Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945

by Andrew Barber

  Galvanic

  By early 1945, the MPAJA 1st Selangor Regiment operated relatively freely in outlying areas of Selangor, in particular near the jungle fringes and in mining areas. One particular stronghold was Serendah to the north of Kuala Lumpur, but so too were the ‘ulu’ (upper country) areas of Ampang and Klang. When, from May 1945, Force 136 came to request secure areas for parachute supply drops, extensive areas of Selangor were available to them. Under the codename Galvanic, five Force 136 units were infiltrated into Selangor. This was the largest single deployment amongst the various teams being introduced into Malaya, largely because the planned landing beaches were on the Selangor and Negri Sembilan coast lines. Based on the ‘Jedburgh’ model that had been adopted successfully by SOE in Europe, small teams comprising British liaison officers, supported by wireless operators, interpreters and specialists, were insinuated into theatres of war, there to advise and support the much larger force of local insurgents. In the case of Force 136, many of the liaison officers had backgrounds in Malaya – often planters or policemen. They also turned to locals who had escaped Malaya, and to a group of Canadian Chinese, to act as interpreters. In August, some Gurkha units also parachuted in to support the various units. Galvanic’s commander, known as the Group Liaison Officer, was a former Malayan police officer, Lt. Col. D.K. ‘Duggie’ Broadhurst (codename Sprout). Broadhurst’s role was to liaise with the MPAJA’s 1st Selangor Regiment leadership and to oversee the broad relationship with the communists. Beneath him and sited around Selangor were five ‘teams commanded by Patrol Liaison Officers (PLOs), each with its own colour designator.

  Galvanic had been vested with ambitious, indeed over-ambitious, objectives by SEAC. In the operational planning for Zipper it was argued that this raw and inexperienced coalition of communists and colonialists would not only play a general role in harrying and thwarting Japanese forces but would also to ‘seize and hold at all costs and prevent from destruction’ the Telok Datoh bridge on the Morib to Klang road. Meanwhile, guerrillas working through Galvanic would destroy a range of ‘vital installations’ across the state. In the view of the Force 136 in-house history, these were ‘unreasonable demands’ for an embryonic guerrilla force with no real history of engaging the Japanese. Luckily, events would conspire that Galvanic was never asked to achieve the impossible.

  Galvanic Purple

  On 30 May 1945, a five-man team (Purple) under an Australian officer, Captain Morrison, parachuted blind into a drop-zone in the Beloh jungle near Serendah. Morrison was supported by a radio officer, Sgt. Reynolds (Marrow) and a Chinese interpreter, Yiu Ming Tek (Leek). They successfully linked in with the local communists and after six weeks Morrison signalled Force 136 HQ in Ceylon that he had established a secure base and had identified by grid-reference four parachute landing zones. For each of these he arranged for two MPAJA agents to prepare markers and make themselves ready to collect the stores from a parachute drop. Morrison requested torches, jungle knives, carbines and twelve .32 pistols. Force 136 HQ then packed the equipment into aluminium drop-containers which were loaded into specially converted long-range B24 Liberators based at the Minneriya airbase in north east Ceylon. The journey was huge - a 22-hour return flight across the Indian Ocean - but thanks to additional fuel tanks and very fine margins the system worked, because on 9 August Morrison thanked the aircrew by signal and advised that the kit had been successfully received.

  Force 136 Map

  Galvanic Blue

  Much less happy with the RAF’s performance was Major Hunter, an officer with the 6/19 Hyderabad Regiment, who commanded Galvanic Blue, which was operating in the Ampang area to the east of Kuala Lumpur. Hunter later caustically noted that ‘Our greatest disappointments during the operation were undoubtedly the many we received from our RAF friends.’ The unstated charge was that the RAF pilots dropped men and material from too high a height and that this resulted in drops being spread over a wide area, well beyond the designated DZs [drop zones]. Nevertheless, by mid-July Blue comprised 64 recruits including ‘three girls’. Hunter later offered the judgement that ‘I had thought that girls would be just in the way in a guerrilla jungle camp but these three women more than pulled their weight. A plucky triumvirate. I thought they were just grand. Just children too.’

