Book  Review The Anti-Japan Resistance A commander's story

Brave men and women IN HIS BOOK on the British war in Malaya 1948 - 1957 Anthony Short pays tribute to the brave men and women on both sides. Who were these brave people who fought British colonialism in the post 1948 years?   "The War in the South," written by Shan Ru-hong,  otherwise known as Ah Hai,  commander of the Negri Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army, is an unadorned account of the guerrilla war against the Japanese invaders. The stubborn soldiers who confronted the armed might of the British empire were graduates of this tough and cruel school.  This book review is of the English translation. This is the first insider's story of the 1942-1945 guerrilla  war. It will probably be the last because the survivors of that war must now be very old; the author is now 84. Ah Hai tells us of the small beginnings until towards the end when the planes from India dropped their guerrilla allies British liaison officers, arms and supplies It is an enthralling tale of a  courageous people battling against a powerful invader and his local agents, and of men who turned traitor when captured yet came back to fight and to die bravely. When, in 1941,  the Japanese invaders were closing in on Singapore, the British came to an agreement with the Malayan Communist Party to set up the 101 Special Military Training School for training their men in guerrilla warfare. But it was too late. The rapid Japanese advance cut Singapore off. The MCP immediately set up Resist Japan Alliances and formed a tiny guerrilla force of 100 men A command post was set up in Titi with the author as area secretary and commander. This tiny force rapidly grew to 1000 men with two bases. But there were not enough guns, though the  Undang of Jelebu contributed a revolver to start them off with. The pioneers had to be content with such weapons as swords, spears and hunting guns. And there was not enough food for everyone. Medicine and rice had to be collected. Recruits had to be persuaded to go home and instead join the Resistance Alliance, an unarmed group. This reduced the main group from 1,000 to 700 men. The primitive army was guided by the rules of discipline and behaviour that had made the Chinese Red Army's discipline famous.    Problems multiplied with guerrillas coming in from Selangor, refugees and British soldiers, left behind by their retreating units. There were only two doctors in the camp and they had to cope with the help of some trainees and some quinine. Typhoid and dysentery were the main scourges. In addition there was malaria, athlete's foot and scabies. There was not enough food. Whatever rice they could get hold of was supplemented with tapioca and potatoes.

Early skirmishes The early inexperience of the greenhorns makes amusing reading but the lessons were  harshly taught. One of their first  encounters was with a suspicious "enemy" group which had occupied a  bungalow. But it turned out that the armed strangers were only refugees -  ground personnel from a  British air base. Luckily, no one was killed and some arms were obtained from the "enemy". Inexperience also enabled Japanese soldiers  to escape from an incompetent ambush. A rash and ill-judged attack on a police station was beaten off with some losses. The forces grew rapidly after the massacre at Ladang Jelebu. In March 1942, 1,700  men, women and children were slaughtered by the Japanese army. In other areas, another 1,500 were killed.  The maturing guerrillas had now formed the 2 Independent of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). This comprised a cadre force of 300 with 200 guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The new regiment retaliated by attacking the Titi police station, but they were beaten off. The Japanese counter-attacked with 1,000 troops and artillery. But, fortunately for the new people's army, they dared not enter the hills. Ambushes were laid which were more successful than in the past. Between 1942 and 1943 guerrilla work was expanding.   Even puppet units were secretly co-operating with the guerrillas who slipped in and out of stockaded villages without hindrance. Patient work was gradually influencing the people in the Malay villages to resist. The result was an increase in food supplies and more freedom of  movement. The friendly penghulus now invited them to meals. As the Japanese had concentrated their attention on Chinese villages, the new situation allowed the guerrillas to move to the Malay areas where they remained till the end of the war. The crowning achievement was the police rebellion at Kuala Pilah which resulted in a seizure of arms and a fake battle with the police, after which the police chief, one Zaini, joined the gerrillas.  Ah Hai pays particular tribute to the Undang of Jelebu in his account. Work among orang asli was excellent and Ah Hai's description of life among them alone is worth reading.  In May 1945 the first liaison team of the South East Asia Command of the Allied Forces parachuted into Negri from the new long range Boeing bombers.  In the British team was  the pre-war head of special branch, Ipoh,  but he did not recognise Ah Hai, a most wanted man he was searching for not so long ago. The next drops were of  arms and medical supplies. The Japanese attacked but were beaten off with not one guerrilla wounded. In the  second battle the enemy  lost 60 to 70 men and the guerrillas  lost only one man. The MPAJA  had matured.. The force was now made up of eight independent regiments which had destroyed five to six battalions of the occupying forces.

