问题严重。
- “这些是令人欣喜若狂的日子，但潜在的匮乏、不安全和种族紧张的状况并没有消失。”
- “它赢得了不受欢迎的绰号‘黑市管理局’，在其队伍中，不仅有像古利克这样有能力和经验丰富的军官，还有相当多的流氓和无能之辈。”
- 战后清算与社会重建：
英国对战犯进行审判，并开始重建社会秩序和经济。
- “日本人军队投降时和打仗时一样纪律严明。”
- “英军在为 120,000 多名日本军队到来做准备时，皇家海军首先必须炸开环绕该岛的珊瑚，以便登陆艇能够到达海滩。”
二战期间的吉隆坡经历了从和平的多元社会到沦陷后的恐怖统治，再到战后重建的漫长过程。这段历史展现了战争的残酷和人性的复杂，也为后来的马来亚独立运动埋下了伏笔。
Kuala Lumpur at War
1939-1945
A History of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor
During World War Two
Andrew Barber
KARAMOJA
Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Malaysian Moments
Malaya the Making of a Nation 1510-1957
Penang under the East India Company 1786-1858
Penang at War 1914-1945
First published in Malaysia in 2012
Copyright © by Andrew Barber
Maps by Lileng Wong
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles, reviews or
publications.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material used or cited in this
book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher would be pleased to hear from
them.
Karamoja Press - AB&A Sdn Bhd
Suite A-6-3 Plaza Mont Kiara
50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Design by Lileng Wong
Printed by United YL Printers Sdn Bhd
To Dick and Gill Hart
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the staff of Arkib Negara in Kuala Lumpur, the
British Public Records Office at Kew, the Imperial War Museum in London
and the National Archives of Australia for their help and advice. Michael
Thompson, Anthony Cooper, Jonathan Moffatt, A. Gunanathan, Michael
Pether, John Nicholson, Andrew Hwang, Mark Disney, Datuk Bertie
Talalla, Ronnie McCrum, Mason Nelson, Paget Natten, Tun Dr. Siti
Hasmah, John Nicholson, Ellen Shustik, Elizabeth Cardosa, Dato Arrifin
Yacob, Charlie Chelliah, Dato Henry Barlow, Merlene Narcis, Dr. Loporte
Khoo, Roger McGowan and Dr Tim Harper were all very supportive. Mark
Wheeler and Anwar Yusoff at ConocoPhillips have generously continued
their support of my work and the Lighthouse Children’s Home by
sponsoring copies of the book. Working as a guest lecturer on Cunard’s
Queen Elizabeth gave me the time and peace in which to make great strides
with the writing, and my thanks go to Tim Wilkin and Keith Maynard. The
Committee of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Malaysia have kindly
offered to host the book’s launch. Puan Sri Elizabeth Moggie critiqued the
text with wonderful focus and attention and acted as an intellectual
‘conscience’, delving into the sourcing detail and not letting go until she
was satisfied! Her help was enormous and I am indebted to her for the
time and effort she devoted to the project. Lileng Wong, having survived
four earlier books, once again proved a great partner in crime,
undertaking all the design work, maps and printing responsibilities. Vithya
Muthusamy proved an engaging, fun and somewhat quirky research
assistant. Caroline, my wife, was as ever a willing and demanding sub-
editor, who waded through more versions of the book than she cares to
remember. It was in many ways a team effort but any errors, either of fact,
omission or interpretation are, of course, my own.
Illustrations and Images
The front cover is adapted from an image in the war-time magazine Fajar
Asia courtesy of Arkib Negara. The 1935 Kuala Lumpur town map is
courtesy of John Nicholson. The remaining photographs and images are
from Arkib Negara or the author’s collection. The maps were compiled by
Yong Aun.
Introduction
This book is about the experience of war on Kuala Lumpur. It is not a
‘military history’, in the sense that there was very little fighting, either
when the Japanese entered the city in January 1942 or when the British
returned in September 1945. Rather, the focus of the book is on how
conflict, the Japanese occupation and the return of the British impacted on
the city and its people. The three years and eight months of Japanese
governance wrought huge change and were a tilting point in the history of
Malaya. As the capital city, Kuala Lumpur was a central player in these
changes. This is the story of those years.
The war impacted on individuals and communities in very different ways
and there was no single or uniform narrative. Rather, the war years
present a hybrid of varied, complex and often contradictory experiences.
For example, while one fleeing British family might make it to Singapore
and safety on a departing boat, others might spend the war in an
internment camp, or worse, embark on a vessel sunk by the Japanese in
the sea-lanes outside Singapore. Similarly, a local girl might find herself
in the wrong place at the wrong time as the Japanese rounded up victims
for their ‘comfort houses’, while others would survive the war unmolested
and unharmed. In general, the Japanese occupation of Kuala Lumpur is
remembered for its brutality but some local residents formed close and
friendly relationships with Japanese civilians stationed in the city and
recall their politeness and exquisite manners. If nothing else, war is
capricious.
It is, however, possible to use some big strokes, particularly when
assessing the impact of the war on individual communities. We can, for
example, say that the Chinese - Japan’s historic enemy - were targeted for
notably brutal and systematic repression at the hands of the dreaded
military security police, the Kempetei. The Indian community, though not
seen as the enemy by the Japanese, was treated with malign expediency,
and many thousands of its young men were dispatched to work, and to
die, on Japan’s ‘death railways’. Kuala Lumpur’s Malay community
suffered the least, but the war was nonetheless a period of strain, poverty
and disorientation. War also brought experiences that were common to
all. Particularly in the latter years of the war, shortages and famine were
commonplace for all communities. These were the ‘tapioca years’ when
hunger and starvation were prevalent.
In researching this book I have been struck by a general lack of interest in
the war by Malaysians, particularly of the younger generation. Unlike in
Europe and the United States, which have perhaps been overly occupied
by these years, most Malaysians seem disconnected and disinterested. One
explanation could be that it was perceived not to be ‘our war’, and that
Malaya was seen simply as a battleground for power hungry empires.
There is some truth in this, and certainly Malayans were the innocent
victims of events and forces emanating from well beyond their shores, but
to blank out the lessons and consequences of the war is, surely, a step too
far. For one, many Malaysians lost family during the conflict and they
deserve better recognition and commemoration.
There have been plenty of books about the Malaya campaign, the fall of
Singapore and some about the impact of the Japanese occupation but not,
I believe, one specifically about the war in Kuala Lumpur and the
surrounding state of Selangor. I hope this helps fill that gap. There will, I
am sure, be many errors of fact and interpretation, for which I take full
responsibility. But it has been fun researching and writing this book, and I
hope others enjoy reading it.
Chapter One
War Clouds – West and East
In late August 1939, German forces were massing on the border with
Poland. Just twenty-one years after the end of the Great War, the ‘war to
end all wars’, Europe was again on the brink of another all-consuming
conflict. That month, Imperial Airways announced that ‘practically all the
available accommodation on the routes outbound from England has been
sold for some months ahead’ but noted that it was still possible to book
flights to Britain. At this stage, Asia looked to be a sanctuary from the
impending war in Europe, and assurances from the Japanese that they
would remain neutral in any conflict helped buttress this sense of
detachment. Travellers were flowing from Europe to the supposed safety
and security of the East.
The tiny British community in Kuala Lumpur, little more than 1,500
strong, listened attentively each evening to broadcasts on the Malayan
Broadcasting Service of the BBC carrying the news from Europe. All had
experience – either directly or through family – of the Great War and there
was little patriotic hyperbole to accompany the daily broadcasts charting
the remorseless descent into war. Instead, there was intense gloom.
Amongst those huddled around the crackling buzz of their radio sets was
James Mather, a British prison warder at Kuala Lumpur’s Pudu Prison. He
lived in nearby official quarters with his wife Dorothy and their young
son, who had just turned three. James Mather followed events from home
on the BBC with a close attentiveness, always hoping – against the odds –
that war could be averted. But he also took solace from the experience of
the last war, in which Malaya had escaped with little or no damage.
Indeed, it had been a time of prosperity for the colony. It was possible
that Mather might be drafted, but even this was not certain as the remote
prospect of war with Japan meant that officials like himself would
probably find themselves ordered to stay behind in their ‘reserved
professions’. Dorothy Mather shared his concerns but was more focused on
her young child than on events on the German-Polish border. Kuala
Lumpur was one of the more comfortable colonial postings, with modern
hospitals and shops. It was nevertheless a long way from home and family
support and Dorothy compensated for this through a bevy of servants and
the help of the wives of the four other British warders at Pudu Prison.
Far less concerned by events unravelling in Europe was Samad Ahmad, a
writer and journalist who lived and worked in Kampung Baru along the
banks of the Gombak River in central Kuala Lumpur. He was part of a
new breed of Malay intellectuals and his writings in the vernacular
magazine Majlis explored a maturing sense of Malay identity and
nationalism. Samad Ahmad was a member of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda
[KMM - Young Malay Union]. Inspired by the example of the Young
Turks, this small group of Malay professional were intent on protecting
their community from the consequences of the rapid modernisation of the
economy and arguing that the colonial British had failed to stem Chinese
commercial encroachment and increasing political ambitions. It was
difficult at this stage for Samad Ahmad and others of similar leanings to
conceive of Malaya without the British, such was the depth of their
authority and control, but this did not translate into any sense of
sympathy for the difficulties they faced. Indeed the opposite was the case;
these Malay nationalists believed that justice was finally being meted out
to the colonialists who had transformed their homeland, without their
consent. Meanwhile, by 1940 some members of the KMM, notably its
leader Ibrahim Yaakob, had gone a step further and had secretly
established a covert relationship with the Japanese, agreeing to support
them in any invasion of Malaya by acting as Fifth Columnists.
Another nationalist, though of a less radical creed, was Raja Uda, a
member of Selangor’s ruling dynasty. He had been present in June 1938
when some 400 Malays formed the Selangor Malay Association (SMA) at a
meeting held at the Sultan Suleiman Club in Kampung Baru. After the war
he became an early and prominent member of the United Malays National
Organisation (UMNO) and later a Chief Minister of Selangor. But in 1938,
the members of the SMA could have had no idea that their world, and
their political ambitions, would soon be transformed by war. At this stage
their goals were much more modest and were centred around the
protection of Malay interests and rights, which the SMA perceived to be
challenged by the economically aggressive Chinese. Increasing evidence
of Malay assertiveness, at least from its professional and educated classes,
however, did not necessarily translate into an automatic antipathy
towards the British by all Malays. In 1939, an advertisement for recruits
for the Malay Regiment, which had been formed in 1934 and was
restricted to Malays, resulted in a large and willing response from ordinary
Malays living in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. So much so indeed that the
vast majority of applicants had to be turned away.
Meanwhile, at the apex of Selangor’s Malay community, Sultan Alam Shah
had also found an accommodation with the British; one in which he was
able to exercise his religious and social responsibilities while the British
provided funding and support to sustain his royal position. Symptomatic
of his close rapport with the British, in May 1940 the Sultan donated
£1,000 as a ‘personal war contribution’. Attitudes within the Malay
community, therefore, were not monolithic, and although it is now
difficult to determine with any confidence the weight and range of
opinions, it is safe to say that at this stage the more radical beliefs of the
KMM and men like Samad Ahmad were something of a minority – but
from this group the seeds of future ambition, once conditions changed,
would rapidly grow.
Within Selangor’s Indian community, a similarly divergent range of views
was also evident. The Indian community was famously fractious and riven
by internal feuds. The political outlook of Jayamani Subramaniam, a
young Tamil worker from Kuala Selangor, was therefore just one thread in
a complex weave of political opinions, attitudes and aspirations. His
parents had arrived from south India as indentured labourers to work on a
Selangor rubber plantation. He was therefore a first generation Malayan
but like many others in his community, whether born in India or Malaya,
he retained an abiding interest in political and social developments in his
homeland and was deeply influenced by the rise of Congress, the demands
for Indian independence and the heavy-handed British clamp-down on
nationalist dissent. This sense of grievance was given greater impetus
when Jayamani witnessed the hard-line response by the British colonial
authorities to a set of strikes by Indian plantation workers in and around
Klang in the late 1930s. Unrest had led to clashes, arbitrary arrests and
even the deaths of some of the plantation workers, resulting in a bitter
hatred by Jayamani towards the colonial British. Though he doubted that
war in Europe would materially affect the position of the Indian
communities in Malaya, he harboured hopes that India itself was on the
cusp of change. He therefore viewed the coming conflict in Europe with
the quiet hope that the colonialist oppressors were about to be taught a
lesson and that, as a consequence of war, independence for India would be
accelerated.
Not all Indians, even those Tamil labourers engaged in back-breaking and
poorly paid work on Selangor’s rubber estates, shared Jayamani
Subramaniam’s instinctive opposition to the British. When Jack Ferguson,
the British manager of the Sungei Buloh rubber plantation north-west of
Kuala Lumpur, was poised to leave, just ahead of the advancing Japanese,
he assembled his estate workers and told them what he was doing but
promised to return within a few years. The workers shed genuine tears,
both on his departure but also when he fulfilled his promise and returned
to the estate after the war was over.
Meanwhile, the Chief Clerk of Kajang, Sinnadurai, had formed an entirely
positive view of the British. Sinnadurai was representative of a key
component in the colonial machine - the local junior official who carried
out at a grass-roots level the policies of the British administration.
Sinnadurai spoke and wrote flawless English but was also fluent in Tamil
and Malay and was therefore well placed to perform this critical
intermediary role. In the Straits Settlements these positions were often
held by Eurasians, but in Sinnadurai’s case he was a Tamil speaker of
Ceylonese extraction. His loyalties and aspirations placed him firmly on
the side of the British, though he only knew them in a colonial setting and
the events unfolding in central Europe would have been of concern, but
were distant and alien to his understanding and perception.
One particularly polyglot community that sat somewhat ambiguously in
the imperial construction were the Eurasians. The van der Straaten family
was Ceylonese, of Dutch Burgher extraction. Of this lineage they were
extremely proud, to the extent that the patriarch of the family, ‘grandpa’,
took a lengthy family tree with him to Singapore when the family joined
the exodus out of Kuala Lumpur. This extended, noisy, emotional,
fractious family, almost a clan, was scattered across households in Ipoh,
Southern Thailand and Kuala Lumpur. Like many Eurasians, they
naturally sided with the British and had complete faith that the mighty
British Empire would continue to protect and govern over them. One
family member later wrote, ‘There was growing uneasiness about the war,
but it was happening elsewhere, and to other people, and anyway, the
stalwart bastions of righteousness collectively personified as the British
government assured us everything would be alright.’ As a mixed-blood
family of proud tradition, they railed against any colour-bar and periodic
racial slights, but their fundamental loyalties remained with Britain.
Philip van der Straaten, working in a tin mine in southern Thailand, had
married an Australian, Doris Heath, who lived with him in this remote
outstation. Meanwhile, a British tin miner, Robert Eames, married
Wilhemina, Philip’s vivacious and beautiful sister, and they had a
daughter who was born just before the war in Bangsar Hospital. She later
wrote ‘We stood four-square with Mother England. We were collective
progeny of a distant yet still glorious realm…’.
Amongst the Chinese, and equally supportive of the British - albeit out of
self interest - was the leader of the Selangor Kuomintang (Chinese
Republican nationalists, or KMT), Lee Hau-Shik. A wealthy and prominent
businessman, he had responded to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War
in 1937 by raising funds to send patriotic young Chinese volunteers to
Manchuria. In the inter-war years, the KMT had publicly backed the
marking of ‘humiliation days’, which were key, if unwelcome,
anniversaries of military reverses against the Japanese. Much against the
wishes of the British - who did not want, at a time of deteriorating
relations, to offend the Japanese - Chinese businesses and schools would
close and hang flags at half-mast. In Selangor and Kuala Lumpur,
‘humiliation days’ were not marked as vigorously as in Penang and
Singapore but the KMT-backed Anti-Enemy Backing-up Society (AEBUS)
organised boycotts of Japanese goods and businesses. Within the city,
Japanese-owned photography shops, pharmacies and opticians found
many of their Chinese customers looking elsewhere, and some suffered a
periodic brick through the window as evidence of a more vigorous form of
political protest.
This activism was largely driven by a sense of nationalist outrage, though
Lee Hau-Shik and other senior members of the KMT were also aware of
the growing presence and challenge of the Malayan Communist Party
(MCP), which offered a radical and aggressive political alternative to the
mainstream Kuomintang. The old guard was having to watch its back and
conservative businessmen were anxious to advance the nationalist cause,
and to do so publicly through fund-raising and political demonstrations of
support. Other local Chinese towkays publicly supported the war effort. In
Kuala Lumpur, the tin mine and plantation owner Yeow Kim Pong
contributed $2,000 to the Patriotic Fund and also arranged – though it is
not clear if they were consulted – that the workers on his two estates
would contribute one per cent of their wages for the duration of the war.
Meanwhile another prominent towkay, Chan Wing, who made his fortune
from the Hong Fatt Tin Mine at Sungei Besi (creating along the way the
world’s largest and deepest open cast tin mine, now flooded and called the
Mines Resort), donated a much more impressive $120,000 to the China
War Relief Fund and then in 1940 bought a $38,000 aeroplane for the
Chinese nationalist air force.
Challenging these wealthy men for the hearts-and-minds of Selangor’s
Chinese community were hardened communist agitators, such the
Secretary of the Selangor MCP, Xue Feng. In good revolutionary style he
also operated under various aliases - ‘Li Xue-feng’, ‘Bai Yi’ and ‘Li Liang’ -
and like most of the MCP leadership had been born in China, in his case in
Taishan in Guangdong Province in 1911. Xue Feng, however, was a
watched man. The focus of British security concerns was the anti-
colonialist, anti-capitalist MCP. In 1938, a strike at the Batu Arang coal
mine north of Kuala Lumpur, which had been supported by the
communists, was broken up by the authorities, with some violence. Later
the police - not ones to underplay the threat - noted that ‘the Federated
Malay States has passed through the most serious crisis in its history. It
was within an ace of dissolving into temporary chaos as a result of
communist intrigue. Had the organisation not been crushed this
country… would have been overrun by angry and desperate Chinese
mobs’. There was exaggeration and hyperbole in this assessment, but a
combination of straightened economic times in Malaya and reverses in
Manchuria had raised the political temperature amongst the Chinese. The
MCP - almost until the day the Japanese landed – formed the centre of
British security interest.
The political activism demonstrated by the Kuomintang and their MCP
rivals was not shared by all, or indeed by many, of Kuala Lumpur’s
Chinese community. While all Chinese felt a common antipathy towards
the Japanese, most were pre-occupied with parochial issues and certainly
few, if any, felt that Britain’s fight in Europe against Germany had
anything to do with them. Kinship and family were of primary concern,
but so too were day-to-day matters such as earning a living and surviving
in Malaya’s rugged commercial environment. Wong Ah Leng, a Chinese
trader in Port Swettenham, was representative of this silent majority.
Running a small shop in the centre of the town, events unfolding in
Europe held little or no interest for him. His focus was on family,
turnover, margins and unpaid debt.
In Kuala Lumpur’s small Japanese community, Ayabe Kuichiro, a dentist
with a small establishment in Pudu that doubled as a barber’s shop, was
also little bothered by events unravelling in Europe. Since the Anglo-
Japanese Friendship Agreement of 1902, the Japanese business
community in British Malaya had slowly built up its numbers, even
though ‘friendship’ between the two nations had long since become a
distant memory. The Japanese were particularly active in the non-
federated states, such as Kelantan and Terengannu, where on-shore they
owned and ran iron-ore and bauxite mines, and off-shore they ran an
aggressive fishing fleet. In Selangor, the Japanese community was less
prominent but was nonetheless a significant niche player in the local
economy. In Kuala Lumpur, the Japanese were well represented in certain
trades and professions, notably ‘teeth and photographs, haircuts and
sukiyaki’. Even that icon of British colonial rule, the Selangor Club, had a
Japanese barber. He was reportedly the best in Kuala Lumpur, though
was boycotted by many of the club’s Chinese members.Japanese geishas, or
‘Marys’, in their elaborate traditional costumes and heavy make-up, had
previously been an exotic addition to the brothels of Singapore and
Penang, though there is no evidence any had worked in Kuala Lumpur and
from the 1930s the Japanese government had banned Japanese girls
working abroad as geishas.
Elsewhere in Selangor, there were a handful of Japanese traders and
shipping managers at Port Swettenham and a number of rubber
plantations in the state were owned and managed by Japanese. According
to one Japanese researcher, pre-war across Malaya over 800,000 acres of
rubber smallholdings and estates, fully one quarter of Malaya’s total, were
owned and operated by the Japanese. The bulk of these rubber operations
appear to have been in Johor, and the older and more established rubber
industry of Selangor remained dominated by British and Chinese interests.
Nevertheless, Japanese companies such as Nanyo Gomu and Nissan Norin
owned and ran extensive rubber estates in southern and northern Selangor
respectively. The Japanese generally failed, however, to register their
large economic interests in Malaya’s two main business directories, the
‘Directory of Malaya’ and ‘The Singapore and Malayan Directory’,
highlighting the extent to which they operated a discrete and semi-
independent ‘economy within an economy’.
The Japanese community was introverted and secretive. Language
difficulties were part of the problem, but so too was an inherent hostility
towards them by the majority Chinese and the increasing antipathy of
colonial British, who were worried by Tokyo’s aggressive and militant
stance. The Japanese residents of Kuala Lumpur, therefore, would have
felt themselves very isolated – a small inward community surrounded by
largely antagonistic neighbours. Kuala Lumpur had no Japanese consulate
but officials visited from Singapore. They had a voracious appetite for
information of all sorts. There were few defence or strategic secrets of
interest concerning Kuala Lumpur itself, but the identification of anti-
Japanese figures within the Chinese community, men like Lee Hau-Shik
and Xue Feng, was noteworthy. Quiet, unobtrusive businessmen such as
Ayabe Kuichiro were part of a network of eyes-and-ears, and willingly and
patriotically imparted snippets of information to visiting intelligence
officers.
Chapter Two
War with Germany
On 3 September 1939, Britain and its dominions and colonies declared
war on Germany. As an immediate consequence, the colonial authorities
in Malaya imposed a State of Emergency which amongst other things
allowed them to censor mail and punish the spreading of ‘disaffection’.
They also arrested and interned all adult male German, Austrian and
Czech nationals, while women and children were told to report to the
police. This process was made more complicated by the fact that most
German and Austrian passport holders in Malaya were Jews fleeing
persecution from the Nazis. To separate refugees from potential
combatants, Superintendent J.P. Pennefather-Evans, Selangor’s Acting
Chief Police Officer, personally assessed each case. There proved to be
eighteen German, Czech and Austrian nationals in Selangor but following
Pennefather-Evans’ work just two were interned; and one of them was a
Czech passport holder and a member of the British Volunteer force! Both
were initially sent to Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur and later joined
twenty-five other internees on St John’s Island off Singapore. Later six
German passport holders were detained at Port Swettenham (today’s Port
Klang); sailors from the German merchant marine caught at the wrong
place at the wrong time.
Two days after the declaration of war, Governor Shenton Thomas
broadcast a radio message to rally the colony behind the war effort.
Paradoxically, he instructed that ‘Europeans must not leave to enlist in
home forces’ but should rather ‘carry on their normal work, which is of
imperial importance and to be available in case their services are needed
for local defences.’ Malaya was a source of strategic commodities (rubber,
tin and copra) which required British leadership and expertise, and it was
in the broader British national interest that nationals should remain in
place. The Governor’s message was soon backed by other senior figures in
Malaya, not least Sultan Alam Shah of Selangor. He declared that ‘Great
Britain and her allies represent the democracies, that is countries in which
the government is by the people for the people. Germany and her
partners, on the other hand, are powers which do as they like. Their creed
is might, and they disregard right, freedom and justice’.
The American journalist, Cecil Brown later noted, ‘That Sultan, I thought,
expressed in simple, clear language pretty much what this war is all
about.’
For Malaya, the impact of the war with Germany, at least from an
economic perspective, was initially entirely positive. Increased demand led
to higher prices for Malaya’s resources which in turn brought revived
prosperity. In Kuala Lumpur ‘land owners were in a position to pay their
land rents in time… income from land sales, licences and rents were all
up’. In 1939, though Selangor suffered from a severe drought, the state’s
economy boomed on the back of rising tin and rubber prices. The 1947
census compiler later noted that ‘At the time of the Japanese attack there
was full employment, for not only were the two major industries [tin and
rubber] engaged in all out production but the Government’s policy of
increasing the acreage devoted to food production, and in particular to
padi, was taking increasing effect.’
The increased demand for Malaya’s commodities was not without
difficulties. While business and industries undoubtedly benefited,
simmering labour issues came to the fore. In late 1939, Governor Shenton
Thomas noted that a ‘contagion of strikes and labour disputes’ was, if
anything, exacerbated by rising demand as ‘The labourer knows perfectly
well how his particular industry is prospering or not, and it is in times of
prosperity, not a slump, that strikes are most common.’ Further
complicating British concerns was the spread of ‘subversive’ ideology
which was anti-colonial and anti-capitalist in character (i.e. communist).
Shenton Thomas would note that strikes and labour unrest were inflamed
by a ‘dangerous combination of political and semi-political organisations
in Malaya, which is ostensibly anti-Japanese in aim, is all the more
formidable in that it may become an anti-Japanese cum anti-British
movement’. The Governor concluded ‘we might have to face the menace
of subversive agitation if the combination of increasing profits and
increasing costs of living were not sedulously watched’.
At this stage of the war the British security authorities focused largely on
the threat from communist subversion, which led to the detention under
special provisions of known left-wing activists. Their task was made
easier by the fact that the Police Intelligence Department was running as
an intelligence source the Secretary-General of the MCP, Lai Teck. In
Singapore and to a lesser extent Penang, the British security apparatus was
also engaged in countering increasing Japanese intelligence activities.
A spy ring was identified and expelled from Singapore and in Penang
visiting Japanese ‘tourists’ were seen reconnoitring the airfield and the
port areas. There is little evidence of pre-war Japanese intelligence
activity centred on and around Kuala Lumpur, and the absence of a
Japanese consulate in the city meant that its agencies did not have a
secure base from which to work. Nevertheless, given knowledge of how
the Japanese operated elsewhere, it is highly likely that their military
intelligence agencies exploited Japanese nationals living and working in
Kuala Lumpur. The Japanese had a voracious appetite for information of
all types – much of it non-secret in nature. Certainly when their forces
later arrived in Kuala Lumpur, they came with a blacklist of known
Chinese ‘opponents’, which can only have been garnered by pre-war
intelligence gathering.
In 1939 and early 1940 there was little or no appreciation by the British
security apparatus of the threat posed by Malay nationalists and little
recognition of the depth of antipathy felt towards them by many within
the Indian community. Amongst the British there was a generally held
belief that the main communities, save left-wing elements, were generally
supportive. But this proved a naïve misreading of the situation. They
would have been wise to have directed much greater focus on the likes of
Samad Ahmad, the KMM member and journalist. The KMM magazine
Majlis sought to promote social, political and nationalist awareness
amongst Malays. The magazine was not without its own issues, not least
an early dependence on beer advertising (alcohol being forbidden in
Islam), but its content reflected a growing nationalist agenda and
increasing ambition amongst the professional and educated class of
Malays. The extent to which in the pre-war years the KMM was actively
subversive is questionable but in late 1941, when the British finally awoke
to the latent threat from Malay nationalists, they reacted in a heavy-
handed and unfocused manner, having hitherto been preoccupied by the
communists.
An Atmosphere of Unreality
For the first two years of the war against Germany (later to include Italy)
the British community in Malaya was a largely distant observer in the
battle for national survival. The press faithfully carried articles about the
Blitz and heavy fighting in the Middle East and Russia. These were given
the best possible spin by the propagandists but there was no getting away
from the fact that Britain was in a bad way. There was of course great
concern amongst Kuala Lumpur’s small European community, and all had
relatives and friends back home who were directly affected by war. But
on a day-to-day basis life in Kuala Lumpur carried on much as it ever had
– and it was a pretty good life. There was no rationing and large houses
and a host of servants allowed for an existence very different from that in
Britain, which was experiencing bombing, nightly blackouts and shortages
of food and fuel. The contrast was stark and news in the press of military
checks and reversals (however positively spun) juxtaposed advertisements
for dances, movies, dinner-plays and sports events.
From early 1941, when regular British troops began to arrive in Malaya
with direct experience of war time Britain, the lifestyle and attitudes of
the white colonial community came under scrutiny and not a little
criticism. The Commander-in-Chief of British Forces, General Percival,
later wrote, ‘… an atmosphere of unreality hung over Malaya. In the
restaurants, clubs, and places of entertainment peace time conditions
prevailed. Having just come from England, where austerity measures had
already become the fashion, I must confess to the rather uncomfortable
feeling when provided with an almost unlimited amount of food….I am
afraid it is true that long immunity from war had made it difficult to face
realities in Malaya’.
Given the suffering that the European community would later experience
under the Japanese, these criticisms might seem misplaced, and there was
certainly little to be gained in practical terms by Malaya’s colonial society
changing its privileged lifestyle. But its mindset reflected an inward and
conservative community that was ill-prepared for the onslaught it would
soon face. The letters page of the Malay Mail gives some idea of prevailing
attitudes. One such letter in early 1941 criticised the imposition of petrol
rationing and was signed off anonymously by ‘Fair Minded’. At this stage
in the war, Britain was experiencing the nightly Blitz and U-boats were
wreaking havoc with the merchant marine in the Atlantic convoys. In
these circumstances to complain about the introduction of petrol rationing
reflected an incredible myopia and was hardly ‘fair minded’. Once the war
started to go badly, the caricature of ‘Colonel Blimp’, created by the
cartoonist David Low with Malaya in mind, came to epitomise, fairly or
unfairly, buffooning colonial incompetence.
The Japanese Threat Rises
While the war in Europe and North Africa was going badly for the British,
the position in Asia proved no less worrying. Early Japanese assertions
that it would not attack European colonial possessions looked increasingly
hollow in the face of ever hardening militaristic rhetoric. For Malaya, the
strategic threat was to change with the defeat of France in June 1940 and
the emergence of Vichy regimes in its Indochina possessions. In September
1940, the Imperial Chiefs of Staff noted that with the fall of France ‘we
cannot assume that the use of French bases will anywhere be denied to
our enemies’. The threat of a Japanese attack from bases in French Indo-
China immediately challenged the basis of pre-war British planning. Long-
standing defence plans were now redundant and in its place the threat was
from a landing on the beaches of north-east Malaya and a subsequent land
and air assault down the Malayan peninsula. In British long-term
planning, Malaya was divided into three main sectors. Singapore was the
core of the defence plan and a sector in its own right; thereafter there was
an outer-zone based on Johor at the southern end of the Malay peninsula.
Finally, there was the rest of Malaya, which was to be commanded and
controlled from Kuala Lumpur. The hitherto ‘outer’ defensive sector
suddenly found itself to be the likely first-line of defence.
The 2nd Battalion of the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force
From late 1940, in response to the increased threat from Japan, the British
started to beef up defences and to deploy increasing numbers of British
and imperial forces to Malaya. Even before this, they had turned to the
local British community, in the form of the militia or the Volunteers, to
buttress defences. The role of the Volunteers was to ‘assist in the defence
of Malaya against external aggression and to assist the Civil Power in the
suppression of local disturbances if required’. The composition of the
Volunteer forces reflected the complexity of British Malaya, as each force
was ‘raised within various governments’. Selangor contributed the 2nd
Battalion of the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force (FMSVF) and half
of the light battery (Perak provided the remainder). Similar levies were
raised in Perak, Negri Sembilan and Pahang. The FMSVF in turn was part
of a wider grouping that comprised counterparts from the Straits
Settlements of Singapore, Malacca and Penang and from the Non-
Federated Malay States of Johor, Kedah and Kelantan. In August 1940, the
authorities designated the civilian flying clubs of Singapore, Ipoh, Kuala
Lumpur and Penang as separate ‘flights’ of the No 1 Squadron Volunteer
Air Force. Its roles were to be reconnaissance, local defensive patrolling
and, optimistically, ‘offensive action in special circumstances with low
dive and low level bombing attacks’. The Kuala Lumpur flight comprised
six Tiger Moth trainers.
Prior to the war, the Volunteers had increased their numbers, training and
equipment, notably additional Lewis guns. Overall, by 1938 numbers had
increased from 733 to 833, and within this a ‘very satisfactory’ reduction
in the average age of its officers. One problem, however, continued to
beset the Volunteers - the colony’s leading commercial and social lights
also tended to be appointed as senior officers. This happy coincidence of
rank and social standing no doubt simplified life in the officers’ mess but
was hardly meretricious or effective in identifying the best military
leaders. Pre-war, another problem facing the Kuala Lumpur contingent of
volunteers was a general reluctance to enlist. In his 1938 Annual Review,
the Commander of the FMSVF, Lt. Col. Saville, lamented that ‘It is very
noticeable that whereas in the country districts the bulk of Europeans join
their volunteer units as a matter of course, this is far from the case in the
larger towns. This is particularly noticeable in Kuala Lumpur where there
is a comparatively small European population there of at least 200 young
men of military age who cannot be persuaded to undertake any form of
volunteer service. The most disquieting aspect of this unpatriotic attitude
was revealed in the recent crisis when, although innumerable offers of
help were received from ex-servicemen, only seven men of military age
offered themselves up for service in the whole of the Federated Malay
States.’
In practice, in 1940 and 1941 there was little reluctance amongst British
nationals in Kuala Lumpur to enlist but it took the threat of real war to
shake them out of their complacency. There was also by then the added
element of compulsion. In January 1940, Governor Shenton Thomas
announced the promulgation of the ‘Compulsory Service [Volunteer Force]
Ordnance’ for able-bodied British males aged 18-55 – in short the call-up
for the local British community to serve in the Volunteer forces. Those
above forty joined the Local Defence Force (a ‘Dad’s Army’) and those
below joined the Volunteers, though a fair number of forty and fifty-year
olds quietly enlisted in the latter. Perhaps the greatest failing of the
Volunteers, and an indictment of colonial society, was that it was only late
in the day that the British turned with serious intent to recruit from within
the very much larger, and in many cases very willing, Asian communities.
Indicative of the potential, the 1939 Kuala Lumpur Municipal Report
reflected, with spectacular complacency, that there had been 165
applications for enlistment to the Malay Regiment of whom eighteen had
been sent for interview and just two selected. As the Japanese menace
increased, but too little too late to be effective, the British recognised their
folly and appealed to the local communities to do their ‘patriotic bit’. In
October 1941, just two months before the Japanese invasion, Brigadier
Moir, Commander of the FMSVF, issued a desperate plea to the local Asian
communities, ‘At the present time when the necessity for keeping
Volunteer Forces up to establishment is so urgent, and all races of the
F.M.S. must feel it their right and their duty to take part in the defence of
the country, it is suggested that the ranks of Volunteer Forces should be
thrown open to all Asiatic races in the peninsular.’ Far from blocking
entry, by late 1941 it was suddenly a ‘right’ and ‘duty’ for Malaya’s
‘Asiatic races’ to fight alongside the British.
Moir’s vituperative outburst was not only focused on the need to widen
the recruitment net. He also acknowledged that the ‘training and
equipment of the volunteers left much to be desired owing to the policy of
the FMS Government, which, in spite of the strongest representations by
the GOC Malaya, refused to mobilise the force’. Overall, 5,000-5,200 men
enlisted in the FMSVF, and within that there were 778 recruits to the 2nd
Selangor Battalion, which comprised 31 officers and 747 ‘other ranks’.
The ethnic breakdown is not given, though this figure certainly included a
good proportion of locals. But whatever the numbers, the British had left
the widening of their recruitment net too late to have an appreciable
impact on the military capabilities of those defence forces raised within
Malaya.
Map of South East Asia
Building up Defences
In selecting Kuala Lumpur to be the federal capital of the Federated Malay
States, the Resident General, Frank Swettenham, had weighed transport
and logistic considerations and the economic weight of Selangor, but not
the need for defence. In the late 1890s, with the Royal Navy sitting proud
and Pax Britannica a reality, there was no conceivable external threat to
Britain’s position in Malaya. Military considerations therefore had no
place in the selection of the site for the new capital; and, anyway,
Singapore was the great naval base and anchor of Britain’s power and
authority in the region. The city, based in the low-lying bowl of the Klang
and Gombak river valleys, its flat terrain pock-marked by tin-mining
ponds and intersected by plantation and jungle fringes, was a defensive
impossibility. Kuala Lumpur was never perceived, in the same way as
Singapore and Penang, to have ‘Fortress’ status. With good reason, there
had been no expectation to fight to defend it – despite its status as the
capital of the Federated Malay States and its considerable economic and
commercial importance. But it was perfectly located to provide rear-
echelon support and played a central role in Malaya’s defensive ‘outer
layer’ as a command, logistics and communications hub and as a base for
reserve formations.
Though Kuala Lumpur was never fortified, it was certainly militarised.
From 1939, new barracks and parade grounds were built along the main
roads leading north out of the city, and Batu Caves became an important
divisional command and communications centre. Within the great
limestone caves themselves, an important ordnance and explosives
munitions store was constructed. From September 1939, the Indian 12th
Infantry Brigade, including elements of the Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders, were sent to Malaya. In late 1939, to the south of the city
Chinese squatters were evicted from the Sungei Besi ‘military
manoeuvring ground’ which from February 1940 became a centre for live-
fire training. From late 1940, as regular British and Indian Army units
began to arrive in Malaya, Kuala Lumpur became accustomed to the sight
and sound of a rapidly expanding military machine. It was an imperial
force, drawn from widely different backgrounds. From the Indian Army,
famous regiments such as the Dogras, Jats, Gurkhas, the Frontier Force
and the Punjabis, each with their distinctive head-dresses, paraded
through Kuala Lumpur before operational deployment further north.
Australian troops in their famous slouched hats, English county regiments
such as the East Surreys and the Leicesters, and from Scotland the Argyll
and Sutherland Highlanders, all marched through the central padang. It
was a diverse and colourful array of imperial might and from May 1941
III Indian Corps under Lt-Gen. Sir Lewis Heath was headquartered at Batu
Caves, immediately to the north of Kuala Lumpur. His command - which
comprised the 9th and 11th Indian Divisions and the various Volunteer
forces - stretched the length of Malaya north of Johor and included the
Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca.
Buoyed by optimistic propaganda, and the smart, efficient demeanour and
sheer numbers of the British and imperial forces, with their attendant
bren-gun carriers, artillery pieces and armoured vehicles, Kuala Lumpur
citizens felt reassured that they were not forgotten but rather amply
supported and defended by the British government. Observant witnesses,
however, might have noted in the array of military equipment being
paraded through the streets of Kuala Lumpur that the British lacked tanks
on the ground and modern fighter aircraft in the sky. Antony Hill, a
member of the Volunteers, later noted, ‘With the appearance of masses of
regular troops in Malaya the old complacency born of ignorance and
inertia was replaced by another more insidious form of the disease....flocks
of armoured cars and Bren-carriers induced in us a false sense of security.’
As part of the overall military build-up, in June 1941 ‘RAF Station Kuala
Lumpur’ was opened at the civil aerodrome at Sungei Besi. It never
became a front-line air base. It was under the ‘engine repair department’,
its role being to service and maintain planes based at the main operational
aerodromes further north and east and in July 1941, in its first month of
operation, the station proudly boasted that six Mercury engines had been
fully overhauled. It was nevertheless a significant deployment. It was
commanded by a Squadron Leader who was supported by 112 British
technical and engineering staff and 61 local technicians – a grand total of
173 men. Perhaps with good reason RAF personnel were colloquially
known as ‘the penguins’ - hundreds on the ground and none in the air -
and RAF Station Kuala Lumpur certainly reinforced this stereotype.
Chapter Three
Malaya Attacked
The deterioration in relations with Japan was matched at a senior level in
the British military by an increasingly sombre sense that war could not be
avoided. From August 1941, the British were aware that a large Japanese
naval and military force was assembling in Hainan, while Japanese air
assets were being deployed to aerodromes in and around Saigon and other
places in French Indo-China. The British judged correctly that the most
likely landings would be on the beaches of north-east Malaya and south-
east Thailand. The position looked so bleak that on 1 December 1941, the
Volunteers were called to active stations. That day the Malay Mail carried
Japanese Prime Minister, General Tojo’s chilling assertion ‘we must purge
east Asia’. The arrival in Singapore of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS
Repulse was met by the headline a ‘New Power in Far East’. Their arrival
lent substance, albeit unwarranted, to the belief that the British were well
prepared to respond to Japanese aggression. Meanwhile, in any difficulty
there is also opportunity – the Prudential began promoting ‘Life Assurance
in War Time’.
The Japanese attacked Malaya in the early hours of 8 December 1941.
The landings at Kota Baru in Kelantan on the north-east coast coincided
with the Japanese attacks on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour and on
British forces in Hong Kong. Due to the international date-line, the attack
on Pearl Harbour was on 7 December, though the Japanese actually
landed one hour earlier in Malaya but on 8 December. This quirk meant
little to the stretched British defences in Kelantan, nor to the citizens of
Singapore who were met that day by the defiant message of an air-raid
over the city. After the wait, Britain was unequivocally at war with Japan
and Japanese forces were pouring into north-east Malaya and south-east
Thailand along the Kra Isthmus.
The attack had been anticipated and the decision to mobilise the
Volunteers the week before was fully vindicated. Adopting a line of quiet
public confidence, through the newspapers British officials described the
attacks as a form of ‘suicide’ for Japan and noted ‘We can, on a most
conservative estimate, be quietly confident as to the future. If it had to
come, it is as well that it came quickly, and it may very well be that it
may have the effect of shortening the war against naked aggression.’ The
Malay Mail noted that in Kuala Lumpur the ‘news [was] received
calmly…. The public went about their daily tasks apparently unperturbed
by what was happening’. Ominously for the British though, one early
report noted, perhaps with an underlying sense of lack of ‘fair play’, that
the Japanese had used tanks in their early assault on Kota Baru.
Despite these momentous events, the newspapers continued to carry
advertisements and promotions for whiskey, gin, anti-heat-rash powder
and ‘recently arrived golf bags from the United States’; it all bespoke a
society more familiar with peace and plenty than war. Dinner-dances
continued in all the main hotels and the cinemas were open and showing a
wide range of Hollywood and Indian movies. On 8 December, the
Pavilion was featuring Target for Tonight, a film made in collaboration
with the RAF about bombing raids on Germany – though whether the
audience recognised that they too would soon become the targets of
bombers was not clear. One cold blast of reality, however, was the
notification that an Air Raid Precaution (ARP) demonstration would be
held at the open ground next to Pudu Prison.
