The Malay Sultans
The Japanese approach to the Malay traditional leaders, the Sultans, was confused, contradictory and at times deeply unsettling. The early architect of Japanese policy to Malaya, Colonel Watanabe, met most of the Sultans and generally formed an unfavourable impression of them. The extreme case was Selangor, where the Japanese summarily replaced one Sultan with another more sympathetic to them. In other cases, such as Johor and Pahang, where Watanabe found the Sultans to be ‘pro-British’ they were punished by low subventions. But for all the Sultans, the Japanese subvention was considerably less than they had received from the British, which meant that the war years were a time of economic difficulty, with little of the pre-war pomp and grandiosity. Watanabe’s uncompromising position was further hardened by the arrival in Singapore of a member of the Japanese imperial family, Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichita, who acted as an advisor on royal matters. He took a hard-line, stressing that the ‘Malays [Sultans] be indoctrinated in the Japanese spirit to be the Emperor’s subjects and pay a visit to the Syonan Jinja enshrined with the ancestral god of the Imperial family.’ This mad policy, seeking to force Malay Muslim sultans to follow Japanese Shinto ancestor worship, was never implemented, thanks largely due to countermanding instructions from the War Minster, Hideki Tojo. He advocated a carrot-and-stick approach similar to that used by the British with the maharajahs of India. To a degree, this is how the Japanese then sought to manage their relations with Malaya’s Sultans.
In Selangor, throughout the Japanese occupation Sultan Musa Ghiatuddin Riayat Shah proved a loyal supporter of the Japanese. In August 1943, writing in the Malay nationalist magazine Fajar Asia, he argued for full co-operation with the Japanese military administration, whom he said had agreed ‘not to disturb the Malay Muslim religion or the status of their Sultans’. He also urged his people to back the call for greater food production. Indeed food shortages towards the end of the war became an instrument of control. Tengku Musa Eddin was provided by the Selangor Food Control Commission with a generous monthly rice allowance, though by late 1944, due to general shortages, he only received forty per cent of his promised allocation. Nevertheless, regular rice supplies allowed him to maintain and feed his entourage at the istana at a time when others were scrabbling for survival. During his short period as Sultan, Tengku Musa Eddin was accused of leading a spendthrift life, and reportedly sold honorific titles to help supplement his income. More disturbingly, at least on one occasion his palace was used by the Kempetei as a place to torture and interrogate. In late 1944, Kempetei Sergeant Yoshinobu Nishi took one Subramaniam to a room at the istana in Klang. At his trial he later noted that I ‘hammered this man with a stick and slapped him with my hand. This I carried on for about an hour’. The familiar use of a room in the istana by the Kempetei only darkens Tengku Musa Eddin’s reputation, though there is no suggestion that he was personally aware of, or involved in, this incident.
The summary dismissal of the Sultan of Selangor was the most flagrant example of Japanese high-handedness towards the traditional rulers, but this was also followed by a range of insensitive actions towards Muslim Malay practices. Mosques and surau were exploited for propaganda purposes and there was even an injunction to bow towards the Imperial Palace when at prayers. Some Islamic organisations sought to raise funds through lotteries, despite being explicitly forbidden under sharia law, and Malay magazines sought advertising revenue from beer companies. Not only were Islamic practices undermined, but the Japanese were not slow to take swipes at the Malays, for example using cartoons to urge the Malay population to work hard and ‘not be lazy’. More pointedly, in 1943 the four northern Malay sultanates of Kelantan, Terangannu, Kedah and Perlis were transferred to Thailand as a reward for its support for Japan. At the same time, however, the Gunseibu tried to use the remaining Sultans to promote their war aims. Following a meeting with Japanese officials in Kuala Lumpur in April 1944, for example, the Sultans were urged to persuade their people to ‘fully understand the existing difficult situation and to double their efforts in all endeavours, to be more patient and frugal and to help one another’.
