by Harper, Tim
34. Chang Cheng Yean interview, OHD, SNA.
35. Heng Chiang Ki interview, OHD, SNA.
36. ‘The Civilians’ to Victor Purcell, 9 December 1945, BMA/CH/7/45, SNA.
37. Ralph Hone to F. S. V. Donnison, 25 March 1953, Hone Papers, RHO.
38. Wilfred Blythe, The impact of Chinese secret societies in Malaya: a historical study (London, 1969), pp. 338–44.
39. D. F. Grant diary, 17 June 1946, DF/370/45, ANM.
40. J. P. Mead, ‘Renewed collection of forest revenue’, 19 October 1945, DF/90/45, ANM.
41. Ang Keong Lan interview, OHD, SNA.
42. Haggard and Haggard, ‘An account of the BMA of Upper Perak’.
43. Peter Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, 1946–52 (London, 1994), p. 105.
44. Hone to F. S. V. Donnison, 1 May 1952, Hone Papers, RHO; H. T. Pagden, ‘Unrest in Malaya’, in letter to O. H. Morris of the Colonial Office, 12 October 1948, CO537/3757, TNA.
45. Charles Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya (Singapore, 1960), pp. 46–7; Arshak Catihatoer Galstaun interview, OHD, SNA.
46. Nanyang Siang Pau, 20 November 1945.
47. Victor Purcell to Maj. General G. N. Wood, 28 December 1945, WO203/5302, TNA.
48. Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 12 December 1945.
49. Sin Chew Jit Poh [Singapore], 19 November 1945.
50. Dr Benjamin Chew interview, OHD, SNA.
51. Victor Purcell to CCAO, 31 October 1945; H. S. Lee to Purcell, 29 October 1945, BMA/CH/31/45, SNA.
52. James to Purcell, 13 November 1945, BMA/CH/31/45, SNA.
53. Gay Wan Guay interview, OHD, SNA.
54. Straits Times [Singapore], 20 December 1945; HQ SACSEA, ‘Discipline: Singapore Island’, 12 January 1946, WO203/4362, TNA.
55. Kung Pao [Singapore], 18 April 1946.
56. B. Dean, The theatre at war (London, 1956), p. 490.
57. Brig, E. H. A. J. O’Donnell to Norman Collins, BBC, 21 September 1945; Minister of Food to First Lord of the Admiralty, 5 September 1945, WO32/11479, TNA.
58. Holder, Eleven months in Malaya, pp. 55–66.
59. Malaya Tribune [Kuala Lumpur], 9 December 1945.
60. For a rare historical study, Haryati Hasan, ‘Malay women and prostitution in Kota Bahru, Kelantan, 1950s–1970s’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 78, 1 (2005), pp. 97–120.
61. Memo: V. D.’ DA & QHG 14th Army, 15 October 1945; C. E. C. Davis, ‘Report on the VD situation in Singapore, 4 March 1946’; ‘Special meeting held at HQ SACSEA to consider methods to combat VD in SEAC, 7 December 1945’, BMA/DEPT/1/2, AMN.
62. Acting Commissioner of Police, Malayan Union, ‘Suppression of brothels – reasons against’, n.d. [November 1946], SCA/28/46, SNA.
63. Singapore City Committee Malayan Communist Party to Civil Affairs Department, 23 October 1945, BMA/CA/8/45, SNA.
64. Min Sheng Pau [Kuala Lumpur], 18 October, 11 December, 1945.
65. New Democracy, 27 October 1945.
66. Maj. General G. N. Wood (25 Indian Division) to Victor Purcell, 24 December 1945; Purcell to Wood, 28 December 1945, WO203/5302, TNA.
67. Min Sheng Pau, 22 October 1945.
68. New Democracy, 22 January 1946.
69. ‘BMA Monthly Report for February 1946’, WO220/564, TNA; Mubin Sheppard, Taman Budiman: memoirs of an unorthodox civil servant (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), pp. 144–5; Datuk Mohd Yusoff Hj. Ahmad, Decades of change (Malaysia – 1910s–1970s) (Kuala Lumpur, 1983), p. 325.
70. Gilmour, With Freedom to Singapore, pp. 133, 152, 155.
71. Chin Kee Onn, Malaya upside down (Singapore, 1946), pp. 190–8.
72. Wong Yunn Chii and Tan Kar Lin, ‘Emergence of a cosmopolitan space for culture and consumption: the New World Amusement Park – Singapore (1923–70) in the inter-war years’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5, 2 (2004), pp. 279–304.