One immediate consequence of the landings was that the police detained
all Japanese citizens living in Selangor. The community had long been
monitored and had to report to the police on a regular basis, but the
authorities had held back from interning them, anxious to avoid giving the
Japanese a casus belli, or pretext to start a war. That concern was now
overtaken and in the early hours of 8 December, and completed before
dawn, 111 Japanese male ‘civil prisoners of war’ were detained and sent
to the quarantine station at Port Swettenham. Included amongst theme
was Ayade Kuichiro, the Kuala Lumpur dentist. His wife and young child
were rounded up and joined the other Japanese women and children
being held in guarded hotels. Shortly thereafter, the detainees were sent
under cover of night by boat to Singapore. Male internees went to Changi
Prison and the women and children were corralled in a tented camp on
Belakang Mati (today’s Sentosa) in Singapore port.
On 9 December, the mood of cautious optimism was buoyed by up-beat
messages from senior officers. The Commander-in-Chief of British Forces
in South East Asia, General Brooke Popham, asserted that ‘Our Defences
Strong and our Weapons Efficient’. Meanwhile the Sultan of Selangor
announced that the ‘enemy has entered our house’ and promised the
British his full support – though in so doing sealed his later fate with the
Japanese. The machinery of war cranked into action, with Kuala Lumpur
playing a critical role in the logistical support of front-line troops. That
day, 16 civilian trucks were impressed and fuel, provisions and ‘cigarettes
for all troops’ loaded and sent to support British forces in Kuantan. Traffic
jams on major roads created delays and were holding back supplies, partly
due to the panicked response from Europeans and Asians alike clogging
the roads from the north and east heading towards Kuala Lumpur. In
response the road to Pahang and Kuantan was declared one-way traffic at
night, west to east, to ease the flow of trucks and vital provisions to the
front-line.
First Warnings for Kuala Lumpur
Following early air raids on Singapore, there was much greater focus in
Kuala Lumpur on air defence. The Malay Mail stated in a tone of jaunty
self-belief that Kuala Lumpur’s ‘passive defence’ (air raid) precautions
were ‘on tip-toe’. Nevertheless, the newspapers carried dark warnings that
blackout precautions - house windows blackened and car-lights trimmed -
must be fully implemented. On 9
December, Kuala Lumpur gained its first taste of war in the form of two
night-time air-raid warnings. The sirens sounded, on the first occasion for
an hour, but both were false alarms. For the citizens of Kuala Lumpur this
was the wake-up call (literally) that they really were at war.
The Volunteers were already deployed; Lt. Thornton of the Selangor 2nd
Battalion later noted that the ‘call up was prompt and eager’. He worked
for the trading and plantation company Guthrie & Co., and joined the
Volunteers in 1940 and described the ‘goings on of the Selangor
Volunteers...as [being as] muddled as any volunteer show could be, not
due to lack of keenness or intelligence on the part of the men but due to
lack of leadership from the top’. Following their mobilisation, Thornton
noted that for several days the Volunteers ‘chafed’ while being ‘virtually
locked up’ at the barracks, but were then sent to help defend Port
Swettenham aerodrome. This they found ‘little prepared, with the pill-
boxes missing any form of communication and not even having rifle tables
[on which] to mount the guns’. By 10 December, and two days after the
Japanese had attacked, Thornton and his platoon were back in Kuala
Lumpur, this time on sentry duty at a large arms depot. During this
period there were a number of ‘paratroop scares’ and at one stage
Thornton and his men rushed to help defend Sungei Besi aerodrome from
an imaginary attack. Later his men were deployed on a full-time basis to
defend the aerodrome but found that, despite months of work, the pill-
boxes were not finished and many were in redundant positions ‘without
line of fire’.
Initially, despite an air of foreboding, life in Kuala Lumpur carried on
much as it ever had. The city worked as normal and the main shops were
firmly into the Christmas season and would not be distracted from their
commercial imperative by the irritant of a Japanese invasion. Indeed
some entrepreneurial businesses soon saw an opportunity in the conflict.
Killoch & Co. advertised air-raid shelters which were ‘Specially erected
[for] maximum protection from splinters and blast’ and Hardial & Singh
Co. was promoting its finest blackout cloth. The air of strained normality
was sustained by the newspapers which continued to advertise for
positions that would never be filled and upcoming sports events that
would never happen.
Refugees – In and Out of the City
With increasing pace, refugees were moving into the city, cars laden high
with personal belongings. Going south, trains to Singapore were fully
booked. While entertainment outlets presented a ‘business as usual’ face,
some shops began to board up their windows. Due to the ‘brown out’,
from 9 December the popular food shop, Cold Storage, announced that it
would henceforth be closing at 5pm. People also started hoarding food,
and eggs - save ‘kampung eggs’ - were suddenly unavailable. This was
partly due to the voracious buying power of the British and Indian Armies
which required 2,000 lbs of meat per day and 200 lbs of bread. On 13
December, the military dispatched from Kuala Lumpur three tons of meat
in a set of commandeered ice-vans, and 1,500lbs of bread and ‘sheep and
potatoes’ which were intended to last five days. But the supply
department also noted that onions and firewood were unobtainable and
vegetables scarce. Not surprisingly, the price of goods in the markets was
rising rapidly. Straining the logistics network and the crowded road
network (most supplies went by truck), huge volumes of war materiel
were heading out of the large supply bases in Kuala Lumpur to the battle
front in the north and east. The munitions supply depot at Batu Caves was
working flat out. On 11 December, six lorry loads of ammunition were
dispatched to a holding station in Kedah and regular requests for
explosives were received from Kuantan in the east. The British were also
sending ambulances and medical supplies to the war fronts, and the
newspapers appealed for trained nurses and blood donors.
By mid-December 1941, following military disasters in the north, the
British reversed their policy towards the communists, whom they had
previously viewed as implacable opponents. The British were now willing,
in extremis, to equip and train the communists and integrate them within
the overall war effort. For its part, war between Russia and Germany had
sparked a reappraisal by the MCP, such that it could now countenance
pragmatic cooperation with the imperialists as part of the broader anti-
fascist, anti-Axis struggle. This was a relationship born of necessity and
for the British required them releasing from prison in Ipoh a number of
prominent communists, including the Secretary of the Selangor Committee
of the MCP, Xue Feng. The Secretary General of the MCP, Lai Teck, was,
as previously noted, a British intelligence source and they therefore
received full support from the communist leadership once this shot-gun
wedding had been agreed. On 19 December, Lai Teck’s British police
handlers, Inspector Innes Tremlett and Detective D.S. Devonshire,
arranged for a meeting in Singapore between Lai Teck and Spencer
Chapman of the British No 1 Special Training School (STS). This modest
gathering had profound long-term implications, though its short-term
impact was limited. It was agreed that the MCP would provide men to
train and work with the British as ‘stay behind’ units. The next day,
Spencer Chapman loaded his red Ford V8 coupé with fuses, time-switches,
explosives and Tommy guns and headed to Kuala Lumpur where he spent
two weeks training his first group of MCP volunteers. He found his new
recruits ‘young, fit and probably the best material we had to work with’.
The aim was for 101 School to arm and train MCP units which were then
to be placed just in advance of the Japanese forces, to cause confusion and
thereafter to create mayhem behind the lines, attacking supply routes and
reinforcements.
In all, one hundred recruits were rapidly processed through the Chunjin
Chinese School in Kuala Lumpur, which had been commandeered for
training. There they learned sabotage skills and explosives handling. On
completion, each graduate was supplied with a Tommy gun, a pistol and
‘lots of explosives’. Anticipating the rapid Japanese advance, Spencer
Chapman also enlisted a small group of local planters and volunteers to
work as part of his stay-behind force. On New Year’s Day 1942, Chapman
left Kuala Lumpur and dodging Japanese fighters made his way to Fraser’s
Hill, the nearest hill-station to Kuala Lumpur. In nearby Pahang he
identified a perfect location for a covert arms cache, in jungle close to an
old tin mine, to be revisited after the Japanese had swept through and to
be drawn upon by his stay-behind guerrillas.
Map of Japanese Offensive at Slim River and Kuala Lumpur
Air Raids
While Kuala Lumpur had entered something of a phoney war, the speed of
the Japanese offensive down the Malayan peninsula meant it was short-
lived. Though in the early days the city was spared air raids, it was not
spared false alarms. With sirens frequently wailing across the city, the
constant news of military set-backs created a febrile, electric atmosphere.
Many local inhabitants chose to flee to outlying districts, with buses and
taxis crammed with people and their belongings abandoning the city. But
as the Asian community fled, in its place European and other refugees
from the north and east arrived seeking sanctuary and a temporary base.
Many then moved on smartly to Singapore, but others rested and took
stock in Kuala Lumpur. To cope, the municipality established a bureau to
help and support refugees and was forced to request that visitors did not
idle in the city centre while Christmas shopping due to the risk of air
attack.
In the face of military reversals in northern Malaya, the early public tone
of ‘a job needs to be done, and better we get this over with quickly’ was
soon replaced by a much more brittle sense of confidence. On 11
December, just four days after the Japanese assault on Kelantan, the press
reported heavy fighting in Kedah and highlighted the use of tanks by the
Japanese. Though not stated, the underlying message was that the British
did not have any of their own with which to respond. More damaging still,
the paper then reported the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.
Under
the
sub-heading
‘Facing
Realities’,
the
British
Cabinet’s
‘representative’ in south east Asia, Duff Cooper, vacuously extolled
‘Battleships are precious but far more precious is the heart of a great
people.’ Such rhetoric in the face of huge set-backs did little or nothing to
reassure a rapidly demoralised population. On 13 December, the Selangor
Club cancelled its Christmas cabaret show and children’s party, the Empire
Hotel stopped serving dinner at 9.30pm and Cold Storage stopped selling
cakes and closed at 4pm to give its staff time to get home before the
blackout. The fabric of colonial society was slowly unraveling.
Propaganda, Lies and Panic
One of the problems faced by the civil population was that heavy
censorship meant bad news was often delayed or cut out altogether. The
authorities were fixated with the goal of maintaining public morale and
tried to manage the flow of information. But the public were not fools,
and the arrival in Kuala Lumpur of droves of refugees, each with their
own story of mishap and disaster, meant that the newspapers and media
were simply mistrusted. In this environment, dark rumours and stories
spread far and fast. On 14 December, a special train holding six hundred
women and children arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Penang with tales of
air raids and the brave but one-sided battles between the RAF’s poorly
performing Brewster Buffaloes and the more capable Japanese Mitsubishi
Zeros. The train was met by members of the Kuala Lumpur Salvation
Army. The tired and dispirited passengers were offered a chance to refresh
and clean up before moving on to Singapore, but the impression on Kuala
Lumpur of this grim evacuee train was marked. Penang, Britain’s oldest
settlement in the region and a city of greater size and importance than
Kuala Lumpur, was being evacuated at a time when the newspapers and
radio were speaking of a dogged defence. Not only that, the evacuees
were exclusively white and the impact of this on Britain’s standing was
immediate and marked. All the old colonial conceits were stripped bare
and the harsh reality of racist colonial rule was clear to all. Despite
frantic efforts to recover the initiative, thanks to the ‘white-only’
evacuation of Penang, Britain’s ‘moral authority’ took a nose-dive.
In the face of growing panic the authorities were reduced to palliatives.
On 16 December, the Malay Mail carried the headline ‘Stand Fast and Stay
Calm’ while the British Resident of Selangor issued a communiqué stating
that ‘Rumours are current that the Government is contemplating the
evacuation of women and children from Selangor, particularly from Kuala
Lumpur. Such rumours are entirely false and indeed are contrary to the
policy of Government. Everybody is asked to stand fast and keep calm.’
This was in fact true, and the British had yet to make the decision to
withdraw their forces south to a line in northern Johor. It would take set-
backs in Perak and at the Slim River later in the month before this was the
case. But the public were certainly now aware that the abandonment of
their capital city was a distinct possibility; government departments began
to burn documents and there was a steady leaching of officials and staff to
the presumed safety of Singapore. That same day the Legislative Council
rushed through a bill imposing the death penalty for looting, though there
is no evidence that it was ever imposed.
On 20 December, Duff Cooper announced that Penang was ‘isolated now
evacuated’. In fact, and widely known, the island had been evacuated on
16 December and had been an ‘open city’ for four days until the Japanese
were invited in to take control by local citizens. By the time of Duff
Cooper’s announcement, far from fighting to save Penang, the British were
being pushed back deep into Perak. By late December, only one
significant defensive obstacle lay between the Japanese and Kuala
Lumpur, the Slim River, just twenty miles north of the border between
Perak and Selangor. Broad and wide with high embankments, it could
and should have been a formidable line of defence. The British, however,
had failed to invest sufficient effort into building fixed fortifications and
were reliant solely on the natural defensive features of the river. The focus
was, necessarily, on the two bridges – one road and one rail. Meanwhile,
as the British were rolled down the Malayan peninsula, and front-line
airfields were denied the RAF, the airfield at Kuala Lumpur assumed short-
lived prominence as an ‘advanced landing ground’.
Chapter Four
Kuala Lumpur under Attack
On 21 December 1941, the Japanese launched their first air attack on
Kuala Lumpur. In almost comic book terms the press reported a ‘…
thrilling dog fight between British fighter aircraft and the enemy machine
[that] developed over the town area. No bombs believed to have been
dropped in the attack but a few were dropped in a hit-and-run raid later’.
There were no casualties but this was the precursor of more raids to
come. The next day a similar air duel ensued. This time, bombs were
dropped and the press reported that ‘The enemy air force has now turned
its attention to Kuala Lumpur and the first actual air raid on the area
occurred yesterday morning. One enemy aircraft was destroyed and
another was believed to have been brought down.’ The city, it claimed,
was ‘barely scathed’. On 23 December, the headlines noted ‘Three raiders
down over city yesterday’. These accounts released by the censors,
however, were highly coloured and failed accurately to portray the reality
of Japanese air dominance.
The daily military sitrep (situation report) issued to General Percival and
his senior commanders in Singapore gave the honest account. In contrast
to the press coverage, it recorded that in the air duel of 22 December
‘Kuala Lumpur [was] raided twice by total eighteen Navy O fighters. One
enemy aircraft destroyed. Our casualties two shot down, two crashed, one
destroyed landing. One pilot killed, two wounded.’ Following this bleak
day of aerial conflict, Pte Littledyke of the Selangor Volunteers, on defence
duty at the aerodrome, met ‘an Australian pilot in black overalls, he was
gaunt, grey complexioned and hollow eyed. I asked him how he was
getting on and he said “awful”, it’s suicide up there. Our Brewster Buffalo
fighters are useless’. This was the more honest assessment of the air-battle.
The Blame Game Starts
Around this time there was a distinct change in the tone of the press
treatment of the war. While the newspapers continued to carry positive
stories of bravery the headlines now noted ‘British caught napping in
Malaya’ and ‘Too much complacency in High Command’. The blame game
had begun. For the British civilians it was traumatic. Two weeks
previously, dark stories of the Blitz, German offensives deep into Russia
and set-backs at Benghazi and Tobruk had been disturbing but distant. In
Kuala Lumpur a ‘normal’, and for the British in many ways a privileged,
lifestyle remained possible almost to the last - the dark clouds of war were
there but had not impacted directly. But now, in remarkably short order,
the barbarians were at the gate.
Despite being long anticipated, the speed and ferocity of the Japanese
assault surprised the British military and civilians alike. On 4 December,
Ellen Parton, the wife of a Kuantan-based Australian tin mining engineer,
set off on a long planned pre-Christmas break to stay with her friend
Peggy in Kuala Lumpur. Ellen was planning to meet her children after
they had finished term at boarding school in Sumatra and to fit in a little
shopping in the city’s big department stores. But before she set off, and a
sign that not all might be ‘normal’, she had been advised to take her
family silver with her. As she left Kuantan on the east coast, the British
military were already mining parts of the main road to the capital. Ellen
noted that ‘It was not a very happy journey as there was a horrible feeling
of something evil in the air.’ Four days later, with the news that the
Japanese had launched their attack on Malaya, she cabled her children to
meet her in Singapore. She then joined the flood of women and children
heading there by car, bus and train and what they hoped would be a
successful evacuation. Ellen Parton and her children were amongst the
lucky ones; the family managed to find a berth on one of the last boats out
of Singapore and by March she was back at her home in Geelong in
Victoria. An unexceptional pre-Christmas shopping trip to Kuala Lumpur
was transformed into a traumatic and dangerous bid for safety and
freedom. Quiet, undramatic lives had been changed by circumstance into
epic and terrifying adventures.
Christmas 1941 was a subdued affair in Kuala Lumpur. Amongst the
British, many men were away fighting with the Volunteers and news from
them was limited and sporadic. Wives were often compelled to make hard
decisions about whether stay or leave. At the same time, the influx of
evacuees into the city increased daily, stretching hotel accommodation.
The Evacuee Bureau sought to place these bewildered people and many
locals offered rooms and help, but increasingly the tendency was to move
south to the perceived safety of Singapore. Trains and roads were full of
departing Europeans whose confidence in the ability of the British to hold
the Japanese had evaporated. Meanwhile, the city’s Asian community was
voting with its feet and was leaving the city for the safety of friends and
family in rural areas. Kuala Lumpur was a city of fear, and in a state of
flux.
Catching the city’s schizophrenic mood, the ARP (Air Raid Precaution)
issued a communiqué that ‘After many alerts and a few actual raids you
are no doubt gradually growing used to war conditions. That is a good
thing. But it would be dangerous to feel secure and become careless
because Kuala Lumpur has so far not suffered much.’ On Christmas Day,
and following warnings and threats relayed by Penang Radio (which they
had, by this stage, captured) the Japanese raided Kuala Lumpur once
more. According to Lt. Thornton little physical damage was done but it
brought the first casualties to the city and there was an ‘astonishing
degree of demoralisation’ as a consequence. The aerodrome was raided -
‘About 13 or 14 planes came sailing over from the west out of the sun
regardless of A.A. fire and dropped about 20 small bombs.’ Thornton
noted dryly that ‘every day we expected clouds of [RAF] planes our
bluffing leaders led us to expect but the greatest numbers ever on the
aerodrome were 13 of which 7 were shot down or destroyed in combat in
one day... They were all Brewster Buffalos which we had been told were
incredibly fast and with great fire-power but they were no match for the
Japanese Navy O... But these pilots did not lack in bravery and skills and
on one occasion bagged five Japs’. Thornton recalled one Japanese fighter
brought down over Kuala Lumpur aerodrome, with the plane crashing into
the Chinese cemetery behind. After Christmas, however, Thornton noted
that Kuala Lumpur aerodrome had been ‘virtually abandoned by the
RAF... we never saw a further plane’. The RAF ground staff had already
started ‘a further southward movement’, though not without creating
animosity by ‘piling up valuable lorries with such junk as mess tables and
chairs’ while other units were struggling to find transport for themselves.
Subversion
As a consequence of these set-backs, the British were no longer viewed by
the local population as the aloof, all-powerful masters; instead they were
seen to have ‘feet of clay’. The Japanese were adept at exploiting British
vulnerabilities, using the newly-seized radio transmitter in Penang to
devastating advantage and by dropping leaflets highlighting British racist
and colonialist attitudes and policies. In late December, the Selangor
Government was forced to publish a communiqué advising ‘The Public…
against believing the lying statements contained in leaflets being dropped
from the air by the Japanese.’ Such admonitions had little impact on
either British civilians or locals.
In early December, thanks largely to intelligence passed to them by the
Dutch security authorities, the British rounded up around one hundred
members of the KMM. The presence of a putative Malay fifth-column,
however modest, came as a shock to the British security authorities which
had devoted so much of their energies to monitoring the Communists. On
the night of 15 December the police in Kuala Lumpur arrested known
Malay political activists, including ‘many subordinate Government
servants’. Amongst those detained was Samad Ahmad, the Majlis
journalist, who later claimed - somewhat incongruously - that the British
had also incarcerated street beggars and prostitutes. The British response
certainly smacked of a knee-jerk reaction to a hitherto hidden problem,
about which they had little serious intelligence or understanding. Samad
Ahmad and other identified radicals were initially sent to Pudu Prison and
were then dispatched to Changi Prison in Singapore. Here they languished
until 16 February 1942, when they walked free after the Japanese took
Singapore.
A greater problem for the British than the presence of a small group of
Malay fifth-columnists was the collapse of faith in them by great swathes
of the general public. Prior to the war, the British had seemed largely
invincible. Buoyed by an active propaganda campaign and by the sight of
large numbers of uniformed allied servicemen of different services and
from different nations, there had been little real concern that the British
could lose. But the speed and success of the Japanese assault, the loss of
Penang and the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, and the abject failure of
the RAF to protect the skies, soon deflated this false optimism. As refugees
headed south to Singapore, ‘confidence punctured like a balloon’. The
radio and press were no longer believed and rumours spread with
incredible speed. Indicative of the problems facing the British, in late
December in Port Swettenham a Chinese man was arrested for spreading
‘false rumours’. He was later released and sent to hospital for a week for
‘assessment’.
Chapter Five
Kuala Lumpur Abandoned
‘Hang on appears to be the motto….’
As the military position deteriorated, and the front line moved ever closer,
a mood of resignation took over. On 2 January 1942, the Malay Mail
carried the bitter-sweet headline ‘Hang on appears to be the motto’. This
scarcely heroic injunction contrasted with the bizarre content of the day’s
editorial, which focused on the annual New Year Honours awards.
Correctly noting that ‘It may seem decidedly incongruous at a time like
this…’ the newspaper dedicated precious space to the award of a C.M.G
(Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George) to Mr. D.H.
Hampshire, a Kuala Lumpur luminary, noting that it ‘believes [it was] the
first time this award has been given to anyone outside the civil service…
there will be general approval of this break with tradition’. While the
Japanese blitzkrieg worked its way down the Malayan peninsula, Kuala
Lumpur’s main English language newspaper was reflecting on the nuances
of the British honours’ system. This decision is only explicable when it is
revealed that D.H. Hampshire C.M.G. was not just a prominent tin-mine
owner but was also a Director of the Malay Mail. Rooted more firmly in
reality, the paper reported, albeit briefly (almost certainly due to the
constraints of the censor), Japanese air raids on Port Swettenham, where
damage was reportedly made to the port but not to the aerodrome.
Kuala Lumpur’s Asian community generally did not have the luxury of
escape south to Singapore, though a number of the richer Chinese towkays,
particularly those involved with fund-raising efforts for the Kuomintang
and the China Relief Fund, chose to leave. But this option was not
available to many locals and the majority bunkered down, with many
small businessmen and shopkeepers shuttering and then defending their
premises from within. But there was also a general movement out of the
city to stay with relatives and friends living in outlying areas of Selangor.
This exodus increased as the Japanese approached the city and as
lawlessness and looting took hold. Mr. Sinnadurai, the Chief Clerk of the
District Office of Kajang, noted an influx of people from Kuala Lumpur
into this small town some sixty kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur, with
many of the better educated and wealthier refugees wearing old clothes
and seeking to hide their affluence and familiarity with English. It was an
early sign of a change in fortunes, with many of those who had fared well
under the colonial British about to experience a profound change in their
status and social position.
Slim River and the Decision to Withdraw
On 1 January 1942, the Japanese continued to pile on the pressure. That
day, Port Swettenham was raided and in the sea lanes HMS Kudat was
sunk by dive bombers. Kuala Lumpur was also attacked once more, this
time by four aircraft dropping bombs and strafing the city with machine
gun fire. Meanwhile to the north, the Japanese had circled behind British
defences in Perak, using small boats and craft in a ‘sea borne threat’,
dropping off two battalions near Telok Intan and then Kuala Selangor. The
British responded vigorously with artillery and were able to frustrate, but
not deny, the incursion. Meanwhile, a stubborn British stand at Kampar in
Perak against the main Japanese thrust was eventually overcome and the
British fell back to the last natural defensive position before Kuala
Lumpur, the Slim River.
The battle for Slim River was, in effect, the battle for Kuala Lumpur. In
contrast to the established Japanese tactic of an enveloping attack using
diversionary tactics, the commander of the Japanese 5th Division relied
instead on a concentrated attack focused on the two bridges. On 7 January
1942, after a sharp encounter, they fell. Worse still, the British rear-guard
failed to detonate the charges and Japanese tanks rolled over an
undamaged bridge; the lead Japanese commander reportedly leaping from
his tank and cutting the detonator cord to the explosive charges with his
sword. It was yet another debacle and on the northern side of the river a
vast amount of materiel and weaponry (‘Churchill supplies’) were
abandoned, and many hundreds of troops were cut off behind the lines. A
Japanese military intelligence officer later wrote ‘The front gate to Kuala
Lumpur, the federal capital, was smashed open in the Slim River battle.’
That same day the allied military supremo, General Wavell, travelled to
Kuala Lumpur to meet the Indian III Corps Commander, General Heath.
They went north to assess the situation. Percival later noted that by this
stage the 11th Indian Division ‘could hardly be called an effective fighting
formation [and] it was only too apparent that they were no longer in a
condition to withstand the enemy’s advance and that immediate steps
must be taken to withdraw them behind fresh troops for a rest. The
decision was therefore taken to withdraw the battle-front without delay to
Johor…’. This momentous decision, to withdraw the defensive line to
Johor, meant a retreat of some 150 miles and ‘involved the abandonment
of the states of Selangor and Negri Sembilan... and also Kuala Lumpur, the
capital of the Federated Malay States’. Wavell signalled the Chiefs of
Staff in London, ‘I instructed General Heath to hold position covering
Kuala Lumpur for as long as possible without awaiting full-scale enemy
attack and meanwhile to deny enemy to greatest extent possible by
demolitions’. For Kuala Lumpur, the goose was cooked. The disaster at
Slim River compounded by the collapse of the Indian 11th Division meant
that it was without defence and would be abandoned. It was now a
question of managing the retreat and denying the enemy valuable materiel
through a scorched-earth policy.
Percival later noted that ‘The military evacuation of Kuala Lumpur had
started over a week before but there were still vast quantities of military
and civil stores there….pillars of smoke and flame rose in the sky as
rubber factories, mine machinery and oil stocks were denied. Small
wonder that British prestige sank to a very low ebb among the
population.’ Intuitively sensing the change, or perhaps having been
formally briefed, on 7 January the Cathay, Odeon and Pavilion cinemas
closed their doors. The Rex, however, showed greater resilience and
continued to air the Chinese movie ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’, while the
Eastern Hotel stoically continued to offer its nightly cabaret and dance;
though, with surprising prescience, noted that its Sunday lunch-time
dance was to be cancelled (the Japanese entered Kuala Lumpur on the
Sunday). Like many other businesses, Storch Bros. jewellers announced
that it had moved its operation to Singapore and – optimistically –
requested that ‘our numerous customers…. will forward remittances in
settlement of their accounts as early as possible’. A few weeks later,
Storch Bros. re-opened as Dai Toa Shokai.
The final pre-Japanese occupation edition of the Malay Mail was issued on
Wednesday 7 January 1942. The newspaper had suffered terribly in its
task of presenting credible news while under the sanction of the British
military censors. Symptomatic of the pressures it faced, in its final edition
it simultaneously announced that ‘on the land enemy activity is
developing in the Kuala Selangor area with the apparent objective of
forcing our troops to withdraw from their position’ while claiming
separately that ‘On the Perak Front there is nothing unusual to report.’
Given that Kuala Selangor is in Selangor, and to the south of Perak, the
reassuring news about the fighting in Perak must have rung hollow.
Exodus
The decision to abandon the federal capital sparked panic and a largely
uncontrolled exodus out of the city. The British had been leaving Kuala
Lumpur in ever increasing numbers but now the road to Singapore was
clogged with vehicles of all types and in all conditions. Amongst the
trucks, buses, cars and other assorted vehicles heading south was a steam-
roller commandeered from the highway department. The queues out of the
city formed a semi-continuous jam to Singapore creeping along at ten
miles per hour. The trains continued to run, though the single line railway
track struggled to handle the pressures placed on it. During the day trains
were strafed by Japanese fighters and were forced to hide in embankments
and forest cuttings – an ordeal in the hot tropical conditions. The young
Tamil boy, Jayamani Subramaniam, was present to see the evacuation of
the colonial British from Kuala Lumpur railway station, fleeing the
Japanese onslaught. He noted that many of the women were in tears,
carrying babies in their arms and clutching the few possessions they were
allowed to take with them. In their reduced state, emotional and having
not eaten and drunk, they thankfully received offerings of tea and bread
from local Indians. This was a complete reversal of the usual relationship
of dependency, with the departing British turning for help and support
from Indians at the station concourse. Nevertheless, despite these gestures
of humanity, Subramaniam was convinced that most Indians were glad to
see that that the British were going.
The British burned thousands of sensitive documents but some of the more
important ones were sent to Singapore for ‘safe keeping’. In January 1942,
the Selangor State government - in a convoy of seven trucks - sent all its
financial records for storage in a lock-up in the Old Treasury Building in
Fort Canning. In May 1942, after the Japanese occupation, two state
government officials visited Singapore and discovered that the records had
been removed and stacked in an office which was then occupied by the
Japanese military. Keen to make space, the papers were sold for $300 to a
Chinese contractor, who could no longer be traced. By this simple action,
thousands of debtors were effectively released from their financial
obligations to the Selangor State government.
As Kuala Lumpur emptied, and central authority withdrew, looting and
arson became widespread. The British had only ever represented a tiny
percentage of the population of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, and their
colonial governance rested largely on the acceptance of their rule by the
local population backed if needed (it rarely was) by the authority of the
Police. The British had mostly turned to Indian Sikhs and Malays to
provide the police constables, corporals and sergeants needed to enforce
their rule and sustain their laws (they were chary of recruiting Chinese
policemen, largely because they found the Chinese difficult to handle, and
because they were the least law-abiding of the main communities). As
senior British police officers joined the exodus to Singapore many local
policemen, fearful of later Japanese reprisals, quietly abandoned their
posts. With the British withdrawal, civic discipline and structures
collapsed. Colonial authority, like grains of sand in an hourglass, began to
seep away and lawlessness and crime began to increase. The looting of
abandoned government offices, shops, hotels and residential properties
became commonplace. The two main department stores, Whiteaway
Laidlaw & Co. and Robinsons, both in Java Street, were stripped of
possessions and trashed, though Cold Storage fared much better – its staff
standing guard. Nevertheless, the fires and smoke which resulted from the
scorched-earth policy and the looting wafted across a city made ghostlier
still by a night-time blackout and curfew. Adding to the sense of
foreboding and menace, the city was rocked by the retort of guns and the
detonation of explosives; Kuala Lumpur had entered a twilight world of
lawlessness and anarchy.
Scorched Earth
On the whole in Kuala Lumpur, the British avoided the debacle that had
accompanied their withdrawal from Penang, in which valuable equipment
and stores had simply been abandoned and fallen into Japanese hands.
The large arms depot at Batu Caves was cleared, with ordnance either sent
to Singapore or dumped in the sea or in nearby mining ponds. Fuel was a
particular problem because it was mostly held in petrol drums. It was
difficult to transport because of its sheer bulk and was denied to the
Japanese by the simple expedient of puncturing the drums.
To attempt a managed withdrawal following the disaster at Slim River, the
British established a rear-guard position at Serendah, some thirty miles
north of Kuala Lumpur. Soon after dawn on 10 January, the Japanese 5th
Division attacked Serendah in strength, using air support and deploying
the usual tactic of a central thrust with strong enveloping of the flanks.
They were faced by the 28th Indian Brigade, plus a ragtag of other units.
Meanwhile to the west, the 6th/15th Indian Brigade covered the roads
south of Batu Arang and along the coast a composite force from the ‘Lines
of Communication Area’ covered Port Swettenham. It was a thin, stretched
and demoralised line intended simply to slow and frustrate the Japanese
advance and to allow an orderly retreat from Kuala Lumpur to the new
defensive line being established far to the south in Johor.
There was nonetheless tenacious fighting. From the 28th Indian Brigade,
there was hand-to-hand fighting involving the Gurkhas and a battalion of
the 3/17 Dogras which led to heavy casualties. General Percival, the
Commander of British Forces, described it as ‘another fine battalion
[which] had lost much of its fighting value’. The defensive action at
Serendah was important from another perspective in that it was the first
time that the British and their newly-trained Chinese Communist allies
fought together. But it was an inauspicious start. The Chinese rapidly
moved from supporting the front-line troops to becoming an insurgent
‘stay behind’ force as the front moved south and their active contribution
was largely anonymous. The guerrillas slipped into the nearby jungle
though were later able to return and cache much battlefield debris.
The Selangor Volunteers, as befits a local force, were amongst the last to
depart Kuala Lumpur. On 10 January, through deserted streets, Pte.
Littledyke’s rearguard group entered the Selangor Club, an icon of British
colonial rule. Colloquially known as the ’Spotted Dog’, it was empty and
half-drunk glasses of beer and unfinished meals bore witness to the sudden
panic that had swept the club as news of the Japanese advance on the city
spread amongst the assembled members. Littledyke’s colleague, Lt.
Thornton, noted that ‘denial work’ was in full flow as ‘explosions and
pillars of smoke’ followed the scorched-earth policy. Thornton and his
men were anxious to get away before dark; they eventually managed to
flee the burning city around 9pm by one of the few bridges left intact and
drove through the night to Port Dickson, where the rest of the Selangor
Volunteers had assembled at the Port Dickson Club and where ‘some well
known Volunteer officers were busy forgetting the war in liquid’.
Late that same day, following their defensive actions at Serendah, the
remnants of the 28th Indian Brigade withdrew through Kuala Lumpur to a
reserve area that had been established at Tampin in Negri Sembilan, some
seventy kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile there was heavy
fighting down the coastal road as the Japanese sought to cut the Kuala
Lumpur- Port Swettenham road and railway line. Most of the British
troops managed to escape and by 11 January the important docks,
warehouses and facilities of Port Swettenham were in Japanese hands.
This left the Indian 6th/15th Brigade covering the Batu Arang area, which
had only been lightly engaged by the enemy, to provide the final
rearguard cover through Kuala Lumpur. At 4.30am on 11th January the
Brigade blew the last bridge in the city centre and then withdrew to Labu,
west of Seremban. Meanwhile, just ahead of the advancing Japanese,
Sergeant Jim Gavin of the Royal Engineers, who was part of Spencer
Chapman’s stay-behind organisation, spent the morning of Sunday 11
January happily strewing booby-traps and fixing grenades on trip-wires
inside key buildings and military locations in and around Kuala Lumpur.
The road south was full of vehicles abandoned due to lack of petrol and
Sergeant Gavin and his team worked their way out of Kuala Lumpur,
blowing vehicles up until they ran out of explosives. They were the final
unit of a retreating army. It would be three years and eight months before
British forces were to re-enter Kuala Lumpur.
Chapter Six
Occupation
Japanese troops entered Kuala Lumpur early in the afternoon of Sunday
11 January 1942. The first echelon of troops was accompanied by a
handful of KMM members who wore an armband bearing the letter ‘F’,
which designated them as being affiliated to the Japanese military
intelligence body, Fuijiwara Kikan. Their role was to guide the Japanese
troops but, more importantly, to liaise and mediate with the local Malay
community, to avoid unnecessary clashes and bloodshed. A senior KMM
leader, Mustapha Hussain, later noted that ‘Kuala Lumpur town was
absolutely lifeless except for the advancing Japanese. Where had all the
400,000 people of the largest town in Malaya vanished to?... Apart from
Japanese troops and a multitude of vehicles, there were just a couple of
Indians bolting with bales of fabric’. The Japanese found a seemingly
deserted city, with fires burning, the result of two days of uncontrolled
looting. Government departments, clubs, shops and abandoned homes
had all been pillaged and occasional looters could be seen in the distance,
bicycles and carts loaded with booty, as they escaped just steps ahead of
the Japanese troops. The new Japanese authorities castigated this
behaviour and noted in the first edition of the re-launched and re-named
Malay Mail New Order that those citizens ‘who preferred to face what was
coming than to flee to the jungle or Singapore must feel sad and
thoroughly demoralised by the unrestricted looting [which]… the citizens
of Kuala Lumpur will find hard to live down’. The tone of outraged civic
pride only went so far and a further headline pointedly noted that the
‘penalty for looting is death’. Proving that this was no idle threat, soon
after their arrival the Japanese shot dead several looters and placed their
heads on poles in Batu Road. This had a salutary impact and widespread
looting ended shortly after the Japanese arrival, though the city remained
a tense place for some weeks to come.
RAF Raids on Kuala Lumpur
The Japanese air force soon moved planes to aerodromes in and around
Kuala Lumpur, though some of the first troops to seize the airfields were
caught by British booby traps – mines and grenades connected to hidden
wires. This slowed things down but within a couple of days the airfields
were up and running and were soon to become targets for British counter-
attacks. On 18 January, the British unexpectedly launched a night-time air
raid on Sungei Besi aerodrome. The damage was limited but the
explosions were loud and dented Japanese claims to have destroyed the
British war machine. The next day the British launched a similar attack
on Port Swettenham. The Malay Mail described these raids as ‘the last
wriggle of the British... they dropped some sound bombs which made a
loud explosion but no damage’. On 21 January the British launched one
last raid on Kuala Lumpur, which the Japanese derided (probably
correctly) as a ‘damp squib’ and in which they claimed to have shot down
one raider.
But the raids, and the failure to curb crime and lawlessness, spooked the
Japanese and a night-time curfew was imposed on the city. One Japanese
officer, Captain Satoru Onishi, later recalled that he received an order
stating that ‘Overseas Chinese are suspected of flashing signals to guide
the enemy’s airplanes. Go and investigate the situation’. Onishi was
privately sceptical but kept his views to himself. Other Japanese officers
were more convinced and two Chinese men were summarily arrested and
shot for acting as spies and guiding the British to their targets. Their heads
were placed on poles at the intersection of Ampang and Java Streets and a
notice placed beneath as a warning to others not to spy for the British.
One contemporary witness remembered heads ‘stuck on wooden stakes….
They were covered with flies and were allowed to rot until they fell to the
ground where they were left unattended. The stench was unforgettable’.
Beneath them was sign stating ‘This man shone his torchlight at an enemy
(RAF) plane flying overhead.’
Cracking Down
For some days after the Japanese arrival many shops and businesses
remained closed. Central Market, Kuala Lumpur’s main market for
vegetables, fruit, fish and meat, largely stopped operating. In a society
where most food was purchased and consumed the same day, the collapse
of market and distribution mechanisms brought in its wake severe
shortages, hardship and price rises. It took some weeks for the markets to
recover, and this was only achieved after the Japanese issued a threat of
dire consequences if normal business was not resumed. The rising cost of
food was a major concern and while establishing a set of agreed prices for
daily items, the Japanese noted that ‘Profiteering springs from avarice and
avarice is one of those despicable human traits which the New Order is
out to exterminate.’ Such emotive and threatening language would not
have been lost on Kuala Lumpur’s many Chinese food-stall and shop
owners.
Another pressing concern for the new authorities was a decline in public
health and sanitation. ‘Night soil’ or the use of latrines cleared by
‘coolies’, was the main method of sanitation for many of Kuala Lumpur’s
citizens, particularly those living in noisy, cheek-by-jowl, Chinatown.
Shortly after their arrival the Japanese were forced to appeal for senior
local officers of the Kuala Lumpur ‘scavenging night soil removal’
department to return to work. They also requested that ‘inspectors,
overseers, madatores and labourers’ from the ‘waterworks, anti-malarial
and roads’ departments report for duty, while noting that ‘punishment’
will follow if they do not do so. The threat of disease and illness, notably
dengue and malaria, was acute once the clearing of drains and mosquito
breeding grounds had been disrupted. Meanwhile the new authorities
requested the return of looted medical supplies and stores, noting too that
‘those who fail to comply will be severely punished’.
The Japanese were quick to crack down on rumour-mongering and
negative talk, particularly from the Chinese. In late January, following
reports from Malacca that one Tiam Kiam Aik had been spreading ‘false
rumours’, three Kempetei officers from Kuala Lumpur - Giichi Osaki, Isa
Kigenta and Shozo Hatakayama - were dispatched to ‘interview’ him. They
detained him at the local police station and having established his ‘guilt’
(he had reportedly been listening to British radio broadcasts and spreading
the ‘false news’ that the British had returned to Penang) Lt. Osaki and his
two colleagues took Tiam Kiam Aik to nearby jungle where he was made
to kneel before being decapitated by a single cut from Osaki’s sword.
Tiam’s head was then cleaned and put inside a specially made wooden
box. The next day it was removed and placed on top of a pole sited at a
nearby crossroads; a grim warning to all passers-by. Just weeks before,
when faced by a similar problem of rumour-mongering, the British sent
the culprit to hospital for a week for ‘assessment’.
In contrast to the fear felt by the Chinese, many in Kuala Lumpur’s Malay
and Indian communities welcomed the victorious Japanese. Indian traders
and businesses were the first to throw in their lot with the ‘New Order’.
The Malay Mail paraded one trader, Din, for being the first ‘to cooperate
with Japanese troops and to supply them with cigarettes’. Dal Singh’s
fabric shop quickly had Japanese flags on sale and the owner appealed for
donations of Indian army khaki uniforms to clothe recruits to a new anti-
British force. Mr. Pillai, a ‘native physician’, advertised that until
Singapore fell he would treat members of the Imperial Japanese Forces for
free. Meanwhile, nothing if not opportunistic, the prominent fabric store,
Hardial Singh & Co., which in December 1941 had been promoting
blackout fabric to protect against Japanese air raids, had by late January
1942 reopened with ‘Thanks to the Imperial Japanese Forces’. Meanwhile,
KMM activists were out and about within the Malay community trying to
smooth relations and outline the new realities. A group of young KMM
activists had been specially infiltrated into the city to support the
transition and they encouraged Malay households to daub an ‘F’ (for F
Kikan) on their properties, or failing that a turtle representing Kame.
Meanwhile, one senior KMM official, Onan Haji Siraj, had arrived with the
first Japanese troops and had accompanied one Yamashita, who pre-war
had been the owner of a textile shop in Batu Road and had now returned
in an intelligence role. Together they entered Yamashita’s boarded up
shop and from beneath a stone floor tile removed a hidden Japanese flag
which was soon proudly displayed outside the shop as evidence that a new
power was in charge.