The Malays Conflicted
On a day-to-day basis, the vast majority of ordinary Malays tended to withdraw and keep close to their families and community. Siti Hasmah, who would in time become the wife of one of Malaysia’s future Prime Ministers, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammed, grew up in a traditional Malay family. She was fifteen years old when the Japanese entered Kuala Lumpur, and this disrupted her education at St Mary’s Anglican mission school. Nevertheless, during the war years she learned to cook alongside her mother as they adapted traditional Malay dishes in the face of shortages. The family also had a strong musical bent, and Siti Hasmah and her siblings spent much time at home improving their musical skills and learning the popular songs of the time. In her memoirs she recalls that one such song was the Japanese Hanabe no Uta Shina no Yoru. She also recalled her pleasure at listening to a ‘wonderful’ Japanese orchestra under its conductor Watanabe as it played at the Pavilion Theatre. The young Siti Hasmah noted, however, that it was not all rosy during the Japanese occupation. One family concern was the fate of her brother Ismail, caught up in the war studying in London. But on a daily basis, while she had heard news of the cruelty of the Japanese army, she did not see or directly suffer from it.
Not all Malays were so fortunate. Being Malay did not help one Omar, a resident of Kampung Baru who lived near the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. Late at night on 12 September 1945, after the Japanese surrender, Omar (his full name is never given in the court transcripts) and a group of men were found by the Japanese guards to be looting rice from the hospital food store. Sgt. Yamamoto, who was a regular soldier on duty at the hospital, chased Omar, cornered him and slashed him nine times with his bayonet. Omar staggered some distance, leaving a trail of blood on the ground, before slumping to the floor and dying. Concerned by his actions, Sgt. Yamamoto and his associates dug a shallow grave in the garden of the hospital isolation wing and buried him. By this stage of the war there were British Force 136 officers in Kuala Lumpur. The next morning, having heard about the incident, they had Omar’s body dug up and shown to his distraught wife; the British later discovered that the Japanese had already delivered a couple of bags of rice to her, seemingly as a form of penance or compensation. There are no doubt many Omars, and the records of the Kra and Burma railway projects reveal many Malay names amongst those conscripted or induced to support the Japanese war effort. The Malay community may not have been targeted in the same way as the Chinese for retribution but they had no automatic protection from the shortages and depredations of war. They too suffered from the effects – deliberately hostile or otherwise – of the Japanese occupation.
The Growth of Malay Nationalism and Ambition
The extent to which the nationalist KMM actively worked against the British in the pre-war years is uncertain. The KMM Vice President, Mustapha Hussain, later claimed that its President, Ibrahim Yaacob, had entered into a secret agreement with the Japanese to support them as Fifth Columnists, but one that he had not vouchsafed to others. Pre-war it was therefore, at best, qualified support. But once the invasion was underway, there is no doubt that the KMM co-operated with and supported he Japanese. Mustapha Hussain, however, down plays its military contribution, emphasising instead the role the KMM played in protecting and supporting Malays who found themselves confronted by the Japanese military juggernaut. As previously noted, a small number of KMM members accompanied the advancing Japanese into a deserted Kuala Lumpur and thereafter established themselves at KMM House which was a closely guarded two storey house in Jalan Swettenham [today’s Sultan Salahuddin), close to its Indian counterpart, the IIL.
The Japanese occupation was one of new and emerging horizons for Malay nationalists, but it was also a time of frustration as the Japanese early on made clear that Merdeka (independence) was not on their agenda. Mustapha Hussain’s memoirs chart his early disillusionment with
the Japanese, and thereafter, during the war years, he argued that the KMM worked primarily to support and defend Malays and Malay interests, often under difficult circumstances. He cited by way of example his own role in protecting three senior Malay police officers who had been arrested and faced Japanese retribution for their earlier work for the British. Nevertheless, in a way that the British had never done, the Japanese actively supported Malay political leaders and organisations and encouraged a wider pan-Malay vision, linking the Malay-speaking peoples of the Dutch East Indies with those of Malaya. In August 1943, for example, the Japanese sponsored magazine Fajar Asia gave space and editorial to the political Indonesian thinker Za’ba as he toured Malaya, including a visit to Kuala Lumpur. Fajar Asia also highlighted, with some justification, how the Malays had moved into professional and technical positions formerly occupied by the British.
This contention is backed by the experience of a prominent Malay civil servant of the post-independence generation, Tan Sri Ahmed Haji Hussein, who had initially served as a junior official in the pre-war British Malayan Civil Service. Like many local officials, after the Japanese victory he remained at home but following overtures from the Japanese was persuaded to serve as a magistrate in Kuala Lumpur. In the absence of British officials, Malay officials found that opportunities for advancement and promotion had hugely increased. In the latter stage of the war, Ahmed Haji Hussein was appointed a District Officer in Kajang, responsible for encouraging local food production. Under the pre-war British, such responsibility would never have been accorded to such a young, local official.
