Growing Up in British Malaya and Singapore

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Contents

I do not know the exact date of my birth and no one else knows either. This may sound strange to a Singaporean as I am sure everyone here, has a birth certificate. I have none. Why? This is because I was born in 1920 in a remote village in Kedah, a northern state in Malaysia or British Malaya, as it was then called. My English father was away on home leave in England and my Tamil mother, who was illiterate, knew nothing about registering the birth of a child. Anyway, records of births and deaths were not kept in villages and no one bothered about it. It was not until I had to go to school that my father obtained a Statutory Declaration f rom a magistrate fixing 24 March 1920 as the date of my birth. This was just a guess, but if correct, I fall under the birthsign Aries in the astrological calendar. According to my mother, I was delivered by a Malay bidan or midwife who cut the umbilical cord with a sharp bamboo knife which must have been germ free. It was 10 am on a bright, sunny day, she said…

Nineteen twenty-six was the year I began schooling in Kuantan. I was scared at the prospect, possibly more than any other child of six, because my mother had frequently threatened that I would be taught to behave by rotan-wielding teachers. She did this to keep me out of mischief, especially to stop me from bullying my younger sister. My mother made bogeymen out of school teachers and Sikh policemen. (The Sikhs were tall and impressive, and even intimidating in their uniform, and I feared I would be arrested for being naughty. Before the Japanese Occupation (1942–1945), a great many policemen were Sikhs, both in Singapore and Malaya.) I had no specific image of a school teacher as a figure to fear but nevertheless I quailed at the thought of school. To me, it was a place of punishment for disobedient children. So I cried and struggled and had to be forcibly carried out of the car to the classroom on the first day! I suppose every child, even nowadays, clings to his mother's comforting hand on his first day in school. It was worse in my time as there were no kindergartens to get a boy or girl used to the idea of school. It was at the age of six at a proper school, that I, like the other children, learnt my ABC. We knew not a word of English, unlike children nowadays, most of whom can already read and write simple English in Primary 1…

The pleasant playtime with chickens and ducks intermingled with fishing, catapult hunting and kite-flying were to come to an end when my father decided I should be put into a boarding school. I was then in the afternoon session of the Anglo-Chinese School in Ipoh in 1930 which admitted overaged boys, as well as those who were backward in their studies. It was called the “continuation school”. The brighter children attended the morning school…

It was from this new class that I had to join Horley Hall. One morning my heart sank when the Reverend Ralph Kesselring appeared in class and called out my name. He was a gifted American missionary teacher in his 20's, who, I was to discover, was a caring boarding master as well as a stimulating teacher of Literature and Mathematics (especially Algebra which thrilled him but not me). He infected us with his enthusiasm and won us with his understanding and patience. He ran the boarding school of a bout 40 of us in good order and kept us happy — no mean accomplishment as some of the boarders were potential hooligans sent there by exasperated parents! All this I was to find out later. Fearful and utterly miserable, I arrived in Horley Hall the next day with my books and a small bag of clothes. I was given an iron bedstead and mattress in dormitory “A” — there were four dormitories in all. There were ten beds in every dormitory. Over each bed was a locker on the wall for our personal effects. One of the senior boys, John Ritchie who was later to become a police commissioner in Malaysia, was told to look after me…

What did we learn in school? Th e curriculum was limited to the Arts, including Mathematics. We had a choice of English or Empire history and in ACS, we read about the kings and queens of England, their conquests and misdeeds. History began with the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 when Henry Tudor defeated the wicked Richard III who, according to Shakespeare cried out, A horse, a horse, My kingdom for a horse when he was unhorsed and about to be slain. Our prescribed period ended in 1714 with the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart dynasty. Queen Anne was not too bright so the famous satirical poet, Alexander Pope, in his Rape of the Lock, making fun of the trivial interests of English courtiers, says of her, And thou great Anna, whom three realms obey Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea (pronounced “tay”)…