Selangor and a Change of Sultan
From the outset, the Japanese announced that they planned to work in co-
operation with Malaya’s Sultans, thereby signalling a message of
reassurance to the Malay community. In the case of Selangor, however,
on arrival they simply deposed the pro-British Sultan Alam Shah and
replaced him with their own appointee. The Sultan’s undoing had been his
declaration in December 1941 that the ‘enemy has entered our house’. On
15 January 1942, shortly after their arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Governor
Fujiyama summoned the Sultan and his brother, Tengku Musa Eddin to
King’s House (next to Carcosa - previously the British Governor’s
residence) where Fujiyama had taken up residence. He kept the Sultan
waiting for over two hours before sending the Deputy Commander of the
25th Army, Major General Manaki, to speak on his behalf. It was less a
conversation, more an instruction. Manaki explained that because of his
pro-British stance and his anti-Japanese comments he would be replaced
as Sultan by Tengku Musa Eddin, who was proclaimed Sultan Musa
Ghiatuddin Riayat Shah. Indicative that they never really understood
Malay culture, Manaki then proposed a toast of saki to the success of the
Japanese army. The newly appointed Sultan Musa Eddin reportedly raised
his glass while the just-ousted Tengku Alam Shah quietly refused.
On 18 January, just three days after his ‘investiture’, Sultan Musa Eddin
implored his people in the local press to ‘Be loyal to the Nippon
Government… and you will never regret your wholehearted acceptance of
the New Order. Let us welcome Colonel Fujiyama and the Japanese army
of occupation and thank them for what they have been able to do to us.’
The Japanese argued that in deposing Tengku Alam Shah they had
restored the precedent of primogeniture, or the older son assuming the
crown, but in reality in Tengku Musa Eddin they ‘appointed’ a compliant,
if difficult and somewhat feckless, Sultan. Nevertheless, the Japanese had
the man they wanted. For the rest of the war, Tengku Alam Shah led a
penurious and marginalised existence, his isolation made worse when the
Japanese seized his radio. His health was also poor – plagued by malaria.
His household was immediately reduced in size, and throughout the war
he and his small retinue felt under constant pressure from the Japanese.
Indeed, one credible report noted that late in the war three close relatives
and office-holders - Raja Uda bin Raja Mohammed, the Chief Kathi, Haji
Osman and the Private Secretary, Raja Nong - were scheduled for arrest
and beheading, though the Japanese never followed through with this
threat. But an atmosphere of fear and intimidation pervaded Tengku
Alam Shah’s household.
Stragglers
One of the very few Britons to remain in Kuala Lumpur was Dr. G.A.
Ryrie, who chose to stay at his post as the Superintendent of the Leper
Colony at Sungei Buloh. On 23 January, in an effort to demonstrate their
benign intent, Dr. Ryrie was summoned by Colonel Fujiyama, who
presented him with a cheque for $2,500 for the leper hospital, an event
which was covered in all the local newspapers. Dr. Ryrie re-paid this
generosity by using the Japanese fear of leprosy to feed and support a
small group of fugitive soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders who rested and recuperated at the hospital before attempting
to regain the British lines. The Japanese had their suspicions about Dr.
Ryrie but could prove no wrongdoing. Nevertheless, some months later
they sent him to join the other British internees at Changi.
For the new Japanese administration in Kuala Lumpur, the repair of
critical infrastructure destroyed or damaged by the British was a priority.
By late January, a temporary bridge over the River Klang had been
opened by Governor Fujiyama and work was progressing on repairing the
electricity generating station at Bangsar. By this stage the Japanese
authorities felt that they were getting on top of their most pressing
problems and concluded, somewhat smugly, that ‘after a fortnight of
disrupted sanitary services and a shorter reign of hooliganism, Kuala
Lumpur is daily returning to normal life…’. It would take until October
for the city’s street lights to function properly, but one sign of normalcy,
the cinemas were re-opening. Bizarrely - or pointedly - the Capitol Theatre
chose to show that classic of British military incompetence tinged with
bravery, The Charge of the Light Brigade. At the same time a similar
example of military incompetence underscored by bravery was enveloping
British forces trapped in Singapore.
‘Caught like Rats in a Trap’
The local media and press gave full exposure to the on-going success of
the Japanese military machine. By late January, it was possible to crow
that the British in Singapore were ‘Caught like Rats in a Trap’ and once
the British surrendered on 15 February the newspapers produced full-page
spreads extolling Japanese military prowess. In mid-February, Governor
Fujiyama sent a message to the people of Selangor. As with many
Japanese pronouncements, the message started cordially but soon
introduced an undercurrent of thinly veiled threat and coercion.
‘On behalf of myself and my officers and men I would like to thank
all the citizens of Selangor for the way in which they have
welcomed us to the State and for the co-operation they have been
giving us from the first day of our entry into Kuala Lumpur and
Klang… [But] we are equally aware that there is an element in the
State which in ignorance is working against the establishment of the
New Order. We are defiantly determined to destroy such bad
elements even if we have to adopt the most drastic methods…’
From the outset, the Japanese made clear that punishment would follow
any efforts to undermine, or indeed failure to support, their government,
but they were also keen to demonstrate that their style and nature was
very different from the departing British. In late January they announced
that henceforth the word ‘coolie’ would no longer be acceptable and
instead the term ‘labourer’ should be adopted. This was an effort to put
clear blue water between themselves and the British, who were widely
perceived to be racist and elitist. The Japanese also noted that, unlike the
just-departed British, they were ‘not snobs or social butterflies’ and that
thanks to the ‘virtue of the Mikado’ (the Emperor) and the absence of
terms of social differentiation in the Japanese language (everyone was
something-san) ‘we are all equal in the eyes of the emperor’. In Kuala
Lumpur, their initial public pronouncements tended to be generally
accommodating, noting how the New Order would differ from the old.
This was ‘liberation’ not ‘occupation’. The media carried prominent and
positive articles about Japan, seeking to confront the ‘distorted stories’
that had been ‘peddled by the colonial British’.
The Japanese method was not all fear. Seeking to win early acceptance,
they used the radio and the re-launched newspapers to highlight the need
‘to dispel...a great deal of the malicious, pernicious and false anti-Japanese
propaganda with which we have been fed in recent years’. In its place, the
citizens of Kuala Lumpur were encouraged to embrace the ‘New Order’,
which they were told was pro-Asian and anti-colonial in character. In this
vein,
the
Japanese
established
the
Orwellian-sounding
‘Peace
Maintenance
Committees’
to
manage
relations
with
the
main
communities, and they highlighted the support the ‘New Order’
government had received from the various Sultans and from prominent
community figures from the other races. But increasingly, as confidence
in their position grew, the tone of public pronouncements took on a more
menacing air. The only flag that could be flown was the Hinomaru, or the
Rising Sun, which was made available through the various Peace
Committees and also through many of the city’s Indian-owned fabric
shops. There were lessons in the press on how to address Japanese troops
– who were to be addressed by the Malay honorific ‘tuan’. Japanese
soldiers were on sentry duty on many roads and civilian passers-by were
expected to bow low; a failure to do so could result in a smart slap.
Meanwhile there was the even more pointed message that ‘The Japanese
government will show no mercy to Communists nor to any others who
attempt to obstruct actively or passively the establishment of the New
Order in East Asia.’ The sinuous, discreet, detached governance of the
British had been replaced by a very different animal.
Japanese Impressions
A Japanese diplomatic signal of early May 1942, sent from its Embassy in
Bangkok to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Tokyo, reporting on conditions
in occupied Malaya was intercepted and decrypted by the British. Shortly
thereafter it was read by Winston Churchill. It cannot have made easy
reading because in general the assessment was accurate and balanced -
which must have made its contents all the more galling. The decrypted
signal read:
‘The restoration of peace and order… in the post-war order has
made better progress than expected. Owing to the sympathy shown
by the indigenous coloured [people] towards the white troops being
unexpectedly negligible the remnants of the defeated forces have
little chance to escape. The remaining troops, being unable to
endure in the hills and the valleys cut off from civilization, are
asking of their own accord to be taken in as prisoner. Though there
are some who have not yet been accommodated, it is not worth
making a song about.
While it is thought there are considerable numbers of Indian soldiers
[intermingling] with the Malayan-born people of their own race,
they are individually dispirited. This is due to their not only being
free ideologically from anti-Japanese feelings, but also to the fact
that the Army’s policy of conciliation is meeting with considerable
success….With regards to the Chinese, there are numbers of bodies
of defeated soldiery and numbers of communists, leading to
occasional incidents but the Army’s plan for [restoring] peace and
order are making progress, and incidents of this nature are on the
decrease….In view of all these circumstances the Army has already
transferred a large part of its forces in Malaya to other fronts……In
short, a Japanese soldier is in no danger even when walking alone
on a country road…
There are over 90,000 prisoners and more than 2,600 officials held
in detention. Some have been deployed on repairing aerodromes,
road repairs and other tasks and they whistle in a leisurely way. The
Australian soldiers are the most simple minded and their treatment
is said to be good….The fact that Anglo-Saxons are being employed
as coolies under the very eyes of the populace must surely make an
impression on the coloured races. Reflecting as it does the real
authority of Japan.’
Following this resounding defeat, for the British the ‘lights went out’ in
Malaya. Having been a determining force for over 150 years, they were
now impotent - either dead, expelled or incarcerated - and with no
influence on events and with little knowledge of what was going on.
Chapter Seven
Exodus
Following the Japanese seizure of Kuala Lumpur, the 101 STS stay-behind
teams slipped into their role of engaging the Japanese supply lines –
though in so doing they had very different experiences. Spencer Chapman
was based near Raub, in Pahang, along with a large store of explosives.
From this base he trekked across the Main Range (Malaya’s central
mountain spine of dense jungle) before setting up a forward base near the
Escot and Behrang estates in the border area of Selangor and Perak, from
which he launched a short-lived but effective series of sabotage raids on
the critical north-south railway. In due course the Japanese responded
and he was forced to retreat into the jungle, where he was protected by
the Chinese communists, forming the genesis of the relationship that was
later formalised into an alliance between Special Operation Executive’s
Force 136 and the communist guerrillas, now named the Malayan Peoples
Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA).
In contrast to Chapman’s early successes, Frank Vanrenen and his stay-
behind party - drawn from the Volunteers - had bunkered down near
Tanjong Malim in southern Perak, but had been spooked by a false alarm
that the Japanese were on their doorstep. Their Chinese porters had fled
and the British officers headed for safety to the nearby jungle. When they
re-emerged some hours later they discovered that their stores, which
included a radio-set, had been stolen. Lacking equipment and
communications,
they
headed
towards
the
coast
where
they
commandeered a sampan and made their way to Port Swettenham. Here
they set about blowing up an arms dump and sabotaged a train. But in
response, the Japanese took a number of local men, women and children
as hostage and threatened to kill them unless Vanrenen and his group
surrendered. On 25 March, they duly responded to this blackmail and
handed themselves in and were sent to Pudu Prison. Another member of
the team, Hembry, however, managed to escape to Java and then to
Australia.
One group of six Selangor Volunteers, linked somewhat incongruously to
the State’s ‘Drainage and Irrigation Department’, were also part of the 101
STS organisation. Under ‘Senior Engineer’ Foster Pelton, they deployed to
Negri Sembilan to the south of Selangor, and there set about attacking, or
rather trying to attack, rear-echelon Japanese units and road and rail
communications. But this proved more difficult than they had
anticipated. Based in a rubber plantation close to the main north-south
rail line, they emerged from their lair to set charges along the tracks,
designed to be triggered by the pressure of a passing train. But the
charges proved temperamental and failed to explode. The drainage
engineers cum commandos then focused on attacking road transport, also
without much success, though their efforts drew unwelcome attention.
They had a short and notably unsuccessful war, their location being
betrayed to the Japanese by a local Chinese man. They were duly
surrounded, captured and sent to Pudu Prison.
The Fate of the Selangor Volunteers
With Kuala Lumpur and Selangor abandoned, the Selangor 2nd Battalion
FMSVF fell in with British and Indian Army units in their disorderly
retreat to Johor and Singapore. Lt. Thornton and his group of Volunteers
were sent to defend the island of Belakang Mati [today’s Sentosa] off
Singapore. They missed the fighting but surrendered with others of the
FSMVF to be sent as POWs to Changi. Thornton later worked on the Thai-
Burma railway, which he survived thanks, he thought, to his youth and
strength and by managing to avoid any of the main killing diseases such as
cholera and dysentery. At the end of the war, he was strong enough to
help set up welfare operations in the various camps to process POWs and
Asian workers.
Lt. Littledyke’s fate, however, proved to be very different. He was also on
Belakang Mati but on 17 February - two days after the official surrender -
along with another resourceful Malayan Volunteer, Walter Drinnan (who
had swum over to Belakang Mati from Singapore dressed in a dinner-
jacket), he found a small native canoe (prahu) in which they paddled off to
Sumatra. They were buzzed by Japanese fighters but never attacked, their
guise as local fishermen working. Eventually Littledyke and Drinnan
arrived in the Dutch East Indies and from there joined the Australian
vessel, HMAS Hobart, which took them to Colombo and safety. Another
fortunate escapee from the Selangor Volunteers was Lt. Ross, a junior
official in the Malayan Civil Service. In late January 1942, Ross got a
letter home from Singapore in which, in stoical manner, he told his
parents that ‘We have seen some small amount of war at first hand and I
am glad that we are working to some purpose.’ But he was at pains to
reassure his anxious mother that ‘we have been let off very lightly in every
way so far’. Following the British surrender, news of the fate of loved
ones was at a premium. Ross’ parents must have literally wept tears of joy
when they received a letter dated 14 March 1942, post-marked Bombay,
letting them know that he had escaped by small boat to Sumatra and then
by steamer to India. But men like Ross and Littledyke were very much a
minority and most families had to contend with the letter of notification
that their son was either a casualty or a POW or, as often as not, the
possibly more traumatic ‘missing, fate unknown’.
The individual European members of the Selangor Volunteers experienced
the whole gamut of war-time outcomes, but how did the force fare
overall? In 1941, 242 Europeans served in the Selangor 2nd Battalion. Of
these, 19 were killed or died of wounds, 23 got away from Singapore
successfully, 36 died as POWs and 174 survived captivity. In short, 55
men, or about twenty per cent of the Battalion’s strength, died due to
fighting or from their subsequent treatment as POWs. This is an appalling
attrition rate and while the British performance in the Malaya campaign
was not militarily impressive this should not impugn the bravery and
conduct of individual soldiers, who suffered disproportionately. By way of
comparison, Max Hastings notes in his grand survey of the 1939-1945 war
that on average one in twenty British Commonwealth combatants were to
die during the war - the European members of the Selangor Volunteers
had a mortality rate that was four times greater than this.
The experience of the local Asian recruits to the Volunteers has been more
difficult to establish. Once the Japanese blitzkrieg had passed Selangor,
the locally-recruited volunteers were allowed to remain with their families
and communities, hiding or veiling their engagement with the British as
best they could. But many chose to fight on and joined the retreat to
Singapore before being released by their British officers in the last days of
fighting. There were accusations after the war that some local members
had ‘deserted’ from the ranks and simply abandoned the fight. There may
have been such cases, but there are also well-cited cases of local
volunteers being ordered by their British officers, when the game was
clearly up, to remove their uniforms, don civilian clothing and try to make
their way home. For some, this involved arduous and lengthy walks back
to their home states. One such local volunteer from Kuala Lumpur was
George Hess’e, a Eurasian gunner in the light artillery battery. He later
noted that his motivation for joining the military was ‘because we loved
the country and were proud of the country – Malaya’. He withdrew
alongside his volunteer colleagues to Singapore, and was then captured
and interned by the Japanese at Changi Prison. Being dark-skinned
amongst predominantly white POWs, he was able to escape after just four
days by passing himself off as one of a group of Tamil labourers who had
been called into the camp (he later joked that he had left Changi because
the food did not suit him). Though free, this was just the beginning of his
troubles, as he had no money and his home was far away in Kuala
Lumpur. He was forced to endure an epic and lonely journey on foot
through a Malaya wasted by war, but one that eventually ended with
Hess’e back in Kuala Lumpur with his family.
The Fate of Evacuees
For the British and most European and Eurasian civilian evacuees, though
they were not to know this when they left Kuala Lumpur, their exodus led
remorselessly to one of three outcomes; escape, death or incarceration.
Some, like Ellen Parton and her children, were able to make good their
escape and eventually made their way back home to Australia. Similarly
the Thompson family, wife and children of a Kuala Selangor rubber
planter, were able to secure a berth on a late-departing boat – the
inappropriately named Empress of Japan (it was renamed the Empress of
Scotland on its final journey). Michael Thompson still recalls the
excitement of a young boy watching the Japanese planes over the
harbour, and the smoke and noise of war, as the vessel made a desperate,
and in this case successful, dash for safety. The Thompson family made its
way to South Africa and finally to Britain. Michael’s father, however, was
serving with the 2nd Battalion Selangor Volunteers and was later to die
from cholera while a POW on the Thai-Burma railway; such was her grief
that after the war Michael’s mother never spoke of her husband nor his
fate.
The Parton and Thompson families were at least successful in escaping
Singapore but not all families were so lucky and a considerable number
died while trying to escape. In the later stages of the campaign, with the
RAF shot from the skies, the Japanese had a free rein against allied
shipping in the sea-lanes and islands in and around Singapore, and further
south towards Riau and Lingga in the waters of the Dutch East Indies.
Fleeing vessels became death-traps, sunk without chance of a fight by
Japanese planes or submarines. Victims came from across Malaya and
included civilians and servicemen alike. Included in the carnage was
Dorothy Mather, the 25-year old wife of the Pudu Prison warden, and
their three year old son. They died on 17 February 1942 while trying to
escape on HMS Tandjong Pinang; a small, hugely over-crowded vessel
carrying some 200 women, children and wounded men that was shelled at
point blank range by a Japanese warship in the waters off Bangka, some
eighty miles south of Singapore. Some of the crew and a few nurses on
board managed to cling to debris and survive but most - including Dorothy
Mather and her baby - were never seen again. Another victim from Kuala
Lumpur was Mrs. Collett, whose husband was a partner in the prominent
accountancy firm of Collet & Whittal Co.
The third outcome for European evacuees was incarceration at Changi and
Sime Road detention camps in Singapore. This in itself was not
necessarily a final outcome because conditions in the camps were poor,
with bad sanitation and insufficient food, and mortality rates were high.
One Kuala Lumpur detainee who survived the war was James Mather.
While his family sought to flee by boat, in the last days of British
Singapore he stayed and helped out at Changi Prison, which at this period
was largely full of Malay nationalists. Amongst those under his watchful
gaze was Samad Ahmad, the Kuala Lumpur journalist. Following the
Japanese victory, Samad Ahmad walked from the prison and into freedom
and a few days later James Mather replaced him within Changi’s grim
walls. Such is the razor-blade of life. Unlike his wife and child, James
Mather survived the war and, after a period of convalescence in Britain,
returned to Malaya where he re-married and started a second family.
As the war progressed there were heart-rending attempts by families
outside to assemble news of loved ones caught in the mayhem of the last
weeks of British Malaya. Confusion was rife, but snippets and anecdotes
such as ‘seen drifting from the Kuala, but a good swimmer’ or ‘reported
murdered by Japanese on the beach at Pompong Island’ was often the only
piece of news a relative would receive. Sometimes those reported
‘presumed dead’ would be found alive, and equally those believed to have
survived were later found to have perished. Organisations in the UK,
Australia and India sought to establish the fate of military and civilians
alike, and roster lists were regularly assembled and published. The
Japanese provided some news to the Red Cross and periodically,
sometimes as a Christmas ‘gesture’, offered news of detainees on Domei
[Japanese government] short-wave radio broadcasts. But it was not really
until after the war that many relatives could with any confidence establish
the facts surrounding the fate of their family members.
Eurasians
Many Eurasian families also boarded departing boats from Singapore, and
suffered the same range of fates as the British and European refugees.
Amongst these there were one or two miraculous escapes, including that
of Wilhemina Eames (née van der Straaten) and her daughter Shirley, who
were part of the prominent Ceylonese Burgher family. Mother and
daughter survived the sinking of the SS Kuala and a long period floating at
sea before being saved by local fisherman. They endured a brutal war,
incarcerated in detention camps in Sumatra. They survived physically
sound but each with their wartime demons to contend with in later years.
The Sime Road civilian camp in Singapore held a large number of
Eurasian detainees; camp records suggest upwards of five thousand.
Overall, the Eurasians confused the Japanese. Though Christian and
largely English-speaking, they were a mixed and varied group and in their
initial trawl, the Japanese had largely rounded up ‘first generation’
Eurasians, or those who had one European parent (usually the father).
Later in the war, from 1943, the Japanese began to release many of them
as part of an attempt to win over local communities to the ‘New Order’.
Most Eurasians felt an instinctive affinity towards Britain but were also
deeply embittered by racist distinctions, not least the defining ‘white-only’
evacuation from Penang. Nothing similar occurred in the evacuation of
Kuala Lumpur, and Eurasians were on board vessels fleeing Singapore, but
they occupied a difficult and at times ambiguous position in the colonial
construction. Shirley Eames of the van der Straaten clan would later note
that some British subjects were not as ‘explicitly Aryan as they would
like’.
The relationship between European and Eurasian civilian detainees at
Changi and Sime Road was fraught. For one, more local and Eurasian
wives of European men emerged in the stress of war than had been
acknowledged in the pre-war era. There was therefore an awkward co-
existence between the two communities, thrown together in close personal
proximity and subject to all the tensions that had been avoided or
suppressed in ‘normal’ life. The subtle racial gradations of colonial life did
not disappear and, according to Eurasian detainees, there was a continued
sense of superiority and aloofness from the British memsahibs, despite the
fundamental equalities of life as prisoners. In general, however, the
Eurasians proved more adept at survival in the camps, partly because they
were more used to the food on offer. While a European might baulk at
fish-head soup and an endless diet of rice, for the Eurasians this was much
more familiar fare.
Kuala Lumpur’s Asian Communities
In the immediate aftermath of the Japanese occupation of Kuala Lumpur,
most locals simply bunkered down and sought to protect their families and
possessions as best they could, though many also moved to rural areas and
the small towns of Selangor. A minority, however, joined the panicked
exodus south to Singapore. Amongst these was the rich Chinese towkay,
Chan Wing, and his family. His very public support for the Kuomintang, as
well as his prominent position in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinese community (he
was the wealthiest man in Kuala Lumpur and appropriately lived in ‘The
Big House’) meant that he would have been high on any Japanese
‘blacklist’. Chan Wing managed to escape from Singapore with his two
sons to Java by plane, and then boarded a merchantman that was sunk by
a Japanese submarine. He survived on a lifeboat and eventually landed in
Australia, where he spent the remainder of the war. The rest of his family
also escaped Singapore, though in their case ‘sat out the war’ in India. But
few of Kuala Lumpur’s terrified citizens fleeing ahead of the Japanese
onslaught had Chan Wing’s wealth and resources – he and his family were
very much in a minority.
In the days and weeks that followed the Japanese arrival, a period of
chaos and confusion, families tried to locate lost members, or at least to
establish news of their fate. One elderly Chinese lady recalls, with tears,
the day her father left home on a routine errand and simply disappeared –
never to be seen or heard of again. The local newspapers in the weeks
after the Japanese occupation are peppered with requests for news about
lost family. On 14 March 1942, for example, the classified section of the
Malay Mail carried the message that ‘Mr Chew Chye Huat and family’ were
‘O.K.’ but sought news of the ‘welfare of Messers Chew Kiam Siong, Soh
Eddie and families in Syonan’ [Singapore]. A few days later, Mr. P.K.
Raghaven and family of the Changkat Estate sought news of his two
brothers and their families at the ‘Syonanese Naval Base’. Later in the
month, ‘Mohammed Salleh bin Wan Chik and family [were] anxious to
know the whereabouts of Bachik wan Chik’ - his older brother. The
confusion of the fighting and war had therefore scattered families from all
communities far and wide and establishing the fate of loved ones proved a
difficult task. Months later, the classified advertisements still carried sad
requests for information about family and friends. In late June 1942, for
example, the family of E. Kathiresu was still seeking news of his
whereabouts.
Japanese Internees
There was a final group of evacuees from Kuala Lumpur - the Japanese
civilians detained by the British at the outbreak of fighting. Their wartime
experience also proved bleak. The 111 men rounded up in Selangor had
initially been sent to Changi Prison and the women and children to a camp
on Belakang Mati. By early January 1942, Japanese internees in
Singapore numbered around three thousand and later that month the
British sent them by ship to Calcutta. There they waited for three days
before embarking on a 70 hour journey by train, and a final two hour
march to Purana Qila, a detention camp on the outskirts of New Delhi.
The camp was located in an old Moghul fort and accommodation was
military style in rows of canvas tents surrounded by wire. Amongst those
sent to Purana Qila was Ayabe Kuichiro, the Kuala Lumpur dentist, and
his wife and daughter. In February 1942, when news of the fall of
Singapore reached Purana Qila, one report noted that ‘fishermen from the
Andamans, the shopkeeper from Singapore and the dentist from Kuala
Lumpur all joined the festivities’. Ayabe Kuichiro, therefore, appears not
only to have survived the journey but also to have retained his sense of
patriotism, which was possibly enhanced by the appalling conditions that
he and his family endured at Purana Qila.
Because the records for male prisoners are incomplete, it is impossible to
account precisely for the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor contingent at Purana
Qila. But assuming the figure of 111 male internees rounded up by the
British at the outset of war is full and accurate, when added to the
complete records for women (65) and children (38) from Selangor, an
overall figure of 214 is reached. By the end of 1942, however, seven of
this group were dead, ranging from the 50 year old Jiroza Miyazaki, who
died of tuberculosis, to Yoko Kobayashi, who failed to make her first
birthday. Overall, 106 internees, from a total of 2856 Malayan and
Singaporean detainees, had died by the end of the year. The internees only
had their light tropical clothes and at night, in winter, temperatures could
drop to near freezing, with a bitter, cutting wind. During the summer, by
contrast, the temperatures rose to over 120 degrees. The men were
separated from the women and children and all were subjected to the
same conditions and rations as an Indian army sepoy. But most were not
hardened to a life of sleeping on floors or living on a diet of simple rice
and dhal, and they struggled. Sanitation was poor and disease
commonplace, leading to disgracefully high mortality rates.
When the high mortality figures began to leak, the initial British response
was defensive, claiming that the ‘complaints of internees are highly
exaggerated’. But by November 1942 one senior official was sufficiently
concerned to note ‘that the Japanese should lodge protests against the
Allied treatment of Japanese nationals seems the strangest inversion
possible, but I am not certain that our own house is in as good order as it
should be’. Against the recorded death statistics another official had inked
‘A very high figure!’ The death rate at Purana Qila was indeed
considerably greater than that in Changi civilian detention camp for the
corresponding period, and this was used by the Japanese as a pretext for
the harsher treatment they later introduced.
Some of those detained, however, were fortunate to be included in a swap
of civilian internees. In August 1942, the British and Japanese - working
through the neutral Portuguese - negotiated an exchange of prisoners. The
primary aim was to exchange consular staff caught up on the wrong side
of the line but it was extended to include other non-official civilians. This
resulted in 720 Japanese civil internees and 64 consular staff from Purana
Qila being repatriated via Mozambique and a Portuguese vessel to
Singapore. The Japanese vetted lists of civilians and priority amongst the
civil internees was given to employees of the major Japanese companies
and institutions, but there was also an element of lottery for those
selected. From Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, the Principal of the Japanese
School, Norito Arimoto, and his extended family of nine relatives were
included, as was Koozoo Yamamoto of the Japanese Association of Kuala
Lumpur. Thereafter, Arimoto returned to Kuala Lumpur where he
resumed his position as a school principal. One of his students later
recalled that ‘he was angry but did not punish’ his students for cheering
the downing of Japanese fighters during an aerial duel with US bombers
over Kuala Lumpur in January 1945.
For the vast majority, however, the exchange passed them by and they
spent the war behind the wire at Purana Qila. One resilient detainee,
Omori Kichijiro - a rubber buyer and merchant based at Port Swettenham
- noted that life at ‘Pamakila (sic)… on an Indian diet of curries, lots of
beans and gallons of tea was not uncomfortable’. But Omori’s recollection
– made many years later – is a singular one, and perhaps he was of a
particularly stoical nature, because most reports stress the hardship and
the loss of life at the camp. Following the dire conditions and bad
publicity of the early months, conditions in the camp improved and from
1943 the death rate decreased, though it remained a harsh and
uncompromising environment. Unfortunately, with incomplete records,
the fate of the detainees in the last years of the war and their treatment
after the Japanese surrender has proven impossible to track.
Chapter Eight
The Kempetei, Sook Chin and the Reign of Terror
Arriving with the Japanese military was the insidious presence of the
Kempetei, or the Japanese military security police. The Kempetei was part
of the army’s legal department and enjoyed semi-independent status
within the military. It was tasked with identifying threats, rooting out
subversion and gaining intelligence on Japan’s enemies. It was, in
practice, the Japanese Gestapo and was feared by regular troops as well as
the civilian population. Individual Kempetei units were relatively small –
the Kuala Lumpur and Selangor ‘buntai’ (cadre) was sixty strong – which
was on a par with the other main states. But these small detachments had
an influence and impact out of all proportion to their size. Indeed, the
defining legacy and reputation of the Japanese occupation of Malaya and
Kuala Lumpur can be attributed to the often psychotic and brutal
behaviour of these men. By introducing a ‘climate of fear’, the Kempetei
ensured that the Japanese were rarely troubled or threatened during their
occupation of Malaya. Until the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the
communist ‘Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army’ (MPAJA) generally
held back from attacking Japanese troops (aware of the disproportionate
response that would be meted out to the civil population) and contented
themselves with a campaign of assassination against collaborators and co-
optees. The Kempetei’s strategy therefore permitted a stretched military to
avoid a serious internal insurgency, though the terror brought the longer
term cost of alienating the vast majority of the people of Malaya, some of
whom – had the Japanese been more accommodating – might have offered
them positive and proactive support.
Sook Chin
The first targets for the Kempetei were Chinese communists and members
of Chinese organisations, such as the Kuomintang and the China Relief
Fund, that had sent money, men and materiel to support the anti-Japanese
forces in Manchuria. The Kempetei arrived with blacklists drawn from pre-
war intelligence gathering. Many of the more prominent activists had fled
but from March 1942 the Chinese community of Kuala Lumpur, alongside
those of the main cities and towns of Malaya, was to feel the full force of
Japanese retribution. The campaign took the name Sook Chin, which
literally means ‘purification by cleansing’. This sinister euphemism
provided a bogus rationale for a campaign of terror designed to cow,
terrify and punish.
The Sook Chin included a huge financial penalty. Across Malaya and
Singapore the Japanese government sought to raise a mighty $50 million
in reparations from the Chinese community. Each state was allocated a
sum to raise. Selangor’s contribution was $10 million, which reflected its
wealth and size; it was the highest single sum for a state in Malaya and on
a par with Singapore. The job of raising the money was handed to
officials of the hapless Overseas Chinese Association, instantly branding
them as Japanese stooges and later leaving some of them as targets for
revenge killings. The fine hit the conservative business sector the hardest,
which was the one part of the community that might, plausibly, have
made some accommodation with the Japanese. In practice, such was the
resistance that less than half the overall sum was raised. To save face, the
Japanese Yokohama Specie Bank stepped in and offered to cover the
remainder. This defused the problem but did nothing to restore the
damage to relations. In the view of the Japanese police chief, Colonel
Keijiro Otani, the fine was the single most counter-productive measure
imposed by the Gunseibu (Japanese government) on the Chinese
community.
The Round-Up
After a few short weeks, the tracking down of those named on early
blacklists gave way to a more general trawl for opponents. On the whole,
and with good reason, the Japanese focused on young Chinese men and
most of their victims were aged 16-35. They were especially anxious to
clamp down on gang members, so a tattoo or a gang attribution could be
enough to result in an arrest. The most common technique was to use
spies and agents within the community to identify hotheads and agitators.
Starting in March 1942, and then in successive waves later in the year and
during 1943, the Kempetei organised a set of round-ups. Following a
pattern adopted elsewhere in Malaya, Chinese districts of central Kuala
Lumpur were sealed off by regular troops, and the inhabitants were forced
to line the kaki lima sidewalks. Kempetei soldiers then swept through the
empty properties looking for those that might be hiding. Meanwhile, the
civilian population stood silently by the road side, often for hours, while
Kempetei officers walked slowly and deliberately down the middle of the
road, stopping to look and question possible suspects. They were usually
accompanied by an informant wearing a tall, white, peaked hood, with
slits for the eyes, who would move through the silent crowd, occasionally
identifying a claimed communist or anti-Japanese militant. These hapless
individuals were then seized and thrown into a prison truck. Each trawl
could bring in over a hundred detainees who were initially sent to the
Kempetei headquarters for preliminary interrogation and thereafter to
Pudu Prison.
The Kempetei
The Kuala Lumpur Kempetei was based at the Lee Rubber Building in the
centre of the city, though they had subsidiary bases elsewhere in the city
and throughout Selangor. There was no attempt to hide its use of the
building; indeed its central and prominent position seemed almost
deliberately
designed
to
flaunt
the
Kempetei’s
importance
and
inviolability. For the first years of their occupation the Kuala Lumpur
Kempetei was led by Major Keiichi Hirati, a Manchurian war veteran. On
the whole, it had a much higher proportion of NCOS and junior officers
than a regular army unit; the sixty-strong Kuala Lumpur contingent, for
example, had 25 NCOs. It had a supporting cast of local staff, including
drivers, cleaners, cooks and even a full-time barber. The Kempetei also
used Formosans (Taiwanese) to act as interpreters and interrogators; their
violence and ‘intermediary’ position between the Japanese and the local
Chinese community earning them particular hatred and animosity.
To provide information, the Kempetei ran a network of sources and agents.
A post-war interrogation of a Kuala Lumpur-based officer produced a list
of twenty-six ‘agents’, almost all of them young Chinese men aged 18-35
living in central Kuala Lumpur (there was just one Malay - Abu Bakar
from Kampung Baru). It is not difficult to see how the Kempetei recruited
so easily within the Chinese community – an offer of release and co-
operation against the prospect of continued interrogation and torture was,
for many, an easy and understandable choice. But the quality of the
agents was suspect, and they often brought their own petty dislikes and
jealousies to the task of identifying ‘anti-Japanese elements’. Moreover,
by September 1945 acting as a Japanese spy had become a decidedly
dangerous game. About half of those named on this list were recorded as
either ‘killed by bandits’ or ‘missing, presumed dead’.
Block B Pudu Prison
After arrest and interrogation at the Kempetei headquarters, prisoners were
sent to Pudu Prison where the Kempetei controlled Block B, a self-
contained compund at the back of the prison. This was, as later war crime
trials would amply testify, a fetid, unsanitary place of horror. The
Japanese proved masters of psychological torture. Until their departure in
October 1942, nearby British POWs in the main section of the prison
would hear Chinese detainees wailing each night in despair. A favourite
trick of the Kempetei was to announce that the next morning one inmate
from each cell would be taken away for execution – and then to follow
through on the threat. The sound of terrified prisoners – each a potential
victim – strayed each night across the dividing wall.
Giving evidence in a post-war trial of prison officials, one local orderly
noted that ‘The political prisoners waiting trial in B Block also known as
hell block, were only permitted to have a bath once a month, they were
allowed no exercise or sunlight and were not admitted into the prison
hospital when ill. They were left to die in their cells.’ Another witness,
Tan Kan Kun, was a locally-employed warder and a former police
inspector who helped keep the records for Block B. He noted that ‘This
Block had never been washed out – no washing whatsoever, and the smell
in this block was stinking. Whenever I visited this Block I had to tie a
handkerchief around my nose and food provided to this block was pushed
in through a hole under the door.’ The witness would recall that the
Kempetei would ‘tie up prisoners of the prison and then beat them with a
stick… lasting two or three hours… some of these who were badly beaten
I have seen the dead bodies of these a few days later’.
The Bukit Jalil Estate Massacre
Many of those caught in the round-ups survived the hell of Pudu Prison
but were then taken away for execution. One witness claimed that ‘several
thousand males, mostly Chinese, were taken to the gaol as a result of the
Japs house-to-house search on 6th of March 1942. Some were released but
more than 1000 detained and nothing has been heard of them’. This claim
is backed by evidence uncovered in March 1946 when Captain Grieve of
the British War Crimes Unit went to Bukit Jalil Estate on the edge of Kuala
Lumpur ‘accompanied by the penghulu and ketuas [headmen] of the
neighbouring kampong’. An estate clerk, S.P. Pillai, confirmed that at
dawn one morning in mid-March 1942, ‘seven lorries filled with prisoners,
some of whom were Chinese, with Japanese guards and accompanied by a
staff car flying a yellow flag [a General’s car] drove up to the estate. The
estate workers hid inside and the prisoners - estimated at around one
hundred - were taken into the young rubber. There were no sounds or
shots. Sentries were then posted round the clerk’s bungalow and the estate
coolies prevented from approaching the area. After approximately ¾ hour
or longer the sentries were withdrawn and the lorries drove off empty
except for the Japanese guards and officers’. After the Japanese departed,
the estate workers went to the site and collected some wooden sandals and
rubber slippers which had been left around the pits. Pillai noted that ‘In
all, seven pits had been dug, one for each lorry load. After a few days the
graves were smelling badly as they had been insufficiently covered, and
labour was sent to cover them with more soil.’
There is a rare Japanese account from the other side of a mass execution,
and from the similarity of the narrative it probably refers to the same mass
execution at Bukit Jalil Estate. Private Miyake Genjiro, a soldier of the
Japanese 5th Division, was stationed in Kuala Lumpur in mid-1942 during
the time of the Sook Chin massacres. In a post-war account, and in an
attempt to purge himself of terrible memories and guilt, Miyake Genjiro
recalled that his platoon was ordered to ‘go and wake up the Overseas
Chinese in the middle of the night. All suspicious people were to be
examined. All to be thrown into prison…. After one week the order went
out: Come with your trucks to the prison’. Seventy people were loaded
into Genjiro’s truck, crammed in and standing up. They had six trucks and
in this way could pack 400 people. They drove to a rubber plantation ten
minutes away…. The officer in charge said ‘You are about to kill these
people by the order of the highest General, the Emperor’. The officer then
‘proceeded to cut off the heads of two of them’ and Genjiro and his
colleagues then disposed of the remainder, either by beheading or
stabbing them with their bayonets. His impression was that about half
were still alive when they were buried. ‘A ghastly stench of blood
pervaded the rubber trees.’
In some ways, the Japanese soldiers who had massacred these innocent
Chinese were also victims. Miyake Genjiro concluded that neither he nor
his colleagues ‘harboured any hostility’ to their victims, claiming that they
had ‘no murderous intentions, they did not want to kill’. He argued that
they had no choice or option to withdraw – had they done so, the Kempetei
would surely have punished them for failing to follow orders. But though
rare and undoubtedly sincerely meant this public contrition would have
cut little ice with the four hundred men who died that day, nor their
relatives who often enough had no idea of their fate. To this day, an
elderly Chinese lady resident in Kuala Lumpur recalls the day when as a
young child she saw her father leave home, never to return. The family
failed to discover his fate, and had to endure many years of uncertainty
before they finally conceded that he had probably been killed by the
Japanese. She, for one, still cannot forgive the Japanese for what they
did.
The Kempetei Perspective
Few Japanese troops, however, appear to have felt the guilt exhibited by
Lt. Miyake Genjiro for their participation in war crimes. Amongst the
Kempetei, in the post-war trials almost all pleaded not guilty to the charges
laid against them. The testimony of the unexceptional Sergeant
Yoshinobu Nishi offers an insight into how many Kempetei officers
rationalised their work. Yoshinobu Nishi had joined the Kempetei in May
1939 and in February 1942 was an early arrival into Kuala Lumpur,
serving there until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Nishi did not
dispute that he had engaged in torture; indeed he provided powerful
testimony against himself. Instead he sought to argue that what he and his
colleagues did was part of the war effort, and was sanctioned from above.
There was little or no sense of contrition or remorse evident in his
testimony.
Yoshinobu Nishi’s trial centred on a set of cases dating from mid-1944.
The victims - Chinese, Eurasian and Indian - were arrested and tortured by
the Kempetei following allegations that they were ‘anti-Japanese’ and were
engaged in actions such as listening to foreign radio broadcasts and
spreading malicious rumour. None of those cited appeared to have been
serious agitators or subversives and certainly none were known
communists. During his trial, Nishi explained that the Kempetei would
initially start their questioning with an attempt to gain information
through a ‘psychological approach’ and through an effort to treat [the
victim] with a ‘warm heart’. But if this failed, and in quick order, an
‘interrogation’ would follow. Yoshinobu Nishi did his slim chances of
acquittal few favours by stating that ‘as everyone knows, there were not
enough Kempeis, it is not possible to let a case drag on for an indefinite
period, as it will only obstruct war operations. [The] First action is to beat
sometimes all over the body. Then to hang him up against a wall with
hands tied up with feet bound and suspended, they would be beaten
again. Next step is to administer the water treatment. Cigarette butts to
burn the tender parts of the body. The whole process would be started
over and over again until its ultimate results are obtained’.
The practice certainly seemed to follow the theory. The court heard the
case of Lal Singh Bull, an Indian Sikh on the run from the Kempetei in
Singapore, who was tracked down by Nishi to a hiding place in Klang. The
first Lal Singh Bull’s family knew of his fate was when a van arrived
outside their property in Singapore and the son was asked to identify his
father’s bruised, beaten and broken body. In the separate case of
Savarimuthu, Nishi admitted to the court that ‘I hit this man with a stick. I
tied him up to the window and then burned his body in many places with
a lighted cigarette end…..I then took a long stick and rammed it up his
rectum. He became senseless with the treatment he was receiving from
me. I let him down on the floor and then poured water over his face and
kicked him.’ He too later died of his treatment. Sergeant Yoshinobu
Nishi’s rare admission that he had engaged in torture did him little good.
He was sentenced to death and at 7.00am on 28 August 1946 he was led
by Mr. James Pink, the British hangman, to the gallows at Pudu Prison
where he died of ‘dislocation of the neck by judicial hanging’.
The Kuala Lumpur Kempetei butai [cadre] carried out their role of
repression in a perfectly effective way but the enduring sense, after
reading dozens of post-war trial documents, is that they were simply a
drab, dull bunch of thugs. In comparison, the Kempetei in Penang were
equally brutal but their violence somehow had greater range and colour.