Many young Malays were drawn to the Japanese sponsored auxiliary forces because they espoused a quasi-nationalist creed (however equivocal in practice the Japanese commitment) but many others were lured by the offer of good rations and/or feared the alternative of being dispatched to work on the war projects. One Kuala Lumpur resident later recalled joining the auxiliaries as a young man, aged sixteen. He had learned some Japanese at school and in the absence of many other options had decided to ‘sign up’, though had not told his parents as he knew they would oppose the move (not on the basis of any ideological resistance, but simply a mother’s natural instinct not to see her son in the military). A major incentive was that both he and his family received an enhanced food allowance as well as a small but regular salary. The boy found his first months hard, and the regular slapping and humiliation that came as part and parcel of life in the Japanese military took a while to get used to. But within months he knew the system and how to play it (bow low to Japanese soldiers and keep a low profile). By the end of the war, he had become quite close on a personal basis to a number of his Japanese seniors. His Japanese language skills had improved and he had been due to go to Japan in late 1945 for enhanced training. When the Japanese surrender came, he felt genuine sympathy for his Japanese instructors, who were shocked and confused by the decision. For some days thereafter, they walked in a daze as they adjusted to this sudden and wholly unexpected outcome.
Malay leaders Mustaffa Hussain and Ibrahim Yaacob were keen to mobilise a military force along the lines of Japanese-sponsored nationalist forces then being raised in Burma and Indonesia, but the Japanese were not about to nurture a Malay volunteer army. In 1944 in Johor, it is true they had trained and equipped a regular military unit, but its numbers never exceeded 2,000. A larger - its estimated strength was around 5,000 - and better established force was the Giyutai, which was an auxiliary body focused on defensive and protective duties. In resisting the establishment of a serious Malay military force but in raising substantive local auxiliaries for defensive duties, the Japanese were driven entirely by calculations of self-interest.
Malay nationalist ambitions were, for almost the duration of the war, of little or no concern to the Japanese. Nevertheless, in the dying months of the war their calculations changed, undoubtedly sparked by the rapid deterioration in their position. Following the arrival of a new political advisor to the Japanese government, Professor Yoichi Itagaki, a new movement known as KRIS was formed. Drawing on the potent imagery of the semi-mystic Malay dagger (kris), it sought to offer a platform to allow the peoples of Malaya and Indonesia to move towards a pan-Malay independence. With this goal in mind, in early August 1945 the Indonesian nationalist leader, Sukarno, flew to Taiping and there met the leadership of the KMM. Following this, and with Japanese encouragement, a grand meeting of Malay nationalists was scheduled to take place at the Station Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on 17 August 1945, from which it was planned to announce the objective of Merdeka. But the two atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender put paid to these plans. Mustapha Hussain later wrote that there was ‘…only 48 hours separating us from the declaration of Independence for Malaya….That was one of the most bitter moments of my life.’
Chapter Twelve
Death Railways
Dislocation, disruption and upheaval characterised the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and none more so than for men of working age who were conscripted into military-related work projects. The range was huge and some Kuala Lumpur workers found themselves toiling in distant islands on the southern tip of the Dutch East Indies building airstrips, while others were in Japan itself working in mines and factories. But the majority found themselves pressed to work on railway projects in Thailand, Burma and Sumatra. About two-thirds of these workers were sent to work in the far north on the Thai-Burma railway, about a third to work on the railway at Kra in southern Thailand, and a very much smaller group (208 from Selangor) to work on the Trans-Sumatra railway. The brutal conditions they suffered stand out in the post-war accounting. The number of workers was so great, and the mortality rate so high, that the ‘death railways’ represent the single most significant and damaging event of the war for Kuala Lumpur and Selangor.