  Blue was the only Galvanic unit to come into direct contact with the Japanese military, or at least with one of its local auxiliary forces. Major Hunter reported that ‘On the 7th [August] we had our first and what was unfortunately our last brush with the enemy. A party of ten in quest of food near Batu Caves bumped into a party of some fifty puppets. Considerable wild firing ensued and altogether our party was scattered to the four winds and the last did not turn up for five days. We had no casualties.’ There was a thought, but no more, that a Japanese soldier might have been killed in the fire-fight. But in general this surprise encounter simply emphasised the lack of training and battle experience of the MPAJA and did bode well for the time it would be called upon to confront the hardened and ruthless Japanese army.

  Galvanic Brown

  Galvanic Brown was under a former Malayan planter, Major Ian MacDonald. He parachuted into the Gombak jungle. After some false start’s MacDonald’s team established a secure base in secondary jungle at ‘Hot Springs near Ulu Ampang’. MacDonald too had a jaundiced view of the RAF. He felt that he and his four-man team (which included two Canadian-born Chinese interpreters) had deployed at an ‘absurd height’ and on landing found themselves spread many miles apart. MacDonald’s temper was made no better by the fact that he landed in the high forest canopy and tumbled to the forest floor, resulting in a serious back injury and a badly torn right hand. The various members of Brown patrol were eventually reunited, thanks in part to help from Major Hunter’s neighbouring Galvanic Blue. Owing to the problems with its parachute drop, for the first weeks Brown found itself without a working radio – and thereby reliant on Blue - and dealing with a very raw and unseasoned force

  MacDonald’s assessment of his MPAJA partners was far from positive; he thought little of the ‘absurdly young’ MPAJA commander Mai Yuan and claimed that the ‘Patrol’s self-elected leaders were apparently only chosen because of their youth and good looks’. In a rather more benign judgement, he spoke positively of the political commissar, Thye Chee, who acted as ‘representative’ for the 1st Regiment and was the only guerrilla leader MacDonald felt he could rely upon. MacDonald’s diary gives full vent to his many frustrations. Parachute drops, or the failure of them, proved a particular bone of contention, but so too were ‘incursions’ by Blue into Brown’s designated area of operational activity. In reading MacDonald’s account, one is struck by the adage that a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine are seldom confused. But perhaps he had reason for his anger, because by mid-August Brown’s MPAJA patrol comprised just 13 armed and 52 unarmed men. The supply situation improved and by mid-September (after the Japanese surrender) MacDonald’s cadre of MPAJA guerillas had grown to 122 strong and could boast 43 weapons, though this still represented less than fifty per cent of the total force carrying a weapon.

  During one of MacDonald’s visits to an MPAJA camp he came across George Hess’e, the Eurasian member of the Volunteers who had escaped from Changi Prison in February 1942 and then made his way home to Kuala Lumpur. During the early years of the Japanese occupation, Hess’e had found work making nails from barbed wire and as an odd-job man in a paper factory. One day, however, he was approached by a Chinese teacher who asked Hess’e to accompany him and fix some steam generators. Unwittingly he was taken to an MPAJA camp near Kajang, but having fixed the generators was then kept captive; the guerillas did not want him reporting on the camp’s location and he had also proved useful in repairing the generator and fixing guns and other equipment. Here Hess’e stayed for the latter period of the war until MacDonald stumbled across him in July 1945. Once he found out that Hess’e was a member of the Volunteers, MacDonald insisted on his release and he moved to the nea
rby Force 136 camp, where he stayed until the Japanese surrender. After the war, Hess’e kept on close and friendly terms with MacDonald, who himself returned to planting near Seremban.