There, for example, one officer would drag victims behind his motorbike
for sustained periods around the prison yard, or throw his pet monkey
repeatedly at prisoners during interrogations. Another became known
colloquially as ‘Thallievety’ (Tamil for ‘head cutter’) after he decapitated a
young Indian boy caught pilfering at a wharf in Butterworth. The boy was
made to kneel at the edge of the wharf and was beheaded with one
smooth cut of the sword; his head rolling into the waters below and his
still-kneeling but headless torso eased in afterwards. From being caught
for pilferage to decapitation took little more than two minutes. This same
officer drove around George Town in an open-top British sports car, his
pony-tail flowing behind him; in the evening he would play Bach on his
violin, the music wafting across the still, tropical air of the port
settlement. In a strange psychotic way, the Penang Kempetei had colour
but a reading of the methods of the Kuala Lumpur Kempetei was simply
grey and depressing – beatings, starvation and thuggishness.
Kempetei Training
The Kuala Lumpur army garrison hosted a regional Kempetei training
centre, under the command of Lt. Col. Tadanori Nakayamu and
comprising 22 training officers. Individual Kempeis, as the officers and
men were known, joined courses spanning from three months to one year
and from here were posted throughout South East Asia. The curriculum
covered core subjects such as investigations into political, black-market
and criminal issues, map reading, ‘peace maintenance’, but also extended
to fencing, judo and ‘spiritual training’. In post-war interrogations,
Nakayamu denied that the school taught torture methods, and claimed
that such activity was deeply frowned upon. This line was also advanced
by General Masanori Kojima, who was the commander of the Kempetei in
Malaya. He asserted under interrogation that ‘each kempei understands
that employment of torture would constitute an abuse of authority’. But
torture and abuse was used on such a scale by the Kempetei as to be
nothing less than systemic.
Lai Teck and a Counter-Intelligence Triumph
The Kempetei’s work, however, was not all terror. They were to exhibit
great deftness of touch in their handling of a significant agent penetration
of the Communist Party. In March 1942, shortly after the Japanese arrived
in Singapore, the Secretary-General of the MCP, Lai Teck, was arrested by
the Kempetei and brought in for questioning. Given his earlier track record
as a spy for the British there should be no surprise that in order to save his
skin (and he would have surely been executed had he not collaborated) he
offered to work for the Kempetei. Like all communist organisations, the
MCP prided itself on its discipline and its strict hierarchy. The Secretary-
General (who occupied a similar status to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and
Mao Tse Tung in China) could both provide the Japanese with intelligence
of huge value and influence party decisions in a way that favoured the
Japanese. Thus controversially, but no doubt under Japanese pressure, in
mid-1942 Lai Teck ordered the various MCP cadres that, rather than
initiating attacks on the Japanese, they should instead focus on a ‘broad
based restructuring on the industrial front’. This was diversionary activity
and most local committees ignored the instruction. But with Lai Teck as
Secretary-General, at least in the early years, the Japanese had a
compliant asset willing to report to them and to do their bidding.
Early evidence of Lai Teck’s treachery came in April 1942, when the
Secretary of the Selangor State Committee, Xue Feng, was picked up by
the Kempetei, almost certainly having been betrayed by Lai Teck, and then
died in their hands after extensive torture. Lai Teck’s most spectacular act
of betrayal, however, came in September 1942, when over forty senior
party leaders were summoned to a top-level meeting at a secret location in
the village of Sungei Dua near Batu Caves on the edge of Kuala Lumpur.
According to Chin Peng, who later became the Secretary-General of the
MCP, the Selangor cadre provided a ten-man protection unit for the
meeting and four women to cook. Makeshift accommodation in the form
a traditional atap (grass roof) hut was prepared in an area of light jungle
and grassland. The main meeting was due to start on 1 September but
most delegates (though not the Secretary-General) were instructed to
arrive a day early to set the agenda.
Knowing in advance through Lai Teck, the Kempetei, disguised as regular
soldiers, had moved into the area and at midnight on 31 August
surrounded the camp and attacked. In the ensuing fire-fight, all ten
members of the Selangor security detachment were killed, as were over
half the delegates. A number of Japanese soldiers, including a senior
Kempetei officer, died in the fire-fight. Despite losses it was a huge victory
for the Kempetei and a major set-back for the Malayan communists, who
lost many good men and whose confidence was knocked; thereafter they
were paranoid about agents and spies in their midst. Either through luck
or skill, the blame for the security lapse was placed on the Negri Sembilan
delegate, who had been arrested en-route to the meeting and was
presumed to have revealed its details. This fortunate twist deflected
attention from Lai Teck.
Thereafter the Selangor communists had a mixed war. In April 1943, a
senior party figure, Siao Peng, was arrested while on a train from Kuala
Lumpur to Singapore. He was taken to the Kempetei headquarters in Kuala
Lumpur and immediately agreed to cooperate. Sia Peng identified the
location of the Selangor State committee headquarters, which was then
based in an atap hut on edge of the city. The Kempetei raided but the base
was surrounded by lalang (long, sharp grass that grows prolifically in open
and de-forested areas) and the three cadre members present managed to
escape. As a consequence of this raid, the Selangor MCP moved to a new
headquarters, described by Chin Peng as ‘the most secure headquarters we
were ever able to establish in occupied Malaya’. It was a small staff house
at the leper colony at Sungei Buloh. The MCP had previously infiltrated
their people as medical staff into the colony and ‘For the remaining period
of the Japanese occupation period, the Selangor state committee operated
uninterrupted from within a colony of a few hundred lepers. All rank-and-
file Japanese feared going near the settlement.’
The Kempetei may have missed a trick through the MCP’s clever use of the
leper colony to hide its Selangor headquarters but overall its system of
terror was not casual or without a hard-nosed rationale; it had first been
developed and refined during the occupation of Manchuria. With military
forces stretched and with Kuala Lumpur a largely Chinese – and therefore
inherently hostile – environment, they clearly calculated that a regime of
fear and disproportionate violence would result in a pliant and cowed
populace. And in many ways, though decreasingly so as Japan’s strategic
position worsened from late 1943, they achieved their aim. There is no
evidence, from the day they entered Kuala Lumpur until the time the
British arrived, that Japanese troops were attacked or seriously threatened
in the urban areas of Kuala Lumpur or in the immediately surrounding
rural areas of Selangor. Repression, though reprehensible, proved a
powerful and effective weapon of war and domination.
Chapter Nine
Pudu Prison
Prisoners of War
Though the British withdrew from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor without a
sustained fight, the collapse of the 11th Indian Division at Slim River and
the rearguard action by Indian Army units in and around Kuala Lumpur
resulted in large numbers of Indian troops falling into Japanese hands.
The Japanese attitude towards these dispirited and demoralised men was
largely passive. They posed little threat and having disarmed them, most
were left to their own devices. In Kuala Lumpur, some were initially
housed in the central police barracks and on 22 January were moved to
Pudu Prison. But this was only a temporary solution and by the end of the
month the prison was cleared for European POWs. A British intelligence
source reported that in May 1942 Indian POWs in Kuala Lumpur were
housed in a set of former British barracks and some were in sequestered
Chinese schools. He noted that there was ‘no barbed wire around camps
and prisoners allowed to wander freely around town. Except when taken
out on fatigues the Japanese did not interfere directly with the prisoners
and no guards were mounted on the camps’. During the war, none of these
Indian Army POW camps was visited by the International Red Cross but
the regime imposed remained relaxed and non-coercive. A 1945 British
assessment estimated that there were about 4,000 Indian POWs in camps
in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, though this proved to be an exaggeration.
When the British returned, numbers proved to be about half of that. The
benign treatment of the Indian POWs certainly helped the Japanese in
their efforts to draw many of them into the anti-British Indian National
Army; a lesson in motivation that they would have been wise to adopt in
their handling of the local communities.
The treatment meted out to the British and Australian POWs proved far
harsher. From late January 1942, Pudu Prison became a camp for British
and Australian troops and some European civilian detainees. Initially the
arriving POWs were crammed into the women’s wing. From April, the
main wings of the prison were made available and troops were housed on
a regimental basis. Thus soldiers from the Norfolk, Cambridge, Leicester
and East Surrey Regiments, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and
Australian ‘diggers’ each had their own wings, while officers (many of
whom were from Indian Army regiments) and civilian internees were in
separate accommodation. At the back of the prison, in its own compound,
was Block B – used by the Kempetei. In mid-February, there were 550
POWs in Pudu and by April this number had grown to 740 as stragglers
emerged from their jungle hide-outs, often semi-starved and many
suffering from wounds and illness. In mid-June the last soldiers to emerge
from the jungle were two Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Privates
James MacFarland and Thomas Hunter, who after five months surviving
as best they could gave themselves up at a police station at Salak, south of
Kuala Lumpur.
In Pudu, the Japanese maintained a regime of malign neglect. The
prisoners were rarely physically mistreated and security was not onerous,
but the sanitary and medical conditions were atrocious. In April, the
original women’s wing was turned into a hospital ward. By June it housed
110 prisoners of whom 48 would die. In early July, conditions in the
prison only got worse when 323 European POWs and internees were
transferred from Taiping Prison. By October, when the British and
Australian troops finally left, 94 prisoners had died, mostly of disease; the
main killers were dysentery and pellagra. Even for those who survived, the
majority were run down and suffering from scabies, ringworm and septic
sores.
The senior ranking prisoner was Brigadier Bernard Challen, Commander of
the 6/15th Brigade of the 11th Indian Division, who was captured on 29
January 1942 following fighting near Benut in Johor. He was lucky
enough to be given his own room in the gaol superintendent’s office.
Despite his relatively privileged existence, Challen described the food as
‘poor’ and the sanitation as ‘appalling’ though he noted that the prisoners
were able to earn a little money through work and could buy ‘the
occasional piece of beef, pork and duck eggs’ to supplement their regular
fare. A major problem were the flies and mosquitoes, particularly as there
were no nets or ceiling fans. Sleeping in the hot fetid conditions of the
gaol was difficult and mosquito-born diseases spread quickly. Challen
noted that visiting Japanese officers were ‘very shy and never spoke to us’
save ‘one youngster who came twice and regaled us with Japanese
cigarettes’. He noted that ‘Lots of Chinese were brought into the prison
from time to time. Jap Gestapo always on to them. Little fellow with a
cat-o-nine-tails and pregnant Chinese woman as interpreter. Much flogging
and beating went on and occasionally a dead body was carried out.’ But
this was someone else’s problem and Challen reflected that ‘on the whole
Kuala Lumpur was not too bad. We were left much to ourselves. A good
library was formed from looted books brought in by working parties. We
read a lot and played chess and every night at 8.30pm I played bridge’.
By March, and with much secrecy, a radio-set ‘donated’ by a Chinese man
was smuggled into the prison in a box of duck eggs. In the absence of
regular and reliable news, Challen noted that wild rumours would spread
quickly throughout the prison, which his secret source of outside
intelligence could only occasionally be used to counter and dispel.
In mid-June, Challen and another senior officer were allowed out of the
prison under escort to buy some food and other basic items for the POWs.
He found the market ‘full and busy’ but expensive. There were very few
cars on the streets and he noted that the Federal Dispensary and Little’s
Department Store had both been burned to the ground. The population of
Kuala Lumpur appeared ‘reticent and frightened looking’ and Challen saw
a number ‘of what we thought were renegade sepoys [Indian Army troops]
in mufti (civilian dress)’. Challen, who before the war had been stationed
in Kuala Lumpur, revisited his old house in Ampang which he found
dilapidated and ransacked. His next door neighbour, an elderly Eurasian,
came to greet him with ‘tears in his eyes’. On his way back to Pudu
Prison, Challen dropped into the Selangor Golf Club. A few caddies and
the caddie-master were hanging around rather listlessly. Two of the ‘nines’
were maintained and playable though ‘3&4 courses’ were over-grown and
the ‘greens gone’. Inside the old club house, a symbol if ever there was of
the colonial British, the bar was ‘destroyed’. It must have been a distinctly
strange outing, but Challen described himself as ‘quite exhilarated by fresh
air and scenes and looking into middle distance’.
Another account of Pudu as a POW camp is offered by Geoffrey Scott
Mowat, who was a member of the Straits Settlements Colonial Service and
a Volunteer. Mowat entered Pudu in late March 1942. Initially at least
there was the opportunity for work outside the prison, with gangs being
sent to clean properties, move ammunition and work as labourers. Some
of this was back-breaking activity but other tasks proved less onerous and,
in the early months at least, Mowat noted that it was often possible to
scavenge food to supplement the prison rations. Books were also
smuggled in and Mowat noted that work at the mansion of the Chinese
towkay Loke Wan To meant they never wanted for reading material, as he
had a large library an ‘excellent taste in literature’.
According to Mowat, relations with the Japanese gaolers varied; some
proved predictably brutal but others exhibited much more human
qualities. In one area, the Japanese could not be faulted – religious
services were permitted and facilitated. A small room by the main gate
was turned into a chapel - ‘The plain whitewashed walls were decorated
with the badges of the various units of the camp, beautifully executed in
black and white…. There was a simple altar and lectern, both made in the
gaol workshops.’ Entertainments also flourished and variety shows proved
popular fare, including with the Japanese. In September 1942, a group of
prisoners were drafted in as extras for a Japanese propaganda film,
playing the part of the defeated British army. At a disused tin-working at
Ampang, the Japanese reconstructed a Japanese assault on an entrenched
British position, which the ‘glorious soldiers of Nippon’ finally overcame
in heroic fashion. Unfortunately for one of them, the climax of the film
culminated in a mighty explosion, accidentally killing one of the attacking
Japanese force and a Malayan ‘coolie’. Mowat’s account also notes the
disease and sickness that stalked the prison, and the tragedy that befell the
escapees, though his abiding memory was of the ‘wonderful comradeship
which can flourish in adversity’. He later noted that ‘Surprising as it might
seem, I have, on the whole, very happy memories of my first year in
prison’.
Break Out
The relaxed security conditions in the prison inspired a group of prisoners
to escape. The senior serving officer was Captain D.R. Nugent of the
Indian Army’s 18th Royal Garhwal Rifles and he was accompanied in the
group by two British soldiers, an Australian sergeant, a Dutch pilot, and
three members of the FMSVF. The key instigators appear to have been the
three buccaneering members of the Volunteers and members of Spencer
Chapman’s 101 STS: Lieutenants Vanrenen, Harvey and Graham. They
clearly believed that knowledge of local languages and conditions outside
the prison would help, but this proved to be a tragic miscalculation.
There was much scepticism amongst the other detainees. L.S. Jones, one of
the civilians transferred from Taiping Prison, tried to dissuade them but
was ignored. Even one of their own from the FMSVF, Lt. Wilson (of the
Selangor Drainage and Irrigation Department and 101 STS) counselled
against, but his advice was also rejected.
On 13 August, after morning roll-call and having obtained a duplicate key,
the eight men escaped through a side door of the prison. The other
prisoners managed to mask their absence for a day by covering up for
them at the next morning roll-call but they did not get far. Europeans
were no longer a common sight and moving quietly and unobserved
proved an impossible task. In the following days all but one were picked
up in and around Kuala Lumpur and returned to Pudu Prison. They were
kept as a group in an isolation cell and regularly taken to the Kempetei
headquarters for interrogation and torture; according to one account two
of them were held in a coffin-like chamber for days on end. The only
exception was Captain Nugent who escaped from Kuala Lumpur but was
apprehended near Betong in Perak. He was shot in the leg during his
capture and then spent time in a Japanese hospital. According to one
source, Nugent was held there until his leg healed after which he was led
away and beheaded. His headstone at the Taiping Commonwealth War
Graves cemetery records that he died on 11 September 1942. L.S. Jones
later noted that though ‘I took a great deal of exception to his [Nugent]
questioning of my lack of courage and left him in no doubt as to what I
thought of that. I took no joy out of being proved correct.’
The remaining escapees were held at Pudu Prison until 1 September. That
day the prison commander, Captain Mizarki, ordered that no one should
approach the administration office. Just before sunset the escapees were
taken out of the main gates and loaded into the back of a military truck.
Ominously for them, they were told to leave their mess tins behind. The
truck drew away, followed by a second containing the prison’s Japanese
interpreter, Fujibayashi, and a detachment of troops. The escapees were
never seen again and it was commonly believed that they were taken to
the European cemetery at Cheras Road, shot and buried there; though
another source, citing an authoritative POW account, states that they were
taken to the old Protestant cemetery near Edinburgh circus (near the
Chinese Assembly Hall), lined up and executed. After the escape the
Japanese demanded that the remaining British officers sign a ‘no escape
certificate’. Initially they refused and as a consequence were incarcerated
‘in vermin infested cells with no sanitary or ablution arrangements,
inadequate food’. Eventually, after suffering ten days of hell, the officers
agreed to sign the certificate but only after quietly rationalising that this
was not a binding agreement, as the Japanese had compelled them to sign
under duress.
From July 1942 the Japanese began to transfer European internees and
POWs out of Pudu. Most were sent to Changi in Singapore, though on 14
October a final group of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was sent
directly to Thailand to work on the ‘death railway’. With this, Pudu was
cleared of POWs and European civilian internees. The Commonwealth War
Graves cemetery at Cheras Road in Kuala Lumpur carries the graves of
British and Australian forces who died in central Malaya and Kuala
Lumpur. Of the 69 headstones from this period, just twelve are from the
period of active fighting. The remaining 57 graves date from beyond mid-
February 1942 and reflect either the delayed consequence of wartime
wounds, or disease and maltreatment as POWs. The last burial from this
period is Pte. Robert McGhee of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
who died on 13 October 1942. He must have been one of the last POWs
held at Pudu before the move to Thailand.
A Civilian Prison
From October 1942 until the British returned in September 1945, Pudu
Prison was used solely for civilian prisoners. In October 1943, following a
crack-down in Singapore (known as the Double Tenth – it followed a
commando raid on the harbour which the Japanese believed had been
assisted by spies), the Japanese started to round up possible ‘agents’ and
pro-British sympathisers elsewhere in Malaya. In October 1943, for
example, nine members of the Talalla family - a prominent Kuala Lumpur
family of Singhalese extraction - were rounded up and placed in solitary
confinement, where they remained for the rest of the war. Their crime
was to have been a family known to be particularly pro-British: two of the
older sons were then flying with the RAF in Britain. In Pudu, the father
was tortured though he and the rest of the family survived the war. One
son, Richard Talalla, later became a prominent High Court Judge and
thereby enjoyed the rare experience of sentencing the guilty to the same
prison where he had spent his boyhood years.
As conditions deteriorated in Malaya, and lawlessness increased, the
Japanese proved predictably robust in their sentencing policy. Soon the
main wings of Pudu Prison were full to overflowing with civilian
prisoners. Towards the end of the war, prison numbers escalated hugely,
from 876 in April 1944 to 1,165 by October. Mortality rates were also
staggeringly high. 74 prisoners died in February 1944, 63 in March, and
74 in April. In January, 1944 there were 108 ‘political prisoners’ held in
Pudu, 31 of whom would be dead by April. Death was largely down to
communicable diseases - TB, beri-beri, diarrhoea – made worse by
starvation. In April 1944, the Food Control Department announced that
the prisoner allowance was to be reduced from two to one gangtang per
prisoner, per week. This was challenged by the prison authorities and
eventually a compromise was reached at one and half gangtang. But by
1945 the Food Control Department was no longer delivering anything like
its agreed quota and ‘the prison budget was so low that the prison could
not afford to buy anything to take the place of rice’. Food Control
Department figures for September 1944 were cited to show that the prison
only received 37 per cent of the monthly allowance of rice. In the main
blocks of Pudu Prison, starvation and disease rather than torture and
execution killed about half the prisoners incarcerated by the Japanese.
Conditions in the prison revealed such as ‘gross degree of callousness’ that
after the war a set of senior prison officers were charged in the Kuala
Lumpur Small War Crimes Trials that ‘between 1 October 1944 and 15
August 1945 while holding their posts they were... responsible not only
for their own acts of omission but also the general conditions in Pudu
gaol’. The five arraigned officials pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charges
levelled against them and sought to exonerate themselves by showing how
difficult conditions had become in the last years of the war, and in
particular how scarce was food and medicine. From February 1944 until
the surrender in August 1945, the Prison Governor was Tobita Shigeo. His
defence cited contemporaneous prison records in support of their man,
though they hardly reflect well on him or the conditions inside the prison.
The ‘Monthly Hospital Progress Report’ for November 1944 noted ‘Health
conditions in the Maimuaya (hospital) were fairly satisfactory [emphasis
added]... There were 43 deaths compared with 38 for the previous
month.’ Given that the average number of inmates at this time was
around one thousand, this meant that about five per cent of prisoners were
dying each month. Put another way, a prisoner incarcerated in Pudu
Prison at this stage of the war with a sentence of over a year stood a less
than even chance of surviving. This was deemed ‘fairly satisfactory’.
Shigeo only received a three-year sentence, probably because a local
warden testified that he had tried to get more food for the prisoners, and
even managed to get them a regular supply of soap.
Two officials, Nakamura Tsurumatsu and Abe Masahiro, however, were to
hang, appropriately enough from the Pudu Prison gallows. Both were
found to have personally indulged in acts of violence leading to the deaths
of prisoners. One local warder, for example, noted that Tsurumatsu was
‘very fond of beating prisoners….[he] caught a Chinese prisoner idling in
the rope making yard. The man was weak and could hardly stand and he
was beaten by the accused with the sheath sword. He was left lying in the
yard till closing time of the prisoners. This prisoner did not come out of
his cell the next morning….and died within ten days to a fortnight of
that’. The absolute number of deaths linked to Pudu Prison during the
war years will never be known, but when European POWs, Kempetei
victims and civilian prisoners are all accounted for, the prison must have
been centrally involved in the deaths of many hundreds, if not thousands,
of innocent victims.
Chapter Ten
Comfort Houses and the Case of Doris Van der Straaten
As with all garrison towns, the Japanese brought with them to Kuala
Lumpur the ‘comfort house’ system of military brothels. These were
intended to meet the sexual needs of the troops and were an integral
component of the Japanese military machine. It was hoped that by
offering such facilities that its soldiers would be less likely to rape, and
would also keep away from local brothels with the attendant risk of
venereal disease. The comfort house system was strictly regulated and run
on ‘military’ lines. There were different facilities for officers and men, and
different tariffs and rules. On the whole, the officers paid more but were
allowed a longer stay and were able, if they wished and upon extra
payment, to stay the night. The troops, however, were generally restricted
to daytime visits. The administration issued condoms and instituted
health checks on the girls. In July 1943, 10,000 condoms were issued to
comfort houses in Selangor, though this paled in comparison with the
30,000 condoms issued that month to comfort houses in Penang.
Condoms, however, did not prevent a major increase in venereal disease,
nor pregnancy amongst many of the girls.
As early as March 1942, the ‘Southern Army’ had requested the help of its
counterpart army in Taiwan to recruit and dispatch women to Malaya and
Borneo. Advertisements appeared in Taiwan’s Chinese language
newspaper Shonan Nippo seeking ‘hostesses’ from all ethnic groups from
the age of seventeen to twenty-eight to work in Malaya, and promising
payment of $150 per month. A classified advertisement in the Malay Mail
of November 1942, offering unspecified employment opportunities for
Malayan girls in Thailand, may have been a similar ruse, this time in
support of the Japanese army in Thailand and Burma. Indian conscript
workers on the Thai-Burma railway later recalled meeting girls from
Malaya working in comfort houses deep in the jungles of Burma.
Kuala Lumpur, being a major garrison town, soon hosted a large number
of comfort houses and while some Korean and Taiwanese women were
either lured or coerced to work there, the vast majority of the girls were
local. One prominent comfort house was a large villa in Jalan Ampang,
which was used as a ‘training’ centre and a place to ‘break in’ new girls. In
the centre of the city a single-storey brick bungalow behind the Chinese
Assembly Hall and the Tai Sun Hotel opposite Pudu Prison were both used
as comfort houses though the largest facility was a set of buildings known
as Ngan Ngan off Circular Road. According to one source, by August 1942
sixteen houses had been established in Kuala Lumpur employing about
150 women. Generally the girls came from poor backgrounds but the
Japanese recruited or press-ganged selectively. There was little or no
compunction in seizing Chinese girls but because of the political
sensitivities, there was a greater wariness in recruiting Malay and Indian
girls. The majority of girls in Kuala Lumpur, approximately 120, were
Chinese. A former comfort house girl noted that in her home ‘we had
eight Chinese, three Malays who were from Sumatra, two Koreans and one
Thai. I never once saw any Malays from Malaya, nor were there any
Indian comfort girls’. In Kuala Lumpur, as in the rest of Malaya but unlike
in the Dutch East Indies, no European women were pressed into service
for the Japanese comfort house system, though the case of Doris van der
Straaten – described later – explores some of the ambiguities of coerced
sexual relationships with senior officials.
A local Chinese girl, who later took the working name of ‘Momoko’,
remembered for the rest of her life the day – 22 March 1942 – when two
truck loads of Japanese soldiers arrived at her village in Serdang on the
outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. She was barely sixteen at the time, and was
busy cooking in the kitchen. She was caught unawares, unable to flee to
safety in the nearby rubber plantation as Japanese troops, reportedly
helped by a local Chinese man, entered the house and seized her brother.
She was then raped and in the struggle was kicked in the head by one of
the soldiers. Worse still, her mother was raped and then murdered in
front of her. Along with several other girls from the village, she was then
loaded into one of the military trucks and driven to Kuala Lumpur where
she was first kept at the villa in Jalan Ampang. As part of the initiation
and breaking-in process, she was held in a room and repeatedly raped for
her first month of confinement and allowed no contact with the other girls
from her village. Following this she was taken to the Tai Sun Hotel in
Jalan Pudu where she was set to work. On a typical day she was expected
to service between ten and twenty soldiers and failure to comply was met
with beatings.
Later, ‘Momoko’ was transferred to the larger complex at Ngan Ngan
where she continued to work until the Japanese capitulation in August
1945. She later recalled the casual beatings and punching that
accompanied the visits of many of her customers. Throughout this ordeal
she had no knowledge of her brother, who had been seized and taken
away on the same day as her abduction. In an act of some - albeit twisted
- clemency, having heard that the Japanese had executed many Chinese
youths and left their heads on poles at crossroads across Kuala Lumpur,
‘Momoko’ was allowed out with an escort to see if her brother had met
this fate – though her testimony fails to record if she ever found him. This
brothel was run by a Chinese madam, Choi Chau, and her husband Ah
Yong. When news of the Japanese surrender came, the comfort women
reportedly seized this pair and drowned them.
Following the Japanese surrender all the girls were told to flee,
presumably fearful that they would be seen as collaborators. ‘Momoko’
initially returned to her village at Serdang, but was spat upon and
chastised by her former neighbours for collaborating with the Japanese.
With the help of an uncle she fled to Seremban and anonymity. Others
were not so fortunate and one eye-witness account noted that after the
MPAJA entered Kuala Lumpur following the Japanese surrender ‘comfort
women for the Japanese had their heads shaved, then stripped and beaten.
Many were just shot or bludgeoned’. This was a time of revenge, when
even innocent victims of Japanese brutality were singled out for further
retribution.
For those comfort women that survived, this was not the end of their
trauma. After the war, ‘Momoko’ kept her wartime employment a dark
secret until she found some release in the late 1990s when she recounted
her story to a sympathetic researcher. By this time she was in her 70s and
had held her wartime trauma a secret for over half a century. The
testimony of these enslaved women, many of whom were little more than
girls at the time, has been little heard. The social stigma of their lives as
prostitutes meant that after the war the vast majority preferred to hide
and veil their involvement – though often at huge personal psychological
cost. Their understandable reluctance to come forward, however, was
shaken in the late 1990s when groups of former comfort women in other
parts of Asia chose to go public and demand compensation from the
Japanese authorities. In Malaysia, the Chinese political party, the MCA,
reportedly received many hundreds of letters following an appeal for
testimonies but the matter was quietly suppressed by the authorities.
Thus the true extent and witness of these many hundreds of women will
now never be properly heard.
Doris van der Straaten - A Coerced Mistress
It has generally been held that in Malaya, unlike in the Dutch East Indies,
European women were not used as the sexual slaves of Japanese officers.
The tragic case of Doris van der Straaten, however, questions this
assumption while raising the difficulty of determining the fine line
between coercion and complicity. In the middle of 1942, Doris became
the concubine of Colonel Koda, the commander of the Kuala Lumpur
garrison. After the war, and despite the fact that she was eventually
murdered by the Kempetei, as a consequence of having been his ‘mistress’
she was viewed by family and friends with shame; someone who brought
a slur to the family’s reputation. But once her story is fully explored, far
from suggesting that she was an immoral sexual opportunist, she emerges
as someone who suffered incredible vicissitude and hardship, including
believing – incorrectly as it happens – that her husband had been
butchered by the Japanese at the outset of the Malaya campaign. If she
did become Colonel Koda’s mistress, it was under far from natural
circumstances. Rather, the relationship smacked of manipulation and the
exploitation of an extraordinarily vulnerable individual. In contrast to the
shame in which she was later held by her family, in her final and very
one-sided confrontation with the Kempetei, Doris van der Straaten revealed
incredible, if ultimately tragic, bravery and defiance against the odds.
Doris van der Straaten was an Australian national. She was born ‘Doris’
Patricia Dulcima but on marriage became Doris Heath and had two
daughters. It is not clear if she was a widow or divorcee, but in Australia
she met and married Philip van der Straaten, a mining engineer and
member of the prominent Ceylonese Eurasian Burgher clan. Marriage
across the ‘racial divide’ was not common and must have required
particular commitment and social bravery. Be that as it may, at the outset
of the war Doris had accompanied Philip to the Pinyok tin mine located
near Yala in southern Thailand, where he worked as a shift engineer. The
mine was in the direct line of the first wave of Japanese assault troops as
they pushed inland from the nearby landing beaches. Given that this was
in Thailand, the European managers and engineers were amongst the first
‘enemy civilians’ the Japanese encountered. On 10 December 1941, just
two days after the invasion, Japanese soldiers and Thai police rounded up
the twenty-seven European mine employees and wives and detained them
in a bungalow at Kampong Toh, close to the mine site. After one day, six
European ‘neutrals’ were removed to a second bungalow but were
replaced by eight captured Indian Army soldiers, Hindus from the Dogra
Regiment that had been fighting hard to resist the Japanese on the
beachheads.
During the night of 13 December, the Japanese attacked the defenceless
prisoners. Two hand-grenades were thrown into the living room and a
machine-gun was fired from beneath the raised wooden floor of the
bungalow into the living room above. They then burst in, firing and
bayoneting indiscriminately. Bodies fell everywhere. L.S. Jones, a New
Zealand mine engineer, survived the assault and later recorded that ‘after
finishing the Japanese withdrew, piled into a lorry and drove towards the
border at Bentong’. Jones noted that ‘strangely enough it appears that
about only half the people in the room were killed outright’. But the rest
scattered. Philip van der Straaten ‘went off by himself’ and was later,
erroneously, reported by local villagers as having died while ‘Mrs van der
Straaten played dead and would not answer’. Jones recalled that ‘after the
bayoneting and when the Japs had left… Mrs van der Straaten teamed up
with another survivor, the Assistant Mine Manager, Mr. Peters’. Together
they approached local Malay villagers who took them in and tended to
them.
Following the trauma of the ‘Kampung Toh massacre’, Doris van der
Straaten and Peters walked ‘hundreds of miles through the jungle without
shoes...’ and then ‘remained in the upper Perak jungles for a total of five
and a half months living most of the time with a Chinese squatter who
helped them in every way...’. But the conditions were brutal and suffering
from ‘the big three’ - beriberi, dysentery and fever - they were eventually
forced to give themselves up. Doris was initially incarcerated in Taiping
Gaol. Other escapees from the Kampong massacre also found themselves
there. These included L.S. Jones, who advised her - on the basis of what he
had been told by villagers - that her husband Philip had died in the
massacre. This must have been an extraordinary blow after all her
suffering and sickness. Doris van der Straaten was the only female
prisoner in Taiping Prison and early on she was offered the opportunity to
move into a nearby Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. But she preferred to
stay in the prison. She was receiving adequate medical treatment and had
been able to take solace and support from a group of Catholic La Salle
Brother missionaries who had been detained alongside other European
civilians at Taiping Prison.
Doris eventually came to the predatory attentions of a senior Japanese
military officer, Colonel Koda, who arranged for her to be transferred to
the nearby Taiping hospital. It was at this point that she became detached
from the other internees and prisoners. In July 1942, they were sent to
Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur. Doris, however, was not part of this group.
At some stage in late 1942, Colonel Koda moved to Kuala Lumpur where
he had become commander of the ‘Western Garrison’ and an officer of
considerable authority and power. He then arranged for Doris van der
Straaten to be delivered to his villa off Circular Road in Kuala Lumpur,
where she lodged and became his mistress. To cover his back, Koda
claimed publicly that she was Italian, and thereby from an Axis power.
In Kuala Lumpur, views on Koda varied. Amongst his responsibilities
were the POWs housed at Pudu Prison. One senior prisoner, Major Oliver
North, viewed him in a generally benign way and noted that after the
failed escape attempt, Koda had reassured the remaining prisoners that
they need ‘have no fears of general reprisals’ though noting the need ‘to
impress upon our troops that other escapes would have serious
repercussions’. But another POW, Kenyon Archer of the FMSVF Armoured
Car Unit, was told by a Japanese interpreter that Koda was a corrupt and
dissolute individual and was held in contempt by his senior officers
because he was embezzling money allocated for the prisoners’ rations.
This was certainly the view that prevailed because eventually reports of
Koda’s criminal behaviour came to the attention of the Kempetei. During
their investigation, his ‘mistress’, Doris van der Straaten, came into their
focus. Though publicly described as Italian there were clear suspicions
that she was not, and once it was established that she was in fact an
Australian the Kempetei rationalised that she was most likely a ‘British
spy’. In August 1943, she was arrested and taken to the Kempetei
headquarters at the Lee Rubber Building where she was handed to Lt.
Shuzi Murakami for interrogation. The sequence of events that follow it
remain controversial, but what is certain is that after a few hours in
Murakami’s hands, Doris van der Straaten’s body lay broken on the
ground, having fallen over one hundred feet from an upstairs window.
On 1 July 1946, Lt. Shuzi Murakami stood in the dock of Kuala Lumpur’s
central court, where he was charged with Doris van der Straaten’s
murder. His case was one of the first to be heard as part of the Kuala
Lumpur Small War Crimes Trials. The Court President, Lt. Colonel Culley,
pushed the proceedings through with military vigour – the case took just
the one day for both defence and prosecution to make their case and for
judgement to be reached. The chief prosecution witness was a Kempetei
interpreter, Sam Ah Ngaw, who had been present throughout van der
Straaten’s ‘interrogation’. He thereby offered eyewitness testimony. Under
cross examination Sam Ah Ngaw said that initially Murakami had ‘caught
hold of her hair and shook her for about 15 minutes. Later he threw her
on the ground and stamped on her body’. Following this she was stripped
and ‘when Mrs Van der Straaten refused to answer her questions’
Murakami ‘slapped and kicked her’. This appalling treatment proved all
too much for the feisty van der Straaten who, according to Sam Ah Ngaw,
shouted ‘tyrant, you can’t do this to me’ and slapped Murakami,
reportedly sending him into a frenzy. He then ‘grabbed her by her dress
and threw her out the window’. Sam Ah Ngaw concluded his testimony by
claiming that Murakami then coerced him into covering up the murder as
‘suicide’.
In response to this devastating testimony from an eyewitness, Murakami’s
defence counsel, in a ‘stirring address’, argued that Sam Ah Ngaw had
made up the story in order to ‘save face and regain the confidence of the
outside public’. The defence counsel also noted that at the time of van der
Straaten’s interrogation, Colonel Koda had yet to be arrested and, given
his position as Commander of the Western Garrison, it would have been
more likely that a junior Kempetei officer would treat Doris ‘leniently and
kindly.’ Finally, the defence counsel advanced the argument that Doris van
der Straaten, in committing suicide, was simply trying to protect her lover,
Colonel Koda. He argued that ‘Mrs van der Straaten had become
separated from her husband, she was alone and friendless. She had no
means of support and Colonel Koda had taken her in and given her what
she wanted in life. He was therefore everything to her – he was like an
oasis in the desert to whom she could look for her livelihood’. Following
this ambitious line of argument, the defence counsel argued that ‘Suicide
was the plan of Mrs Straaten to save Colonel Koda. Murakami might have
been morally responsible for her death but not legally and therefore he
should be acquitted’.
Following these depositions, the Court President, Lt. Colonel Culley,
retired for forty minutes to review the arguments, which largely rested on
the credibility of the prosecution’s eye-witness, Sam Ah Ngah and a
willingness to accept the ‘suicide to protect a lover’ argument. The next
day at 9.00am, in the ‘hushed silence of a crowded court’, Lt. Culley called
the proceedings to order and pronounced Murakami ‘not guilty’ of the two
charges levelled against him. The Straits Times described the ‘surprise and
excitement’ with which the judgement was met, and this outcome must
have been highly unexpected. Murakami, however, showed ‘not the
slightest trace of emotion’ but rather ‘bowed stiffly to both the officers of
the Court and the European officer assisting his Japanese counsel’.
It is difficult to know how, or why, Lt. Colonel Culley reached the decision
he did. Sympathy was hardly high with the Kempetei, and this trial was
one of the earliest to be heard in Kuala Lumpur. The prosecution would
surely have thought that with an eye witness account of her murder, this
was ‘one in the bag’. Perhaps Sam Ah Ngah cut an unconvincing figure
and the defence raised enough doubts to save Murakami. Or perhaps Lt.
Colonel Culley was unwittingly swayed by the thought of van der Straaten
as a ‘purple woman’, or perhaps even a femme fatale out to protect her
lover. Whatever calculations went into his judgement, it was a highly
unexpected and controversial outcome. Lt. Murakami was released a free
man to join the other Japanese prisoners then being repatriated en-masse
to Japan.
There is no way to assess whether Doris van der Straaten was a willing or
forced mistress of Colonel Koda. But the bare bones of her story – a
traumatically ‘widowed’ prisoner, straight from surviving a terrible
massacre, forced by starvation to forage in the jungle, then imprisoned
and suffering from dysentery is offered medical care by a powerful
Japanese officer who arranged for her to be delivered to his house in
Kuala Lumpur – smacks entirely of coercion and manipulation.
Nevertheless, her story left a lasting legacy of shame. A family account
noted that ‘Rumours were rife about her alleged scandalous behaviour…
was she the willing mistress of a high-ranking Jap officer or did she
assume that role to ensure her survival?... The spectre of Aunt Doris
haunted the family... forever seeking acceptance and redemption.’
The historic account, however, must exonerate this extraordinarily brave,
feisty but ultimately tragic woman. The sad case of Doris van der Straaten
is, however, made even worse. Her presumed dead husband, Philip
survived the Kampung Toh massacre and spent the war in a Bangkok POW
camp. This was known by the time of Murakami’s trial but was not
known to Doris while she was Colonel Koda’s mistress. Before he died in
1966, Philip spoke to Doris’ two daughters from her first marriage –
though what transpired between them remains a secret. He was, by all
accounts, a gentle and generous man so the supposition must be that he
held no animosity but rather viewed her as the victim she most surely
was. One last mystery surrounds Doris van der Straaten. In August 1973,
the La Salle Brother’s Catholic Mission in Kuala Lumpur appealed for news
of her Australian relatives. Since the war they had kept in their possession
poems written by Doris for her two daughters, reportedly expressing her
longing to return to Australia. These almost certainly date from her time
incarcerated at Taiping Prison, where she was detained alongside the
Catholic missionaries. One of the Brothers seemingly kept her poems safe
and many years later sought to find and deliver them to a family member.
Alas, it has neither proven possible to track down the family nor the
poems.
Chapter Eleven
Communities
In 1941, on the cusp of war, Kuala Lumpur was a city of strategic and
economic significance but was barely sixty years old. The early settlement
was founded in the middle of the nineteenth century by the Malay Chief,
Raja Abdullah, and was then developed and expanded in the late 1880s by
industrious Chinese migrant workers who saw in the tin rich soils of the
Klang Valley a route to wealth and prosperity. It was a hard-living mining
town with a ‘wild west’ reputation, set in the jungles and padi fields of
rural Selangor. In 1896, the British settled on Kuala Lumpur as the capital
for the Federated Malay States (FMS). On the back of tin and rubber it
became a wealthy and valuable ‘colony’ and in quick order Kuala Lumpur
added grand colonial quarters and a set of magnificent state buildings -
constructed in the unique Indo-Moorish style - to complement and contrast
with noisy, bustling, Chinatown.
Pre-war Kuala Lumpur comprised a polyglot and diverse set of
communities living and working generally peaceably alongside each other.
But it was, nevertheless, a society formed on the basis of deep social and
racial cleavages. The colonial British, small in number but influential in
all areas, sat at the apex of the economic and political pyramid; thereafter,
sat the main communities - Chinese, Malay and Indian. Kuala Lumpur
was predominantly a Chinese city, but the two other communities each
had numerical weight and clear and defined stakes and roles within the
city’s life. The three communities were each internally divided along
language or ethnographic lines, but when challenged promptly merged
into a defensive communal solidarity. Racial harmony was supported by a
British colonial administration that not only managed its relations with
the individual communities but also sought to foster sooth inter-racial
relations. There was, inevitably, tension and rivalry, and while there was
some inter-racial mixing and marriage, on the whole it was a mosaic, not
a melting-pot, of religions, languages and peoples. Pre-war prison
statistics suggest that the least law- abiding of the communities were the
Chinese, but Pudu Prison, designed to take 650 prisoners, generally held
many fewer - indicative of a society in which security and law-and-order
was not a major problem. The concept of a broad Malayan nationalism
and loyalty had yet to take hold. For these communities it was not a
question of being ‘pro-British’ or ‘pro-Japanese’ but rather of being
supportive of their own interests.
The experience of war, and the impact of the Japanese occupation,
however, would change all this and would polarise differences and
communal tensions. Prior to their arrival in Malaya, save for some
businessmen and officials, the Japanese had little substantive contact with
Indian or Malay communities or politics. They had simply not engaged
historically in a significant way with South or South East Asia. In
contrast, the Japanese had extensive historic contact with the Chinese; a
relationship characterised by conflict and enmity made worse by the
Japanese occupation of Manchuria. It was this background - ignorance
and lack of familiarity with the Indians and the Malays and almost too
much contact and knowledge of the Chinese - that informed Japanese
attitudes towards the three main communities of Malaya. Differing
Japanese approaches, though not deliberately planned, helped stir the
racial pot and heightened both intra- and inter-racial tensions.
