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The Price of Innocence






The Price of Peace 

    - True Accounts of the Japanese Occupation
 

I HAD ALWAYS BELIEVED  that the culture of the Chinese of South East Asia was inclined towards money for the sake of money and had wondered if they should be respected for more than just that. At last, the Price of Peace published by  the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce tells me that they were also filled with moral courage, loyalty and self sacrifice and that I was wrong. For that book is a book of courage and self sacrifice and nationalism; especially the account of what may be one of the greatest Chinese of South East Asia - Tan Kah Kee.

The book is not a great literary piece of work and with the valuable information within, deserves better. The Chamber of Commerce, with its immense resources, could have done better. Nevertheless it is  a very valuable historical book if not a literary masterpiece and  it consists principally of a short series of essays by Chinese volunteers, now in their twilight years; who were actually the participants in the incidents described. Principally it deals with how the Chinese of South East Asia reacted to the ill-conceived but well planned invasion of South East Asia by Japan when their militarists thought they could emulate the imperialist West and take over the East for themselves rather than support the emancipation of an emaciated East from serfdom.

Unfortunately, rather than stories of heroic acts, the accounts sadly wound down into a series of tales of  humiliation, betrayal, torture, suffering and death for those heroic men who were the volunteers and the members of Force 136. Their selfless offerings  to the gods of war to help their motherland turned out to be no more than aimless sacrifice to the dogs of war. It is sad because their sufferings and betrayals were unrelieved and without any happiness. We read of incident after incident of betrayals as they fought in innocence of the truth that they were not trusted and were unappreciated guests in South East Asia who could be made use of for the occasion. But for one man, perhaps. Tan Kah Kee. 
 
Tan Kah Kee
 His story began with the Marco Polo Bridge incident in China which ended with Japan's aggression against China in 1937 which aroused the indignation and the national consciousness and loyalty of the Chinese. Like the rest of those who contributed to the book, Tan Kah Kee was a Singaporean. He started conferences for China relief and became an anti-Japanese patriot and it could not be that the British did not know of him nor he of the British and their contempt for the Chinese immigrant colonial subjects.  Malaysia was not yet in existence then and it was not that their loyalties were so much Chinese but just anti-Japanese.  Could it be that they were not aware of the contempt, and disdain of the British for them or that they lacked awareness of the humiliation they would suffer in the hands of the contemptuous British allies till it was too far too late.

For he knew the situation and Sir ShentonThomas did not heed his demands for the creation of armed Chinese volunteers until just before the Japanese assault of the island fortress when it was far too late.  But how much and how deep? He said to Choon Hong, in the book, that the people "were still too young to know that the colonial government was only making use of them " and "he feared that the Nanking Massacre would repeat itself in Singapore saying "what the colonial government is doing is to make the Japanese hate the Chinese even more, so that it would be much easier to launch counter-offensives later".

He was probably one of the greatest personalities of the overseas Chinese in recent history at that time and he was at first of Kuomintang leanings. It was to him that Huang Ye Lu (the Communist representative who exposed Lai Tek in 1947) proposed the setting up of a local militia and he knew enough to reject the idea because soldiers required at least four months to train and there was no time for that. 
 
Old fashioned guns
 YET HE DID NOT hesitate to help the British and assisted the call of the government  for the local people to serve the government and  "when he called upon the local people to join the guerilla group under government and mobilization council", according to one Choon Hong, he " was quite upset about the government's decision to supply 1,000 old-fashioned guns for the Chinese youths to use in the battlefront against the Japanese who were equipped with the latest weapons." (According to another account, the volunteers were given hunting rifles and inadequate supply of bullets and they ran short of bullets during the fighting!).

If that was so, why sacrifice those youths to no purpose when they could at least have been sent into the Malayan jungles before the Japanese landed in Singapore? He himself was told that the British government would not be able to assist them if they chose to flee Singapore as there were no boats. He managed to escape only because some of his friends encouraged him to flee as "they could expect no further help from the government". And  he, with a few of his trusted friends went into hiding in  Indonesia. Luckily, he did not disclose his plans to Lai Tek, otherwise he might have been sold out too.