When I was in the School Certificate Class in 1936, our new progressive American principal, Percy B Bell, made us sit for an intelligence and aptitude test to help us choose our future careers. This test was based on some American educational research and we were graded according to the points we scored. We were also required to fill in a questionnaire listing the sort of jobs we wanted to do upon leaving school. In those days, nearly all school-leavers went to work after passing the Cambridge School Certificate examinations as very few aspired to pursue higher studies either at Raffles College or at the Medical College in Singapore. One of my classmates who was more daring and mischievous than the rest of us listed his ambition to be a dance hall manager or a horse-racing tipster! This was a great shock to the teachers and the students as the Methodist mission consistently frowned on any form of gambling, alcohol or dancing (except folk dancing). At least one teacher who frequented the cabaret in Jubilee Park and patronised the taxi dancers found himself transferred to the backwoods of Telok Anson where there was no dance hall. Most of us expected that our classmate would be expelled. The principal, more liberal than his predecessors, was content to let him off with a warning. The interesting thing about this story is that my classmate did eventually become a well-known racing expert in Malaya and Singapore under the pseudonym of Epsom Jeep. He had been serious in his intentions while we assumed he was merely being cheeky…

Malaya under the British was divided into the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States which were ruled by the Sultans with British resident advisers. Power really rested with the advisers except in matters of religion and traditional customs. Penang, Singapore and Malacca constituted the Straits Settlements which were colonies directly administered by the Colonial Office in London. Tertiary education was available only in Singapore in Raffles College which was officially opened in 1929 mainly for the training of teachers, and the King Edward VII Medical College which had been established in 1905. Admission to this institution was the same as for Raffles College. I could have joined the Medical College if I had wanted to. First year medical students had to come to Raffles College for courses in Physics and Chemistry. Nowadays admission to read for a medical degree is so fiercely competitive that some who could have become doctors without difficulty are denied admission. Yet the doctors who graduated in the earlier years were of the highest quality and many distinguished themselves in the service of their fellowmen. Generally speaking, the doctors before the war received an all-round education and were perhaps better read as they were not made to join the Science stream early in secondary school as is done nowadays. I have some doubts about the effects of too early specialisation on the minds and personalities of students. But this is a controversial subject. I was fortunate to follow my own inclinations in what I wanted to study. I was not subjected to any parental pressure to be a doctor or a lawyer. I wanted to be a teacher, inspired as I was by my own teachers who thought, however, that I should read law. I could have applied for a scholarship to Raffles College as there were ten open to Singapore and Malaya but my father thought I should not deprive some deserving poor boy or girl who needed the scholarship. He said that he could support me without any difficulty. A Raffles College scholarship was worth $720 a year. It was enough to pay tuition fees, the hostel charges, to buy clothes and to have something left over for pocket money. Clothes were formal. All students had to wear a tie and appear in a full suit of white drill at every lecture. We also had to dress for dinner! Remember that there was no air-conditioning then, only fans. On one occasion at a History lecture by Professor Dyer, who always entered the class in full regalia in his gown and mortar board, he noticed that one of the students had taken off his jacket. I recall vividly Professor Dyer's order, “You! Remove your naked presence from my immediate vicinity!”…

What was our daily routine in Raffles College like? We had lectures about five or six times a week, each lecture lasting about 50 minutes or so. We had to hand in an essay every week and attend tutorials in the three subjects of our choice. A tutorial meant two students at a time facing the lecturer for an hour, answering probing questions on our essays. We had to convince the lecturer or professor that we really understood the subject and knew what we had written about. The tutorial is the most important part of university training as it develops critical thinking and accurate, succinct writing. The tutorial is essential for all arts subjects. In Raffles College we had only English Literature, History, Geography, Economics and Mathematics. The Science students in my time had to do laboratory experiments in Chemistry and Physics in the afternoons while the Arts undergraduates spent their time reading in the library. There was always a great deal of reading to be done…

College student life in the 1930s was peaceful and tame compared to the 1960s when university students in Europe, the United States and elsewhere including Malaysia and Singapore were fighting for academic freedom. The 1960s were years of academic turmoil and some institutions of higher learning had to be closed temporarily. Things are much quieter now, perhaps even as they were in the 1930s. We had no political interests, being content with pursuing our studies while the colonial government maintained law and order…