The Chinese Community
If the colonial districts were stripped out, and the districts of Kampung
Baru (Malay), Brickfields and Sentul (Indian) were overlooked, Kuala
Lumpur was to all intents a Chinese city. But there were considerable
differences between the overseas community and those at home. In
Malaya, there were very few Chinese farmers or cultivators, and it was
this group that made up the vast majority of the working population in
China. Instead, the Malayan Chinese community was dominated by
labourers who were employed in mines, plantations and other sectors. At
the apex of the community were a numerically small group of traders and
businessmen, and they enjoyed a much greater influence than would have
been the case in China. What was missing in Malaya was the ‘scholar-
administrator’ or Mandarin class, which carried such weight and wielded
such social influence in China. The Chinese in Malaya, therefore, were a
very distinct and ‘skewed’ community, albeit one which continued to
venerate traditional Chinese values, notably kinship and the importance of
ancestors. Kuala Lumpur’s richly decorated Chinese temples and clan
houses reflected the need by the community to celebrate their Chinese
origins and traditions, and in some ways to compensate for the distance
from the native land of their ancestors by the wealth and flamboyance of
their buildings and architecture.
In 1941, the Chinese population of Kuala Lumpur stood at around
105,000, about sixty per cent of the total. It was about half Cantonese,
with somewhat less than a quarter each Hokkien and Hakka and a
sprinkling of Teocheow, Haiananese and Hokchia. There was a
preponderance of men to women, though this historic imbalance had
corrected significantly in the decade leading up to the war. In 1920, 80
per cent of Chinese were first generation immigrants but by 1940 this had
dropped to less than half. The age spread, however, was far from ‘natural’
being heavily weighted towards the young and the early middle-aged, a
consequence of high birth rates and the relatively recent migration of
people of working age from China. On the whole the community was
poorly-educated, with only fifty per cent of men and less than one quarter
of women literate in their own language. It was also a very insular
community, with only a tiny minority literate or conversant in English or
Malay.
The Chinese, particularly in the early years of the war, were to suffer
brutally from the Japanese. This was not casual, indiscriminate violence
but was the result of policy and directive. Malaya and Singapore were
governed by the Japanese Gunseibu, or the Military Administrative
Department. Initially it was headed by the Deputy Commander of the 25th
Army, Major General Manaki Takanobu. Holding both positions proved
onerous and the day-to-day leadership fell to his fanatical deputy, Colonel
Watoru Watanabe, the architect of the Sook Chin. A ten-year veteran of
the war in Manchuria, and a graduate of the Institute of Total War, in
February 1942 Watanabe laid down a set of ’Policy Principles towards the
Chinese’. A sense of his mind-set can be deduced from his pronouncement
that ‘The fundamental principle of my nationalist policy is to require them
[the Chinese] to account for their past mistakes and to make them ready
to give up their lives and property. Only when they repent their
wrongdoings will I allow them to live…’. In a separate announcement, he
noted that ‘The Chinese, accustomed to a foreign rule, are prone to
maintain a false obedience and they are crafty as anything and hard to
control. They ought to be dealt with unsparingly.’
Inevitably, one response to the wave of repression was passivity and the
desire not to stand out. One elderly lady still recalls her mother’s anxiety
when, as a child, she ever left the family house in the Chow Kit district of
central Kuala Lumpur. Her mother’s constant admonishments were for her
to stay indoors, but should she venture outside and see a Japanese soldier
she was to hide or to move away as quickly as possible. Her mother cut
her hair short and kept her appearance as ‘boyish’ as possible, again in an
attempt to reduce the dangers of unwanted attention. This appears to have
been a commonplace tactic – an attempt to mitigate and manage the risks
by avoiding or minimising contact with the Japanese. This elderly lady
noted that the stresses of the Japanese occupation reduced her mother to a
form of neurotic fatalism, leading to intense mood swings and bouts of
depression. No one in her family was to die as a consequence of the
Japanese occupation, but many neighbours lost family members and the
pervading sense of fear placed such a strain on her mother that, though
she was to live until the 1960s, after the war she never quite recovered
her mental equilibrium.
A second response to the occuptaion was an uneasy co-operation with the
Japanese – an attempt to manage and steer a path to survival through
negotiation. After the war, there was an effort by the British to identify
collaborators, but this proved to be a difficult area. Clearly those who
ended up acting as spies and agents for the Kempetei were at one extreme
(though many of these would surely have been coerced into the role) but
many others, particularly senior businessmen and community leaders, had
little choice and through pragmatic considerations, though no doubt often
confronting difficult judgement calls, ended up working alongside the
Japanese. Some senior business figures – who tended to support the
Kuomintang – for example participated in the ‘Peace and Reconciliation
Committees’. During the war, the communists often made their own
judgements about who had over-stepped the line, and engaged in a
campaign of assassination against ‘collaborators’ within their own
community. Finally, the alienation created by Japanese violence also led
to more active responses, not least a drift towards armed resistance. It
was the communists, and their military wing the MPAJA, that formed the
main – indeed almost the only – armed resistance to the Japanese. It was
towards this banner that some young men and women, mostly but not
exclusively Chinese, were drawn.
The final response to the Japanese occupation was resistance. Staying in
the city and running the risk of being rounded up and sent off to the
‘death railways’ persuaded many young men to move across to the
communists, or to join groups of ‘bandits’ living in the jungle. The
number of active communists is difficult to estimate, and there was a flood
of new recruits late in the war, once the British started to support the
MPAJA. By this stage the Selangor 1st Regiment of the MPAJA was about
600 strong. This was not an inconsiderable force but given Selangor’s
adult male Chinese population of approximately 80,000, the communist
flag was clearly not for everyone. The MCP had, however, a large group of
civilian supporters known as the Mui Mui and there were also an
undetermined numbers of ‘bandits’ and gangs of young men surviving on
their wits and trying to avoid contact with the Japanese.
In general, while the MCP was later to emphasise its leadership role in
confronting the Japanese, the call to the communist cause was mostly late
and never in large numbers. Neither was the MPAJA particularly active in
confronting the Japanese. It was able to assert its presence in remote
areas of the state, and at night-time and under civilian guise it could move
largely at will, but for obvious reasons (it was out-gunned and the
Japanese retribution on nearby communities would have been hugely
disproportionate) it tended not to target Japanese troops. Instead its most
active operations were assassinations of local collaborators. This limited
resistance by the MCP, however, has tended to hide the reality that most
members of the Chinese community sought either to manage day-to-day
life alongside the Japanese as best they could, or moved to the anonymity
and relative safety of shanty communities established along the jungle
edge – a feral existence but one considered safer than staying in the city.
The Indian Community
At the start of the war there were approximately 32,000 Indians living in
Kuala Lumpur, or just under twenty per cent of the total population. In
Selangor as a whole, the population was 160,000 or about 23 per cent of
the population, reflecting the weight of the plantation sector. Though
Tamils dominated, the Indian community reflected the complex mosaic of
peoples, with Sikhs, Bengalis, Gujaratis, Punjabis, Chettiars, Malayalam all
represented. About two-thirds of the Indian population were male. This
was because many had come as indentured labourers – brought to Malaya
on fixed-term contracts and with employers favouring male workers
because they carried out the hard work on the estates. Selangor’s Indian
community was generally poor and one-third of young (20-24 years old)
Indian males in Kuala Lumpur were illiterate in their own language and
very few could communicate in English. Reflecting social conservatism
and historic poverty, illiteracy rates amongst women and the elderly were
even higher. In Selangor in 1947 less than twenty per cent of Indian
women could read or write in their own language and barely any (less
than five per cent) were literate in English. Reflecting the educational
advantages of urban living, however, 17 per cent of Indian women living
in Kuala Lumpur could read English. Another marked characteristic was
that - like the Chinese - about forty per cent were first generation
migrants, with three-quarters of this number being born in the ‘Madras
Presidency’ (Tamil). They had come to Malaya to work, often with the
intention (many did) of returning home once they had saved a nest-egg of
money.
Various social and political consequences flowed from these close links to
India. There was little or no sense of being ‘Malayan’; national affinity
was ‘Indian’ and the political and social outlook of the community was
largely shaped and moulded by events at home. Reflecting the politics of
pre-independence India, many were inherently hostile to the British, and
the Japanese occupation helped give voice to these aspirations. Equally,
however, the divisions and rivalries between the different peoples and
religions of the sub-continent were given full range in distant Malaya, and
the Indian ‘community’ during the war, and thereafter, was riven with
internal feuding and tensions. Capt. Durrani, a Muslim British Indian
Army officer who worked alongside Japanese and Indian intelligence
organisations in occupied Malaya, reserves his greatest vitriol and hatred
for his Hindu counterparts. The politics of the sub-continent were being
played out in full in the tropical setting of Malaya.
Though the politics of the sub-continent set the context, local events
helped fashion and shape political outlook. Before the war, a set of labour
disputes in Selangor helped stoke local Indian resentment towards the
British. Strikes by estate workers in Klang in 1940 and at the Batu Arang
coal mine in northern Selangor had been suppressed by the British, with
the ring-leaders deported to India and some strikers killed. The British
had clearly wanted to ‘send a message’ and had attributed much of the
blame for this industrial agitation on ‘communist subversives’ and
‘nationalists’ within the Central Indian Association of Malaya (CIAM)
which from the early 1930s had developed a strong following amongst
estate workers. There had been a public and international outcry at the
brutal treatment meted out to the strikers and the government had sought
to mediate and address some of the main demands of the CIAM, but the
wounds were still raw when the Japanese arrived in late 1941. Thus, as
war beckoned, many estate workers were radicalised and readily
supported the calls of the Indian nationalist movement.
The Indian Independence League and the Indian National Army
Members of Kuala Lumpur’s Indian community were amongst the first to
see opportunity in the ‘New Order’. On 20 January 1942, just nine days
after their arrival, the Governor of Selangor, Colonel Fujiyama, and the
Mayor of Kuala Lumpur, Major Fujiwara, officiated at a ceremony at the
Kuala Lumpur Police Depot where, in front of several hundred Indians and
the ‘flags of the Rising Sun and the Indian nation’, they formally approved
the launch of the Indian Independence League (IIL). The IIL was an
avowedly nationalist organisation and its objective was to remove the
colonial British from India and launch an independent nation. Its senior
officers reflected the diversity of Indian nationalities; its President was Dr.
M.K. Lukshumeyeh (Punjabi), his deputy was Budh Singh (Sikh) and the
two secretaries were Neelakanda (Tamil) and P.M. Dalal (Bengali). In late
January 1942, even before the fall of Singapore, the Malay Mail ran an
article promoting Indian nationalism under the headline ‘To Raise an
Army in Malaya’. In time this aspiration would materialise as the Indian
National Army (INA).
Following the Japanese occupation, Indian nationalist activity in Malaya
blossomed and many troops of the defeated British Indian regiments, and
Indian civilians living in Malaya, flocked to join the newly formed IIL.
The Japanese were adept at portraying a positive vision of an Asia under
Japanese leadership, bereft of European colonialists. A typical newspaper
heading of the period read ‘Anglo Saxon superiority complex humanity’s
greatest woe’; sentiment which tapped directly into the long- standing
sense of grievance and humiliation felt by many of Malaya’s communities
towards their former colonial masters. The Japanese were able to offer
the prospect of ‘Jai Hind’ or ‘Victory in India’, which became the great
rallying cry of the INA when it was launched in Syonan (Singapore) in
July 1943 by the nationalist leader, Subhas Chandra Bose. In front of a
large and ecstatic crowd he held up the goal of ‘bharat mata ki jai’ or
‘victory for Mother India’ and independence from the British. He also
announced the formation of a new Indian army, the INA, to include a
women’s section – the Rani of Jhansie Regiment. The announcement
coincided with a visit to Singapore by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. In a
stroke of genius, the Japanese press agency, the Domei, issued a press
release noting that these were ‘two men of amazing vitality, unflagging
energy and unbounded enthusiasm’. Here were the Japanese comparing
their great war leader, General Tojo, with Subhas Chandra Bose – what
better evidence could there be that the Japanese were truly committed to
a fair and balanced relationship?
Kuala
Lumpur’s
Indian
community
responded
vigorously
and
enthusiastically to this sense of moment. On 5 July 1943, the Japanese
Jikeidan (a Japanese local auxiliary body) organised a ‘colourful pageant’
on the padang in which all of the city’s main communities gathered to
celebrate the sixth anniversary of the ‘China Incident’; the date that
Japanese troops ‘responded’ to Chinese aggression in Shanghai. The
Governor of Selangor, General Katayama, used the occasion to warn
against the ‘insidious British influences that still exist in Malaya’, while
pointing a finger directly at the Chinese whom, he said, ‘must make the
best efforts for the sake of the new born Chinese in their native countries’.
Such veiled threats were not needed for the Indian community. The INA
used the ‘pageant’ as a platform for its recruitment drive and two days
later the Rani of Jhansie Regiment held its inaugural meeting in Selangor.
At the same time, the Indian ‘Bharat Youth Training Centre’ based in
Kuala Lumpur began to send young men to Singapore for follow-on
training, with much talk of sacrifice and the price to be paid for freedom.
Shortly after the Singapore rally, Subhas Chandra Bose travelled to Kuala
Lumpur where he addressed a large crowd at the padang – many of them
POWs from the British Indian Army. He arrived in an open-top car,
presidential style, with two motor-bike outriders. As he spoke in
Hindustani the (mostly) Tamil crowd could not understand him but the
mood was infectious and his speech was translated into Tamil by an IIL
luminary, Chidambran. One IIL member later noted ‘The roads were
covered with people… it was a sea of heads. Bose spoke for forty-five
minutes and replied [to] questions from the crowd. Registration of
members started immediately after. His speech was moving, and with such
feeling created by him, wives freely donated their jewellery and the men
handed over money to the cause.’
In a further example of inspired rhetoric, in early August the Japanese
announced that Burma was now an independent nation as they had,
following victory over the British, disbanded their military civil
government. Whatever the reality, this announcement showed to those
who wanted to believe it that the Japanese were committed to
independence in the sub-continent. In December 1943, the Selangor IIL
held a large public meeting to ‘celebrate a promise by the Dai Nippon
government to transfer the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the
Provisional Government of Azad Hind’. These were indeed heady days, but
the INA was about to be bloodied in the bitter battle for the Arakan and
the Japanese would never make good on their promise of setting up a
Provisional Government in the Andaman Islands. Even in this early period
of euphoria, seeds of future difficulty were present. In September 1943,
the Selangor IIL publicly appealed to all those who had promised
contributions to honour their pledges and they were then forced to repeat
this request a month later; public support therefore not quite matching
private commitment. One wealthy INA supporter, the prominent Sikh
fabric trader Hardial Singh, had warmly welcomed the incoming Japanese
forces into Kuala Lumpur, posting prominent adverts in the newspapers,
and had then helped collect large amounts of gold and jewellery for
Subhas Chandra Bose. But illustrating the deeply fractious nature of Indian
politics, he was denounced by his enemies as a British spy and was
subjected to lengthy torture and interrogation by the Kempetei before
finally being released.
A Promise Betrayed
Beneath the bravura, not all was well within the Indian community. The
plantation industry was beginning to suffer the consequences of a collapse
in demand for rubber and from the upheavals of war. From early 1943,
shortage and famine were becoming commonplace and the impoverished
estate communities were amongst the first to be affected. The IIL
introduced welfare programmes and sought support and funds for feeding
centres and hospitals, but the response by the Japanese to growing
hardship was hardly sympathetic. In July 1943, the English language
Malai Sinpo newspaper carried the banner headline ‘People of Malai have
little to grumble about’ and then noted ‘In war-time rough must be taken
with the smooth’.
By late 1943 and into 1944, military reversals in Burma and the failings of
the Japanese to fulfil their promises to the IIL and the INA sapped Indian
nationalist euphoria. To the bitter end, the Tamil Nesan newspaper
continued to support Subhas Chandra Bose’s commitment to a military
victory over the British while in Kuala Lumpur a die-hard core of
nationalists continued to press for all out military conflict with Britain. In
March 1945, the IIL Selangor Branch hosted a talk by Mr. N.K. Banerji,
President of the Penang Azad Hind Club, who urged faith in the power of
Japan, whose soldiers he said should be a role model for young Indians.
Noting the many rumours then circulating about Japanese military
reversals, Banerji urged the Indian community to ignore such ‘lies’ and
rather recall that it was only through Japan’s victories that Indian
independence had become possible. Later that month, on 21 March 1945,
the Indian community was urged to celebrate ‘Azad Hind’ day by flying the
Hinomaru and the Indian national flag and to attend a set of rallies
throughout the state.
‘with a vividness rare in mere statistics’
In scarcely concealed words of excitement - an emotion not usually
associated with civil servants - the 1947 census compiler Moroboë
Vencenzo Del Tufo noted that the wartime losses to the Indian
community, ‘with a vividness rare in mere statistics’, had led to a marked
impact on population levels and on Malaya’s demographic profile. Pre-
war, the Indians had represented fourteen per cent of the population of
Malaya but by 1947 they had dropped to ten per cent. In Selangor, the
Indian population dropped in absolute terms by seven per cent during the
war years, and as a proportion of the overall population it declined from
23 per cent to 20 per cent. If one had to look for the single most telling
consequence of the war years it would be the story behind these dry
statistics.
In 1942, the Indian male population (aged 16-60) of Selangor and Kuala
Lumpur was estimated at around 55,500. The true number is not known
with any accuracy but by comparing Japanese figures and post-war British
estimates at least one third of them, or 18-20,000 men, were sent as
labourers on Japanese war projects to Burma, Thailand and Sumatra, and
even further afield to Japan and the outer reaches of Japanese occupied
territory. Of these, by the end of the war over 10-12,000 (about two-
thirds of those dispatched) were reported dead or unaccounted for. At
least one in five of Selangor’s Indian male working population, therefore,
would die as a consequence of Japan’s war needs. The removal of so many
able-bodied young men for war work caused labour shortages. An
unintended consequence of the disappearance of so many men was the
opening of work opportunities for women. In mid-March 1945, the Tamil
Nesan newspaper reported that ‘since all the talented and strong male
workers have been sent on important war work’ the Selangor Indian
Independence Council was seeking to recruit female workers for offices,
banks, factories and hospitals. Another consequence was that the
Japanese authorities began to draft large numbers of Javanese workers to
fill the vacuum in the Malayan labour market.
Deterioration of Life on the Estates
While the Japanese war projects were wreaking carnage on conscripted
workers, life in the ‘native lines’ of Selangor’s plantations and estates
remained characterised by poverty, illiteracy, alienation, and an
extraordinary isolation. Located deep in the Malayan countryside, these
communities were particularly vulnerable to exploitation. The British
colonialists had early on noted that the south Indian Tamils were an
immensely resilient and hard-working people, prepared to grind for
minimal return, but were also generally passive and quiescent. Just as the
British had long exploited these characteristics, so too did the Japanese.
Conditions in the plantations, even in the best of times, were bad but in
wartime conditions became appalling. The market for rubber and palm oil
collapsed. Unemployment and famine began to stalk the estates. Against
this background, the recruitment of young male workers for war-related
projects seems less surprising.
P. Ramasamy’s research into the Pal Melayu Estate near Malacca
highlights the brutalisation of plantation life during the war, and the
intensification of divisions and animosities between the various classes
and races working within the plantations. He noted that in the absence of
European managers the Japanese relied upon the estate’s middle-
managers, the kerani. They were often of a different caste from the estate
workers; many were of Ceylonese or Malayalam extraction. They
controlled pay and food and often encouraged young male workers to
enlist for Japanese war work so that they could earn a commission, and in
some cases coerce the wives of absent husbands to become their wartime
mistresses. Similarly, there were also cases where Tamil foremen, kangani,
exploited their authority to take on mistresses and generally lord it over
the remaining estate workers. Such kerani and kangani who had exploited
their positions during the Japanese occupation, however, set themselves
up as targets for later retribution and during the interregnum that
followed the Japanese surrender many were killed by bandits. The war
years also left a lasting bitterness and anger as the returning British, far
from chastising the kerani for their role in supporting Japanese war aims,
often praised them for keeping the estates together.
The Japanese did not deliberately and as a policy (unlike their policies
towards the Chinese and European POWs) seek to punish or to harm the
Indian community but their brutal neglect and the harsh realities of the
‘death railways’ resulted in enormous loss of life. The Japanese, despite
their rhetoric of a common anti-colonial affinity, showed little respect or
concern for the Indian soldiers of the INA, their political leaders and most
certainly not for the thousands of largely illiterate and impoverished south
Indian workers who toiled in conditions of incredible harshness and
danger on war-related work projects. By 1945, however, save amongst
some die-hards, the euphoria had gone and instead the Indian community
was confronted by massive loss of life for its young men, and famine and
shortage for many estate workers and their families. This also led to
introspection and not a little bitterness within the Indian community, with
the leaders of the largely rural Tamils noting that the political and
military leadership of the IIL and the INA had done little or nothing to
stem or prevent the grievous loss of life on the Thai-Burma railway. This
indifference, they believed, was due to the dominance of educated, urban,
mostly north Indians within the nationalist movement.
The Malay Community
Malays comprised just over ten per cent of Kuala Lumpur’s population.
Most lived in Kampung Baru, which was set in 223 acres located between
Batu Road and the Gombak River. It was an ‘island’ of Malay Muslims in a
largely Chinese town. The settlement had been set aside in 1899 by the
British as the ‘Malay Agricultural Settlement’ with the toe-curlingly
paternalistic objective ‘to enable them [the Malays] to reap some of the
advantages of the current prosperity’ and ‘to give them a Malay-English
education’. Attempts to teach craft skills, however, were abandoned after
five years due to lack of interest and efforts by the British to inculcate
their ideas of progress were abandoned in the face of quiet but persistent
disinterest. Kampung Baru remained something of a novelty. In the late
1930s one British administrator noted that the Sunday fair there ‘is the
most interesting show place in Kuala Lumpur because more of the Malay
can be seen there than in any other place’. Across Selangor, as befitted a
largely rural community, the Malays constituted a much larger seventeen
per cent of the state’s population. It had grown and developed more
naturally than the migrant Chinese and Indian communities and there was
a straightforward balance between the genders and the age profile was
more ‘natural’. Illiteracy rates, however, remained stubbornly high with
more than half the Malay community of Selangor unable to read or write.
Reflecting traditional prejudices, this level rose to 72 per cent for Malay
women. In Kuala Lumpur, however, literacy levels were over 70 per cent
for men and 44 per cent for women, illustrating once more the educational
the benefits of urbanisation.
The Malay Sultans
The Japanese approach to the Malay traditional leaders, the Sultans, was
confused, contradictory and at times deeply unsettling. The early architect
of Japanese policy to Malaya, Colonel Watanabe, met most of the Sultans
and generally formed an unfavourable impression of them. The extreme
case was Selangor, where the Japanese summarily replaced one Sultan
with another more sympathetic to them. In other cases, such as Johor and
Pahang, where Watanabe found the Sultans to be ‘pro-British’ they were
punished by low subventions. But for all the Sultans, the Japanese
subvention was considerably less than they had received from the British,
which meant that the war years were a time of economic difficulty, with
little of the pre-war pomp and grandiosity. Watanabe’s uncompromising
position was further hardened by the arrival in Singapore of a member of
the Japanese imperial family, Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichita, who acted as
an advisor on royal matters. He took a hard-line, stressing that the
‘Malays [Sultans] be indoctrinated in the Japanese spirit to be the
Emperor’s subjects and pay a visit to the Syonan Jinja enshrined with the
ancestral god of the Imperial family.’ This mad policy, seeking to force
Malay Muslim sultans to follow Japanese Shinto ancestor worship, was
never implemented, thanks largely due to countermanding instructions
from the War Minster, Hideki Tojo. He advocated a carrot-and-stick
approach similar to that used by the British with the maharajahs of India.
To a degree, this is how the Japanese then sought to manage their
relations with Malaya’s Sultans.
In Selangor, throughout the Japanese occupation Sultan Musa Ghiatuddin
Riayat Shah proved a loyal supporter of the Japanese. In August 1943,
writing in the Malay nationalist magazine Fajar Asia, he argued for full co-
operation with the Japanese military administration, whom he said had
agreed ‘not to disturb the Malay Muslim religion or the status of their
Sultans’. He also urged his people to back the call for greater food
production. Indeed food shortages towards the end of the war became an
instrument of control. Tengku Musa Eddin was provided by the Selangor
Food Control Commission with a generous monthly rice allowance, though
by late 1944, due to general shortages, he only received forty per cent of
his promised allocation. Nevertheless, regular rice supplies allowed him to
maintain and feed his entourage at the istana at a time when others were
scrabbling for survival. During his short period as Sultan, Tengku Musa
Eddin was accused of leading a spendthrift life, and reportedly sold
honorific titles to help supplement his income. More disturbingly, at least
on one occasion his palace was used by the Kempetei as a place to torture
and interrogate. In late 1944, Kempetei Sergeant Yoshinobu Nishi took one
Subramaniam to a room at the istana in Klang. At his trial he later noted
that I ‘hammered this man with a stick and slapped him with my hand.
This I carried on for about an hour’. The familiar use of a room in the
istana by the Kempetei only darkens Tengku Musa Eddin’s reputation,
though there is no suggestion that he was personally aware of, or involved
in, this incident.
The summary dismissal of the Sultan of Selangor was the most flagrant
example of Japanese high-handedness towards the traditional rulers, but
this was also followed by a range of insensitive actions towards Muslim
Malay practices. Mosques and surau were exploited for propaganda
purposes and there was even an injunction to bow towards the Imperial
Palace when at prayers. Some Islamic organisations sought to raise funds
through lotteries, despite being explicitly forbidden under sharia law, and
Malay magazines sought advertising revenue from beer companies. Not
only were Islamic practices undermined, but the Japanese were not slow
to take swipes at the Malays, for example using cartoons to urge the Malay
population to work hard and ‘not be lazy’. More pointedly, in 1943 the
four northern Malay sultanates of Kelantan, Terangannu, Kedah and Perlis
were transferred to Thailand as a reward for its support for Japan. At the
same time, however, the Gunseibu tried to use the remaining Sultans to
promote their war aims. Following a meeting with Japanese officials in
Kuala Lumpur in April 1944, for example, the Sultans were urged to
persuade their people to ‘fully understand the existing difficult situation
and to double their efforts in all endeavours, to be more patient and frugal
and to help one another’.
The Malays Conflicted
On a day-to-day basis, the vast majority of ordinary Malays tended to
withdraw and keep close to their families and community. Siti Hasmah,
who would in time become the wife of one of Malaysia’s future Prime
Ministers, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammed, grew up in a traditional Malay
family. She was fifteen years old when the Japanese entered Kuala
Lumpur, and this disrupted her education at St Mary’s Anglican mission
school. Nevertheless, during the war years she learned to cook alongside
her mother as they adapted traditional Malay dishes in the face of
shortages. The family also had a strong musical bent, and Siti Hasmah
and her siblings spent much time at home improving their musical skills
and learning the popular songs of the time. In her memoirs she recalls
that one such song was the Japanese Hanabe no Uta Shina no Yoru. She
also recalled her pleasure at listening to a ‘wonderful’ Japanese orchestra
under its conductor Watanabe as it played at the Pavilion Theatre. The
young Siti Hasmah noted, however, that it was not all rosy during the
Japanese occupation. One family concern was the fate of her brother
Ismail, caught up in the war studying in London. But on a daily basis,
while she had heard news of the cruelty of the Japanese army, she did not
see or directly suffer from it.
Not all Malays were so fortunate. Being Malay did not help one Omar, a
resident of Kampung Baru who lived near the Kuala Lumpur General
Hospital. Late at night on 12 September 1945, after the Japanese
surrender, Omar (his full name is never given in the court transcripts) and
a group of men were found by the Japanese guards to be looting rice from
the hospital food store. Sgt. Yamamoto, who was a regular soldier on duty
at the hospital, chased Omar, cornered him and slashed him nine times
with his bayonet. Omar staggered some distance, leaving a trail of blood
on the ground, before slumping to the floor and dying. Concerned by his
actions, Sgt. Yamamoto and his associates dug a shallow grave in the
garden of the hospital isolation wing and buried him. By this stage of the
war there were British Force 136 officers in Kuala Lumpur. The next
morning, having heard about the incident, they had Omar’s body dug up
and shown to his distraught wife; the British later discovered that the
Japanese had already delivered a couple of bags of rice to her, seemingly
as a form of penance or compensation. There are no doubt many Omars,
and the records of the Kra and Burma railway projects reveal many Malay
names amongst those conscripted or induced to support the Japanese war
effort. The Malay community may not have been targeted in the same
way as the Chinese for retribution but they had no automatic protection
from the shortages and depredations of war. They too suffered from the
effects – deliberately hostile or otherwise – of the Japanese occupation.
The Growth of Malay Nationalism and Ambition
The extent to which the nationalist KMM actively worked against the
British in the pre-war years is uncertain. The KMM Vice President,
Mustapha Hussain, later claimed that its President, Ibrahim Yaacob, had
entered into a secret agreement with the Japanese to support them as Fifth
Columnists, but one that he had not vouchsafed to others. Pre-war it was
therefore, at best, qualified support. But once the invasion was underway,
there is no doubt that the KMM co-operated with and supported he
Japanese. Mustapha Hussain, however, down plays its military
contribution, emphasising instead the role the KMM played in protecting
and supporting Malays who found themselves confronted by the Japanese
military juggernaut. As previously noted, a small number of KMM
members accompanied the advancing Japanese into a deserted Kuala
Lumpur and thereafter established themselves at KMM House which was a
closely guarded two storey house in Jalan Swettenham [today’s Sultan
Salahuddin), close to its Indian counterpart, the IIL.
The Japanese occupation was one of new and emerging horizons for
Malay nationalists, but it was also a time of frustration as the Japanese
early on made clear that Merdeka (independence) was not on their
agenda. Mustapha Hussain’s memoirs chart his early disillusionment with
the Japanese, and thereafter, during the war years, he argued that the
KMM worked primarily to support and defend Malays and Malay interests,
often under difficult circumstances. He cited by way of example his own
role in protecting three senior Malay police officers who had been arrested
and faced Japanese retribution for their earlier work for the British.
Nevertheless, in a way that the British had never done, the Japanese
actively supported Malay political leaders and organisations and
encouraged a wider pan-Malay vision, linking the Malay-speaking peoples
of the Dutch East Indies with those of Malaya. In August 1943, for
example, the Japanese sponsored magazine Fajar Asia gave space and
editorial to the political Indonesian thinker Za’ba as he toured Malaya,
including a visit to Kuala Lumpur. Fajar Asia also highlighted, with some
justification, how the Malays had moved into professional and technical
positions formerly occupied by the British.
This contention is backed by the experience of a prominent Malay civil
servant of the post-independence generation, Tan Sri Ahmed Haji Hussein,
who had initially served as a junior official in the pre-war British Malayan
Civil Service. Like many local officials, after the Japanese victory he
remained at home but following overtures from the Japanese was
persuaded to serve as a magistrate in Kuala Lumpur. In the absence of
British officials, Malay officials found that opportunities for advancement
and promotion had hugely increased. In the latter stage of the war, Ahmed
Haji Hussein was appointed a District Officer in Kajang, responsible for
encouraging local food production. Under the pre-war British, such
responsibility would never have been accorded to such a young, local
official.
Many young Malays were drawn to the Japanese sponsored auxiliary
forces because they espoused a quasi-nationalist creed (however equivocal
in practice the Japanese commitment) but many others were lured by the
offer of good rations and/or feared the alternative of being dispatched to
work on the war projects. One Kuala Lumpur resident later recalled
joining the auxiliaries as a young man, aged sixteen. He had learned some
Japanese at school and in the absence of many other options had decided
to ‘sign up’, though had not told his parents as he knew they would
oppose the move (not on the basis of any ideological resistance, but
simply a mother’s natural instinct not to see her son in the military). A
major incentive was that both he and his family received an enhanced
food allowance as well as a small but regular salary. The boy found his
first months hard, and the regular slapping and humiliation that came as
part and parcel of life in the Japanese military took a while to get used to.
But within months he knew the system and how to play it (bow low to
Japanese soldiers and keep a low profile). By the end of the war, he had
become quite close on a personal basis to a number of his Japanese
seniors. His Japanese language skills had improved and he had been due
to go to Japan in late 1945 for enhanced training. When the Japanese
surrender came, he felt genuine sympathy for his Japanese instructors,
who were shocked and confused by the decision. For some days
thereafter, they walked in a daze as they adjusted to this sudden and
wholly unexpected outcome.
Malay leaders Mustaffa Hussain and Ibrahim Yaacob were keen to
mobilise a military force along the lines of Japanese-sponsored nationalist
forces then being raised in Burma and Indonesia, but the Japanese were
not about to nurture a Malay volunteer army. In 1944 in Johor, it is true
they had trained and equipped a regular military unit, but its numbers
never exceeded 2,000. A larger - its estimated strength was around 5,000
- and better established force was the Giyutai, which was an auxiliary body
focused on defensive and protective duties. In resisting the establishment
of a serious Malay military force but in raising substantive local auxiliaries
for defensive duties, the Japanese were driven entirely by calculations of
self-interest.
Malay nationalist ambitions were, for almost the duration of the war, of
little or no concern to the Japanese. Nevertheless, in the dying months of
the war their calculations changed, undoubtedly sparked by the rapid
deterioration in their position. Following the arrival of a new political
advisor to the Japanese government, Professor Yoichi Itagaki, a new
movement known as KRIS was formed. Drawing on the potent imagery of
the semi-mystic Malay dagger (kris), it sought to offer a platform to allow
the peoples of Malaya and Indonesia to move towards a pan-Malay
independence. With this goal in mind, in early August 1945 the
Indonesian nationalist leader, Sukarno, flew to Taiping and there met the
leadership
of
the
KMM.
Following
this,
and
with
Japanese
encouragement, a grand meeting of Malay nationalists was scheduled to
take place at the Station Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on 17 August 1945, from
which it was planned to announce the objective of Merdeka. But the two
atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender put paid to these plans.
Mustapha Hussain later wrote that there was ‘…only 48 hours separating
us from the declaration of Independence for Malaya….That was one of the
most bitter moments of my life.’
Chapter Twelve
Death Railways
Dislocation, disruption and upheaval characterised the Japanese
occupation of Malaya, and none more so than for men of working age who
were conscripted into military-related work projects. The range was huge
and some Kuala Lumpur workers found themselves toiling in distant
islands on the southern tip of the Dutch East Indies building airstrips,
while others were in Japan itself working in mines and factories. But the
majority found themselves pressed to work on railway projects in
Thailand, Burma and Sumatra. About two-thirds of these workers were
sent to work in the far north on the Thai-Burma railway, about a third to
work on the railway at Kra in southern Thailand, and a very much smaller
group (208 from Selangor) to work on the Trans-Sumatra railway. The
brutal conditions they suffered stand out in the post-war accounting. The
number of workers was so great, and the mortality rate so high, that the
‘death railways’ represent the single most significant and damaging event
of the war for Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.
Recruitment
The recruitment of workers would begin with an ‘order’ from the Japanese
7th Army in Thailand and Burma to its counterpart in Malaya, the 29th
Army who were told ‘to obtain a certain number of labourers’. The 29th
Army then turned in large measure to the Malayan Labour Department to
fill these quotas. In its post-war reckoning, the Labour Department (which
was a pre-war British body used for the recruitment of staff for the
plantation sector and public works projects) reported that it organised the
passage and payment of 17,881 men from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor,
but also noted that other bodies, such as the Indian Independence League
and the Selangor Chinese Association, also participated. Somewhat
defensively, it noted that ‘Labour office staff were detailed to make
feeding arrangements, paying cash advances to the labourers and
accompanying them to the railway station where they were taken over by
the military.’ In short, they argued that they had carried out the
administrative arrangements in Selangor but had nothing to do with the
conditions met by the workers at their final destinations.
In April 1943, the first tranche of Labour Department-sourced workers
from Selangor left Kuala Lumpur station in freight wagons for the long
journey to northern Thailand and Burma. Until September of that year
there were frequent and sizeable transportations of workers north. In July
alone, the Labour Department noted that 7,815 labourers were sent in
twelve separate batches. This was the peak month and thereafter the flow
diminished with just five batches in August and September totalling 3,118
men. There were then no further transports of workers to the Thai-Burma
railway until November 1944. This much smaller draft of 801 workers
ended with a final group sent in January 1945. Separately, a much smaller
contingent of 4,130 men, sent in nine batches, were dispatched between
mid-August and mid-December 1943 for railway work on the Kra Isthmus.
The Labour Department noted that the ‘labourers were recruited
principally from estates and to a lesser extent from mines through the
agency of Japanese companies which controlled all former British
properties’. By way of incentive, the workers were paid $15 per month
(the average pre-war daily rate for ‘coolie labour’ in Selangor was 60 cents
per day, or $14 per month, so a very small increase, though other sources
report a much higher daily rate for the war work) but, as a sign of both
inflation and the difficulty in recruitment, by October 1944 for the final
tranche of recruitment the daily wage rate was doubled to $30 per month.
There was also a compensation payment of $120 to the family of any
worker who died and $50 to each labourer who returned on completion of
his contract.
An important account of the conditions faced by the local labourers was
prepared by Major R. Campbell, commander of ‘K Force’. This was a unit
of British medical staff drawn from the ranks of POWs and used in the
later stages of the war by the Japanese to try to reduce the chronic levels
of sickness and mortality in camps and hospitals. Major Campbell and his
team were given much latitude and freedom of movement in Thailand and
Burma, and his testimony, commissioned in November 1945 and entitled
‘Report on the use of Malayan Labourers’, offers a unique, if bleak, insight
into the conditions prevailing under the Japanese. Campbell highlighted
that the main movement of Asian labour to the Thai-Burma railway was
from March to December 1943, in the wake of earlier movements of
European POWs who were engaged in the notably brutal work of breaking
ground and clearing primary jungle. Campbell estimated that 70,000
Malayan labourers and 8,000 Javanese were sent in this initial period of
recruitment, with a further tranche of 5,000 Malayans sent in 1944. He
did, however, note that these figures, in the absence of formal Japanese
records, were tentative with some of his sources claiming up to 150,000
workers.
Campbell reported that initially many workers volunteered for work on
the railways, attracted by a contract of three to six months, sign-up
bonuses and a generous wage of one to two dollars per day (a much
higher, and probably more plausible rate than the one cited by the Labour
Department). 1943 was a time when hardship and unemployment was
rife and the possibility of guaranteed income and food allowances for the
family held much attraction. At this stage, of course, Japanese war work
had yet to develop its evil reputation as a brutal way to an early grave. It
was also not yet recognised that a three month contract meant little when
deep in the jungles of Thailand and Burma; many who signed up for three
months in March 1943 were still there at the Japanese surrender in August
1945. But volunteers could not make up the full numbers required, and
the Japanese also used to impress workers. Japanese-run and controlled
enterprises were particularly vigorous in drafting workers and in
desperation the authorities also resorted to ‘capturing’ young men in
cinemas, while some were literally ‘netted’ in the streets of the capital by
the police and the army. According to Campbell, in March 1944 the
Japanese had a plan to repatriate 20,000 workers and replace them with a
fresh group of 25,000 workers, but it came to nothing, partly because of
lack of railway capacity but also because the Japanese were fearful of the
reaction in Malaya to thousands of semi-starved and emaciated workers
returning and revealing the reality of railway work. Indeed, when new
cadres of workers arrived in Thailand, the Japanese kept them apart from
the earlier batches of workers, for fear of revolt.
Life (and death) on the Death Railways
For those workers recruited in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, the journey
started at the railway marshalling yards near Brickfields; it was in
unventilated and overcrowded wagons, with over thirty men in each.
Food stops were irregular and sanitation minimal. Thus by the time these
train-loads of workers arrived at the primary marshalling facility at Ban
Pong in southern Thailand they were already tired and stressed. Campbell
noted that the journey ‘undoubtedly played a part in the genesis of
disease’. At Ban Pong transit camp the workers were allocated in batches
to various Japanese Railway Field Company butais or camps further up the
line. The selection for different butais was a lottery, but one with critical
consequences for individual workers. The worst and most stressful work
was at the ‘sharp end’ of the railway, deep in the jungle and involving
long marches followed by brutally hard labour, carrying heavy wooden
sleepers, cutting jungle, stone quarrying and so forth. Sanitation in these
camps was of the most primitive kind, and the perimeters were little more
than open latrines. In the hot, humid conditions of the jungle this was the
perfect recipe for the spread of infectious diseases, for which there was
little or no medical treatment. Workers literally died like flies –
undernourished, overworked and suffering from deadly diseases such as
beriberi, cholera, dysentery, malaria and dengue.
One such camp was at Hintok in which 1,500 Malayan labourers were
engaged in ‘embankment work’. Accommodation was initially in tents,
which leaked appallingly in the monsoon. There was gross overcrowding
and sanitation was negligible. Cholera was the big killer in this camp, with
ten to fifteen workers dying day. The worst days were ‘driving days’ in
which Japanese guards with bamboo sticks as whips would compel all but
the near-dead to the work site for intensive ‘drives’. This was a far cry
from the recruitment promises of a three month contract, one to two
dollars per day, and regular food and proper accommodation. Many
workers sought to abscond by moving into the jungle, but diseased,
emaciated and in a formidably hostile environment, this was for many of
them little more than a slow form of suicide. At the end of the war,
however, when the British were seeking to collect these workers into
welfare camps, a surprising number slowly emerged from hiding, having
led a feral existence along the jungle fringes.
The testimony of individual labourers conscripted for Japanese war work
is frustratingly meagre. One such survivor was V. Kumarasamy, who in
1943 as a young man volunteered for one of the early drafts. He was
swayed by the promise of a regular wage. Many of the early recruits -
mostly illiterate and ill-educated - had no idea of what they were letting
themselves in for; many believing that ‘Thailand’ was an estate elsewhere
in Malaya. Kumarasamy said that from his estate near Kuala Selangor
there were four major recruitment drives each drawing in upwards of one
hundred men. At the end of the war, only a trickle returned. He managed
to escape and made his way back to Malaya, literally selling the shirt off
his back to survive. He was caught on the border and placed in a
Japanese-run police cell but escaped once again, this time making his way
back to his family in Prai, who were able to hide and feed him. Had he
not managed this, Kumarasamy would surely have been yet another
nameless and unknown victim.
War Criminals?