73. M. S. Daud, ‘Popularity of the “Bangsawan” is declining’, Malaya Tribune, 18 July 1948.
74. Sin Chew Jit Poh, 22 October 1945.
75. New Democracy, 4 October 1945.
76. Modern Daily News, 10 October 1945.
The ‘Eight Principles’ are:
(1) Support the Democratic Alliance of Soviet Russia, China, Britain and America. Support the new International Peace Organization.
(2) Materialize the Malayan Democratic polity. Establish organs of peoples’ wish for the whole of Malaya as well as the respective States by universal suffrage of the various nationalities and Anti-Japanese organizations of Malaya.
(3) Abolish the political structure formed by the domination of the Japanese Fascists in Malaya. Abolish all Japanese laws and decrees.
(4) Practise the absolute freedom of speech, publication, organization, public meeting and belief. Assure the legal position of all parties and organizations.
(5) Relinquish the old system of education and exercise democratic education with the respective national languages. Expand national culture.
(6) Improve the living conditions of the people; develop Industry, Agriculture and Commerce; relieve the unemployed and refugees; increase wages universally and practise the ‘8 hours’ work system’.
(7) Reduce the prices of goods to the level; stabilize the living conditions of the people; punish corrupt officials, profiteers and hoarders.
(8) Treat the Anti-Japanese armies kindly, and help the families of the fallen warriors. (Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singa-pore, 1983), appendix D, ‘Statement of the Selangor State Committee, The Communist Party of Malaya’, 27 August 1945, pp. 308–9.)
77. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate IV: 10–30 November 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
78. ‘Number of cases receiving relief and amount of cash issued’, 11 October 1945, BMA/CA/48/45, SNA.
79. Cheah Boon Kheng, The masked comrades: a study of the Communist United Front in Malaya, 1945–48 (Singapore, 1979), pp. 24–5.
80. Modern Daily News [Penang], 25 December 1945.
81. Sin Chew Jit Poh, 6 October 1945.
82. See the testimonies in Agnes Khoo, Life as the river flows: women in the Malayan anti-colonial struggle (Petaling Jaya, 2004).
83. Tai Ngo, ‘To our sisters’, Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 3 November 1945.
84. A. F. P. Hulsewe, ‘Survey of current Chinese periodicals in Malaya’, Chinese Press Summary, 60 [Jan. 1946], pp. 13–18.
85. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate II: 1–19 October 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
86. Ibid.
87. Purcell, Memoirs of a Malayan Official, p. 353.
88. Quoted in Gamba, The origins of trade unionism in Malaya, p. 19.
89. Min Sheng Pau, 26 October 1945.
90. ‘Report on Labour troubles in Singapore’, 27 October 1945; ‘Labour sitrep Singapore’, 27 October 1945, BMA/DEPT/2/15, ANM; New Democracy, 23 October 1945.
91. Michael Stenson, Industrial conflict in Malaya: prelude to the communist revolt of 1948 (London, 1970); Leong Yee Fong, Labour and trade unionism in colonial Malaya (Penang, 1999). For Brazier, see Gamba, The origins of trade unionism, p. 101.
92. Under the name Wee Mong Cheng, Ng Yeh Lu embarked on a successful business career; he became an office bearer in the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and between 1973 and 1980 Singapore’s ambassador to Japan and Korea, C. F. Yong, The origins of Malayan Communism (Singapore, 1997), pp. 190–2, 253. Also Yoji Akashi, ‘Lai Teck, Secretary General of the Malayan Communist Party, 1939–1947’, Journal of the South Seas Society, 49 (1994), pp. 57–103.
93. Kin Kwok Daily News [Ipoh], 27 November 1945.
94. Victor Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate V: 1–20 December 1945’, WO203/5302, TNA.
95. ‘Appendix I: Lai Teck, Communist leader’, in CO537/3737, TNA.
96. Mamoru Shinozaki, Syonan – my story: the Japanese occupation of Singapo
re (Singapore, 1979), pp. 101–2; Yoji Akashi, ‘The Anti-Japanese movement in Perak during the Japanese occupation, 1941–45’, in Paul H. Kratoska (ed.), Malaya and Singapore during the Japanese occupation (Singa-pore, 1995), p. 118.
97. We have here drawn on the detective work of Cheah Boon Kheng, Red star over Malaya: resistance and social conflict during and after the Japanese occupation of Malaya, 1941–1946 (Singapore, 1983), pp. 244–7.
98. Quoted in Charles B. McLane, Soviet strategies in Southeast Asia: an exploration of Eastern Poicy under Lenin and Stalin (Princeton, 1966), p. 306.
