Malayans Displaced Abroad
Not only were there Javanese and internally-displaced Malayans who needed support but there were tens of thousands of Malayans abroad who needed locating and repatriating. The task was huge, and workers were soon emerging as far afield as New Guinea, and from factories and mines in Japan itself. The largest single concentrations, however, were in Burma and Thailand, and their safe return posed a huge logistic challenge. The railway system was in disarray and avoiding famine in Malaya was the most pressing problem for the BMA – supplies of Thai rice taking up much of the limited available provision of railcars, thereby denying this transport option to the displaced. In October 1945, the BMA sent a Lt. Col. James to survey the extent of the ‘D.P.’ (displaced persons) problem in Thailand. He reported that alongside handling British and allied POWs, who received priority, the British Fourteenth Army had to corral and handle the many thousands of ‘coolies’ and Japanese POWs who had surrendered to the British. The aim was to use the railway system to draw the refugees south, but Lt. Col. James’ estimate of a thirteen week period to complete this work was considered optimistic by those who had a fuller understanding of the parlous state of the Malayan and Thai railway systems.
In southern Thailand in the Kra Isthmus, the British 25th Division had ‘moved its lines’ to encompass two holding camps at Chumphon and Suathani. The 4,600 displaced people here were then sent to a camp at Alor Star in northern Malaya. The bulk of the POWs and Malaya’s displaced persons, however, were held much further north. An estimated 23,000 workers were at camps near Kanburi and Tha Muang to the west of Bangkok, which Lt. Col James reported were expected to grow to 26,000 as stragglers and deserters emerged from the jungle. He recommended that the civilian refugees be transferred by boat to Singapore, Port Swettenham, Penang and Port Dickson and noted that the policy was that ‘all estate coolies go back to their original estates and the only variations to be made from this policy should be in consultation with and advice from the Rubber Inspection Unit’.
By January 1946, 1,500 labourers had returned from Thailand and a further 5,000 were expected to return shortly thereafter to Selangor. On arrival in Selangor, displaced workers were first sent to a processing camp at Batu Arang and ‘will be moved to neighbouring estates where labour is needed’. There is a sense in this language that these poor men were still being viewed as units of labour, to be moved as needed by economic necessity, rather than victims of circumstance. Nevertheless, to try to help families of lost relatives the British established in Kuala Lumpur a ‘Small inadequate but better than nothing organisation for trying to locate missing persons.’ By November 1945 it had received 192 enquiries and succeeded in tracing twenty-seven displaced persons. But this was tiny when compared to the challenge and for the majority of families, the fate of their lost relatives would in most cases never be known.
Force 136 – Out in the Cold
One of the early problems faced by the regular army and the BMA was how to deal with the MPAJA, and as an adjunct to that, how to deal with Force 136. As befits a buccaneering group of insurgents, Force 136 and its men did not fit easily into the mainstream military. They were fine working behind enemy lines but soon became the source of endless irritants and issues once ensconced on the right side of the line. In October 1945, the Chief Secretary to the BMA bemoaned Force 136’s expansive ways and minuted ‘will you please ensure GLOs and PLOs [liaison officers] with Force 136 money do not throw that money around like water in providing gold teeth, extra cigarettes etc for their patrols... We know we have to keep them [the MPAJA] happy but there is nothing laid down about setting them up for life.’ Similarly in November 1945, Major Gabbutt of the ‘Pan Malayan Accounts Section’ sent Lt. Col. John Davis of Force 136 a severe dressing down, noting in exasperation that he had written ‘on three occasions ….and have had no reply’ to account for a loan of $100,000/- paid two months previously. Slowly but remorselessly the pirates were being reined in.
In Kuala Lumpur, Force 136 did its own position no good by commandeering a set of luxury houses in Petaling Hill and introducing a considerable number of British female support staff. In retaliation, in late October much of the accommodation was sequestered by ‘HQ Malaya Command’ which ordered that ‘Only Colonel Davis and his Liaison Section totaling two officers, two BORS, five Asiatics. HQ Force 136 Malaya and Malaya Country Section totaling 12 officers, 16 European women, forty BORS, Five Asiatics are to remain in the city’. The remainder of Force 136 was told to find accommodation elsewhere. Even in leaving they left a legacy of mistrust. One BMA official cattily noted ‘It may be entirely unjustified but there is a prevalent belief amongst many responsible officers in this region, some not in BMA, that Force 136 as it vacates accommodation may remove from there furniture and other fittings.’ The glory days of Force 136, the weeks after the Japanese surrendered and before the British returned, were now a distant memory as the conventional army set about its work. On 15 November 1945, Force 136 was formally wound up. The aim by now was to disband the MPAJA, and responsibility for this task fell to the conventional army supported by the developing civilian police and Special Branch apparatus – many of whose officers, such as Colonel Davis and Lt. Col. Broadhurst, had been central players in Force 136.
Let’s all ring AJA’s knell. I’ll begin it. Ding, Dong, Dell…..