  Galvanic Orange

  Galvanic Orange was led by Flight Officer J. Robertson (Carrot). He parachuted in solo to connect with the MPAJA to the north of Kuala Lumpur and was joined on 10 July by Major P.T. Thompson-Walker (Parsnip) and Seah Tim Toon (Tomato) who became the group’s radio operator. Tragically for Orange, one of the team, Sgt. David Richardson, landed in a pond next to a tin mine. Weighed down by his heavy equipment he drowned and was buried the next day at Sungei Plubong. Thompson-Walker noted that many of the MPAJA recruits were in poor physical shape and were suffering from malnutrition. In terms of background, he argued that they could be divided into three categories. There was a hard-core of ‘truly patriotic types’ who had been involved in the resistance since the British withdrawal. They were followed by a ‘very very few’ who had ‘only a slight idea of what communism means but in their own eyes are true communists’. Finally there were a ‘large number of youths who had they not joined the AJF [Anti Japanese Forces] would likely in due course have been conscripted by the Japs for war labour’. This, from other sources, seems a fair assessment of the composition and background of the MPAJA in July and August 1945.

  MPAJA

  Between 30 May and 22 August 1945, 52 British, Gurkha and Malayan operatives dropped into Selangor as members of Galvanic. They joined approximately 500, increasing to 700 when additional ‘mobile units’ were added, guerrillas of the Selangor 1st Regiment of the MPAJA. Insurgent forces are generally small in numbers, but by the time of the Japanese surrender active CPM fighters amounted to less than one percent of the adult (14-55) male Chinese population of Selangor. The MPAJA, therefore, was not a popular choice. These figures also flatter the MPAJA, in that its numbers increased notably from mid-1945, following the agreement between the MPAJA and Force 136 and the arrival of British officers, training, equipment and money.

  How would Force 136 and its MPAJA allies have fared had they been called upon in late August to support through sabotage and guerrilla activity a British assault on the beaches around Morib? It is, of course, impossible to state with any conviction. A post-war examination of captured Japanese army maps showed that they had successfully identified the locations of all the MPAJA jungle camps and hideaways and it is something of a mystery why they had not attacked them. Amongst the Galvanic teams there was only one armed contact with the Japanese, and this occurred by happenstance and resulted in the MPAJA patrol firing wildly, possibly killing one Japanese soldier, but then being ‘scattered to the wind’ with a number of them taking over a week to return to base. This isolated example, and the absence of any other experience of attacking the Japanese, suggests that they would have struggled in any sustained efforts at harassment and sabotage, and certainly the more ambitious objectives, to seize and hold bridges, would have been well beyond them. Nevertheless, despite clear operational short-fallings, the Force 136/MPAJA relationship delivered tangible dividends to SEAC. The various Force 136 units, all with radio contact, provided valuable intelligence about conditions on the ground. The MPAJA, under Force 136 leadership, also played a key role in maintaining a measure of discipline and stability after the Japanese surrender and before the British returned. But for the British the return on investment was mixed. Under them the MPAJA had gained hugely in operational experience and confidence; acquiring skills and a bravura that would later come to haunt the British during the years of the Malayan Emergency.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The British Return

  On 15 August 1945, following the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese people were told to ‘bear the unbearable’, which was as near as the Japanese High Command would publicly come to admitting that Japan had unconditionally surrendered. On 21 August, in Singapore and Malaya, Lt. Gen. Tezio Ishiguro, the Supreme Commander of the Nippon Army in ‘Malai’ [Malaya] announced by radio that the ‘Command of Tenno-Heike [the Emperor] of Dai Nippon was ordered to cease hostilities on August 14 2605 [1945]…. The Imperial command to terminate hostilities is due to the limitless virtue of Tenno-Heike to avoid unnecessary casualties among human beings in this part of the world’. With these words the officers and troops of the Japanese military in Malaya were instructed to stop fighting. Six weeks later, the British returned to popular jubilation to recover Malaya and its capital city. But these six weeks opened up a dangerous political vacuum that was to test the communal and political fabric of the country.