Early suspicions In May 1942, Ah Hai heard that Lai Te, the general secretary of the Communist Party, had condemned the attack on the Titi police station as "adventurism". The commander of the attack force,  Ch'en Ch'un, should be sentenced to death, he declared. Lai Te also ordered that the guerrillas hide their weapons and to do "mass" work  Although Ah Hai at that time did not suspect that Lai Te was a Japanese agent, he did not swallow everything that Lai Te said. He was too shrewd for that. He thought that the orders amounted to tying the hands of the resistance.  Ah Hai and another committee member, Ah San, boldly made it known that they would resign if the death sentence was carried out. The threat saved Ch'en Ch'un who only punished with a  demotion. But, in obedience to orders, weapons were hidden. This was a disaster. The Japanese immediately attacked the unarmed men and killed many of them.  The defiant  Ch'en Ch'un  set up his own unit and continued to fight the Japanese, with Ah Hai shutting an eye to his recalcitrance.  Experience was to teach the guerrillas to ignore Lai Te's wrong-headed  resolutions. There were other events that aroused doubts  about Lai Te. For instance, there was that puzzling directive for 2 Independent to "go East". The formal excuse was the increasing attacks on them by the Japanese. But Ah Hai thought that the departure of the army meant closing down the resistance.  Negri was strategically important.  The north-south railway went through the state.  If the guerrillas took Gemas the railway line would be cut.  Tthe British liaison officers too had their doubts; they preferred that the troops stay to guard the Negri hills to await further drops. Then there were the  meetings called at which Lai Te failed to turn up. Cadres had marched the dangerous track to the meeting place, walking days and nights through mountains and streams only to find that the meeting was cancelled. Their frustration can be imagined. Ah Hai's description of one of these marches is awe inspiring.  Two hours of walking through secret paths with experienced guides, then another three or four hours to Frazers Hill then, after a  night's sleep, a steep climb at dawn up the Hill where Ah Hai had to be pushed and pulled  because he was still very ill.  This took six hours. Then downhill to the river and it is another three hours to  the jungle where one night is spent resting.  It is another three hours before they reach the meeting place. And Lai Te does not  turn up. Two months had been wasted.  Again, in January 1945, another month was wasted when Lai Te failed to attend the  "central-south" meeting which he had summoned. The top leaders still trusted Lai Te even after they had discovered an enemy outpost deep in the jungle disguised as a paper factory. But the commanders and their escort forces were saved from disaster  thanks to Ah Hai's talent for spotting danger. A ruse tricked the agents into revealing who they really were. The Japanese spies were immediately made prisoner. Had Ah Hai believed they were innocent civilians the commanders of 3, 4 and 6 Independents would have been massacred.  .

The triple spy Even the fact that Lai Te came to the meeting by car to Sungei Buloh and returned by car failed to raise simple questions such as, how did the man manage to travel about by car when only the military and top Japanese civilians had cars. This puzzle can only be explained by the fact that the guerrillas were in the jungle areas and concentrating mainly on warfare and little knowledge of civilian life under Japanese control. Ah Hai only met Lai Te in April 1944. He describes him as follows: "About 1.62 metres tall, with a squarish face,  hair cut in a circular fashion and parted in the middle,  eyes which showed a mixture of Cantonese blood. He spoke mandarin with a Hainan accent". No opposition group is safe from infiltration by government spies. In modern times, the agent  Kang Sheng was at the command post of the Chinese Communist Party, the politbureau member who ran  the secret service. His crowning achievement was his actress agent, Chiang Ching, who metamorphosed into Madame Mao and oversaw the madness of the Cultural Revolution.(see Note 1).  Malaya's triple agent, Lai Te, was equally efficient. At  Batu Caves on September 1, 1942 he and his Japanese masters killed  almost the entire central committee of the Malayan Communist Party. It was easily done; Lai Te simply summoned a meeting of the committee.   Lai Te's exposure after the war  explains why he had  turned down the Indian National Army's offer, made after the Japanese surrender,  to join the MPAJA with 10,000  and the proposal of the  Japanese army at Port Dickson to send them  5000 men and 50 armoured cars. Ah Hai tells us that when rebuffed, the commander drove his vehicles into the sea together with arms and ammunition. This section of the book gives us history with a jolt and provokes many questions.              Chin  Peng The last chapter of this important book exposes the British made myth of Force 136. It points out that Anthony Short in his "In Pursuit of Mountain Rats" had written that the MPAJA had fought the Japanese single-handedly. While Victor Purcell, formerly of he Chinese Protectorate, had claimed that there were 700 in Force 136, in fact, only 88 British officers were dropped, and that was only towards the end of the war,  between May and August 1945. In his candid book, "Force 136", which tells of his training with other Kuomintang men in India, Tan Chong Tee appends a list of some 110 men, which includes those who had earlier entered the country by submarine Our local editors, who seem oblivious of history, keep the fable alive. "The Star" of 29 November 2003 reporting the death of  Tsang Jan Man (see Note 2) of Force 136, tells us that the British-KMT group was a resistance movement which was "largely responsible for the liberation of Malaya during World War Two. About 400 locals were recruited and trained by the movemenet to spy on Japanese forces" But Tan Chong Tee tells us that the Kuomintang government had trained altogether 200 men in India and only 60 made the course. Out of these 50 reached Malaya and served with the British liaison teams. Tan Chong Tee was in Gustavus 2, a submarine operation, whose leader was Capt. Broome, emerging later as the arrogant secretary to the Military administration at  Singapore. Tan Chong Tee reports that the espionage network set up by the British was crushed by the Japanese.# Note 1: Faligot Roger & Remi Kauffer   The Chinese Secret Service 1987 Note 2: Tsang's son told The Star that his father, of Chingking, China, studied in Canton  at the  Universityof Chungking, and was  air dropped into Baling in 1945. (Tsang was one of a liaison team headed by Major Hislop which parachuted in on February 26, 1945 from a B24). # [Photo: The Star newspaper] Go to the top

The BOOKSHOP  Chow Thye Road :  stocks Penang Sketchbook as well as books previously reviewed in The Penang File such as : Tan Sooi Beng: Bangsawan ; Machiko Katayama; The Philosophy of Ikebana ; Dato J J Raj Jr: The War Years and After ; Lim Kean Siew: The Eye Over the Golden Sands ; Lim Kean Siew:  Blood on the Golden Sands ;  Malaysia Nature Society, Penang branch: Nature Trails of Penang Island . Lim Kean Siew:  The Beauty of Chinese Tixing Teapots and the Finer Art of Tea Drinking ; Said Zahari: Dark Clouds at Dawn ; Eric Lawlor ; Friends of the Botonical Gardens: ;  T N Harper: The End of the Empire and the Making of Malaya. (Telephone 228 2252)

______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page   Baba sayings   Food guide   Hindu temples   Hokkien road names   Negri's guerrillas   Peace treaty   Police state   PoW Island Gazette

_____________________ The Penang File Issue  32