The war in Europe began on 1 September 1939 when Hitler's forces smashed into Poland. On the 3rd, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, declared war on Germany as did France. Gathered round a small radio, we listened to Chamberlain's doom-laden voice. Initial excitement and fears vanished fast as nothing seemed to happen; so we carried on with our studies. The war was too far away and too unreal for us even in 1940 and 1941 when tensions began to build up in the Pacific. It was business as usual in the city and studies as usual in Raffles College. British rule immunised us from feeling any direct involvement and even when the German blitzkrieg inflicted a disastrous defeat on France and the Allied Forces, we were enthralled by the brilliant British evacuation of half a million soldiers from Dunkirk. British propaganda seemed to transform an overwhelming military disaster into some sort of triumph. It all sounded heroic and we never doubted that ultimate victory would be won by Britain. We had been brought up on English history which showed time and again that Britain might lose a battle or two but always won the final battle (except the war with the American colonies). While the British civil servants, bankers and businessmen played cricket on the padang, danced in Raffles Hotel and dined in their exclusive Tanglin Club, the Japanese were busily infiltrating Malaya and Singapore as photographers, barbers, dentists, doctors and shopkeepers. In fact, both my dentists in Ipoh and Singapore were Japanese. There was even a vegetable gardener in Cameron Highlands who turned out to be Major Goto in the Nippon Imperial Forces which conquered Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese shops in Middle Road were cheap and well-patronised until the Chinese organised a complete boycott of Japanese goods, even to the extent of using secret society gangsters to beat up any Chinese seen entering a Japanese shop. This happened after the Japanese invasion of China. A China Relief Fund was set afloat to help China. When Singapore fell, the Japanese avenged themselves by a massacre of thousands of young Chinese men…

This cataclysmic event changed the lives and shaped the destiny of my generation. Although signs of the approaching catastrophe were there, we were nevertheless taken by surprise when the blow fell. We were as little prepared for the reality of the invasion as the British who had hoodwinked us and themselves too. Though we had news in early December 1941 that Japanese troop transport ships had been sighted off French Indochina (Vietnam) which was under Japanese control after the fall of France, the first air raid on Singapore on the night of 8 December was a shock. All the city lights were on at 4 am although there had been some black-out practices. In any case, the moon shone brightly that night. Singapore's defenders had been caught asleep at their posts. When the sirens sounded, the attacking planes were already leaving. We came out of our rooms in Sophia Home and looked up at the night sky. Lim Kean Siew, now a leading lawyer in Penang, who was living with us then, pointed at the night sky where three silver streaks were clearly etched out in the moonlight. These were the last three of the departing squadron, the rest of which were invisible. We heard the drone of the departing raiders. The anti-aircraft batteries opened up but only after the crash of bombs in the distance. We hurried downstairs to take cover. We tried desperately to wake up Robert Ho who was a heavy sleeper but we failed. The next morning he accused us of heartlessly abandoning him. In fact we had dragged him out of his bed shouting, “Jap planes, Jap planes bombing,” but he had just flopped back into bed…

When the siege of Singapore began on 1 February, there were still many of us who believed in the myth of “Fortress Singapore”, the “Gibraltar of the East” and that the island would be another defiant Malta. Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, had withstood German bombing for years. We were aware that huge quantities of food had been stored up and that troop reinforcements were on the way. The more realistic among us perhaps had little hope when we saw the beaten and bedraggled troops retreat to Singapore. The sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse had already demoralised the civilians right at the beginning of the Japanese onslaught. No doubt the British troops were even more demoralised by a succession of defeats they suffered as they withdrew from one defence line to the next down the Malay Peninsula. Now they had to face the triumphant Japanese who were brimming with confidence as they prepared to invade Singapore. The end was inevitable. It was merely a matter of time. But human beings usually live in hope of better things. As Alexander Pope, the 18th-century English poet wrote, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is, but always to be blest.” Some of us prayed for a miracle to save us but miracle there was none…

The time of my return home was decided for me by the Nippon authorities. Chinese refugees from the mainland had been ordered to leave Syonan by road or rail in late February and on 6 March, refugees of all nationalities were commanded to do the same. The order stated frankly that Syonan was overcrowded and that there was an impending shortage of food. It claimed falsely that the Malay Peninsula had been reorganised and would provide a comfortable living. Finally the order stated bluntly that all those who did not leave Syonan by 14 March would be "severely punished". Anyone in doubt quickly made up his mind to go north. We could go by road on foot as there were no buses or cars except for those in the hands of the Japanese. Those who lived in Johor could walk back but for the rest of us, the best way was to go by train. There were only open goods wagons and covered cattle trucks but no passenger coaches for us refugees. Those who decided to go by rail had to obtain permits from the military. The permit was priced according to your race. A Malay had to pay $1; an Indian $2; all others had to pay $5. The wagon and cattle truck fares were as follows…

The following section is included:

• Glossary