  Operation Zipper and the Return of the British

  In early August 1945, the British had been assembling off Ceylon the amphibious naval force designed to launch and support the invasion of Malaya. The two atomic bombs and the Japanese surrender of 15 August changed everything and instead the British planned for the - hopefully - peaceable re-occupation of Malaya. With their forces already at sea, the British were in a position to move quickly, but due to instructions from the Allied Supreme Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, that the main surrender ceremony first take place in Tokyo Bay on 2 September, were forced to wait. In these changed circumstances, in place of an armed assault at Morib the British decided first to take control of Penang and then Singapore, which they calculated would give them valuable port and airfield facilities. Zipper would still happen, pouring British forces into central Malaya, but only after both Penang and Singapore had been restored to British authority. This decision meant that mainland Malaya would enter a period of weeks in which there was no clear authority.

  The return of the colonial British was not viewed by the MPAJA with complete satisfaction – indeed many viewed this development as simply another phase in their fight for national determination and a Marxist utopia. But Secretary-General Lai Teck, no doubt conscious that his old masters would soon be back, pushed the MPAJA in an accommodative direction. On 19 August 1945 he met the Selangor leadership of the CPM and announced an Eight Point Programme which his successor, Chin Peng, described as ‘Designed to appease… and arguing against a militant stance.’

  Following the surrender announcement, the various Force 136 units were told to watch and report what was happening but not break out from their jungle lairs. From his base near Serendah, Captain Morrison signalled that copies of the surrender document, in Japanese as well as local vernacular languages, had been successfully air-dropped and were being widely read across Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. He also noted that the presence of covert British troops dotted across Malaya was known to the Japanese. The position was unclear but Morrison signalled ‘increasing local reports japs passive attitude towards AJAF and ourselves’. Galvanic, playing a valuable intelligence role, report ed that following the surrender the ‘Japanese are calling in all outstation personnel to Kuala Lumpur and are disarming puppets who are now being used as coolies. The Japanese are withdrawing from Sungei Besi and Petaling. Bandits are in complete control. Some Malay puppets are raping and looting in the suburban areas of Kuala Lumpur just outside Japanese control’. Galvanic reporting also noted ‘clashes between guerrillas and Japanese on the night of 21 August’, following exuberant celebrations by the Chinese community and the running up of ‘guerrilla flags’.

  On 23 August, British intelligence source ‘Sooty’ [details of this source are not clear and ‘Sooty’ might be a cover codeword for decrypted Japanese signals] reported that Japanese troop numbers in Kuala Lumpur continued to increase in numbers and that ‘Telephone, telegraph communications and cinemas still working....There is a severe shortage of clothing, shoes, tobacco and medicines. Prices are rising rapidly. Many deaths have occurred due to cholera. Malaria is spiralling.’ Intelligence also noted the Japanese decision of 24 August to impose martial law and a curfew on Kuala Lumpur in response to ‘guerrillas entering the town and assassinating prominent collaborators’. Ominously for the British, Galvanic also reported ‘Guerrillas have distributed leaflets to the peopl
e informing them that they must cooperate with them for the liberation and independence of Malaya’. At this stage, the British may have been keen on liberation but independence was most certainly not an objective.

  On 25 August, Force 136 HQ in Ceylon instructed Force 136 units that their MPAJA allies were to occupy rural areas vacated by the Japanese as the latter moved to barracks in urban centres. ‘Their [the MPAJA] first duty would be to keep order, to prevent looting, burning and stealing and to guard roads, railways, bridges and other important places…’. On 28 August, the code-word ‘Example’ was transmitted which was the go-ahead for Force 136 teams to break out from hiding, establish formal links with the Japanese and inspect POW camps; there were reports that the Japanese were ‘abandoning’ POW camps and the High Command was anxious to establish security and ensure relief supplies reached the prisoners. The Force 136 teams were firmly advised, however, that ‘All contact you have with the Japs must for the present be only for the purpose of obtaining information….’. They were specifically instructed not to discuss local surrender terms.

  Following this instruction, Captain Morrison issued a letter, with his address given as ‘In the field’, to General Syontano Katayama, Governor of Selangor. Morrison stated that Katayama’s reply should be left ‘at the Railway Station’, where he ‘had a contact present at all times’. The letter read: