SINGAPORE
By EWART SWANSTON
DURING the days of rumour and recrimination that followed the fall of Singapore in February, 1942, there came into being a legend, as partial explanation of the catastrophe, which our tri- umphant return will for the time being have served to scotch but hardly to kill. The British, it seemed, had " no roots" in a country they had first grabbed, or, at least, taken means to dominate, through greed, and then lost through incompetence, and had failed com- pletely to ingratiate themselves with its native populations, and induce in them any spirit or inclination to join in its defence under attack by a third party. The theory unwarrantably launched by a handful of newspaper correspondents, both American and British, that Malaya fell because it was rotten to the core gained a disastrous currency. That so fatally damaging a misconception of tke facts concerning British Malaya, and our connection with it, should have called forth no official correction either at the time or since, is a complete mystery. Fortunately, there is plenty of evidence now available enabling the necessarily superficial accounts of war correspondents cabled back during the stress and strain of with- drawal and disaster to be put in proper perspective.
Let it be said then—and said quickly, before 21,000 unfortunate British men, women and children, after three and a-half years in Japanese prison and internment camps, begin to disembark, as they shortly will do, on the shores of that homeland upon which their thoughts and longings have for so long been fixed—that the " no roots" legend is just plain rubbish, that the " fifth column " of Malay, Chinese and Indian collaborators is similarly seen, on ex- amination, to dissolve into moonshine, and that the alleged columnists of whatever race, creed, or colour were not only singularly well treated under our administration, but well aware of that fact, and
very appreciative of it, expressing their gratitude in most practical form by extending, in scores of authenticated instances, and often at great risk to themselves, help and succour to our troops on the long retreat down the country, to our sorely tried womenfolk in the dreadful period of last-minute evacuation, and, when opportunity offered, to captives and internees during their long years of im- prisonment.
Assertions are, of course, not disposed of merely by being contradicted. Let me explain, therefore, that I have lately been given the opportunity of tracing, interviewing, and taking state- ments from as many as possible of the various categories of people available who had first-hand experience of the Malayan campaign. These included not only the evacuees and escapees (both men and women) who began three years ago to drift back to this country via Australia, India, South Africa and the Dutch East Indies, but service personnel who had spent years in Japanese prison camps prior to their rescue and repatriation some time before the end of hostilities. One batch of these were survivors from the bombed Rakuyo Mani,' others had been freed from camps in the Philip- pines when the Americans recaptured those islands. In all, fully a hundred such statements were eventually procured. Not one single proved case of Fifth Column in Malaya during the campaign came to light, and the stories of help given to our people by Malayan Asiatics of all races and ranks, from Malay tengkus and Chinese towkays to the humble Tamil coolie, are innumerable. It was a Tamil labourer who, finding a captured European tied up to a stake after torture, and waiting to be shot by the Japanese, crawled through the lalang grass, though there were Jap sentries only twenty feet away, cut the ropes binding his arms, and cried "run tuan! " as he wriggled off. The tuan couldn't, his legs being tied as well, so the coolie wriggled back again and freed those too.
There was the Malay member of a ruling house, himself a senior civil servant, and a passenger on the bombed ' Kuala ' at Pompong Island, who organised the most heroic rescue work there, and saved scores of European lives. Conrad could and would have composed a whole epic about what Tengku Mahyideen accomplished on that tragic occasion, but Conrad is dead, and the Tengku gets an M.B.E. Those who know all the story may think a George Cross would have been more appropriate. There were the hundreds of Chinese who hardly ever take payment for food, petrol, or even sometimes for the boats that gave them their livelihood. Good vigorous haters of the Japanese these Chinese, and what artists in sabotage! "When Japanese come," one Singapore amah gleefully announced to her employer, " I pretend to be very nice. Every day take new husband, every night cut off head."
The food situation has for more than a year been grim in the extreme, and the population almost starving, for Malaya, and Singa- pore in particular, had always imported huge quantities of rice, meat and vegetables. The immense stores of food the British had accumulated were still available by the autumn of 1942, but by 1944 rice was practically unobtainable, except inadequate rations doled out to those who worked for the Japanese. It is significant that prisoners of war sent from Siam to Singapore were given three months' ration of rice as luggage. There were no food reserves. Tapioca, a crop wasteful of the soil, was planted all over the place. and had become the main diet. Markets remained open, but no vegetables. Fish was scarce, since the military took all the supplies. There was no flour and no bread. There were no cats and dogs.
Almost 8o per cent. of Singapore's population are Chinese. They have remained throughout the occupation quite open in their sym- pathy with British prisoners, inspiring a healthy fear in the Japanese. who have never felt they could trust them, even as labourers, for fear of sabotage. It seems they were willing to cash any English officer's cheque for a c,pmmission of to per cent., a sure sign of confidence in the return of the British. A still more striking demonstration of this was the offer, by an Asiatic firm of opticians in Singapore (name not remembered by the prisoners who vouched for it, but probably Chinese), to supply British prisoners of all ranks needing them with spectacles to their own prescriptions, .without payment until after the war. Of this most useful service scores of prisoners took advan- tage, the Japanese, strangely enough, collaborating by forwarding many spectacles when ready to various camps in Siam. The Indiar and Malay communities were numerically unimportant in Singapore Temperamentally, they could not be expected to display openly their distaste for the Japanese -regime, which it would seem accorded them favours and preferential treatment refused to the Chinese. The Malay seemed as a rule too scared to show sympathy to British prisoners of war. Many Indians were dragooned and persuaded into joining Subhas Chundra Rose's Free India movement, which received tremendous publicity in the days when its members were trumpeted as prominent in the Japanese invasion of India in 1943. BY 1944 these Indians were worrying about what was going to happen tc them when the British returned, and will be cheered by the under- taking already given that their cases will be individually examined. and as lenient a view as possible taken of their default under duress.
What emerges from the whole picture is that fully a year ago the Japanese were seen, in the eyes of all Singapore city, to have failed completely to live up to the promises they held out both tc themselves and the people of Malaya regarding the good thing certain to flow from their New Order. Many of the city's one-time 560,000 inhabitants have been dumped on the mainland to fend for themselves. All have suffered terribly by the loss of a livelihood for long-sustained on a worldwide trade in rubber and tin, and on the biggest entrepot commerce of the Far East. Decay has markedly corroded a city once proud of its health, its fine buildings, streets and social amenities. A . harmonious community, possibly more racially mixed than in any other city in the world, was subjected to a harsh military rule imposed on a Chinese population obviously biding its time before turning against an old and hated enemy.
Despite the strenuous attempt made to suppress the use of English, the old street names continue to exist, and British stamps carrying the face of King George VI have continued to be used throughout Malaya, though overprinted by the Japanese. Neither the temporary rulers nor their temporary subjects can have escaped the conclusion that all that had gone and was good was the creation of British rule, and all that could be retained and developed was equally a bequest from the past. The Japanese have done nothing with their conquest to serve the people. We need have no mis- givings about the feelings with which Singapore is today welcoming the advance guard of an all-British army of liberation.
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