After the war, as part of the Kuala Lumpur Small War Crimes Trials, the
British heard charges against Captain Ori Masami, Sgt. Maj. Mishima
Hiromu, Sgt. Shimizu Shotaru and Corporal Takao Matsuichi who were all
Japanese medical administrators based at hospital camps at Krabury on
the Kra railway. These men were charged in that ‘they have in their care
civilian inhabitants of occupied territories who were employed in the
construction of the Kra railway were together concerned in the ill
treatment of the said civilians resulting in the death of many and causing
physical suffering to others’. Despite death on a huge scale, the defence
produced Malayan witnesses whose testimony exonerated the individual
medical officers of personal culpability. One such witness was Abdul
Razak bin Abdul Rahman who had worked in the Malayan Railways
Survey Department and was dispatched to work at the Kra hospital at
Champorn. Under testimony, he said that he never saw any torture or
serious maltreatment of workers (he admitted to beatings, but said that on
the whole they were light) and instead highlighted the fact that the
initially good supply of medicines dried up towards the end of the war and
each hospital had, at best, only one qualified doctor.
A second witness, Omar bin Ahmed, who was a medical ‘dresser’, was sent
to the Kra peninsula in late 1943 where he stayed until the Japanese
surrender. He too noted the steady decline in medicines and said the
workers were weak from poor food, sickness and over-work. From his
hospital he estimated there were on average two to three fatalities per
day. But with respect to the hospital commandant, Captain Ori, Omar bin
Ahmed said he was ‘quite fair except when he was slightly drunk when he
would scold the patients’. With this and similar testimony, the cases
against the arraigned medical officers proved impossible to sustain and
they were acquitted. The evidence rather highlighted a chronic and
systemic decline in food, drugs, medicine and personnel and the
conclusion reached was that the death of the many thousands of Malayan
workers was down to systemic problems of neglect and Japan’s dwindling
resources rather the deliberate actions of the individuals arraigned before
the court. One observer noted that ‘it can be said that the Japanese
Officers were as cruel to their own soldiers…’.
Chapter Thirteen
Governance
The Japanese occupied Kuala Lumpur for three years and eight months.
They arrived proclaiming a ‘New Order’, part of an ‘Asian Co-Prosperity
Sphere’, in which the ‘liberated’ peoples of Asia under Japanese leadership
would be offered freedom from the old European colonialists. But the
details of this freedom were left largely unarticulated and the early
promises were soon replaced by disappointments and set-backs. Despite
the stirring rhetoric, the Japanese administration was in the end
characterised more by political oppression than by enfranchisement or
genuine nationalist progress.
Propaganda and Mobilisation
One area of public life in which the Japanese excelled was in propaganda
and public mobilisation. Initially their core message of a ‘New Order’
found a ready and willing audience, and a forgiving one as early
disappointments were put to one side in the hope of a better final
outcome. One key tool in the Japanese armoury was the radio. They
boosted the number and range of vernacular languages and also the
technical capability of the service. Prior to the war, in Kuala Lumpur
there was just one transmitter in Petaling Hills and a receiving station in
‘Kato Road’. In April 1943 the Japanese introduced an additional 10Kw
transmitter in Bluff Road and converted the old Guthrie building in Jawa
Street into a new radio studio. In September 1943, they brought a 50W
medium transmitter from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to enhance their
propaganda effort.
Alongside enhancing vernacular radio services, from September 1943, in
order to curb their pernicious influence, American and European films
(which seemed anyway to be on endless repeat) were banned from local
cinemas and only Japanese or ‘Axis’ films were permitted, though there is
little evidence that either German or Italian films ever made the long
journey to Kuala Lumpur’s cinema screens. In practice, Indian films were
screened as before but instead of the pre-war British and Hollywood fare,
Kuala Lumpur’s movie-going public were now offered ‘Syo Ri No Ki Roku’,
ambitiously described as a ‘mighty Nippon production’. Failing that, those
who preferred their films in English could choose to watch ‘Union Jack is
Down’, a stirring movie about the fall of Hong Kong.
The Japanese made an early effort to promote knowledge of their
language and culture. The local newspapers all carried basic guides to
Japanese (Nippon-go) and in schools, Japanese language lessons were
supplemented by the singing of Japanese songs at the start of each day
(one of the legacies of this era are the memories of elderly Malaysians who
can still recall the blood-curdling nationalist songs they were taught at
school by the Japanese – even if they don’t understand the words). The
Japanese pulled down public signs in English and replaced them with
Japanese alternatives. Kuala Lumpur, unlike Singapore which became
Syonan, retained its name but some local place names were changed.
‘Coronation
Park’,
for
example,
was
re-gazetted
as
‘Rizyo’
to
commemorate the fall of Singapore.
The Japanese were keen to exploit significant anniversaries to inculcate a
sense of their history in the peoples of Malaya. On 8 December 1943, the
Japanese celebrated Dai Toa Senso, or the second anniversary of the attack
on US and British forces. In Kuala Lumpur this was marked by a large
rally held on the padang where Governor Shotaro Katayama spoke about
the course of the war. With battles raging in the Solomon Islands and on
the border between Burma and India, this period represented the high-tide
mark of Japanese expansion. But signs of strain were already evident and
Katayama spoke with frankness and honesty in noting that the allies ‘who
were miserably defeated at the outset of the war… are now increasing
their hostile strength by mobilizing their entire rich material resources..’.
Katayama concluded his remarks with the predictable demands for greater
support and sacrifice.
The Kuala Lumpur wartime press was censored and controlled in much the
same way as its pre-war British counterpart. The local newspapers carried
a surprising amount of news from the West – the Japanese clearly able to
glean (from intercepted radio broadcasts) a wide and extensive news
service from the United States and Britain, though inevitably every story
was presented in a manner which supported the Japanese cause. As the
war progressed, however, and the Japanese position deteriorated, there
was a subtle shift in Japanese rhetoric. The public confidence of 1942 and
1943 was slowly changed by a defiant sense of embattlement; the mood
changes from a victor’s crowing to denial mixed with the threat of bloody-
minded nihilism.
More Carrot and Less Stick
From late 1943, in response to a deteriorating military position, the
Japanese began to exhibit a more emollient approach to the local
population, including a somewhat softer attitude to the Chinese. This did
not stop the Kempetei from going about its business, and the stick was
always there – and usually not that well hidden – to complement the
carrot. But as Japan’s position deteriorated there was a subtle but
perceptible softening in policy. One example of the more emollient
approach was the establishment of the Selangor Advisory Council, which
was intended to allow senior representatives of the local communities to
liaise with the Japanese administration. The Malays were represented by
a cousin of the Sultan of Selangor, Raja Haji Othman bin Raja Yahaya, the
Indians by the Chairman of the Indian Independence League, M.K.
Ramachandran, and the Chinese by Choo Kia Peng, a prominent
businessman and Vice Chairman of the Selangor Overseas Chinese
Association. In real terms the Advisory Council never amounted to much
but it did at least represent an effort on the part of the Japanese to reach
out to the local communities in a more accommodating manner. In more
practical terms, around this time the Japanese also started to recruit
manpower to their local militia forces and, evidence that they were now
increasingly on the defensive, they also revived air-raid precaution
measures and the testing of blackout drills.
The Japanese also sought, in a rather contrived and formal manner, to
develop links on a social level with the local communities. For example,
while Choo Kia Peng was appointed President of the Selangor Club,
Governor Fujiyama and the Head of Selangor Railway Board, Maj. Gen.
Kamada, were both appointed Honorary Patrons, though there was little
evidence that by adopting these positions there was an increase in
fraternisation or that the Selangor Club became a place of easy
interaction. Despite these efforts at assimilation, the overriding
impression is that on a social level the Japanese largely kept to
themselves; photographs from the period tend to show groups of Japanese
socialising amongst their own. Language, if nothing else, was always a
barrier but so too was fear.
Lost in translation?
The Japanese civil administration - the Gunseibu or the Military
Administrative Department - imposed a thin layer of Japanese control over
existing British governance structures, albeit a layer which imposed huge
changes to policy and practice. The minutes of the unexceptional Kuala
Lumpur Sanitary Board for 20 February 1943 offer a rare, albeit oblique,
insight into the relationship between the local community leaders and the
Japanese authorities. The Sanitary Board, although its name hardly
conjures up great expectations, was in fact a significant local body
responsible for most of the main urban services, such as water, sewage,
lighting and cleaning the roads. It had also, from early colonial days,
included on its council a range of local luminaries from all of the main
communities, giving it political and social significance.
In his opening statement, and setting the tone, the Japanese Chairman of
the Sanitary Board, Mr. Y. Tatsuno, noted that ‘We have been ordered by
the Central Government of Japan to function only as a part or unit of the
military operations which must necessarily be concentrated on the one
definite object in view, namely, to win the war... It is not an opportune
moment for us to discuss the details of how Malai [Malaya] should be
governed or how the Sanitary Board should be administered. On the
contrary our whole hearted efforts should be concentrated on winning this
war.’ In a somewhat more conciliatory tone, Tatsuno then noted that ‘The
sole aim of the Board is to see the citizens of this town are kept a happy
and contented lot and that the town itself is maintained in a healthy and
sanitary condition...especially [given] the presence of the garrison here.’
Nevertheless, his last injunction lends suspicion that Tatsuno was
primarily concerned about the health of Japanese troops in Kuala Lumpur
and was less so by the overall health and well-being of the citizens of
Kuala Lumpur.
A growing problem in the war years was a rise in the practice of
prostitution. Before the war, and in a bid to curb prostitution, the British
had banned women from working in Kuala Lumpur’s ‘eating houses, coffee
shops or street stalls’. Since the Japanese occupation, however, these bye-
laws had been ‘neglected’ and women – many of them struggling
financially – were employed in increasing numbers in the city, with many
of them selling sex. The Sanitary Board discussed this problem, and the
local members leaned towards the implementation of measures to
clampdown on prostitution. It may have been a language problem, but
more likely reflected more robust Japanese views on the subject, because
Chairman Tatsuno’s contribution was to note that working women could
be categorised into three types; taxi dancers (paid dancers who would
sometimes offer additional sexual services), waitresses and ‘service girls
and private prostitutes’. His solution to the growth of prostitution was to
recommend that ‘service girls [be] medically examined by a lady medical
doctor’; and this was the one tangible outcome of the inaugural meeting
under the Japanese of the Sanitary Board, held more than one year after
they arrived in Kuala Lumpur.
Chapter Fourteen
Daily Life
Personal Relations
The relative status of occupier and occupied was deeply unequal. The
diary of a Japanese soldier, captured on the Arakan front in 1944, carried
an entry from mid-943 at a time when he was based in Kuala Lumpur. In
this he noted that the ‘native population beg for the rice left over from the
meal so I conserved a portion for them’. Japanese control of food
represented one of many points of power and authority they held; another
was the fear that stalked the army and most particularly the Kempetei. The
gulf in power and wealth between the Japanese and civilian population
spilled over and influenced all aspects of relations, including the personal
and the sexual.
The comfort house system was designed to cater for the sexual needs of
the Japanese garrison, but inevitably there was also casual and informal
fraternisation between local girls and Japanese soldiers and civilians.
There were very few Japanese women in Kuala Lumpur, so there was
inevitably an enthusiasm on the part of the occupying Japanese to
fraternise with local girls. In early June 1942, the classified
advertisements of the Malay Mail carried a barely concealed request for a
local concubine: ‘Wanted – by a Nipponese gentleman attractive girl for
secretary, able to speak English, unmarried, and aged between 19-25.
Good family. Apply with latest photo.’ A few days later a similar advert
sought ‘Two smart English speaking girls as companions to Nipponese
officers.’ These may have been veiled lures, designed to entice local girls
into the comfort house system, or they may have simply been brazen
attempts by Japanese men to find local girls – it is impossible now to say.
Details of these casual liaisons are now hard to find, though it is likely
that, as in Penang, girls working in restaurants and bars would have been
amongst the first to establish relations with individual Japanese. Poverty
and food shortages played a role, as the Japanese increasingly used rice
and food rations as a lever and weapon in day-to-day relations. This view
is echoed by the research of Abu Talib Ahmad in Kelantan and Johor, who
noted that there even Malay girls were drawn to prostitution during the
occupation due to the dire economic circumstances. It may have been,
therefore, that casual, short-term sexual favours and affairs were not
uncommon but it appears that deeper relationships were few. Certainly,
any local girl setting up a brazen, open relationship with a Japanese man
would have set herself up for ostracism or worse from her community.
After the war, there was little evidence - in the same way, for example,
that occurred in France with girls found guilty of liaison horizontale with
German soldiers - of systematic retribution against local girls who had
developed relations with Japanese soldiers, suggesting that such
relationships were rare.
Despite the gulf in power and the fear that stalked the Japanese, close and
friendly relations were established on occasion between ‘occupier’ and
‘occupied’. The KMM member and journalist, Samad Ahmad, spent the
war working on the Malay newspaper Berita Malai [Malay News], initially
in Singapore and later in its Kuala Lumpur office. After the war he
recalled that most of its news was simply drawn from the Japanese press
agency Domei, and the remaining material was heavily censored. He
noted that most journalists only continued to work because they badly
needed the money. Samad Ahmad moved to radio and worked as a Malay
presenter, a position he clearly enjoyed. On a personal basis, while noting
that the ‘system was not good’, he found his Japanese counterparts in the
radio station to be civil and to be seasoned professionals. Samad Ahmad
made a clear distinction between these civilians, whom he held in high
regard, and the Japanese army, who were brutal and crude. Indeed, he
noted that certain of his Japanese colleagues apologised on a number of
occasions for the violent and boorish ways of the military.
Even towards the military, relations were far from monolithic. Some
British POWs spoke with warmth about certain of their captors, and made
clear distinctions between them based on personal qualities. In giving
witness at the Small War Crimes Trials, some local witnesses also came
forward with positive testimony to support some of the arraigned army
officers, prison wardens and hospital staff. In Kuala Lumpur, no Kempetei
officers received such support, though at his trial in Penang, the senior
commanding officer of the Penang Kempetei received widespread backing
from communal luminaries, which resulted in his death penalty being
reduced on appeal to a prison sentence. In many cases local witnesses
offered the refrain that the accused tried their best, within difficult
circumstances, to act against the system and in a civilised way. On
occasion, personal characteristics and relationships were able to offer a
human counter-weight to systemic repression and brutality.
Relationships seemed to be warmer when there was a common bond.
Religion offered one such channel. St Andrew's Presbyterian Church was
one of the many buildings looted after the British abandoned Kuala
Lumpur. When they arrived, the Japanese stopped the looting and
recovered as much of the church's furniture as they could. Thereafter, for
about a year it was used as a naval store for the Japanese until a group of
Tamil Methodists applied to use the church building for their
congregation, to which the Japanese agreed. Several of the Japanese civil
administrators and some of their army officers were Christian and were
therefore inclined to leniency in dealing with the various churches and
Christian orders in Kuala Lumpur. The La Salle Brothers, for example,
after an initial period of incarceration were allowed a large measure of
freedom during the occupation – perhaps also protected by Japanese
Christians.
Kajang – The Experience of a Small Selangor Town
Kajang is a small town to the south of Kuala Lumpur, strung along the
main north-south trunk road. Like most towns in British Malaya, it
developed on the back of the local tin industry and as a centre for nearby
rubber estates and plantations. The surrounding district was dotted with
many small Malay kampung but Kajang itself was largely Chinese with
some Indian shops, such as the dhobi (laundry) and sundry shops selling
Indian fabrics and foods. Local Malays lived in scattered kampung
settlements and visited the local wet market on a daily basis. At the edge
of the town, a little distant from the ‘Asiatics’, as befitted their colonial
detachment, were the local outposts and symbols of British authority; the
police station, government offices and a scattering of European
bungalows. Kajang was a quintessential small Malayan town.
Sinnadurai, the Chief Clerk of Kajang, later wrote an account of daily life
under the Japanese. He noted that in January 1942, as the Japanese army
approached the town, thousands of local inhabitants fled to the nearby
jungle or sought safety with family and friends in small settlements and
villages nearby. This was particularly so for those with young girls,
because the ‘threat of rape stalked’ the Japanese army. With properties
left empty, the opportunities for looting and theft were enormous, and
both Japanese troops and local ‘bad hats’ seized their moment and many
houses and offices were plundered. Following this early period of anarchy
and lawlessness, a new order established itself. Families slowly drifted
back to the town, though Sinnadurai noted that the educated and more
affluent burned books and destroyed possessions so that they would not be
tarred as being pro-British. Indeed, many of the ‘better off’ chose to wear
shabby clothes to ‘escape suspicion’. Schools and places of work gradually
reopened, but this only offered a semblance of pre-war normality. Salaries
in the government sector had been cut by the Japanese but prices of basic
goods and food were rising fast, and this meant that many officials
struggled and were forced to take on other, more menial work, to make
ends meet. It was a time of social fluidity and respectable salaried men
now found themselves struggling in this new, raw world of survival. Those
who formerly sat towards the top of the social pyramid, often English-
speaking and in salaried positions, were now seeking to downplay their
educated status. Corruption and a blackmarket proliferated and
opportunists and shysters were able to make a good living from shortages
and price inflation.
In July 1942, schools reopened in Kajang, though there was a new and
virulent pressure on the teachers to ‘instill hatred of the British’. Some
teachers were sent to special training schools, and were expected to use
‘Nippon-Go’ (Japanese) but few succeeded in mastering the language,
partly because there was very little in the way of teaching materials but
also because of its sheer impenetrability. Food at these training schools
was minimal, military drilling formed a major part of the day and any
spare time was spent trying to grow food to supplement the meagre
rations.
Sinnadurai noted the spread of Indian nationalist sentiment and activity.
While acknowledging that many Indians were active and willing recruits
to the INA and the IIL, he also argued that many young men volunteered
‘through fear of the prison and its horrors’ and conscription for war
projects, adding that many from ‘the coolie class were taken to Thailand
where they died after untold neglect’. He recalled, however, that
following news of the Japanese failure to take Imphal (on the border
between Burma and India), news of which filtered through by clandestine
monitoring of the ‘All India Relay’ of the BBC, the mood shifted. ‘The
Japanese were beginning to realize that they could not cope with the
opposition and therefore adopted a milder policy, hoping to win the
people over.’ From 1944, therefore, there was a distinct sense that the tide
of the war had changed. The Chinese, who had initially been ‘rounded up’
and ‘suffered daily’, after Imphal found the Japanese seeking a more
accommodative approach. But it was too late and instead the Japanese
found that they had spawned an ‘anti-Japanese army’. From the early days
of the occupation the communists had approached Chinese towkays for
money to support their cause and as the war progressed this levy trickled
down to all businesses such that by the end of the war ‘every shop
contributed secretly’. Sinnadurai portrayed the ‘anti Japanese army’
behaving more like a protection racket; threatening those who would not
support them and assassinating policemen and collaborators.
Sinnadurai highlighted the increased stresses in inter-communal relations.
He starkly asserted that the ‘Malays helped the Japs from the start’ and
noted that ‘the worst were in the police force’. Their pay was so menial
that the police (generally Malay or Sikh) regularly ‘resorted to the vilest
means to secure money’. Those who resisted might be ‘falsely accused of
being communists and were taken off to the prison where they suffered
until death mercifully released them’. Sinnadurai saw ‘a Chinese being
cruelly kicked and beaten because he forgot to take his hat off when
passing the Malay sentry’. These simmering tensions would boil over in
Kajang in the period of political vacuum that followed the Japanese
surrender and before the British were able to reassert their authority. The
targets for retribution were the ‘puppet’ police and local auxiliary forces.
Chapter Fifteen
Wartime Economy
The Japanese occupation was a time of economic dislocation and
uncertainty, deteriorating towards the end into atrophy. Many
established colonial businesses were simply trashed by the looting and
turmoil that surrounded the beginning and the end of the Japanese
occupation. It is generally difficult to feel sorry for lawyers, but the case
of Shearn, Delamore and Co., one of the longer established Kuala Lumpur
law firms, elicits some sympathy. Pre-war, the firm had a distinguished
and well-appointed city office, complete with a wood-panelled library and
a partners’ meeting room. Each of the four partners – Messers Tosswill,
Charlesworth, Delamore, and Shearn – had an expansive office, complete
with a vast leather-topped desk and comfortable leather chairs. An
inventory of furniture and office equipment for the company stretched to
over 150 items. On return after the war, therefore, there was much
dismay to find that the firm’s possessions comprised one teak chair, an
‘almeirah’ and three metal safes. There was however one, modest, silver
lining to this story of loss and destruction. The three metal safes had,
rather surprisingly, survived the war intact and when opened in November
1945 many hundreds of wills and legal documents stored inside were
found to be in good shape.
Pre-war, the Japanese had been important investors in Selangor and had
owned a number of rubber estates and plantations alongside their
entrenched position in professions such as photography, dentistry and
barber shops. They were therefore well placed to respond to new
commercial
opportunities
offered
by
sequestering
former
British
businesses. Thus in March 1942, the jewellers Storch Bros. became Dai
Toa Shokai and the Borneo Motor Co., which had a large workshop and
showroom off Circular Road became Nissan Jidosha K. Kaisha. It
continued to sell and repair cars but there was little evidence that the
Japanese used their wartime dominance to import their own brands.
When the British returned they found no new cars but rather a messy
collection of old vehicles, many of them cannibalised, and a yard full of
stripped parts and old equipment.
A major problem facing the Selangor economy was that its traditional
export markets had been the United States (which had taken over fifty per
cent of exported commodities – mostly rubber and tin) and Britain. Japan
had accounted for just five per cent of pre-war Malayan trade.
Surprisingly, Malaya’s main export commodities were not of particular
interest to the Japanese. In a pre-war assessment, the Japanese had
identified Malayan bauxite and manganese as being of the greatest
importance to them, with iron ore, tin and rubber of secondary interest.
While it was useful to deny its enemies these valuable commodities, even
at the best of times Japan was never going to replace the United States
and Britain as a destination for Malayan products. Thus the twin pillars of
Selangor’s economy, tin and rubber, were hugely and negatively impacted
by the Japanese occupation. When, later in the war, the steady attrition
of Japanese merchant shipping led to a lack of ‘shipping bottoms’ the
goose was decidedly cooked for the Selangor economy. Its main export
markets had dried up and the small remaining market was now
inaccessible.
Tin Mining
The Japanese occupation led to a considerable degradation in the physical
state of Selangor’s tin mines. In part the retreating British were
responsible, and in no sector more so than tin mining where they had
carried out vigorous scorched earth denial practices as they withdrew
south. When the British returned they conducted an audit of the industry
and found that of the thirty-five British-owned mines (which were
generally based around capital-intensive tin-dredging machines) only
seven were in ‘fair condition’ with the remainder ‘dismantled, damaged or
removed’; only one dredger was in a position to restart work with
immediate effect. For the smaller, more labour-intensive Chinese mines
using gravel pumps, twelve were found to be in good condition but 107
were under flood water, fourteen had machinery damaged and 24 had
been abandoned. This was an incredible legacy of damage and it would
take Selangor’s tin industry many years to recover.
During the war the Japanese sought to cobble together businesses from
the existing British legacy. The Japanese Iron Manufacturing Co’s factory
in Klang was ‘equipped by cannibalising tools and heavy plant, the
property of Fleming Bros., United Engineers, Hume Pipe Co., Harbour
Board and govt. depts’. One large Japanese engineering operation was
the Nippon Seitetsu Kabushiki Kaisya (NSKK) which had its headquarters
in Kuala Lumpur and manufactured mining equipment for the tin
industry. It was one of the biggest engineering operations in Malaya and
was founded on expropriated British businesses. Its Kuala Lumpur main
office employed 36 staff and it had a factory at Klang and operations in
Ipoh and Taiping. At the time of the Japanese surrender it employed one
hundred Japanese staff and over eight hundred Malayans. This was a
major undertaking, though quite how it kept going in the last years of
war, with minimal shipping available for export and a moribund domestic
market, is difficult to know.
Coal Mining
The Batu Arang mine near Rawang to the north of Kuala Lumpur was
Malaya’s primary source of coal, operating as both an open cast pit and an
underground colliery and during the war was under the control of the
Mitsubishi Kokyo Kaisha company. It employed a surprisingly large
number of workers, with over 9,000 ‘Asiatic workers’, 600 ‘maintenance
staff’ and 55 Japanese managers. By the end of the war, like so many
other enterprises, it was operating at well below capacity, with the normal
monthly production of 35,000 tons down to 18,000. When the British
returned, ‘five cuts’ in the open pit and two underground shafts were still
in operation. Large stocks of coal, however, were stored at the mine,
suggesting that while production was down, demand was even lower and
probably also that the disruption on the railways had undermined the
distribution system.
Rubber
Pre-war the Japanese owned and managed a surprisingly large number of
rubber plantations in Selangor. During the war, the administration handed
sequestered British estates to the Japanese controlled Syonan Rubber
Association (Syonan Gomu Kumiai) which offered a central system of
rubber buying at controlled prices. Prior knowledge of the sector, and
management of large swathes of the industry, however, did not prevent
huge disruption and dislocation of the rubber industry caused by a
collapse in demand and the departure of thousands of rubber tappers and
estate workers to Thailand. On return, the frequent refrain of British
planters and estate managers was the extent to which the estates had been
damaged and neglected during the period of the Japanese occupation. As
noted, vast numbers of young Tamil men, upon whom the estates relied to
carry out the back-breaking work of clearing undergrowth, cutting
irrigation ditches and tapping the rubber trees in the pre-dawn hours, had
been sent to work on Japanese work projects. As a consequence of this
and the collapse in markets the estates fell into disrepair. Towards the end
of the war, the death rate amongst the old and the very young
(particularly girls) still living in the ‘plantation lines’ was notably high,
reflecting grinding poverty and food shortages at little short of starvation
levels.
Inflation, Fixed-Price Panties and Controls
From mid-1943, as food and other items became increasingly scarce,
prices rose and merchants and shopkeepers began to hoard items. The
response by the Japanese administration was not to address the
underlying problems of supply but rather to impose increasingly onerous
controls on shopkeepers and merchants. Red-tape began to proliferate.
The owners of bicycles, for example, were compelled to obtain a permit.
In September 1943, the range of ‘controlled items’ was hugely extended
beyond the earlier staple of basic food items. A two-page spread in the
local newspapers detailed a vast range of items now under price control.
This introduced some quirky outcomes. For the larger woman with a
waist of 34” or over, panties would henceforth cost $1.50, but a slimmer
woman with a waist of 32” or less could buy her underwear at half this
price – a harsh price to pay for a larger girth. Within the controlled price
list there were twenty-two categories of designated bicycle tyres and
inner-tubes, each with their own controlled selling price. While
compelling traders to sell at published prices, the authorities also forced
them to declare their stocks, on pain of arrest. As an example to others, in
early September 1943, Lim Kin Cheok, ‘a dealer… was arrested by an
officer of the Military Police while in the act of secretly disposing of his
piece
goods…’.
This
snippet
of
news
was
followed
by
the
recommendation that ‘Those who possess such commodities and do not
report them should do so without delay.’
Food Shortages
In the face of growing shortages and hardship, from 1944 increased
domestic food production became a mantra for the Japanese. Salt, sugar
and rice were rationed but increasingly the authorities were unable to
meet demand and supply the agreed daily ration, which steadily fell
towards the end of the occupation. Rice in particular was the staple of all
communities but Selangor was not a rice bowl and could not easily
convert its plantations and estates into food production. Prior to the war,
Thai and Indian rice had been imported into Malaya in considerable
quantities. For obvious reasons (not least a famine of its own) Indian rice
was not available, but Thai rice was also difficult to come by. The
shortage here seemed to be as much a problem of distribution as
availability. Thai rice had previously come by railway but the FMS
railway system was in disarray, with hundreds of wagons and locomotives
scattered across Thailand, Burma and Indo-China. There was simply not
the capacity to import rice in the quantities required. The Japanese
therefore encouraged small-scale market gardening and the growing of
vegetables and other staples. Tapioca was often used as a substitute. Open
land was converted to gardening and Kuala Lumpur citizens grew what
they could to try to alleviate the hunger and shortages.
The Royal Selangor Golf Club was turned over to vegetables and the open
ground near Pudu Prison was cultivated by prisoners, whose regular
rations were barely above starvation levels. One contemporary witness
later noted that towards the end of the Japanese occupation ‘it was not
uncommon to see cows with a crude bandage over their shortened tails
which had been cut off by thieves for meat’. He also noted that ‘our
chickens were guarded more and more and they were moved from the
edge of the garden to nearer the house… My parents now lived on mainly
tapioca and sweet potato and kept what little rice was available for their
children’.
At Tanjong Karang near Kuala Selangor the Japanese set aside 1,200 acres
of land, which had previously been part of a sugar factory, as a ‘pioneer
farm’. This followed similar projects in Johor and in Province Wellesley.
It was originally intended that one thousand settlers, ‘Indians and Selangor
Chinese’ would till this land and produce vegetables and staples for the
markets of Kuala Lumpur. The project was underway when the British
returned, and facing similar food shortages, they were keen that the
settlement should continue, but the ‘pioneers’ quickly abandoned the
project and it made little appreciable contribution to the food supply.
There was a similar scheme at Sungei Labu, near Sepang to the south of
Kuala Lumpur, where 5,000 acres of land had been set aside for a ‘food
growing settlement’. By August 1944, two thousand acres of light jungle
had been cleared and ‘bunds were under construction’. The settlement was
divided into eight lots, ‘two of which were to be given to the Chinese’ and
it was planned that 3,000 families and 20,000 people would move there.
But thereafter, little more was heard of this ‘settlement’ suggesting the
scheme ran out of steam.
The Federated Malay States Railway
Kuala Lumpur was the headquarters of the Federated Malay States
Railway (FMSR) and the centre of Malaya’s rail network. It had large
engineering workshops and marshalling yards at Sentul and the main
station was a magnificent Indo-Moorish extravagance near Brickfields. On
their departure, the British sought to destroy much of the heavy
equipment. Despite these efforts, the Japanese were able to rehabilitate
the rail network in quick order. By the time the British returned in August
1945, however, the railway system was in a sorry state. The absence of
proper servicing and the non availability of spare parts contributed but so
too did Allied bombing raids of early 1945. Following these, in order to
avoid further bomb damage, about half of the mechanical equipment from
the Central Workshops was dispersed for safety to sidings on a rubber
estate alongside the Port Swettenham branch line. But the biggest
problems stemmed from an incredible dispersal of equipment due to
Japanese wartime needs. FMSR locomotives and rolling-stock steadily
leached northwards as they connected with the Thai, Burmese and Indo-
China railway systems. In 1946, the Railway Department noted that ‘60
locomotives; 20 carriages; 3,300 wagons; rails 25,000 tons, bridges –
considerable quantities’ had been sent to Thailand while 25 FMS
locomotives were eventually located in Burma. As if this was not enough,
when the final accounting took place track, rolling stock and locomotives
had also been removed to French Indo-China, where 82 FMSR wagons
were identified plying the Phnom Penh – Saigon route. Not surprisingly,
after the war the job of restoring the rail system and its rolling-stock
proved a long, hard haul.
The Black Market
Shortages, inflation and rationing inevitably led to a thriving black
market. There was also a widespread lack of confidence in the Japanese
‘banana notes’ leading to an increase in barter trade. One contemporary
witness noted that by the time of the Japanese surrender inflation was so
high that $1000 in ‘banana notes’ would not buy a coffee. He also
recalled seeing in August 1945 a box of new $1000 notes breaking open in
Bukit Bintang and the notes lying strewn and unwanted in the street.
They were valueless and did not even have serial numbers. This chronic
inflation and the collapse in faith in money led to rapid changes in
economic fortunes. With salaries eroded by price rises, the old
professional and salaried classes suffered. While money became less
valuable, disposable goods of all sorts became the new currency. Traders
and businessmen, adept at playing the new system, found themselves able
to acquire quick wealth and possessions. It was an ‘upside downside’
world, and many who had previously found themselves amongst the social
elite were now reduced to penury, while illiterate but street-wise
opportunists were able to benefit from the new realities and possibilities.
A classified advert dated June 1942 in the Malay Mail requesting ‘New
golf balls. Any Make. Cash paid. No questions asked’ was indicative of the
new world of skulduggery.
Chapter Sixteen
Shifting Tide of War
In terms of its military significance, the Japanese viewed Kuala Lumpur in
a similar way as the pre-war British. It housed a garrison, headquarters
staff, a number of military hospitals, a base for stores and was an
important communication hub. But beyond that, it had little strategic or
military importance. By the time of the Japanese surrender there were
about 4,000 Japanese troops in and around Kuala Lumpur, out of a total
45,000 based in Singapore and Malaya. Kuala Lumpur airfield held a few
trainers and transport aircraft but little more as, by this stage of the war,
Malaya was largely denuded of front-line fighters. But it was the capital
city of Malaya and had the Japanese been forced to defend it against an
invasion force there is little doubt that they would have fought tenaciously
and bravely to retain it. Luckily for the city and its people, the shifting
course of the war meant this did not materialise.
Allied Bombing Raids
From late 1944 from bases in India the Allies began to launch bombing
raids into Malaya. The primary targets were the ports of Penang and
Singapore, as well as nearby sea lanes, which were heavily mined. In
early 1945, however, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme-Commander of
Allied Forces South Asia, decided that he wanted to preserve these port
facilities to support an allied return, so the focus shifted. Kuala Lumpur,
with its extensive railway engineering sheds and marshalling yards, was
next on the planner’s targeting list and responsibility was handed to the
United States Army Air Force’s (USAAF) XX Bomber Command’s 45th
Bombardment Group flying B29 long-range Superfortress bombers out of
Karagapur, close to Calcutta in West Bengal.
The first air raid was on 19 February 1945 when 49 (out of 50, one had to
turn back) aircraft attacked the railway facilities at Sentul and the Batu
Arang coal mine. On arrival at Kuala Lumpur, the resistance was light,
bombing conditions were good, and the raid - from photo reconnaissance
evidence - was judged a success. One eyewitness noted that the US
bombers ‘shot down a few Japanese Zero fighters who were out gunned. I
recall hearing the distinctive cannon fire from the planes and seeing the
Japanese Zeros plummeting down with smoke trailing’. Despite clear
evidence of a one-sided duel, the pro-Japanese Tamil language newspaper,
Tamil Nesan, reported damage to workers’ housing and a store during
bombing raids though it claimed, a little implausibly, that the main
facility was little damaged and thanks to air raid shelters the loss of life
was low. This daytime raid stretched the B29s to the limit, and involved
twenty hours or more of flying, with a number limping back with empty
fuel tanks. But they all did return, and this encouraged the USAAF to
revisit Kuala Lumpur.
Some six weeks later the USAAF decided to hit the same target, the
‘Railroad marshalling Yard, Kuala Lumpur’. It was deemed that a
successful raid would ‘destroy substantial quantities of military supplies
and commercial goods and will for a time impede movements along the
railroad’. On 10 March 1945, under Colonel J.V. Edmundson, thirty B29
Superfortresses of XX Bomber Command set off deep into the night,
heading east across the Bay of Bengal. Each was carrying fifteen 500lb
‘GB bombs’, essentially large high-explosive bombs designed to destroy
and wreck buildings, heavy equipment and rolling stock. One plane was
carrying radar-tracking intercept equipment, designed to test the Japanese
electronic defences. In the event that an attack on Kuala Lumpur had to be
aborted, for weather or other reasons, the fall-back target was the airfield
at Alor Star, and the ‘last resort opportunity target’ was a Japanese base in
Thailand.
Map of B29 Bombing Missions
The aircraft flew in three flights of ten, and almost immediately in the
dark skies over the Bay of Bengal one plane lost its companions, though it
continued on with its mission and eventually made a solo attack on the
marshalling yards. Over the Bay of Bengal, two B29s had technical
difficulties and turned back. Later in the journey another B29 lost its way
and ended up attacking the ‘last resort’ target in Thailand. That left
twenty-six aircraft to line up over northern Sumatra and then Penang
before making their final approach from the west to Kuala Lumpur. Given
the experience of February’s raid, when resistance had been light, it was
decided once again to bomb at a low altitude of 10,000 feet. Over Penang
and Sumatra, the radar-tracking equipment picked up signs of Japanese
monitoring, so it was no surprise that when the bombers arrived over
Kuala Lumpur they were intercepted by fifteen Japanese ‘Vals’. But the
Japanese counter-attack was weak, the fighters were outmoded and did
not press their attacks, and the bombers were not seriously troubled as
they began their final run on the target. It had initially been decided that
all three flights should zero in on the marshalling yard’s round-house, but
it was later determined that each flight, which attacked separately and in
phases, would have its own target, so the engineering works and the
supply depot buildings were added as target markers.
The attack took place between 7.30 and 9.00am on a clear morning, with
generally good visibility. One B29 found his bomb run obscured by cloud,
and so turned and dropped his load on the back-up target of Alor Star
airfield, leaving twenty-five aircraft to drop their high explosives on Kuala
Lumpur’s marshalling yard. Post-raid photographic record judged the raid
a success. Fifty per cent of the round-house, ninety per cent of the
engineering shed and ninety per cent of the supply depot were adjudged
to have been destroyed, along with six locomotives and 83 wagons, while
30 nearby residences (mostly the Indian workers of the FMS Railway)
were destroyed. The raiders then made the long journey back across the
Bay of Bengal without loss in what, for the USAAF, had been a highly
successful raid.
After the raid the pro-Japanese Tamil Nesan newspaper claimed that four
of the bombers had been ‘destroyed’ and a further five ‘captured’ – though
quite how a bomber could be captured was not explained. After the war,
one official report questioned the extent of damage to the railway sheds
and the accuracy of the bombing, noting instead that some wayward
bombs had blown up the nearby museum; luckily, being a Saturday, it was
shut and no one was killed. The report also noted that earlier, much of
the rolling stock had been removed to sidings outside Kuala Lumpur.
Nevertheless, photographs taken by the returning British of the
engineering works and central train shed at Sentul show a mass of twisted
metal and destroyed locomotives and wagons. A post-war British
assessment stated that there was ’60 per cent destruction at loco house
and total destruction of about 80 carriages which are a mass of twisted
wreckage.’
Collectively the attacks were a military success and gave a further knock
to Malaya’s faltering railway system. They also offered a huge propaganda
fillip to the resistance, which could now demonstrate in the most tangible
terms that the war really was going against the Japanese and that
powerful external forces were beginning to line up and focus their energy
and attention on Malaya. One such pamphlet, The Voice of Malaya, which
was printed in ‘upper Pahang’, noted in April 1945 ‘On 19 February more
than 50 B29 Super Flying Fortresses devastated a factory of the FMS
Railways at the vicinity of Kuala Lumpur. On 12 March, 60 Flying
Fortresses raided Kuala Lumpur for the second time. In central Burma, the
allies are now converting a base near Mandalay into a general air base for
launching extensive air raids against Malaya.’
In April 1945, the British launched Operation Livery around Phuket,
designed to clear the shipping lanes of mines, and followed this with
Operation Sunfish, which was the intensive aerial photography of possible
landing beaches in Selangor and Negri Sembilan. These were recognised
by the Japanese for what they were – the initial preparations for
Operation Zipper, the planned reoccupation of Malaya. In response to the
increased threat of invasion, in early August intelligence gained from
intercepted Japanese signals noted plans to buttress defences in Penang
and along the beaches and mud flats around Morib (which was, indeed,
the planned landing site). British estimates at the time put the Japanese
army in Malaya at around 54-58,000 and the total military deployment to
around 81-85,000. Tellingly for the British, they only identified three to
seven fighter aircraft and between eight to sixteen reconnaissance planes
in the whole of Malaya. Against this force the British were assembling in
Ceylon a small armada from which to launch their assault, including a
number of aircraft carriers. Initially, the invasion had been scheduled for
November 1945, but in July the Chiefs of Staff decreed that the invasion
should be brought forward to late August; an ambitious time-frame made
all the more difficult by the huge distances involved.
Chapter Seventeen
Communists and Colonialists – MPAJA and Force 136
Following the British defeat of 1942, the MCP, through its military arm
the MPAJA, formed the main resistance to the Japanese. During the
fighting in January and February 1942 it had gained some limited
experience of irregular warfare training with Spencer Chapman’s No1 STS,
but mostly the communist guerrillas headed for the security of the jungle
where they established bases and cached stores and weaponry. Alongside
their fighters - who were initially very few in number - the MCP had an
important covert civilian support movement called the Min Yuen which
provided spies and logistic and financial support; the MCP literally had
supporters and agents in every Chinese community. The official history of
the British Force 136, which was the name given to the Special Operations
Executive (SOE) in South East Asia, noted that ‘the Communists in Malaya
were by far the most fertile ground on which to plant the seeds of
subversive activity and resistance in general; this had been made
abundantly clear by their conduct in the closing stages of the Malaya
campaign’.
In Selangor, the military wing of the MCP was the MPAJA 1st Regiment.
While the military commander was responsible for operational activity, in
the early years of the war the political commissar was, in theory, the more
powerful figure. Initially this led to a lack of coordination between
political and military wings and perforce over time the military units had
become increasingly autonomous. The main focus of MPAJA activity was
the assassination of collaborators and the development of covert
operational networks and capabilities. The MPAJA developed four to five-
man ‘killing squads’ that carried out public, brazen killings. These sent the
clear message that the MCP was the prime source of resistance to the
Japanese but by focusing on local targets also indicated the extent to
which the conflict was as much an ‘internal’ struggle for hearts-and-minds
within the Chinese community as a battle against the Japanese. In Kuala
Lumpur, the communists made the lives of Japanese collaborators highly
dangerous but they were not a potent insurgency movement and posed
little direct threat to the Japanese military. They needed equipment,
training, money and guidance to bring raise their performance and
ambitions.
From mid-1944, once the British had begun to role back the Japanese in
Burma, they set their sights on the armed re-occupation of Malaya. Critical
to their plans was the development of an insurgency force to cause
mayhem and confusion behind the Japanese lines. The plan was that
British would arm and train communist guerrillas who would emerge from
their jungle lairs to coincide with the British invasion. It was a marriage of
convenience, and the objective of these strange bedfellows was to defeat a
mutual enemy whatever inherent contradictions there might be in their
respective political outlooks and ambitions.
Strange bedfellows
The Secretary-General of the MCP, Lai Teck was, as already noted, a pre-
war agent of the British who had then offered his services to the Japanese.