The inherent contradictions existing between a largely Chinese, anti-colonialist and anti-capitalist communist party and the returning British were bound to surface. Perhaps more surprising than the emergence of these tensions was that the alliance had worked as well as it had done for the critical four to six weeks of the interregnum following the Japanese surrender. But following the British return, complex relations soon began to sour. Lt. Col. Broadhurst, the Galvanic GLO, noted that ‘on peace with so many extraneous influences and interest in the nature of the peace the [MPAJA] leaders neglected their commands, resulting in an unfortunate loss of discipline.’ Looking back, Broadhurst concluded that ‘there remains the suspicion that the 1st Regiment was probably over paid for service inadequately rendered and in the end not required’. He did not place the whole blame entirely on the MPAJA’s shoulders, because he also recognised that Force 136 ‘could never escape the innuendo that they were little more than peddlers in arms and a welcome source of money’. Broadhurst finished with an epitaph – or so he thought – for the MPAJA; ‘The operation fizzled out and AJA dies in the cradle where it lies. Let’s all ring AJA’s knell. I’ll begin it. Ding, Dong, Dell.’
But, as pleased as Broadhurst may have been by his ditty, the MPAJA did not ‘die in the cradle’. The British officially disbanded the force in December 1945, when the Commander-in-Chief Malaya, Lt. General Sir Frank Messervy, declared ‘The time has now come when your services as an Armed Force are no longer required and you are therefore released into Civil Life.’ With a final gratuity to all men, the British hoped – but without great conviction – that this would be the end of it. But the MPAJA was to morph into the Malayan Peoples Anti British Army and were to conduct a long and bitter insurgency campaign against their erstwhile allies through the long years of the Malayan Emergency. This, however, did not stop some guerrillas from later seeking additional payment from the British for their period of war-time alliance. As late as 1950 these claims were being pressed, though a colonial official noted caustically that assembling a list of genuine claimants ‘would involve much detailed investigation and the interrogation of persons whose acquaintance the Police are most anxious to make but who now are unfortunately in the jungle’.
The BMA – Struggling to Cope
In the war years the British had given much thought to the post-war political construction of Malaya and had determined that, initially at least, Singapore would be separately governed but that Penang and Malacca from the former Straits Settlements Colony would be folded into the new colonial structure of Malaya. The British were also intent on drawing into the new constitutional framework the former Non-
Federated Malay States of Kedah, Perlis, Terengganu and Kelantan, such that in future there would be no distinction between ‘Federated’ and Non-Federated’. In short, Malaya was to be a less complex and more centralised state, and its capital would be Kuala Lumpur. But in British planning it would remain an unambiguously colonial possession.
The British handed the early governance of Malaya and Singapore to the BMA which, as the name implies, was essentially a military-run administration tasked with civil responsibilities. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor were ‘Region 4’ as far as the BMA was concerned. After so much upheaval, dislocation, destruction and hardship, the challenges facing the BMA were enormous, and it struggled. In a report dated October 1945, it admitted that ‘…the volume of work and the variety of problems have made the tasks of this Administration very difficult. The first excitement and relief consequent upon the surrender of the Japanese Forces having evaporated, the bulk of the people find that their lot has not yet materially improved as an immediate result of victory. Prices are high, foodstuffs (particularly rice) are scarce, wages have been re-established in terms of British dollars at pre-invasion levels, profiteering is occurring, there are few piece goods and cigarettes and unemployment exists on a considerable scale’.
The report continued, ‘This state of anxiety in the minds of the people provides a fertile field for the agitator and the extremist and they have not been slow to exploit their opportunity; they do this covertly but nonetheless with conviction. Certain sections of the Malays and the Chinese have become, as a result of Japanese occupation, increasingly politically conscious and articulate and now that they are permitted to organise themselves and to express their feelings freely, wild talk and over-statements are apt to be indulged in on the Chinese side. Many of the youths of the country have been imbued with Communist sentiments, though very little knowledge of the exact tenets of Communism. Despite these disturbing factors it is clear that the articulate agitators have no real following though many people are nervous of their activities.’ By October 1945, the BMA claimed that it was making progress against the myriad challenges that it faced and noted that ‘it is clear to all that the country is making remarkable progress and the power of the Administration for good is rapidly making itself felt’. Despite such self-serving assessments, however, progress proved much slower than many expected and the claim that the communists ‘have no real following’ proved wide of the mark.
Population and Demographic Changes
The war brought enormous changes to population of Kuala Lumpur. Initially the threat of the Japanese assault saw an exodus from the city to the safety of nearby towns and rural settlements, while some headed to the illusory safety of Singapore. But this urban-rural drift was to correct itself once the Japanese established a modicum of stability and thereafter during the war there was a steady movement from rural areas into the city. The 1947 census complier, del Tufo, noted that there was an increased ‘clustering’ of people around towns and a draining of population from the tin and plantation districts into the city. On their return the British were struck by the overcrowding of Kuala Lumpur, the emergence of shanty communities at the city edge and the number of beggars, orphans and homeless living on the streets. Except for the Indians, whose massive losses have already been noted, the ‘natural increase’ (i.e. births against deaths – not migration) of Chinese and Malay communities of Kuala Lumpur, having ‘paused’ in 1942, was a healthy two per cent throughout 1943-1945. Overall during the war, therefore, the population of Kuala Lumpur expanded due to inward migration and natural population growth; a post-war British assessment calculated that the city population grew by twenty per cent during the Japanese occupation, though no new housing had been built and overcrowding had become a major problem.