When peace came he went to meet with the Kuomintang in Chungking and from there to Yenan. He never returned, spawning after him the famous managers of his extensive estates, Lee Kong Chian, in Singapore, Low Yat in Kuala Lumpur and  Lau Geok Swee in Penang. I do not know the other two personally, but I knew Lau Geok Swee who was another true patriot but not of such a high stature as his former boss. Mr. Tan worked selflessly for a cause and was one who did not put money before everything. His story was not a story of sadness but of honour, integrity and inspiration. He was not a Communist till he became one when he found that the Party maintained the honour and dignity of the country and that it was not corrupt. He was no Communist but became one because he saw a better party  serving China and he wiped the dust of Singapore off his feet because of his treatment by the British. If anyone had to be blamed that we lost such a great man, it was because of the British.
 
Mrs Karthigesu
 I HAVE QUOTED much from the account in the book because I could not do better. This is one of the accounts in the collection of essays which concerns the Chinese and the rest deals mostly with those who became the men of Force 136, the heroic Mrs. Karthigesu who was tortured but did not die during the war but a few years later and one Elizabeth Choy. They all played heroic roles such as Lim Bo Seng, and excerpts of what happened to him and the surrounding circumstances would probably be sufficient indication of what happened during the war and to the others since the stories are sad repetitious accounts of exposure, arrests and torture with or without execution at the end. 

The account by John Davies goes something like this. He was the leader of the first group of infiltrators and they landed in Segari, near Pangkor island,  and eventually found their way to Bukit Bidor recommended by Chin Peng, the Communist representative. They were joined by another group of infiltrators comprising of Richard Broome, Spencer Chapman, Yi Tian Song, Lian Yuen Ming, Lim Bo Seng, Ah Han with several other Chinese intelligence agents. Then they met up with the top brass of the MCP and held as many meetings as possible to spur on anti-Japanese movement and "we understood very well the resistence group in every state had to accept MCP leadership" and "on 1st of January 1944, we signed an agreement with Lai Tek to seal our commitment to the anti-Japanese cause.......the MCP also agreed to give their support to the Allied Forces".

No doubt their fate was sealed, if not earlier, at least by that time for the British ought to have recognised Lai Tek since they had dealt with him before the war when he was already known to them as a communist. The first casualty was a man known as Tan Kong Chin and his wife, introduced to them by Wu because he "did not live long enough to see the end of the Occupation".
 
Lim Bo Seng
 LIM BO SENG decided to go into the town because things were not going on so well and he was captured.  With him Wu was also captured as well as Yi Tian Song, Tan Chong Tee, Cheng Ji Non and Mo Ching. "With their capture , all underground activities of Force 136 came to an abrupt halt". "It was several months before we managed to pull ourselves together......However, the Japanese soldiers attacked the base camp on Bukit Bidor. Overnight, we experienced tumultuous changes and with that came the darkest period of our mission. We lost most of our important documents, equipment and medical supplies." Need I go further when the rest of the accounts were how those who opted out fled the country or like Hu Tie Jun who fled back to Tualang in Perak and his wife to disguise himself and live the life of a quiet farmer for the duration of the war. 

The rest of the accounts are of the extreme brutality of the Japanese soldiers, especially the Kempetai with tales of roundups, arrests and beheadings, all too gruesome to repeat. All I could think of was, were not these people aware that there could be betrayals during a war and acts of cowardice and exposure by incompetency and how much havoc did Lai Tek bring about? It is a sad book, sad because after what had happened in China those people ought to have known they faced torture and death as an inevitability and no one seemed to care because there seemed to be no preparations for the eventuality of failure. They never had a chance, even to influence the war and their sacrifice seemed in vain and they never actually receive proper recognition for their services. The Japanese had a hatred which bordered on fear of  the Chinese threat to their imperialist rule so they were sacrificed and thrown to the dogs of war with the rest of the population of Singapore.

Perhaps the title the "price of peace" is pretentious and it should be more appropriately called the "price of innocence". Nevertheless, it is a highly valuable and revealing book and should have been written some fifty years ago as South East Asia was still embroiled in its war of liberation. However, it is not too late for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to do something for the Chinese community as a part of their duty and we hope more books would be issued by them in the future perhaps with more erudition. 

Book review by Lim Kean Siew

The Price of Peace is a collection compiled and edited by Foong Choon Hon, translated by Clara Snow and published by the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry

 
Home || Book Review || Comment || Concerns || Concordance || Heritage || News || People || Page 11 *** Apologies to Machiko Nakayama whose name was incorrectly spelt in the review of her book The Philosophy of Ikebana (Issue No 4)