Lai Teck was canny enough to recognise that the war had begun to go
against the Japanese and in October 1944, at an MCP meeting at
Serendah, he announced that he had decided to work with the British to
help bring about the defeat of the Japanese. True to his devious nature,
however, he told his senior commanders that the MPAJA would also form
a ‘clandestine’ army (Mi Mi Tui) which would operate independently and
undeclared to the British – thereby maintaining the MCP’s independent
operational capability. In April 1945, in a jungle hideaway in Perak, Lai
Teck (using the alias Chang Hong) and Chin Peng, signed a formal
agreement with Captains Davis, Broome and Chapman of Force 136. It
was agreed that the MPAJA would work under South East Asia Command
(SEAC) and in return would be given supplies, money, training and
operational support.
As a result of this agreement, and with increasing strength, Force 136
clandestinely infiltrated into Malaya liaison teams to work alongside the
MPAJA. With the decision to bring forward the planned armed invasion
of Malaya (Operation Zipper) from an initial target date of November
1945 to late August, the whole scheme took on increased urgency. The
British agreed to provide individual MPAJA regiments with equipment,
money and liaison teams comprising British officers, radio communicators
and interpreters. From a starting point of a handful of operatives scattered
across Malaya at the beginning of the year, by mid-July 1945 ‘111 bodies
were successfully dropped into Malaya’.
Galvanic
By early 1945, the MPAJA 1st Selangor Regiment operated relatively freely
in outlying areas of Selangor, in particular near the jungle fringes and in
mining areas. One particular stronghold was Serendah to the north of
Kuala Lumpur, but so too were the ‘ulu’ (upper country) areas of Ampang
and Klang. When, from May 1945, Force 136 came to request secure
areas for parachute supply drops, extensive areas of Selangor were
available to them. Under the codename Galvanic, five Force 136 units
were infiltrated into Selangor. This was the largest single deployment
amongst the various teams being introduced into Malaya, largely because
the planned landing beaches were on the Selangor and Negri Sembilan
coast lines. Based on the ‘Jedburgh’ model that had been adopted
successfully by SOE in Europe, small teams comprising British liaison
officers, supported by wireless operators, interpreters and specialists, were
insinuated into theatres of war, there to advise and support the much
larger force of local insurgents. In the case of Force 136, many of the
liaison officers had backgrounds in Malaya – often planters or policemen.
They also turned to locals who had escaped Malaya, and to a group of
Canadian Chinese, to act as interpreters. In August, some Gurkha units
also parachuted in to support the various units. Galvanic’s commander,
known as the Group Liaison Officer, was a former Malayan police officer,
Lt. Col. D.K. ‘Duggie’ Broadhurst (codename Sprout). Broadhurst’s role
was to liaise with the MPAJA’s 1st Selangor Regiment leadership and to
oversee the broad relationship with the communists. Beneath him and
sited around Selangor were five ‘teams commanded by Patrol Liaison
Officers (PLOs), each with its own colour designator.
Galvanic had been vested with ambitious, indeed over-ambitious,
objectives by SEAC. In the operational planning for Zipper it was argued
that this raw and inexperienced coalition of communists and colonialists
would not only play a general role in harrying and thwarting Japanese
forces but would also to ‘seize and hold at all costs and prevent from
destruction’ the Telok Datoh bridge on the Morib to Klang road.
Meanwhile, guerrillas working through Galvanic would destroy a range of
‘vital installations’ across the state. In the view of the Force 136 in-house
history, these were ‘unreasonable demands’ for an embryonic guerrilla
force with no real history of engaging the Japanese. Luckily, events would
conspire that Galvanic was never asked to achieve the impossible.
Galvanic Purple
On 30 May 1945, a five-man team (Purple) under an Australian officer,
Captain Morrison, parachuted blind into a drop-zone in the Beloh jungle
near Serendah. Morrison was supported by a radio officer, Sgt. Reynolds
(Marrow) and a Chinese interpreter, Yiu Ming Tek (Leek). They
successfully linked in with the local communists and after six weeks
Morrison signalled Force 136 HQ in Ceylon that he had established a
secure base and had identified by grid-reference four parachute landing
zones. For each of these he arranged for two MPAJA agents to prepare
markers and make themselves ready to collect the stores from a parachute
drop. Morrison requested torches, jungle knives, carbines and twelve .32
pistols. Force 136 HQ then packed the equipment into aluminium drop-
containers which were loaded into specially converted long-range B24
Liberators based at the Minneriya airbase in north east Ceylon. The
journey was huge - a 22-hour return flight across the Indian Ocean - but
thanks to additional fuel tanks and very fine margins the system worked,
because on 9 August Morrison thanked the aircrew by signal and advised
that the kit had been successfully received.
Force 136 Map
Galvanic Blue
Much less happy with the RAF’s performance was Major Hunter, an officer
with the 6/19 Hyderabad Regiment, who commanded Galvanic Blue,
which was operating in the Ampang area to the east of Kuala Lumpur.
Hunter later caustically noted that ‘Our greatest disappointments during
the operation were undoubtedly the many we received from our RAF
friends.’ The unstated charge was that the RAF pilots dropped men and
material from too high a height and that this resulted in drops being
spread over a wide area, well beyond the designated DZs [drop zones].
Nevertheless, by mid-July Blue comprised 64 recruits including ‘three
girls’. Hunter later offered the judgement that ‘I had thought that girls
would be just in the way in a guerrilla jungle camp but these three women
more than pulled their weight. A plucky triumvirate. I thought they were
just grand. Just children too.’
Blue was the only Galvanic unit to come into direct contact with the
Japanese military, or at least with one of its local auxiliary forces. Major
Hunter reported that ‘On the 7th [August] we had our first and what was
unfortunately our last brush with the enemy. A party of ten in quest of
food near Batu Caves bumped into a party of some fifty puppets.
Considerable wild firing ensued and altogether our party was scattered to
the four winds and the last did not turn up for five days. We had no
casualties.’ There was a thought, but no more, that a Japanese soldier
might have been killed in the fire-fight. But in general this surprise
encounter simply emphasised the lack of training and battle experience of
the MPAJA and did bode well for the time it would be called upon to
confront the hardened and ruthless Japanese army.
Galvanic Brown
Galvanic Brown was under a former Malayan planter, Major Ian
MacDonald. He parachuted into the Gombak jungle. After some false
start’s MacDonald’s team established a secure base in secondary jungle at
‘Hot Springs near Ulu Ampang’. MacDonald too had a jaundiced view of
the RAF. He felt that he and his four-man team (which included two
Canadian-born Chinese interpreters) had deployed at an ‘absurd height’
and on landing found themselves spread many miles apart. MacDonald’s
temper was made no better by the fact that he landed in the high forest
canopy and tumbled to the forest floor, resulting in a serious back injury
and a badly torn right hand. The various members of Brown patrol were
eventually reunited, thanks in part to help from Major Hunter’s
neighbouring Galvanic Blue. Owing to the problems with its parachute
drop, for the first weeks Brown found itself without a working radio – and
thereby reliant on Blue - and dealing with a very raw and unseasoned
force
MacDonald’s assessment of his MPAJA partners was far from positive; he
thought little of the ‘absurdly young’ MPAJA commander Mai Yuan and
claimed that the ‘Patrol’s self-elected leaders were apparently only chosen
because of their youth and good looks’. In a rather more benign
judgement, he spoke positively of the political commissar, Thye Chee, who
acted as ‘representative’ for the 1st Regiment and was the only guerrilla
leader MacDonald felt he could rely upon. MacDonald’s diary gives full
vent to his many frustrations. Parachute drops, or the failure of them,
proved a particular bone of contention, but so too were ‘incursions’ by
Blue into Brown’s designated area of operational activity. In reading
MacDonald’s account, one is struck by the adage that a Scotsman with a
grievance and a ray of sunshine are seldom confused. But perhaps he had
reason for his anger, because by mid-August Brown’s MPAJA patrol
comprised just 13 armed and 52 unarmed men. The supply situation
improved and by mid-September (after the Japanese surrender)
MacDonald’s cadre of MPAJA guerillas had grown to 122 strong and
could boast 43 weapons, though this still represented less than fifty per
cent of the total force carrying a weapon.
During one of MacDonald’s visits to an MPAJA camp he came across
George Hess’e, the Eurasian member of the Volunteers who had escaped
from Changi Prison in February 1942 and then made his way home to
Kuala Lumpur. During the early years of the Japanese occupation, Hess’e
had found work making nails from barbed wire and as an odd-job man in
a paper factory. One day, however, he was approached by a Chinese
teacher who asked Hess’e to accompany him and fix some steam
generators. Unwittingly he was taken to an MPAJA camp near Kajang, but
having fixed the generators was then kept captive; the guerillas did not
want him reporting on the camp’s location and he had also proved useful
in repairing the generator and fixing guns and other equipment. Here
Hess’e stayed for the latter period of the war until MacDonald stumbled
across him in July 1945. Once he found out that Hess’e was a member of
the Volunteers, MacDonald insisted on his release and he moved to the
nearby Force 136 camp, where he stayed until the Japanese surrender.
After the war, Hess’e kept on close and friendly terms with MacDonald,
who himself returned to planting near Seremban.
Galvanic Orange
Galvanic Orange was led by Flight Officer J. Robertson (Carrot). He
parachuted in solo to connect with the MPAJA to the north of Kuala
Lumpur and was joined on 10 July by Major P.T. Thompson-Walker
(Parsnip) and Seah Tim Toon (Tomato) who became the group’s radio
operator. Tragically for Orange, one of the team, Sgt. David Richardson,
landed in a pond next to a tin mine. Weighed down by his heavy
equipment he drowned and was buried the next day at Sungei Plubong.
Thompson-Walker noted that many of the MPAJA recruits were in poor
physical shape and were suffering from malnutrition. In terms of
background, he argued that they could be divided into three categories.
There was a hard-core of ‘truly patriotic types’ who had been involved in
the resistance since the British withdrawal. They were followed by a ‘very
very few’ who had ‘only a slight idea of what communism means but in
their own eyes are true communists’. Finally there were a ‘large number
of youths who had they not joined the AJF [Anti Japanese Forces] would
likely in due course have been conscripted by the Japs for war labour’.
This, from other sources, seems a fair assessment of the composition and
background of the MPAJA in July and August 1945.
MPAJA
Between 30 May and 22 August 1945, 52 British, Gurkha and Malayan
operatives dropped into Selangor as members of Galvanic. They joined
approximately 500, increasing to 700 when additional ‘mobile units’ were
added, guerrillas of the Selangor 1st Regiment of the MPAJA. Insurgent
forces are generally small in numbers, but by the time of the Japanese
surrender active CPM fighters amounted to less than one percent of the
adult (14-55) male Chinese population of Selangor. The MPAJA, therefore,
was not a popular choice. These figures also flatter the MPAJA, in that its
numbers increased notably from mid-1945, following the agreement
between the MPAJA and Force 136 and the arrival of British officers,
training, equipment and money.
How would Force 136 and its MPAJA allies have fared had they been
called upon in late August to support through sabotage and guerrilla
activity a British assault on the beaches around Morib? It is, of course,
impossible to state with any conviction. A post-war examination of
captured Japanese army maps showed that they had successfully
identified the locations of all the MPAJA jungle camps and hideaways and
it is something of a mystery why they had not attacked them. Amongst
the Galvanic teams there was only one armed contact with the Japanese,
and this occurred by happenstance and resulted in the MPAJA patrol firing
wildly, possibly killing one Japanese soldier, but then being ‘scattered to
the wind’ with a number of them taking over a week to return to base.
This isolated example, and the absence of any other experience of
attacking the Japanese, suggests that they would have struggled in any
sustained efforts at harassment and sabotage, and certainly the more
ambitious objectives, to seize and hold bridges, would have been well
beyond them. Nevertheless, despite clear operational short-fallings, the
Force 136/MPAJA relationship delivered tangible dividends to SEAC. The
various Force 136 units, all with radio contact, provided valuable
intelligence about conditions on the ground. The MPAJA, under Force
136 leadership, also played a key role in maintaining a measure of
discipline and stability after the Japanese surrender and before the British
returned. But for the British the return on investment was mixed. Under
them the MPAJA had gained hugely in operational experience and
confidence; acquiring skills and a bravura that would later come to haunt
the British during the years of the Malayan Emergency.
Chapter Eighteen
The British Return
On 15 August 1945, following the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the Japanese people were told to ‘bear the unbearable’, which
was as near as the Japanese High Command would publicly come to
admitting that Japan had unconditionally surrendered. On 21 August, in
Singapore and Malaya, Lt. Gen. Tezio Ishiguro, the Supreme Commander
of the Nippon Army in ‘Malai’ [Malaya] announced by radio that the
‘Command of Tenno-Heike [the Emperor] of Dai Nippon was ordered to
cease hostilities on August 14 2605 [1945]…. The Imperial command to
terminate hostilities is due to the limitless virtue of Tenno-Heike to avoid
unnecessary casualties among human beings in this part of the world’.
With these words the officers and troops of the Japanese military in
Malaya were instructed to stop fighting. Six weeks later, the British
returned to popular jubilation to recover Malaya and its capital city. But
these six weeks opened up a dangerous political vacuum that was to test
the communal and political fabric of the country.
Operation Zipper and the Return of the British
In early August 1945, the British had been assembling off Ceylon the
amphibious naval force designed to launch and support the invasion of
Malaya. The two atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender of 15 August
changed everything and instead the British planned for the - hopefully -
peaceable re-occupation of Malaya. With their forces already at sea, the
British were in a position to move quickly, but due to instructions from
the Allied Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, that the
main surrender ceremony first take place in Tokyo Bay on 2 September,
were forced to wait. In these changed circumstances, in place of an armed
assault at Morib the British decided first to take control of Penang and
then Singapore, which they calculated would give them valuable port and
airfield facilities. Zipper would still happen, pouring British forces into
central Malaya, but only after both Penang and Singapore had been
restored to British authority. This decision meant that mainland Malaya
would enter a period of weeks in which there was no clear authority.
The return of the colonial British was not viewed by the MPAJA with
complete satisfaction – indeed many viewed this development as simply
another phase in their fight for national determination and a Marxist
utopia. But Secretary-General Lai Teck, no doubt conscious that his old
masters would soon be back, pushed the MPAJA in an accommodative
direction. On 19 August 1945 he met the Selangor leadership of the CPM
and announced an Eight Point Programme which his successor, Chin Peng,
described as ‘Designed to appease… and arguing against a militant
stance.’
Following the surrender announcement, the various Force 136 units were
told to watch and report what was happening but not break out from their
jungle lairs. From his base near Serendah, Captain Morrison signalled that
copies of the surrender document, in Japanese as well as local vernacular
languages, had been successfully air-dropped and were being widely read
across Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. He also noted that the presence of
covert British troops dotted across Malaya was known to the Japanese.
The position was unclear but Morrison signalled ‘increasing local reports
japs passive attitude towards AJAF and ourselves’. Galvanic, playing a
valuable intelligence role, report ed that following the surrender the
‘Japanese are calling in all outstation personnel to Kuala Lumpur and are
disarming puppets who are now being used as coolies. The Japanese are
withdrawing from Sungei Besi and Petaling. Bandits are in complete
control. Some Malay puppets are raping and looting in the suburban areas
of Kuala Lumpur just outside Japanese control’. Galvanic reporting also
noted ‘clashes between guerrillas and Japanese on the night of 21 August’,
following exuberant celebrations by the Chinese community and the
running up of ‘guerrilla flags’.
On 23 August, British intelligence source ‘Sooty’ [details of this source are
not clear and ‘Sooty’ might be a cover codeword for decrypted Japanese
signals] reported that Japanese troop numbers in Kuala Lumpur continued
to increase in numbers and that ‘Telephone, telegraph communications
and cinemas still working....There is a severe shortage of clothing, shoes,
tobacco and medicines. Prices are rising rapidly. Many deaths have
occurred due to cholera. Malaria is spiralling.’ Intelligence also noted the
Japanese decision of 24 August to impose martial law and a curfew on
Kuala Lumpur in response to ‘guerrillas entering the town and
assassinating prominent collaborators’. Ominously for the British,
Galvanic also reported ‘Guerrillas have distributed leaflets to the people
informing them that they must cooperate with them for the liberation and
independence of Malaya’. At this stage, the British may have been keen on
liberation but independence was most certainly not an objective.
On 25 August, Force 136 HQ in Ceylon instructed Force 136 units that
their MPAJA allies were to occupy rural areas vacated by the Japanese as
the latter moved to barracks in urban centres. ‘Their [the MPAJA] first
duty would be to keep order, to prevent looting, burning and stealing and
to guard roads, railways, bridges and other important places…’. On 28
August, the code-word ‘Example’ was transmitted which was the go-ahead
for Force 136 teams to break out from hiding, establish formal links with
the Japanese and inspect POW camps; there were reports that the
Japanese were ‘abandoning’ POW camps and the High Command was
anxious to establish security and ensure relief supplies reached the
prisoners. The Force 136 teams were firmly advised, however, that ‘All
contact you have with the Japs must for the present be only for the
purpose of obtaining information….’. They were specifically instructed not
to discuss local surrender terms.
Following this instruction, Captain Morrison issued a letter, with his
address given as ‘In the field’, to General Syontano Katayama, Governor of
Selangor. Morrison stated that Katayama’s reply should be left ‘at the
Railway Station’, where he ‘had a contact present at all times’. The letter
read:
I have received orders by wireless from the Supreme Allied
Commander, South East Asia Command, to make immediate contact
with you for the following purposes:-
1/. That you have in place transport and facilities at my
disposal in order that I may visit and report on all Allied Prisoners of
War and Internee camps in this State. I must report by wireless (a)
numbers of prisoners in each camp (b) conditions of each camp (c)
types of prisoners held (d) location of camps (e) most urgent needs
to be dropped by air.
2/. That you will give my Party, which will consist of
myself, Captain Robert W[indistinct] my assistant, Captain Halman
Medical Officer, a sergeant wireless officer and fourteen Guerrilla
soldiers to act as [indistinct] whilst carrying out the duties described
in paragraph 1 above.
3/. I am NOT empowered to accept any Surrender nor carry
out negotiations of any sort. I have no right to give any guarantee or
promise of any sort.
4/. The wireless signal received and aforementioned states
that you are still obliged to administer and maintain the Prisoners of
War and detainee camps until you receive orders from the Supreme
Allied Commander South East Asia Command. I cannot and have not
the authority to relieve you at present of this responsibility.
5/. Please intimate whether you require my party to be
armed or otherwise. They are all well under control. I suggest arms
are not necessary if you can guarantee us Safe Conduct…..
Your escort and vehicles could contact us at the Station at any time.
I have a man constantly at the Station who will know where to
contact us at any time should the escort arrive during our absence.
Yours sincerely,
Capt. C.S Morrison. Australian Imperial Forces
It is difficult to know how Governor Katayama reacted privately to this
bold letter from an upstart commando in his early twenties skulking in the
jungle fringes, but his formal reply, written on 30 August, was civil though
non-committal:
I have the honour to inform you that I have received your letter
dated 28th last, the contents of which were noted with thanks. I beg
to point out to the fact that I am the Civil Officer under control of
the Imperial Nipponese Forces stationed here and carrying out the
civil administration to the local inhabitants and have nothing to do
regarding the treatment of prisoners of war etc. Under the
circumstances, I have tried to transmit your message to the Military
Commander of Imperial Forces stationed here but informed that no
individual private negotiation can be entertained, therefore I am
returning your correspondence inclosed herein.
Galvanic Orange and its MPAJA allies emerged publicly into the small
town of Serendah and based themselves in a bungalow one mile to the
south of the town, prominently flying a Union Jack. Meanwhile, the
guerrillas took over the local police station and used Serendah’s cottage
hospital to treat their sick. This proved all too much for the local
Japanese commander who decided to retake the police station and
attacked the MPAJA; it required the intervention of a flag-bearing British
team to intercede between the two combatants and persuade the Japanese
to back off. Following this Morrison reported to headquarters, ‘Queer
situation here. Japs and selves just glare at each other when passing.’
Nevertheless an effective cease-fire and liaison with the Japanese was
established. Thereafter the Japanese left a small military presence in
Serendah, partly to maintain ‘face’ but also to explain to Japanese forces
heading south to Kuala Lumpur about the changed circumstances and the
agreed arrangements.
The next day, on 2 September, a Force 136 team led by Broadhurst, Davis
and Morrison, travelled by car the short distance to Kuala Lumpur.
Despite promises of safe-passage Morrison reported an ‘unprovoked attack
by Japs on us but no casualties’; the incident was seemingly pushing and
hostile gesturing by Japanese troops rather than a fully-fledged attack.
Brushing this off, the by now sixteen-strong team visited the Japanese
military headquarters and arranged through them to visit the main POW
Camp, which was located at the Suleiman Building in central Kuala
Lumpur. On 3 September, Morrison reported ‘Very few white PWs kept
here any time. These sent to Singapore two years ago... Met the Indian
officer POWs at the Jap HQ who stated number of prisoners in that camp
one thousand five hundred. All Indians. No white POWs this state. Many
units in camp represented and officers making nominal roll. They state
conditions poor. Need food, clothing, medical stores and comforts. You
can drop at race course at KL. Japs promise to help us. Indicate TOT and
ground indicator required.… The Indian POWs not INA.’ Morrison
concluded ‘Japs cooperating but don’t trust little bastards.’ Despite these
trenchant antipodean sentiments, the Japanese were by now co-operating
fully and the Galvanic team moved to a villa at 109 Ampang Road in
central Kuala Lumpur supplied by them.
A Power Vacuum
The period between the Japanese surrender and the British return was a
strange twilight world. On 5 September, the Malay Mail, as opposed to the
Malay Mail New Order, printed its first edition since early 1942. Treading
gingerly, the newspaper noted that ‘Although we have been permitted to
change the name of the newspaper, the public will still realise that
conditions are still not normal and that so long as the Japanese Military
Administration is responsible for law and order in the State, we are subject
to official censorship..’. But displaying its colours a little more bravely,
the newspaper carried the banner ‘Freedom of speech and free expression
of public opinion have now been restored to Malaya.’
In Kuala Lumpur, Force 136’s first priority was to get badly needed aid
and supplies to the Indian POWS at the Suleiman Building. At Minneriya
airbase in Ceylon, vital supplies for the various POW camps being
liberated across Malaya and Thailand, as well as specialist paratroop,
medical and Gurkha units, were ready for air drop where and when
needed. Indicative of the problems faced, on 4 September a planned drop
of supplies for Kuala Lumpur came and went. Morrison signalled, in some
exasperation, ‘PWs, Japs, selves anxiously waited racecourse yesterday but
no drop. PWs disappointed.’ More positively, however, he noted that
‘Japs have given us transport. Japs salute us now.’ The next day there was
an air drop but it was not expected and there was no welcoming party.
Morrison signalled ‘Yesterday morning one plane dropped POW comforts.
No warning. Consequentially civilians looted about two containers before
our arrival.’ But things were to improve; later that day Morrison signalled
‘Finally, the afternoon drop all clothes military and civil. Luckily received
intact. Please indicate who civilian clothes for. Also received two bundles
newspapers. Now have POWs permanently waiting on racecourse. POWs
much heartened by drop.’ On 7 September, the Malay Mail, under its new
colours, appealed to its readers to cooperate in the handling of parachute-
dropped supplies so that they might reach their intended recipients –
prisoners of war. One local eyewitness later recalled seeing a ‘low flying
Allied plane with the side door open and the air crew clearly seen pushing
out supplies to the ex POWs assembled below. Within days new shirts
made out of parachute material appeared on the blackmarket’.
Major Hunter from Galvanic Blue was another early entrant into Kuala
Lumpur alongside a party of ten MPAJA guerrillas. He noted that ‘bitter
were the looks I received from the guards at the numerous barriers which
straddled the approaches to the city. They were no little shaken those
guards.’ His first port of call was to the Japanese Military Governor, who
was keen that Hunter and his guerrillas should return to the jungle from
where they had come. But Hunter explained that ‘(a) he had been there
for some time and had no wish to return and (b) as we had won the war
this time he had no alternative but to comply with my desires.’
Force 136 had commandeered various bungalows in the elite Kenny Hills
area of Kuala Lumpur and one of these was allocated to the MCP, along
with a car and driver. Following discussions with Colonel Davis and Lt.
Col. Broadhurst, the Japanese agreed to cooperate in an orderly transition
of power, to include the CPM. From the MPAJA, Liew Yao (a ‘military’
Central Committee member) and Chin Peng moved to Kuala Lumpur. As a
gesture of solidarity, but also to highlight British strength, Captain Davis
invited Chin Peng to Morib to watch the British invasion force arrive. The
MPAJA, however, had its own agenda and many cadre members, clad in a
dark green khaki uniform courtesy of the British, and a green cap with the
three stars (bintang tiga - or ‘three stars’ - one communist star for each of
Malaya’s
three
main
communities)
emerged
independently
and
provocatively on the streets of Kuala Lumpur in commandeered vehicles,
in a very public display of force and authority. Kuala Lumpur citizens
were conflicted, with many seeing them as liberators while others viewed
them as little more than bandits. Between them and the Japanese army
there was a frosty hostility but one that did not break out into fighting –
though both sides were on edge and wary. Far more concerned were the
collaborators and agents of the Japanese, mostly Chinese, who were
hunted down for the communists’ brand of summary justice. With the
Japanese moving into barracks, Kuala Lumpur suffered ‘considerable rice
looting and pilferage’ as hungry people took the opportunity to seize the
contents of food stockpiles. Major Hunter used his MPAJA guerrillas to set
up some static guards in key locations but also ‘flying squads’ designed to
respond to incidents. He later, and with no absence of modesty, attributed
‘the secret of success throughout this troubled time, the velvet hand in the
iron glove’.
Kuala Lumpur Re-Occupied
With Penang successfully re-occupied on 3 September, Admiral ‘Hookey’
Walker’s fleet moved down the Straits of Malacca and one week later, on 9
September, British and Indian Army troops landed at Morib. Thanks in
part to liaison work conducted by Force 136 officers, the landing was
successfully concluded. Far from meeting opposition, some Japanese
troops helped pull ashore British troop amphibious landing craft that got
stuck in the mud. On 10 September, a convoy of British and Indian troops
headed to Kuala Lumpur. The Malay Mail noted that a convoy of ‘150
ships’ [a significant exaggeration] has arrived at Morib and about 35,000
British and Indian [again a significant exaggeration] troops began to move
northwards at noon…’. Finally, late that afternoon, the convoy arrived in
Kuala Lumpur, there to be received by boisterous and noisy crowds, the
lead British jeeps pushing their way through the jubilant throng to the
padang and the city centre. For the first couple of days following the
arrival of British forces, the Force 136 officers continued to take the lead
in responding to security incidents and in policing the city. One
unexpected problem came with the arrival of fresh – perhaps overly fresh
– Indian troops who ‘as conquerors doubtless’ decided to ‘avail themselves
of the youth and beauty’ of the Indian ladies of Sentul. Major Hunter
noted that ‘This was stopped. And rightly’.
Kuala Lumpur’s Surrender Ceremony
At 2.00pm on Thursday 13 September, a British military delegation led by
the Commanding Officer of the 34 Indian Corp, Lt. Gen. O.L. Roberts,
supported by Captain Cooper of the Royal Navy and Air Vice Marshall the
Earl of Brandon from the Royal Air Force, oversaw the signing of the
formal instrument of surrender in Kuala Lumpur. It was held in the hall of
the Victoria Institution, which pre-war had been the premier school in
Kuala Lumpur and during the war had been used as a headquarters
building by the Japanese military. The surrender ceremony echoed others
taking place in Penang, Singapore, Labuan and various locations in the
Dutch East Indies. The day before, the Supreme Allied Commander South
East Asia Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, had touched down at the
aerodrome in Klang on his way from Penang to the main surrender
ceremony in Singapore but chose not to visit Kuala Lumpur.
At the Kuala Lumpur Surrender Ceremony, the Japanese were represented
by Lt. Gen. Teizo Ishiguro, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese 29th
Army, supported by Maj. Gen. Naoichi Kawahara, the Chief of the General
Staff and Major General Inouye. The Japanese delegation arrived in three
cars, each flying a white flag of surrender. On arrival they were held
under guard in a small room off the main hall until the British delegation
arrived, under an escort of Military Police. An honour guard from the 29th
Punjabi Regiment provided security. The British faced a singular problem,
however, because a Union Jack could not be found as a backdrop to the
ceremony. Fortuitously one pro-British Malayan had - at much personal
risk - hidden a flag at his home throughout the Japanese occupation and
he dashed home to bring it to the ceremony. Once the flag was in place,
the Japanese entered the main hall, bowed to the Union Jack and then on
behalf of the Japanese, Lt. Gen. Teizo Ishiguro signed the document in
Japanese calligraphics, using a brush. Lt. Gen. Roberts then responded on
behalf of the British. The entire ceremony took just twenty minutes and
was over by 2.30pm. Throughout, and despite much jeering and hostility
from the crowd outside, the Japanese delegation maintained a ‘calm and
unperturbed demeanour’.
Immediately after the signing ceremony, Lt. Gen. Roberts drove the short
distance to the central padang where at 3.00pm a march past of British,
allied and MPAJA (mostly from Force 136 units Galvanic, Brown and
Orange) took place. Roberts was flanked, appropriately enough, by
Spencer Chapman and John Davis from Force 136. Photographs of the
occasion highlight the central role accorded to the MPAJA contingents,
marching smartly in their British-supplied uniforms. This inclusiveness
was all part of an effort to draw the communists into the British post-war
settlement - an ambitious objective that was soon to show signs of
fraying. A large and enthusiastic crowd gathered to witness the Japanese
humiliation. The parade and display of martial power sent the message, as
it was intended to do, that the British were back and in charge. Sitting in
Kajang, Mr. Sinnadurai noted that the ‘army parade made a lasting
impression particularly on the uneducated’. This was further increased in
the following days as Japanese POWs, guarded by Indian soldiers, were set
to work cleaning the streets of Kuala Lumpur. The Malay Mail noted that
‘large crowds today watched with unconcealed joy batches of Japanese
soldiers cleaning the streets and other public works. Whoops of delight
signified the pleasure the spectators derived at seeing the bumptious,
rude, face-slapping Japanese soldier so meek and cowed’.
While the surrender formalities were taking place, the new British Military
Administration (BMA) was setting up shop in the former offices of the
Federal Secretariat. Brigadier H.C. Willan, who luxuriated under the title
Deputy Chief Civil Administration Officer (DCCAO), established the
headquarters of the ‘Mainland Division’ of the BMA in Kuala Lumpur,
which assumed de-facto control of the various BMA ‘regions’. Willan
moved into the Governor’s Residence at Carcosa, where many of the early
meetings with the MPAJA were held. Indicative of the cultural
differences, Major MacDonald reported that Willan was ‘rather more
delighted than otherwise by their unaffected manners and guerrilla tactics
in that (a) they would calmly seat themselves on the sofa beside him or
(b) help themselves liberally from his table. These little peccadilloes,
though amusing at outset, were apt to pall in the long run. It was
checked.’
Racial Clashes in Kajang
In the rural areas of Selangor the situation proved more fluid. In and
around Kajang, to the south of Kuala Lumpur, Major MacDonald and his
four-man liaison team struggled to prevent serious inter-racial clashes and
lynch mobs taking revenge on ‘puppet’ policemen and collaborators. On
31 August, MacDonald and his men moved out of their jungle camp.
Firstly they met Colonel Broadhurst and a group of Japanese officers who
had driven out to Kajang to explain to the local Japanese commander the
need to cooperate with the British and their MPAJA allies. A local deal
was negotiated, which left the Japanese commander, Lieutenant Morri,
and his five Japanese military police responsible for safety and security in
the town. The biggest problem centred on the 65 local ‘puppet’ policemen
who had collaborated with the Japanese and had now moved for safety,
with their families, to Kajang police station. Here they huddled, well
armed but in fear for their lives.
The local security arrangements held firm for a few days, but on 4
September the Japanese commander, still wedded to the old methods, sent
his men to burn down the houses of six villagers who had been found
looting rice. This incident soured the atmosphere. On 10 September, a
mob of between 2-3,000 men surrounded the police station, where ’10
Sikhs, 2 Indians and 53 Malay... puppets’ were holed up. It all proved too
much for Lieutenant Morri, who set off to Kuala Lumpur with his Japanese
troops, taking with him a handful of Malay policemen and the bulk of the
weapons. It was at this point that the mob chose to move on the police
station. In the ensuing mêlée, at least one policeman was caught and
murdered. Luckily for the remaining men and their families, MacDonald
and his MPAJA guerrillas intervened, took control of the police station
and placed all there under ‘protective custody’. The baying crowd outside
was moved on and patrols were set. MacDonald concluded, with some
justification, that the ‘situation….had very definitely been ugly and might
well have got very out of hand if we hadn’t taken over’.
This was not the end of MacDonald’s problems, though the difficulties he
now faced proved more insidious. Increasing numbers of ‘bandits’ were
terrorising rural areas of Selangor. Many of these operated under the
‘three stars’ but, in a fine distinction, MacDonald categorised those
communists working with him as ‘guerrillas’ (therefore legitimate) while
those not in liaison with Force 136 were considered ‘bandits’ (and
therefore not legitimate). On one occasion it took the intervention of Chin
Peng to adjudicate on which side of the line one particular group fell. On
20 September, Broadhurst was reinforced by regular troops from the 6/8th
Punjab Regiment that had come ashore at Morib as part of Zipper. They,
however, were banned from engaging in the active pursuit of bandits due
to an understandable wish to reduce the risk of clashes with the MPAJA.
Thus the thorny problem of how to work with the MPAJA was to remain
with Force 136 for a few more weeks to come.
After the surrender ceremony, in and around Kajang, MacDonald noted
that the town was busy with ‘unions, meetings and general flag waving
(red)’. On one occasion a group of young communists from a ‘propaganda
unit’ visited the town, replete with bunting, banners and loudspeakers
calling for volunteers to join the struggle. While acknowledging that the
MPAJA troops ‘did a very fine job in volunteering to assist the Allies’ by
early October, just six weeks after they were called to deploy, MacDonald
felt their job had been done and that the MPAJA should be disbanded.
Astutely, he recognised that his MCP guerrillas were only offering
qualified support and concluded that ‘Something which was essentially
Anti-Jap is now speedily becoming an Anti-British and ‘Quit Malaya’
policy.’ In the circumstances, MacDonald was no doubt hugely thankful
when, on 10 October, he and his men were relieved by 20 Indian
policemen. But MacDonald’s sense that his wartime MPAJA allies were
fast becoming adversaries proved prescient. Major Hunter and Galvanic
Blue meanwhile were trying to tackle ‘armed bands and pretty tough
thugs’ who were ‘milling about in Sungei Besi troubling the population no
little with threats of violence’. In Klang, looting and intimidation by
armed gangs proved a problem that was only finally dealt with by the
dispatch of a Force 136 team.
One Galvanic team – Slate – under the command of Major Heine was
dispatched from Selangor to a civilian refugee camp at Bahau in Negri
Sembilan. They arrived on 3 September to find 1,600 mixed European
internees, including ’14 Irish Roman Catholic Brothers and 14 Roman
Catholic Sisters.’ In his messages to Force 136 in Ceylon, Heine noted that
‘Every person was suffering from malnutrition and malaria, beri-beri and
dysentery were also prevalent.’ In response, supplies were air dropped to
the camp and on 8 September a five man team of medics were air dropped
‘under extremely hazardous conditions’. Heine then proceeded to declare
that the ‘general situation in the camp was under such good control that
Captain Wraith and RAPWI colleagues not required’. Later in the month,
however, and following the British return the mercurial Heine complained
of lack of food and supplies, noting that ‘so far the BMA [British Military
Administration] has been very uncooperative’.
Chapter Nineteen
British Military Administration (BMA)
Following the surrender ceremony, in a speech transmitted by radio and
placed prominently in all of the main newspapers, the British commanding
officer, Lieutenant General Roberts, announced that Malaya was now
under the governance of the British Military Authority (BMA), though in
fact this was not strictly correct as it was not until 1 October that the
military operational chain of command handed formal authority to the
BMA. These were euphoric days but the underlying conditions of scarcity,
insecurity and racial tension had not gone away. In his speech, Roberts
noted that the BMA’s ‘primary tasks are to restore law and order, prevent
diseases and unrest’ and to bring Malaya as quickly as possible back to its
former prosperity. He cautioned, however, that the outbreaks of looting
that had taken place during the interregnum would not be tolerated and
would be dealt with severely. The British were anxious to demonstrate
that their governance would be different from the repressive ways of the
Japanese but also wanted to keep a lid on simmering social, racial and
economic tensions. Nevertheless, a few days later the BMA’s Brigadier
Willan emphasised that ‘The public must realise that for now we are living
under military law.’
In an effort to show that pre-war norms were being reintroduced, on 18
September the Malay Mail carried a front-page article, complete with
photograph (though it showed a young girl rather than the teenager that
she had become) reporting that Princess Elizabeth had ‘bruised both her
legs following a riding fall at Balmoral Castle in Scotland’. For a nation
pulling itself out of over three and a half traumatic years of war, this
might seem somewhat trifling and incongruous, but the symbolism will
not have been lost on the readership: the British were back. Meanwhile,
and of greater local interest, the newspaper noted that Mr. and Mrs. Foster
and their two children had arrived back in Selangor after release from
internment in Singapore, the first of a trickle of returning European
internees.
Physically, the British found Kuala Lumpur little damaged or changed, the
destruction of the railway sheds and engineering works by the USAAF
excepted. It was, however, ‘tired’ and rundown; its physical degradation
reflecting the huge collective psychological damage of war. It would
prove much easier for the British to rehabilitate Kuala Lumpur’s buildings,
roads, and urban infrastructure than it would to tackle the huge political
and social legacies of the war. There were, however, some light
moments. On entering Carcosa, the magnificent hill top residence of
British Governors, the British troops discovered that it had been used by
senior Japanese army officers as a mess and living quarters. The
magnificent snooker table had survived the war, though the Japanese had
chopped four inches off each leg to make it easier for them to play!
The Sultan of Selangor Restored
An early priority for the British was to establish contact with Tengku Alam
Shah, the ousted Sultan of Selangor, and to remove the ‘quisling’ Sultan
Musa Eddin. On 14 September, and having sent warning in advance, a
British delegation arrived at Tengku Alam Shah’s house, greeting him in
the name of the Supreme Allied Commander. The officer in charge
reported that the Sultan was ‘overcome with joy at seeing me. He had
tears in his eyes and could not express himself for a few moments.’ Having
learned that under the BMA he would not be able to recover his full duties
until a full transfer to civil powers occurred, Sultan Alam Shah was then
restored to his position as the Sultan of Selangor. The British then drove
to the istana at Klang where they met and detained Tengku Musa Eddin,
along with his nephew Raja Wahid. With Tengku Musa Eddin sitting in
the rear of the lead car, a not inconsiderable military convoy under Lt.
Col. Usman, ‘a very fine type of Indian officer’, drove him to the Selangor
family residence in Kuala Lumpur, where he was placed under military
guard. The telephone was disconnected, he was banned any outside
contact and arrangements were made to send him to exile in the Cocos
Keeling Islands. According to one British account, there he languished
until 1948 when, following pleas from his wife and a legal judgement that
his detention was no longer legal, he was allowed to return, but to
Singapore, where he became a thorn in the side of the authorities,
endlessly pleading poverty. He was brought back to Selangor shortly
before his death in 1955 and was buried in the royal mausoleum alongside
his father. In the Encyclopaedia Malaysia, however, it is recorded that he
returned to Selangor after just one year in exile and was reinstated as
Tengku Kelana Jaya and thereafter led an uncontroversial life until his
death ten years later.
While the British were reconstituting the Selangor royal family, they faced
another diplomatic quandary after a set of Kuomintang supporters
announced that they were the official representatives of the Chinese
government, and had printed cards describing themselves as ‘Liaison
Officers’ to South East Asia Command. As no one seemed to know
anything about these men, who all carried military ranks, the British
simply arrested them and pulled them in for questioning. Little more is
heard of these men but by December 1945 the Chinese nationalist
government in Chungking had made formal approaches to the British to
set up consulates in Singapore, Penang and Kuala Lumpur.
Collaborators and War Criminals
One of the more complex and testing issues for the British was how to deal
with collaborators. As Victor Purcell, one of the senior civilian advisers to
the BMA (and later a distinguished historian) noted, the British themselves
were in many ways culpable for leaving the people of Malaya to their fate
and therefore how ‘could they fault them for coming to terms with the
new power’. In assessing levels of complicity, Purcell concluded that ‘It is
one thing to have deliberately helped the enemy and another to have
carried on with one’s ordinary business… the greatest care must be taken
regarding alleged cases of collaboration.’ War criminals were a relatively
simple category, but collaborators were a minefield. The case of N.N.
Nair, however, was perhaps not so nuanced. He had been appointed by
the Japanese as an estate manager in Klang and in October 1945 was
arrested for ‘collaboration, corruption, extortion, tyranny, assault also
reported rape and murder’.
Like the Japanese before them, the British arrived with a ‘blacklist’ of
names of those they wanted to detain and question. These started with
the Kempetei, and extended to intelligence services such as Tokomu Kikan
and Hikari Kikan, General Staff intelligence personnel, war criminals and
guards of POW and internee camps. But their interests also extended to
independence organisations, the KMM, INA and IIL. Herein lay complex
judgement calls and often very different perspectives, not only between
the British and the local population but also amongst the British
themselves. Some officers within the BMA were infused with the new
mind set of the recently elected Labour government towards Britain’s
colonies, while others were steeped in pre-war orthodoxy. Through
different optics, different judgements could emerge.
An early, and uncontroversial, port of call for the returning British was the
Kempetei headquarters at the Lee Rubber building which, not surprisingly,
had been stripped of any incriminating documents. Through the
interrogation of Japanese POWs, however, the British quickly produced a
list of over 35 Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Kempetei officers and men,
which formed the basis of their wanted list. Once these men had been
located in dispersal camps sited in and around Kuala Lumpur, they were
taken to cells in Pudu Prison, the scene of much of their brutality.
Alongside Kempetei officers, the British tried to locate their local spies and
collaborators. This was a more difficult task as the MPAJA had
assassinated many of them, and the remainder were on the run and in
hiding. Gaining reliable information proved awkward. In March 1946, the
British arrested one Wong Ah Leng as a collaborator but his wife then
complained that ‘It is to our knowledge that Wong Ah Leng was one of
those energetic members against the Japs during the Japanese occupation’
and claimed this was ‘One of those strange cases brought against persons
by false complaints.’
One problematic area for the British concerned those former members of
the Indian Army and Indian civilians who had joined the INA and IIL.