Generational Strains
After the war it was commonplace - by adults at least - to rue the absence of schooling and parental control of children during the war years. The Japanese had, predictably, been easier on Malay and Indian schools but for all races the war years were either free from schooling or involved much disruption. It was later argued that a generation grew up almost feral and lacked traditional respect and discipline. The re-launched Malay Mail would note in September 1945 that ‘It is most regrettable that children of tender age have not only wasted three and half years but also have been exposed to innumerable temptations. The result is that in most cases parental discipline has gone to the wind.’ Traditional social patterns, authority structures and respect for elders were therefore strained or broken by the impact of the war. Chin Peng, a senior MPAJA Commander, was only nineteen at the end of the war. Many of the older generation of Chinese leaders, most of whom were business leaders and supporters of the Kuomintang, were compromised in the eyes of the young by their association with organisations such as the Overseas Chinese Association which cooperated with the Japanese. The Indian community had its own generational issues as it lost many young men on the death railways and estates and plantations were plunged into economic and social disarray. The Malay community was probably the least disrupted socially by the experience of war, but even here problems with schooling and simple poverty created an underclass that was forced to scavenge and scrape to survive. As a consequence, many Kuala Lumpur youths probably were wild and out of control by the end of the war. Who could blame them?
A Shattered Economy
The Japanese had embarked on a reckless policy of printing ‘banana’ bank notes, with little or no control, which had encouraged high levels of inflation. On their return, the British immediately re-imposed their own currency, with Japanese occupation notes bearing no, or minimal, conversion value. At a stroke, money lenders (many of them Indian Chettiars) were left holding worthless Japanese-era notes and debts and the informal money-lending system, that had underpinned much of the day-to-day economy, collapsed. Inflation was further increased as shortages forced up prices, even though wages remained fixed at pre-war levels. This was the perfect recipe for labour unrest which spilled over into lawlessness and a crime wave.
By 15 October 1945, British banks reopened in Kuala Lumpur using the new notes brought in by the BMA. But getting credit to businesses brought low by the consequences of war was another problem. Efforts to get the BMA to offer loans were met by an uncompromising response from Brigadier Willan who stated ‘So far as loans to industry in general are concerned I don’t think it is proper for BMA to usurp the business of the banks.’ If loans were difficult to come by, US dollars were even scarcer as the currency control board sought to keep a tight lid on funds held outside the sterling zone. It would prove a long haul to recovery.
The two main pillars of the Selangor economy, tin and rubber, were essentially comatose. For the rubber estates, the toll on the labour force exacted by Japanese war projects would take many years to overcome and the low fixed price of rubber was deemed ‘highly uneconomical’ and hindered reconstruction. The appalling conditions within the rubber estates, stalked by starvation and exacerbated by the large number of widows and orphans, prompted the Selangor Labour Department to argue that ‘the Estates can hardly be expected to shoulder the burden in a position which has been brought about by no fault of their own’. This led the British to offer some limited compensation to the relatives of those who had died on Japanese work projects, while brusquely noting that the ‘scheme should not promote laziness…there can be no parasites amongst the Indian working population’. A mid-1946 survey of eight estates in Selangor suggested that concerns about ‘laziness’ were misplaced. From a work force of 5,290 (divided between 2,934 males and 2,356 females) there were 529 ‘working widows’ and 68 ‘non-working widows’ who supported 59 fatherless children. The government’s financial assistance in these estates therefore aided just 125 ‘non-working widows and orphans’. More important than this limited financial support were additional food supplies. While a consignment of powdered milk was anxiously awaited from Canada, the Labour Department circulated local solutions to the nutritional cr
isis, which included dishes such as ‘Estate Pudding’, which was a quixotic mix of buffalo milk, rice, dhal and sugar as well as a wide range of dishes based around coconut and fishmeal.
For the tin industry, a major problem was securing the necessary capital with which to buy spare parts to refurbish the mines. This, and the recovery of export markets, would take many years to complete. The problems of the tin industry spilled over into many engineering support companies. In mid-1946, a survey of factories in Klang highlighted the problems of a radicalised labour force struggling to make ends meet in a time of rampant inflation. By July, the Labour Department noted that in Selangor there had been ’26 cases of labour unrest’ which had led to twenty strikes. It noted that many workers were ‘unable to afford black-market prices’ and there was ‘undoubtedly an undercurrent fanned by outside sources’. Against this background, the Deputy Commissioner of Labour sagely warned that ‘whether or not the volcano will erupt will be largely dependent on the energies of the employers and their wise handling of labour forces’.
Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Page 20