Recruitment
The recruitment of workers would begin with an ‘order’ from the Japanese 7th Army in Thailand and Burma to its counterpart in Malaya, the 29th Army who were told ‘to obtain a certain number of labourers’. The 29th Army then turned in large measure to the Malayan Labour Department to fill these quotas. In its post-war reckoning, the Labour Department (which was a pre-war British body used for the recruitment of staff for the plantation sector and public works projects) reported that it organised the passage and payment of 17,881 men from Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, but also noted that other bodies, such as the Indian Independence League and the Selangor Chinese Association, also participated. Somewhat defensively, it noted that ‘Labour office staff were detailed to make feeding arrangements, paying cash advances to the labourers and accompanying them to the railway station where they were taken over by the military.’ In short, they argued that they had carried out the administrative arrangements in Selangor but had nothing to do with the conditions met by the workers at their final destinations.
In April 1943, the first tranche of Labour Department-sourced workers from Selangor left Kuala Lumpur station in freight wagons for the long journey to northern Thailand and Burma. Until September of that year there were frequent and sizeable transportations of workers north. In July alone, the Labour Department noted that 7,815 labourers were sent in twelve separate batches. This was the peak month and thereafter the flow diminished with just five batches in August and September totalling 3,118 men. There were then no further transports of workers to the Thai-Burma railway until November 1944. This much smaller draft of 801 workers ended with a final group sent in January 1945. Separately, a much smaller contingent of 4,130 men, sent in nine batches, were dispatched between mid-August and mid-December 1943 for railway work on the Kra Isthmus.
The Labour Department noted that the ‘labourers were recruited principally from estates and to a lesser extent from mines through the agency of Japanese companies which controlled all former British properties’. By way of incentive, the workers were paid $15 per month (the average pre-war daily rate for ‘coolie labour’ in Selangor was 60 cents per day, or $14 per month, so a very small increase, though oth
er sources report a much higher daily rate for the war work) but, as a sign of both inflation and the difficulty in recruitment, by October 1944 for the final tranche of recruitment the daily wage rate was doubled to $30 per month. There was also a compensation payment of $120 to the family of any worker who died and $50 to each labourer who returned on completion of his contract.
An important account of the conditions faced by the local labourers was prepared by Major R. Campbell, commander of ‘K Force’. This was a unit of British medical staff drawn from the ranks of POWs and used in the later stages of the war by the Japanese to try to reduce the chronic levels of sickness and mortality in camps and hospitals. Major Campbell and his team were given much latitude and freedom of movement in Thailand and Burma, and his testimony, commissioned in November 1945 and entitled ‘Report on the use of Malayan Labourers’, offers a unique, if bleak, insight into the conditions prevailing under the Japanese. Campbell highlighted that the main movement of Asian labour to the Thai-Burma railway was from March to December 1943, in the wake of earlier movements of European POWs who were engaged in the notably brutal work of breaking ground and clearing primary jungle. Campbell estimated that 70,000 Malayan labourers and 8,000 Javanese were sent in this initial period of recruitment, with a further tranche of 5,000 Malayans sent in 1944. He did, however, note that these figures, in the absence of formal Japanese records, were tentative with some of his sources claiming up to 150,000 workers.
Campbell reported that initially many workers volunteered for work on the railways, attracted by a contract of three to six months, sign-up bonuses and a generous wage of one to two dollars per day (a much higher, and probably more plausible rate than the one cited by the Labour Department). 1943 was a time when hardship and unemployment was rife and the possibility of guaranteed income and food allowances for the family held much attraction. At this stage, of course, Japanese war work had yet to develop its evil reputation as a brutal way to an early grave. It was also not yet recognised that a three month contract meant little when deep in the jungles of Thailand and Burma; many who signed up for three months in March 1943 were still there at the Japanese surrender in August 1945. But volunteers could not make up the full numbers required, and the Japanese also used to impress workers. Japanese-run and controlled enterprises were particularly vigorous in drafting workers and in desperation the authorities also resorted to ‘capturing’ young men in cinemas, while some were literally ‘netted’ in the streets of the capital by the police and the army. According to Campbell, in March 1944 the Japanese had a plan to repatriate 20,000 workers and replace them with a fresh group of 25,000 workers, but it came to nothing, partly because of lack of railway capacity but also because the Japanese were fearful of the reaction in Malaya to thousands of semi-starved and emaciated workers returning and revealing the reality of railway work. Indeed, when new cadres of workers arrived in Thailand, the Japanese kept them apart from the earlier batches of workers, for fear of revolt.
Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Page 13