The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (13 page)

“Among those detained was a young, strapping, jolly Teochew lad of about 17 or 18 years of age. He was a
gunpo
who was caught after he deserted. One evening, the
Kempeitai
strapped him bare-bodied to the ceiling. His hands were tied behind him and the rope attached to a beam with his feet barely touching the ground. From time to time you could see him stretching his toes to reach the ground, to ease the weight on his shoulders.

“They left him there the whole night without food and water. He yelled profanities and cursed the Japanese in a strong voice in Teochew.

“The next morning, the shouts and curses turned to piteous wails and moans when a
Kempeitai
man used a cane to hit the man’s back. It went on for a few hours and the wailings and moanings became weaker and weaker; ultimately, it stopped. He was dead and yet was left hanging for some time before all of us, as a warning to the
gunpo
and to us.

Gruesome torture by Japanese soldiers during the occupation.

“Another time water was pumped into a man from a hose, and when his stomach was filled with water, the torturer would jump and sit on it. The man vomited and passed out.

“Every morning, we shivered when we heard the sound of heavy boots approaching our cell. It was a sign that some of us would be undergoing interrogation and torture. Some never came back.

“I was released on the intercession of the top Taiwanese liaison officer.

“I have seen the true nature of the Japanese, in and out of prison. The civility and the bowings are a thin veneer under which lurks the beast. The Allied victory saved Asia.”

A poignant summation of Japanese bestiality was contained in the opening address of Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Sleeman, the prosecutor in the “Double Tenth” trial, which opened in Singapore on 18 March 1946:

“To give an accurate description of the misdeeds of these men it will be necessary for me to describe actions which plumb the very depths of human depravity and degradation. The keynote of the whole of this case can be epitomised by two words – unspeakable horror.

“Horror, stark and naked, permeates every corner and angle of the case from beginning to end, devoid of relief or palliation. I have searched, I have searched diligently, amongst a vast mass of evidence, to discover some redeeming feature, some mitigating factor in the conduct of these men which would elevate the story from the level of pure horror and bestiality, and ennoble it, at least, upon the plane of tragedy. I confess that I have failed.”

Yet, throughout the 50 years since the end of the war, successive Japanese Liberal Democratic Party governments, the majority of leaders
of all Japanese political parties, most of their academics and nearly all their media have chosen not to talk about these evil deeds. Unlike the Germans, they hope that with the passing of the generations these deeds will be forgotten, and the accounts of what they did buried in dusty records. When they refuse to admit them to their neighbours, people cannot but fear that it is possible for them to repeat these horrors. It was only when a non-LDP government took office in 1992 that a Japanese prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, gave an unqualified apology.

4. After the Liberation

On Wednesday, 12 September 1945, at about 10:30 in the morning, I walked to City Hall, where the surrender ceremony would take place, and waited on the Padang across the road. The wait was worth it. I saw a group of seven high-ranking Japanese officers arrive from High Street, accompanied by British military police wearing their red caps and armbands. They were led by General Itagaki, commander-in-chief of the forces in Malaya and Singapore. Unlike so many Japanese officers, they did not shuffle; they walked properly. The crowd hooted, whistled and jeered but the Japanese were impassive and dignified, looking straight ahead. They had come to sign the formal surrender in obedience to their emperor’s orders. Many officers were later seen at various locations laying down their long samurai swords in a pile. They were acknowledging defeat, were disarmed, and became prisoners of war. But the seven generals who now walked up the steps of City Hall represented an army that had not been routed in battle. They would have fought to the death, and they left the people of Singapore who hated them in no doubt that they would have preferred to go down in flames, bringing everyone else down with them, rather than surrender.

Some 45 minutes later, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the British commander-in-chief, South East Asia Command, appeared, wearing his white naval uniform. He was accompanied by his generals and admirals, and some seven or eight officers representing the Allied forces, including Indians, Chinese, Dutch and others. He raised his naval cap high with his right hand and gave three cheers to the troops that formed the cordon in front of the steps. He loved uniforms, parades and ceremonies.

These were moments of great exhilaration. The Japanese occupation nightmare was over and people thought the good times were about to return. The signs were favourable. The troops were generous with their cigarettes – Players Navy Cut in paper packets, unobtainable for the last three years. Good quality beer, Johnnie Walker whisky and Gordon’s dry gin found their way into the market, and we believed that soon there would be plenty of rice, fruit, vegetables, meat and canned foods. This was not to be for some time. But during those first few weeks, there was jubilation. The people were genuinely happy and welcomed the British back.

By early 1946, however, people realised that there was to be no return to the old peaceful, stable, free-and-easy Singapore. The city was packed with troops in uniform. They filled the newly opened cafés, bars and cabarets. The pre-war colonial business houses could not restart immediately, for their British employees had died or were recuperating from internment. Ship arrivals were infrequent and goods were scarce in Britain itself. It looked as if it would be many years before the pre-war flow of commodities resumed. Even locals who had worked for the government could not just go back to their old offices, and many remained unemployed. It was a world in turmoil where the hucksters flourished in Singapore as they did in Britain (where they were called spivs). Much of the day-to-day business was still done on the black – now the free – market.