The British adopted a generally lenient attitude to regular INA troops, who
were confined to a holding camp on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, but
were anxious to round up the INA and IIL leadership. About forty senior
figures were arrested and taken to Pudu Prison. In response, on 1
November, the ‘Indian Community of Selangor’ petitioned the Deputy
Chief Civil Affairs Officer (DCCAO), Brigadier Newboult, to receive a
delegation to lobby for the release of those who were ‘detained in gaol on
grounds of military security on allegations of collaboration with the
Japanese or ill-treating the inhabitants of Malaya’ while stressing that ‘We
beg to assure you that the grounds of military security cannot be applied
to the Indian gentlemen still under detention in the gaol.’ The British
position was made more complex by the negotiations then taking place in
India with the leaders of the Congress Party. In January 1946, at the
behest of the Viceroy of India, two senior Congress leaders, Pundit KunRu
and Mr Kodany Rao, visited INA and IIL prisoners in Pudu and Penang
Prisons. The British were by now, in effect, collaborating with the
Congress Party.
A homely and personal appeal, and typical of many received by the
British, was from Mrs. E. John who argued that ‘My husband was the
Chairman of the Indian Independence League sub-branch Klang and has
been detained by the Field Security branch for that reason. He was taken
into custody on the 1st of October and detained in the I.N.A camp for three
weeks, after which date he has been confined in Pudu Gaol. I am the
mother of seven children, four of whom are of school age…I have no
income of my own and since my husband’s incarceration, have not
received any part of his salary from his department… I humbly beg that
some form of assistance monetary or otherwise be given to me…’. By
January 1946, 39 Indians were still under detention in Pudu Prison
without trial for collaboration. The British, however, soon lost their
appetite for prosecuting INA and IIL officials and by mid-1946 most had
been quietly released. In early 1947, the British Resident to Selangor
enquired whether ‘there is any government ruling’ regarding the
employment of ‘members of the Indian National Army’. The Deputy Chief
Secretary promptly replied that the ‘Malayan Union [as it was by then]
has no objection’.
In terms of tracking down Malay nationalists, the British blacklist
contained the names of a number of senior KMM officers. After the
Japanese defeat, its leader, Ibrahim Yaccob fled to Indonesia and joined
the independence struggle there (he died in Jakarta in 1979). Meanwhile,
his erstwhile deputy, Mustapha Hussain handed himself over to the British
in Taiping and was then sent for interrogation to Kuala Lumpur followed
by and a year spent in Baju Gajah prison. The British were intent to
establish the historic record and quizzed Mustapha Hussain about the pre-
war KMM, seemingly keen to see where and how they could have so
misread the position and leanings of the pre-war Malay community.
Japanese Prisoners of War
The Japanese army proved as disciplined in surrender as it was in battle.
Thanks to the early liaison role of the Force 136 officers it had been
possible to manage with some deftness the handover of security and civic
responsibility to the returning British. There were few incidents and the
Japanese proved generally compliant. Nevertheless, in an extraordinary
twist, some Japanese soldiers chose to continue their ‘anti-colonial’ battle
by joining forces with the MPAJA. In certain areas, whole units moved
into the jungle with the communists. According to Chin Peng, following
the intervention of Lai Teck (who was a British agent once again) some
were taken away by the MCP and shot, but others, around two hundred,
were absorbed into the communist forces and fought against the British.
When the Malayan Emergency ceasefire was finally signed in 1990, it
emerged that two Japanese veterans had survived and both chose to
return home. They had left Japan for Malaya almost fifty years before –
theirs was, indeed, the longest war.
But most Japanese troops followed orders and submitted to their POW
status. In Kuala Lumpur the troops were initially corralled at key military
areas throughout the city, such as Sungei Besi airfield, where they handed
over weapons and were subjected to body searches. Officers were made to
surrender their ceremonial swords. After this was completed, they were
marched off under escort - usually of Indian troops - to ‘concentration
areas’ outside the city, though some POWs were retained for rehabilitation
work. In this, there was an element of publicly humiliating the Japanese
in front of the citizens of Kuala Lumpur. One of the first tasks was to
tackle the scourge of malaria, which had been allowed to grow during the
Japanese occupation. As early as 23 September, POWs were used on anti-
malarial work by cutting grass and clearing drainage ditches. Their tasks
also included street cleaning, rehabilitating the airfield and the railway
station, and clearing out the huge arms’ depot at Batu Caves (although a
military instruction stated that POWs should not handle ordnance,
photographs from the time show them hard at it). By October 1945, the
British had 2,420 POWs working on a range of projects in and around
Kuala Lumpur. The demand for POW labour greatly exceeded the supply
as organisations such as the Royal Selangor Golf Club and rubber estates
sought help for rehabilitation work and the BMA was soon compelled to
restrict their use for essential tasks.
In October 1945, the decision was made to transfer all the Japanese forces
in Malaya and Indonesia to a holding camp in the ‘Riouw archipelago’. In
preparation for the arrival of over 120,000 Japanese troops, the Royal
Navy had first to blow passages through the coral surrounding the island
so landing craft could reach the beaches. Before all this happened,
however, the prisoners had first to be vetted. A processing camp was
established at Kluang in Johor, where ‘100 % named bad hats and
doubtful units’ were interrogated and about ten percent of the remainder
were questioned on a random basis. The aim was to pick out those who
were likely to face war crime trials or were of security interest. Initially,
one thousand POWs were shipped each day from Batu Pahat to Riouw,
though this was later to rise as more shipping became available. In early
July 1946, The Straits Times noted that ‘117,369 Japanese have been
temporarily exiled on Rempang and its associated island of Galang since
the first batch of 1000 men were dumped on the mangrove shores in
October and told to begin work clearing the rubber and to build
themselves homes and then open up the land to fend for themselves.’ As
shipping became available, however, the allies began the long process of
repatriating them; by 8 July 1946 the camp had emptied.
Displaced Persons
Alongside processing the many thousands of Japanese prisoners, another
urgent issue was the widespread dislocation and dispersal of civilians,
both internally in Malaya and across the region. One example came on 20
September 1945. The British received reports that a large group of INA
soldiers had arrived at Kuala Lumpur railway station that morning and
had de-camped there. Lieutenant J.S. Forrest and thirty men rushed to the
station, keen to arrest these ‘traitors’, but instead were confronted by a
sorry group of Javanese workers dressed in Japanese military fatigues.
They had been abandoned at the station, their origins unknown, and a
‘great majority …. were ill and starving. They had terrible sores on their
bodies and one had died previous to our coming’. The soldiers contacted
the hospital and army doctors arrived to help. Forrest instructed his men
to search for weapons but ‘a few irresponsible and senseless people
removed Japanese currency, knives and boots…’. Once this was
discovered these ‘souvenirs’ were returned. Somewhat defensively, Forrest
later noted that ‘…the people had been on the Railway Station since
morning and nothing had been done for them. The British Troops
proceeded to dress these Javanese people’s wounds with their own field
dressings. They gave them their rations and cigarettes’.
The British were confronted by large numbers of Javanese and Sumatran
workers, many in a poor state of health. To handle the rehabilitation and
processing of these poor men, the British established a camp at Sungei
Besi, which by November housed 2,000 workers. That month, a thirteen-
strong Dutch relief team arrived to provide medical and other support,
though it is not reported how the displaced Javanese viewed this assertion
of Dutch colonial concern (at this time the first shots were being fired in
Indonesia’s bloody war of independence). The British authorities in Kuala
Lumpur were, however, less concerned with the broader picture and
proudly reported that a ‘high Dutch official has visited the camp and has
said he will inform the Queen and the P.M. of all that the B.M.A are doing
for Javanese Dutch subjects’. With transport at a premium, it took many
months to repatriate these Javanese workers. In the meantime, and as
their strength returned, the British authorities tried to employ them on
rehabilitation work. In January 1946, 600-700 labourers ‘all based at Kyle
Palmer & Co’s Printing Works’ agreed to work at the Tanjong Karang
plantation (the Japanese pioneer farm at Kuala Selangor) on anti-malarial
de-silting work but it was not a success. According to officials involved,
‘the cost of clearing by Javanese is about twice that of Chinese contract
workers’ and the Public Works Department was ‘only willing to employ
Javanese on a ‘piece-meal’ basis’.
Malayans Displaced Abroad
Not only were there Javanese and internally-displaced Malayans who
needed support but there were tens of thousands of Malayans abroad who
needed locating and repatriating. The task was huge, and workers were
soon emerging as far afield as New Guinea, and from factories and mines
in Japan itself. The largest single concentrations, however, were in Burma
and Thailand, and their safe return posed a huge logistic challenge. The
railway system was in disarray and avoiding famine in Malaya was the
most pressing problem for the BMA – supplies of Thai rice taking up much
of the limited available provision of railcars, thereby denying this
transport option to the displaced. In October 1945, the BMA sent a Lt. Col.
James to survey the extent of the ‘D.P.’ (displaced persons) problem in
Thailand. He reported that alongside handling British and allied POWs,
who received priority, the British Fourteenth Army had to corral and
handle the many thousands of ‘coolies’ and Japanese POWs who had
surrendered to the British. The aim was to use the railway system to draw
the refugees south, but Lt. Col. James’ estimate of a thirteen week period
to complete this work was considered optimistic by those who had a fuller
understanding of the parlous state of the Malayan and Thai railway
systems.
In southern Thailand in the Kra Isthmus, the British 25th Division had
‘moved its lines’ to encompass two holding camps at Chumphon and
Suathani. The 4,600 displaced people here were then sent to a camp at
Alor Star in northern Malaya. The bulk of the POWs and Malaya’s
displaced persons, however, were held much further north. An estimated
23,000 workers were at camps near Kanburi and Tha Muang to the west of
Bangkok, which Lt. Col James reported were expected to grow to 26,000
as stragglers and deserters emerged from the jungle. He recommended
that the civilian refugees be transferred by boat to Singapore, Port
Swettenham, Penang and Port Dickson and noted that the policy was that
‘all estate coolies go back to their original estates and the only variations
to be made from this policy should be in consultation with and advice
from the Rubber Inspection Unit’.
By January 1946, 1,500 labourers had returned from Thailand and a
further 5,000 were expected to return shortly thereafter to Selangor. On
arrival in Selangor, displaced workers were first sent to a processing camp
at Batu Arang and ‘will be moved to neighbouring estates where labour is
needed’. There is a sense in this language that these poor men were still
being viewed as units of labour, to be moved as needed by economic
necessity, rather than victims of circumstance. Nevertheless, to try to help
families of lost relatives the British established in Kuala Lumpur a ‘Small
inadequate but better than nothing organisation for trying to locate
missing persons.’ By November 1945 it had received 192 enquiries and
succeeded in tracing twenty-seven displaced persons. But this was tiny
when compared to the challenge and for the majority of families, the fate
of their lost relatives would in most cases never be known.
Force 136 – Out in the Cold
One of the early problems faced by the regular army and the BMA was
how to deal with the MPAJA, and as an adjunct to that, how to deal with
Force 136. As befits a buccaneering group of insurgents, Force 136 and its
men did not fit easily into the mainstream military. They were fine
working behind enemy lines but soon became the source of endless
irritants and issues once ensconced on the right side of the line. In October
1945, the Chief Secretary to the BMA bemoaned Force 136’s expansive
ways and minuted ‘will you please ensure GLOs and PLOs [liaison officers]
with Force 136 money do not throw that money around like water in
providing gold teeth, extra cigarettes etc for their patrols... We know we
have to keep them [the MPAJA] happy but there is nothing laid down
about setting them up for life.’ Similarly in November 1945, Major
Gabbutt of the ‘Pan Malayan Accounts Section’ sent Lt. Col. John Davis of
Force 136 a severe dressing down, noting in exasperation that he had
written ‘on three occasions ….and have had no reply’ to account for a loan
of $100,000/- paid two months previously. Slowly but remorselessly the
pirates were being reined in.
In Kuala Lumpur, Force 136 did its own position no good by
commandeering a set of luxury houses in Petaling Hill and introducing a
considerable number of British female support staff. In retaliation, in late
October much of the accommodation was sequestered by ‘HQ Malaya
Command’ which ordered that ‘Only Colonel Davis and his Liaison Section
totaling two officers, two BORS, five Asiatics. HQ Force 136 Malaya and
Malaya Country Section totaling 12 officers, 16 European women, forty
BORS, Five Asiatics are to remain in the city’. The remainder of Force 136
was told to find accommodation elsewhere. Even in leaving they left a
legacy of mistrust. One BMA official cattily noted ‘It may be entirely
unjustified but there is a prevalent belief amongst many responsible
officers in this region, some not in BMA, that Force 136 as it vacates
accommodation may remove from there furniture and other fittings.’ The
glory days of Force 136, the weeks after the Japanese surrendered and
before the British returned, were now a distant memory as the
conventional army set about its work. On 15 November 1945, Force 136
was formally wound up. The aim by now was to disband the MPAJA, and
responsibility for this task fell to the conventional army supported by the
developing civilian police and Special Branch apparatus – many of whose
officers, such as Colonel Davis and Lt. Col. Broadhurst, had been central
players in Force 136.
Let’s all ring AJA’s knell. I’ll begin it. Ding, Dong, Dell…..
The inherent contradictions existing between a largely Chinese, anti-
colonialist and anti-capitalist communist party and the returning British
were bound to surface. Perhaps more surprising than the emergence of
these tensions was that the alliance had worked as well as it had done for
the critical four to six weeks of the interregnum following the Japanese
surrender. But following the British return, complex relations soon began
to sour. Lt. Col. Broadhurst, the Galvanic GLO, noted that ‘on peace with
so many extraneous influences and interest in the nature of the peace the
[MPAJA] leaders neglected their commands, resulting in an unfortunate
loss of discipline.’ Looking back, Broadhurst concluded that ‘there remains
the suspicion that the 1st Regiment was probably over paid for service
inadequately rendered and in the end not required’. He did not place the
whole blame entirely on the MPAJA’s shoulders, because he also
recognised that Force 136 ‘could never escape the innuendo that they
were little more than peddlers in arms and a welcome source of money’.
Broadhurst finished with an epitaph – or so he thought – for the MPAJA;
‘The operation fizzled out and AJA dies in the cradle where it lies. Let’s
all ring AJA’s knell. I’ll begin it. Ding, Dong, Dell.’
But, as pleased as Broadhurst may have been by his ditty, the MPAJA did
not ‘die in the cradle’. The British officially disbanded the force in
December 1945, when the Commander-in-Chief Malaya, Lt. General Sir
Frank Messervy, declared ‘The time has now come when your services as
an Armed Force are no longer required and you are therefore released into
Civil Life.’ With a final gratuity to all men, the British hoped – but without
great conviction – that this would be the end of it. But the MPAJA was to
morph into the Malayan Peoples Anti British Army and were to conduct a
long and bitter insurgency campaign against their erstwhile allies through
the long years of the Malayan Emergency. This, however, did not stop
some guerrillas from later seeking additional payment from the British for
their period of war-time alliance. As late as 1950 these claims were being
pressed, though a colonial official noted caustically that assembling a list
of genuine claimants ‘would involve much detailed investigation and the
interrogation of persons whose acquaintance the Police are most anxious
to make but who now are unfortunately in the jungle’.
The BMA – Struggling to Cope
In the war years the British had given much thought to the post-war
political construction of Malaya and had determined that, initially at least,
Singapore would be separately governed but that Penang and Malacca
from the former Straits Settlements Colony would be folded into the new
colonial structure of Malaya. The British were also intent on drawing into
the new constitutional framework the former Non-Federated Malay States
of Kedah, Perlis, Terengganu and Kelantan, such that in future there
would be no distinction between ‘Federated’ and Non-Federated’. In short,
Malaya was to be a less complex and more centralised state, and its capital
would be Kuala Lumpur. But in British planning it would remain an
unambiguously colonial possession.
The British handed the early governance of Malaya and Singapore to the
BMA which, as the name implies, was essentially a military-run
administration tasked with civil responsibilities. Kuala Lumpur and
Selangor were ‘Region 4’ as far as the BMA was concerned. After so much
upheaval, dislocation, destruction and hardship, the challenges facing the
BMA were enormous, and it struggled. In a report dated October 1945, it
admitted that ‘…the volume of work and the variety of problems have
made the tasks of this Administration very difficult. The first excitement
and relief consequent upon the surrender of the Japanese Forces having
evaporated, the bulk of the people find that their lot has not yet materially
improved as an immediate result of victory. Prices are high, foodstuffs
(particularly rice) are scarce, wages have been re-established in terms of
British dollars at pre-invasion levels, profiteering is occurring, there are
few piece goods and cigarettes and unemployment exists on a considerable
scale’.
The report continued, ‘This state of anxiety in the minds of the people
provides a fertile field for the agitator and the extremist and they have not
been slow to exploit their opportunity; they do this covertly but
nonetheless with conviction. Certain sections of the Malays and the
Chinese have become, as a result of Japanese occupation, increasingly
politically conscious and articulate and now that they are permitted to
organise themselves and to express their feelings freely, wild talk and
over-statements are apt to be indulged in on the Chinese side. Many of
the youths of the country have been imbued with Communist sentiments,
though very little knowledge of the exact tenets of Communism. Despite
these disturbing factors it is clear that the articulate agitators have no real
following though many people are nervous of their activities.’ By October
1945, the BMA claimed that it was making progress against the myriad
challenges that it faced and noted that ‘it is clear to all that the country is
making remarkable progress and the power of the Administration for good
is rapidly making itself felt’. Despite such self-serving assessments,
however, progress proved much slower than many expected and the claim
that the communists ‘have no real following’ proved wide of the mark.
Population and Demographic Changes
The war brought enormous changes to population of Kuala Lumpur.
Initially the threat of the Japanese assault saw an exodus from the city to
the safety of nearby towns and rural settlements, while some headed to
the illusory safety of Singapore. But this urban-rural drift was to correct
itself once the Japanese established a modicum of stability and thereafter
during the war there was a steady movement from rural areas into the
city. The 1947 census complier, del Tufo, noted that there was an
increased ‘clustering’ of people around towns and a draining of population
from the tin and plantation districts into the city. On their return the
British were struck by the overcrowding of Kuala Lumpur, the emergence
of shanty communities at the city edge and the number of beggars,
orphans and homeless living on the streets. Except for the Indians, whose
massive losses have already been noted, the ‘natural increase’ (i.e. births
against deaths – not migration) of Chinese and Malay communities of
Kuala Lumpur, having ‘paused’ in 1942, was a healthy two per cent
throughout 1943-1945. Overall during the war, therefore, the population
of Kuala Lumpur expanded due to inward migration and natural
population growth; a post-war British assessment calculated that the city
population grew by twenty per cent during the Japanese occupation,
though no new housing had been built and overcrowding had become a
major problem.
Generational Strains
After the war it was commonplace - by adults at least - to rue the absence
of schooling and parental control of children during the war years. The
Japanese had, predictably, been easier on Malay and Indian schools but
for all races the war years were either free from schooling or involved
much disruption. It was later argued that a generation grew up almost
feral and lacked traditional respect and discipline. The re-launched Malay
Mail would note in September 1945 that ‘It is most regrettable that
children of tender age have not only wasted three and half years but also
have been exposed to innumerable temptations. The result is that in most
cases parental discipline has gone to the wind.’ Traditional social
patterns, authority structures and respect for elders were therefore
strained or broken by the impact of the war. Chin Peng, a senior MPAJA
Commander, was only nineteen at the end of the war. Many of the older
generation of Chinese leaders, most of whom were business leaders and
supporters of the Kuomintang, were compromised in the eyes of the young
by their association with organisations such as the Overseas Chinese
Association which cooperated with the Japanese. The Indian community
had its own generational issues as it lost many young men on the death
railways and estates and plantations were plunged into economic and
social disarray. The Malay community was probably the least disrupted
socially by the experience of war, but even here problems with schooling
and simple poverty created an underclass that was forced to scavenge and
scrape to survive. As a consequence, many Kuala Lumpur youths probably
were wild and out of control by the end of the war. Who could blame
them?
A Shattered Economy
The Japanese had embarked on a reckless policy of printing ‘banana’ bank
notes, with little or no control, which had encouraged high levels of
inflation. On their return, the British immediately re-imposed their own
currency, with Japanese occupation notes bearing no, or minimal,
conversion value. At a stroke, money lenders (many of them Indian
Chettiars) were left holding worthless Japanese-era notes and debts and
the informal money-lending system, that had underpinned much of the
day-to-day economy, collapsed. Inflation was further increased as
shortages forced up prices, even though wages remained fixed at pre-war
levels. This was the perfect recipe for labour unrest which spilled over
into lawlessness and a crime wave.
By 15 October 1945, British banks reopened in Kuala Lumpur using the
new notes brought in by the BMA. But getting credit to businesses brought
low by the consequences of war was another problem. Efforts to get the
BMA to offer loans were met by an uncompromising response from
Brigadier Willan who stated ‘So far as loans to industry in general are
concerned I don’t think it is proper for BMA to usurp the business of the
banks.’ If loans were difficult to come by, US dollars were even scarcer as
the currency control board sought to keep a tight lid on funds held outside
the sterling zone. It would prove a long haul to recovery.
The two main pillars of the Selangor economy, tin and rubber, were
essentially comatose. For the rubber estates, the toll on the labour force
exacted by Japanese war projects would take many years to overcome and
the low fixed price of rubber was deemed ‘highly uneconomical’ and
hindered reconstruction. The appalling conditions within the rubber
estates, stalked by starvation and exacerbated by the large number of
widows and orphans, prompted the Selangor Labour Department to argue
that ‘the Estates can hardly be expected to shoulder the burden in a
position which has been brought about by no fault of their own’. This led
the British to offer some limited compensation to the relatives of those
who had died on Japanese work projects, while brusquely noting that the
‘scheme should not promote laziness…there can be no parasites amongst
the Indian working population’. A mid-1946 survey of eight estates in
Selangor suggested that concerns about ‘laziness’ were misplaced. From a
work force of 5,290 (divided between 2,934 males and 2,356 females)
there were 529 ‘working widows’ and 68 ‘non-working widows’ who
supported 59 fatherless children. The government’s financial assistance in
these estates therefore aided just 125 ‘non-working widows and orphans’.
More important than this limited financial support were additional food
supplies. While a consignment of powdered milk was anxiously awaited
from Canada, the Labour Department circulated local solutions to the
nutritional crisis, which included dishes such as ‘Estate Pudding’, which
was a quixotic mix of buffalo milk, rice, dhal and sugar as well as a wide
range of dishes based around coconut and fishmeal.
For the tin industry, a major problem was securing the necessary capital
with which to buy spare parts to refurbish the mines. This, and the
recovery of export markets, would take many years to complete. The
problems of the tin industry spilled over into many engineering support
companies. In mid-1946, a survey of factories in Klang highlighted the
problems of a radicalised labour force struggling to make ends meet in a
time of rampant inflation. By July, the Labour Department noted that in
Selangor there had been ’26 cases of labour unrest’ which had led to
twenty strikes. It noted that many workers were ‘unable to afford black-
market prices’ and there was ‘undoubtedly an undercurrent fanned by
outside sources’. Against this background, the Deputy Commissioner of
Labour sagely warned that ‘whether or not the volcano will erupt will be
largely dependent on the energies of the employers and their wise
handling of labour forces’.
Shortages
One of the BMA’s biggest problems was the supply of food and its
distribution to the needy. In Kuala Lumpur, four feeding centres had been
set up in the city to provide basic provisions; in October they offered over
10,000 meals per day. In Kuala Lumpur, as elsewhere in Malaya, the
weekly allowance of rice from government-supplied retailers was three
kattie for adult males and one and a half katties for women and children,
which was low but above starvation levels (it was one quarter the level
offered in 1941 when the British introduced a ration card shortly before
their defeat). With great reluctance, given the government’s tight
financial position, there were also short-term cash payments to the very
needy, particularly those in outlying areas. In December 1945, $70,000
was distributed to the poorest of the poor.
Poverty contributed to the wave of lawlessness then sweeping Selangor.
Not only were starving people more likely to turn to crime but the
distribution lines and food centres themselves sparked violence as hungry
and disaffected people vented their anger on slow queues and petty
restrictions. In November 1945, the Food Board said that it was
anticipating the arrival of additional rice supplies by boat from India and
Thailand but noted ‘If any of the shipments fail to arrive it will be
embarrassing.’ By January 1946, however, Brigadier Newboult said that
while there remained areas of shortage there were stockpiles and the
challenge was in part one of distribution. But he also acknowledged that
the rice stock had been hit hard, and seed-rice for next season’s harvest
had in many cases been consumed. Newboult revealed that the army had
imported thousands of chickens from India but all had died due to the
absence of inoculation. Following this set-back, the BMA looked to rabbits,
noting that ‘rabbits give fairly quick returns’. It would take many months
for the food situation to become tolerable, though there is little evidence
that fast-breeding rabbits ever played an appreciable role in improving
matters.
Malayan Railways – in Disarray
The Japanese occupation had left the Malayan Railways network in a truly
terrible state. The two massive USAAF bombing raids on the engineering
and marshalling yards at Sentul had wrought great destruction but, even
more disruptive, large sections of branch-line rail track had been up-
rooted and sent to Japan’s ‘death railway’ projects, along with scores of
Malayan Railway locomotives and literally hundreds of wagons. After the
war, there was the thorny decision of what to do about all this scattered
stock, and whether and how it might be returned. On inspection, much of
it was found to be in an appalling condition and it was therefore decided
to dispose of it in situ. With the aptly named Colonel A.A. Forward
representing the Malayan Railways Advisory Board serious haggling took
place, though the British were hardly in a strong position. In negotiations
with the French Chemins de Fer de L’Indochine, Colonel Forward initially
asserted that he would accept no less than £2,200,000; by February 1949,
the French paid the Bank of England £1,250,000 in full and final
settlement. A somewhat lesser sum was eventually extracted from the
Thais, who also proved frustratingly slow to pay. British exasperation at
Thai delaying tactics was only matched by the frustration of the Dutch,
who were seeking similar restitution from the British for Dutch East Indies
locomotives that had been brought to Malaya, the British proving equally
tardy in paying compensation! A further problem was the dispersal of
Malayan Railway staff who had followed their rolling stock to Thailand
and Burma. As late as 1947 the Railway Department Annual Report
lamented that while most of their staff had by then returned, the number
of employees was ‘still below that required’.
In the immediate post-war years, the Malayan Railways was faced with
huge problems in restoring its service to pre-war levels. In 1946, the
journey time from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore had doubled. Only in
income could they show a better result, making $16,629,612 in revenue
against $10,024,096 in 1939. This spectacular increase, however, was
only achieved by a massive hike in ticket prices which brought
considerable public anger and added to the high inflation rate of the
period. Payment was also much flouted. In 1946, travel was supposed only
to be for those with BMA permits, but according to a contemporary
account ‘all trains are invaded, except at principal stations by
uncontrollable crowds who travel free not only in all vehicles but on their
roofs and even on the buffer beams of locomotives. This lack of order
brings considerable operating difficulties and pilferage abounds, the most
recent instance being the removal during the progress of a train of almost
the complete contents of 8 wagon loads of sugar’.
Crime and Unrest
With homeless and transient people flooding into Kuala Lumpur, with the
economy at a stand-still and with enormous food and other shortages,
crime rates rose to alarming levels. When, in October 1945, the RAF re-
established an airbase at Sungei Besi, it was beset by thieves and robbers
only too happy to steal anything loose and portable. In response, the
commander of the base added additional armed patrols to beef up
perimeter security but found it an impossible task. In the same month a
mob of about 300 broke into the Selangor Tin Dredging Company stores
and looted all the equipment. The British were anxious to distance
themselves from the repressive ways of the Japanese but started to crack
down on looters and thieves through harsh sentencing. At a meeting with
local community representatives in January 1946, an official warned that
‘The armed robbery situation has become very serious and the question of
meting out more severe punishment is already under consideration.’
Meanwhile Colonel Lee of the BMA noted that ‘Whipping and even the
death penalty cannot be too severe on these desperados.’
In terms of inter-racial clashes, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur were fortunate
not to suffer to the same extent as Perak, Johor and Malacca. A BMA
report of October 1945 noted that ‘Regarding the Sino-Malay incidents…..
we have not had as bad a time as other regions. There have been two or
three isolated incidents….’ One such clash was sparked when both Chinese
and Malay gangs tried to rob the same train which resulted in an
‘unfortunate incident’. In January 1946, Brigadier Newboult noted that
‘elements of the population… are taking advantage… to go outside the
law to rob, to threaten, to intimidate often by force of arms, other
members of the community. The Police and Military authorities are coping
with the situation [but] they are not receiving that help from the public,
which could be given but is withheld owing presumably to fear of
retaliation’. Elsewhere in Selangor, there was the added problem of
industrial strikes and agitation. In October 1945 the BMA noted that
‘strikes occurred at the Batu Arang coal and the Railway Workshops and
Supplies Depots’ with the ‘Selangor People’s State Committee’ being
‘responsible for the majority of the demonstrations and irresponsible
activities’. Despite all this, Newboult concluded that the BMA was ‘getting
the upper-hand’. Slowly the police presence became increasingly visible
and effective. It was a reformed force having purged many of the
policemen who had served during the Japanese occupation and it
gradually gained greater popular support. Overall, crime rates and the
number of violent incidents began to drop, though Kuala Lumpur would
never return to pre-war levels of security and public safety.
Public Health and Education
The British found that public health and medical services had deteriorated
hugely during the Japanese occupation. In October 1945, a team of British
medical auxiliaries arrived in Kuala Lumpur to work on public health
programmes, though an absence of drugs and equipment severely
hampered their progress. Malaria eradication measures were soon put in
place but it took some years for public health to return to pre-war levels –
partly because so many people were undernourished and lacking in
strength. It was a similar situation with schooling. By November 1945 the
majority of schools had reopened though Kuala Lumpur’s premier English
school, the Victoria Institution, and two prominent English medium
technical colleges remained occupied by the army until 1947. Chinese and
Indian enrolment was increasing each month and English-medium schools
had raised class numbers from 240 to 320 – an increase of fifty per cent on
pre-war figures. The Malay schools had also increased their enrolment but
took time to return to pre-war levels, partly because there was no cloth
available for school uniforms. With an educational backlog, Kuala
Lumpur’s burgeoning population and a demographic bulge of young
people, providing sufficient school places remained problematic for a
number of years to come. Once again, the BMA’s intentions were good
but the practical realities of getting a broken system back to its former
level proved taxing.
The BMA – Unloved and Little Missed
On 1 April 1946, the BMA handed over authority to a civilian
government. It had endured a torrid eight months of governance. One
BMA officer, and later a distinguished administrator and academic, J.W.
Gullick, noted that ‘government by an occupying army is, by its nature
likely to be an unpleasant experience for the civilian population subject to
it. The British Military Administration of Malaya was no exception to
that’. It had earned the unwelcome moniker, the ‘Black Market
Administration’ and within its ranks there were not only capable and
experienced officers like Gullick, but also a fair sprinkling of rogues and
incompetents. The range and complexity of the problems facing the BMA
would have tested the most well-oiled and proficient of administrations –
which the BMA most certainly was not. As Gullick concluded, on ‘April
Fool’s Day 1946… unloved - the BMA passed into the history books.’
Chapter Twenty
Kuala Lumpur Small War Crimes Trials
Throughout 1946 and into 1947, Kuala Lumpur was the scene for one of
the war’s longest running and most comprehensive set of Small War
Crimes Trials. Similar trials took place elsewhere in Malaya and in
Singapore. Penang held a particularly large and colourful trial of Kempetei
officers. They were held under the auspices of the British military and the
Court Presidents were military officers with legal backgrounds. The court
proceedings followed the British practice of contesting prosecution and
defence counsels, though it was the Court President rather than a civilian
judge or a jury who made the final judgement and determined sentencing.
For those who received the death penalty, there was an appeal process,
which was in the form of a short summary document sent to the
Commanding Officer of the British Forces in Malaya. From the trials held
in Kuala Lumpur, however, there was not one successful appeal against
capital punishment. The Kuala Lumpur trials were held in the Crown
Courts, in what is now the Sultan Abdul Samad building, opposite the
central padang. The cases were dealt with in a brisk military manner with
some being heard and decided in just one day, though some of the
complex cases lasted for over two weeks. Between July 1946 and
December 1947, the Kuala Lumpur trials brought at least 94, and possibly
as many as 105, defendants to the dock. Certain cases were held
individually but in others there were multiple numbers of accused. Most
defendants were Japanese military personnel and Kempetei officers but
also included medical administrators from the Thai-Burma railway, prison
officials and Taiwanese and local interpreters and collaborators.
The defendants were held at Pudu Prison and those who were executed
were hanged from the gallows there. By the conclusion of the process at
least nineteen prisoners were sentenced to death, with their executions
generally coming some four to six weeks after their appeals. The
executions took place early in the morning, starting at 7.00am. The
hangman, James Henry Pink, received $50 for each execution and his
assistant, a Malay warder, received $10. Though the process was kept
discreet and sheltered from the rest of the prison, there was no hiding the
fact that an execution was taking place, if only because the other prisoners
- due to prison convention - were not served breakfast until the executions
had taken place.
A small group of officials attended the execution, including a Japanese
interpreter to help the condemned man through his last moments. The
gallows was located in a dark, forbidding chamber located on the ground
floor of Block A, at the end of ‘death row’ from which a metal door led
directly to the execution chamber. It was through this that the condemned
man was taken to his execution, though the corpse would later be
removed through an external door to the prison yard, where a van would
be waiting to take it away. Inside the chamber was a simple raised
wooden-platform complete with trapdoor, and above this ran a large
wooden-beam from which dangled the hangman’s noose, complete with its
thirteen turns. The condemned man could either sit on a wooden chair or
stand, and was invariably hooded for his last moments. In similar cases
elsewhere, there is testimony that in the seconds before the trapdoor
opened the Japanese prisoners cried defiant screams of ‘banzai’ or
protestations of faith to the Emperor. In the case of Pudu Prison,
however, the dry, official paperwork fails to record whether or not such
acts of bravura occurred. After the hanging - and in some cases two or
more men were executed in the same session - the corpse was laid out on
the floor of the execution chamber and inspected by a medical officer who
then recorded on the death certificate that death came through
‘dislocation of the neck by judicial hanging’, or some similar formulation.
The bodies were then driven away and cremated, partly due to the fear
that the buried corpses might be exhumed and mutilated by angry Kuala
Lumpur residents. For those who escaped the gallows there was a broad
spread of sentencing, ranging from two years to life, and a goodly number,
as many as thirty, were acquitted. Those that were given prison sentences
initially served their time in Pudu Prison but from the late 1940s the
British quietly allowed them to return to Japan to finish their sentences,
which in many cases were cut short on remission.
It might have been thought, and this was certainly the intention, that the
Small War Crimes Trials would bring ‘closure’ to traumatised communities
and a sense of justice for the widespread atrocities of the Japanese. There
was certainly entrenched anger and animosity, and the trials offered some
form of justice. Indicative of declining public interest, however, individual
cases were increasingly consigned to passing references on the inside
pages of the local newspapers. Though the wounds would take many
years, if ever, to heal, there was already a sense that the citizens of Kuala
Lumpur were sick of the whole business and were much keener on
restoring their damaged lives and in looking ahead to the challenges of the
post-war era than in revisiting the trauma and violence of the Japanese
occupation. The final cases concluded in late 1947, over two years after
the return of the British and shortly before the CPM took to the jungles
once more, but this time in opposition to the colonial British. Soon a new
conflict would envelope Malaya, and would come to dominate the
political and social landscape.
Epilogue
The Japanese occupied Kuala Lumpur from January 1942 until September
1945, a period of three years and eight months. The impact of their short
occupation was profound. Much, however, depended on race, age,
gender, occupation and happenstance. It is therefore impossible to offer a
single narrative or portrayal of these years; each community, family and
individual having a very different war. Nevertheless, certain themes
predominate and perhaps the most common was the capricious brutality
that accompanied the Japanese. While the British may not have been
loved, they were later welcomed back as a respite from the violence,
hardship and famine that accompanied the Japanese occupation.
The Japanese occupation was a turning point in the history of Malaya and
of its capital city. Kuala Lumpur suffered physically from the effects of the
British ‘scorched earth’ policy, from looting and from USAAF bombing
raids, but much less so than either Penang or Singapore. The main
traumas visited upon the city and its inhabitants were political,
sociological, economic and psychological. Through their divisive policies
and repressive methods, the Japanese tested inter- and intra-communal
relations to breaking point and left behind a radicalised and polarised
political landscape. Into this fractured environment the British tried to
rebuild an economy and society wrecked by war. The Malayan
Emergency, which followed hard on the heels of the British return, would
attest to the difficulties and strains that war had imposed on a hitherto
largely settled and peaceful country. The war years were divisive and
heightened inter-communal tensions. The focus of Japanese repression
was on the Chinese, but all communities suffered. When the spectrum of
violence reaches the lows of the Bukit Jalil massacre, where over four
hundred Chinese men were decapitated or bayoneted to death, this leaves
plenty of space for more lenient but still oppressive treatment. Indeed, in
terms of absolute losses, it was the Indian community that suffered the
most. Though they handled the different communities in different ways,
Japanese policies stoked existing divisions leading to heightened
animosity and increased polarisation.
Within each community, the war also left lasting scars. For the Chinese,
pent-up anger and hatred shifted from the Japanese (now repatriated) to
perceived spies and collaborators within their own community. This sense
of betrayal helped fuel the divisions that fed the growth of the communist
insurgency. The Indians, meanwhile, remained deeply divided on racial
and religious grounds. The majority Tamils took many years to recover
from the death and losses of their men on the Japanese war projects, with
many believing that the political leadership of the IIL and the INA had
failed, for fear of alienating the Japanese, to protect legions of their young
men. Even the Malays, who fared relatively better than the other two
main communities, entered the post-war era stressed and conflicted. The
‘Malay left’, which had made progress during the Japanese occupation,
was confronted by an emerging political establishment based on the
traditional rulers - the Sultans and aristocrats - and the new professional
elite of UMNO. Supported by the British, they wished to forget as fast as
possible any accommodation that might have occurred during the
Japanese occupation and instead highlighted the role played by Malays in
confronting the Japanese, at the expense of a truly balanced account.
In reviewing the cast of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor citizens introduced in
Chapter One, few emerged better or happier as a consequence of the war.
Some, such as Dorothy Mather, wife of the Pudu Prison warden, and Doris
van der Straaten, victim of the Kempetei’s psychotic brutality, were to die
as a direct consequence of the war. Even those who lived often carried
deep psychological wounds for the rest of their lives. Doris van der
Straaten’s sister-in-law, Wilhemina Eames, survived the sinking of the
HMS Tandjong Penang and a detention camp in Sumatra, but later
‘succumbed to a life spent permanently trying to atone for the privilege of
surviving the war’. Even the perpetrators of war crimes, men such as
Miyake Genjiro, the Japanese soldier who bayoneted to death innocent
Chinese civilians at Bukit Jalil, were later to suffer deep psychological
trauma – in his case leading to a public confession of remorse and guilt.
Despite this dark backdrop, not all who lived through these years were so
bleakly affected. Some who suffered greatly during the war thereafter
showed great resilience which allowed them to re-build their lives. Sultan
Hisamuddin Alam Shah restored the dignity and status of the Selangor
Sultanate and in 1960 was elected by his peers to become the second
Agong of independent Malaysia. His untimely death in September of that
year meant he only held this position for a few months, though not before
he officially proclaimed the end of The Emergency. James Mather and
Philip van der Straaten, following the deaths of their wives and time spent
in Japanese captivity, picked themselves up and re-launched their lives.
James Mather re-married and started a new family in Malaya while Philip
van der Straaten emigrated to Britain. The war no doubt stayed with
them, and continued to impact their lives, but they had sufficient sense of
hope and confidence to start life anew.
Kuala Lumpur itself took a leaf from this book. Despite the depredations of
war, or perhaps because of them, its population expanded hugely and in
the post-war years continued remorselessly on an upward growth path. In
1947, Penang (Singapore remained an independent entity) was Malaya’s
largest city and economy, with a population of 444,000. Kuala Lumpur
meanwhile had a population of around 290,000. But the new Federation’s
capital city would soon outstrip Penang, Ipoh and all the other major
cities of the peninsula to become, without dispute, the primary centre of
government, politics and commerce. To show how things have changed,
contemporary ‘metro Kuala Lumpur’ has a population of over seven
million while Penang has a population of 1.6 million. Kuala Lumpur’s
change in fortunes can, in large measure, be tracked back to the war
years. But the city has largely forgotten this transformatory era. There is
no memorial to the hundreds of civilians murdered by the Kempetei, nor
any recognition of the thousands of south Indian workers who were
dispatched to their deaths on the Thai-Burma railway. Neither is there a
collective memory of the Allied bombing raids on the city, nor the days of
looting and mayhem that accompanied the British withdrawal and later
anticipated their return. Hopefully this book will go some way to
rekindling knowledge of, and interest in, this fascinating if disturbing
period in the city’s history.
Sources
The primary documentary sources used for this book were found in Arkib
Negara in Kuala Lumpur, the Singapore National Library, the Straits Times
on-line collection, the Australian National Archives, the UK Public Record
Office at Kew and the Imperial War Museum.
Arkib Negara holds the important BMA records as well as the Malay Mail,
Malay Mail (New Order), Straits Times, Malai Sinpo, Tamil Nesan
newspapers. It also carries an eclectic set of documents linked to e.g. the
FMS Volunteers and the Selangor State government and an extensive set of
recorded oral accounts, which I variously cite.
The Australian National Archives holds the personal papers, including
photographs, of Captain Morrison of Force 136. In the UK, the Imperial
War Museum (IWM) ‘personal papers’ collection holds a range of
contemporary accounts and retrospective memoirs of British civilians and
military. The UK Public Record Office at Kew holds the extensive British
government files. Those cited come from the following series, (WO) War
Office (RAF, Army, Navy Force 136 etc); (CO) Colonial Office; (FO)
Foreign Office; (WO 235) Judge Advocate Generals Military Department;
(KV) Security; (HW) Intelligence and (CAB) the Prime Minister’s Office
papers.
The images are sourced from Arkib Negara and I am grateful for their
authority to use them in this publication. The map of Kuala Lumpur is
courtesy of John Nicholson.
Alongside documentary and recorded sources, I am grateful to a range of
contacts and interlocutors who were willing to share their personal and
family recollections and stories. Many wish to remain anonymous - but
they know who they are and I thank them all for their contributions.