There were numerous army jeeps and motorcycles in the streets, but no new motorcars or buses. The trolley buses were dilapidated, and the roads full of potholes; telephones were old and the lines unclear because replacements were not available; electricity was still in short supply. It was going to take some time to put things right. We had lived too much in anticipation of the “good old days” during those years of suffering. Our hopes, based on nostalgia, were too high, and we were bound to be disappointed. The infrastructure had run down, property had been lost
or destroyed, people had died, become old or sick. Life had to go on but it was not going to be like the good old days.

Nevertheless, the British Military Administration, whatever its shortcomings, was an immense relief after the terror and oppression of its Japanese predecessor. British officers and civilians knew that the locals welcomed them back, and they reciprocated the warmth we showed them and did their best for us. Many soldiers and officers shared their army rations as well as their cigarettes and liquor with the people they dealt with. Many in Singapore understood the English language, English culture and the English form of government. Even the uneducated were vaguely familiar with those parts of the British colonial system with which they came in contact.

It was to be expected that the Straits Chinese in particular would be happy with the return to a form of society into which they had been for long assimilated. Although they retained much of their Chinese culture, many had stopped speaking their own dialects, and conversed only in Baba Malay. They were the descendants of early immigrants who had not brought their womenfolk with them from China and had therefore contracted mixed marriages with local women. They were for the most part loyal to the British, and they sent their children to local English schools, many in the hope that they would eventually become professionals and government servants in a colony administered in the English language. The most loyal joined the Straits Chinese British Association and were popularly known as the King’s Chinese. Their leading members were made knights.

But the King’s Chinese formed only about 10 per cent of the community. The remainder were the Chinese-speaking Chinese who had come to Singapore more recently. They spoke not English but their own dialects – mainly Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese. Their children went to Chinese schools, where they learnt Mandarin. Their contact with the British authorities was minimal, they led a separate
existence and they were no more assimilated after the war than they had been before it.

Their loyalty was to China, not Britain. It was they who went into the Malayan jungle to fight the Japanese, as guerrillas in the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party. They were looking ahead to the day when they would expel not only the Japanese, but also the British. In the power vacuum created when the Japanese surrendered suddenly before the British could invade, they spelt trouble.

In Malaya, they took over some of the smaller towns, put up arches to welcome the guerrillas as the real victors in the battle against the Japanese, and acted as the
de facto
local authority. Mercifully, they did not try that in Singapore, but they caused turmoil enough. They appeared in the streets in assorted khaki uniforms with cloth caps modelled on those of the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army – soft, floppy, oddly shaped, with three red stars on the front over the visor. In the flush of victory, they were high-handed. They forcibly requisitioned property and set up people’s courts to mete out summary justice to collaborators of all races. In one instance 20 Chinese detectives were rounded up and put into pig crates pending trial.

There was extortion and subtle blackmail of businessmen for their past collaboration with the enemy. Many prominent people were psychologically or physically compelled to make generous contributions to the MPAJA to make up for their past misdeeds. Young hooligans went around town openly using MPAJA credentials to wring money or goods from those who had had dealings with the Japanese. The British forces could not reestablish law and order in the face of the MPAJA’s aggressiveness and the opportunism of gangsters who pretended to have played a part in the resistance. Fortunately, because they had no means to travel down to Singapore, most of the MPAJA remained stuck in Malaya, where they operated more effectively as it was familiar territory.

The British Military Administration offered the MPAJA $350 for every guerrilla who handed in his weapons. From December 1945 to January 1946, some 6,500 did so, including several hundred in Singapore. On 6 January, the British held a ceremony outside City Hall at which a small, uniformed MPAJA contingent marched past Lord Louis Mountbatten, who pinned medals on 16 of their leaders. Chin Peng, described in the newspapers as a communist guerrilla commander, received the Burma Star (1939/45) and War Star, after which he gave a clenched-fist salute. Official recognition of the MPAJA’s contribution in defeating the Japanese gave them a status that they exploited to the utmost to extend their power. Meanwhile, they secretly stored many weapons for future use.

The communists were able to recruit some of the English-educated into the united front they were creating. A group of so-called intellectuals – lawyers, teachers, Raffles College graduates and students back from Cambridge – formed the Malayan Democratic Union, which had its headquarters in some shabby rooms above the dance hall at the Liberty Cabaret in North Bridge Road. They had inveigled Philip Hoalim Senior, a lawyer and our family friend, into lending it respectability by becoming its chairman. They needed him as cover in order to manipulate the organisation, and I became a casual visitor to their proceedings through my acquaintance with him. Its purpose appeared legitimate enough. The British had announced the formation of the Malayan Union, which would include the nine Malay states and the Straits Settlements of Penang and Malacca, but not Singapore. This meant that Singapore would remain a British colony. That was unacceptable, and the Malayan Democratic Union demanded the independence of both Malaya and Singapore as one unit.