99. US Army, Kuala Lumpur, ‘Interview with Communist leaders’, 15 October 1945, NARA/XL26313, SNA. Lim Cheng Leng, The story of a psy-warrior: Ta Sri Dr C. C. Too (Batu Caves, 2000), pp. 67–9.
100. Shih Tai Jit Poh, 21 October 1945; Min Sheng Pau, 24 October, 1945.
101. Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate V’.
102. The following report is complied from notes taken by William McDougall of United Press during an interview with ‘Wu Tain Want’ [Wu Tian Wang], spokesman of the Singapore City Committee of the Malayan Communist Party, 23 September 1945, NARA/XL27129, SNA.
103. OSS, ‘Activities of Liu Yau’, 31 August 1946, NARA/A-71322, SNA.
104. Hu Ti Jun, ‘A letter to the British Advisor of Malayan Affairs (The Parkerton Open Letter)’, in Foong Choon Hon (ed.), The price of peace: true accounts of the Japanese occupation (Singapore, 1991), p. 288.
105. War Office to ALFSEA, 27 June, 1946; Chief Secretary to HQ Malaya District, 20 April 1950, WO32/17642, TNA.
106. Ho Thean Fook, Tainted glory (Kuala Lumpur, 2000), pp. 252–9.
107. Purcell, Memoirs of a Malayan official, pp. 352, 357.
108. Mary Turnbull, ‘British planning for post-war Malaya’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 5, 2 (1974), pp. 239–54.
109. H. M. Cheng, ‘Re: Malayan Nationality’, 5 December 1945, BMA/CH/68/45, SNA.
110. Purcell, ‘Malaya’s Political Climate II’.
111. Mountbatten to Oliver Stanley, 19 July 1944, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part 1, pp. 82–3.
112. Report by H. C. Willan, 7 October 1945, ibid., pp. 140–2. For the Sultan’s tiger kills, A. Locke, The tigers of Trengganu (London, 1954), p. 149.
113. A. J. Stockwell, British policy and Malay politics during the Malayan Union experiment, 1945–1948 (Kuala Lumpur, 1979), p. 40.
114. Sir Harold MacMichael to Sir George Gator, 22 October 1945, in Stockwell, British documents: Malaya, part I, pp. 171–5.
115. Notes by Sir Harold MacMichael, 30 November–3 December 1945, ibid., pp. 181–6.
116. Badlishah’s letter to Yang di-Pertuan Besar [ruler] of Negri Sembilan, in Ismail bin Haji Salleh, The Sultan was not alone: a collection of letters written by Sultan Badlishah in his effort to repeal the Malayan Union policy imposed by the British Government on Malaya in 1946, and other supporting letters and documents written by others (Alor Setar, 1989), p. 2; ‘Extract from letter from an official in Malaya’, 6 January 1946, Maxwell Papers, BAM Papers, CUL.
117. Warta Negara, 11 December 1945.
118. Majlis [Kuala Lumpur], 12 December 1945.
119. Utusan Melayu [Singapore], 2 November 1945.
120. Ahmad Boestamam (trans. William R. Roff), Carving the path to the summit (Athens, OH, 1979), pp. 22–7.
CHAPTER 4 1945: THE FIRST WARS OF PEACE
1. Bengal press adviser’s report for the first half of August 1945, L/P and J/5/142, OIOC.
2. Dirk Bogarde, Cleared for take-off (London, 1995), pp. 100–110.
3. As reported in John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde: the authorised biography (London, 2005), p. 164.
4. Dirk Bogarde, Backcloth (London, 1985), pp. 125–35.
5. M. E. Dening, ‘Review of events in South-East Asia 1945 to March, 1946’, 25 March 1946, in A. J. Stockwell (ed.), British documents on the end of empire: Malaya, part I (London, 1995), p. 211.
6. Peter Bates, Japan and the British Commonwealth occupation force, 1946–52 (London, 1993).
7. George Rosie, The British in Vietnam: how the twenty-five year war began (London, 1970), p. 15.
8. David Marr, Vietnam 1945 (Berkeley, 1995), p. 135.
9. Cited in Rosie, The British in Vietnam, p. 25; there is a recent reassessment of these events in John Springhall, ‘Kicking out the Vietminh: how Britain allowed France to reoccupy south Indochina’, Journal of Contemporary History, 40, 1 (2005), pp. 115–30.
10. Marr, Vietnam, p. 458.
11. E.g. ‘A short note on Indochina’, intelligence summary appended to orders of 20th Indian Division, Gracey Papers, 4/1, LHCMA.
12. Paul Mus, Le destin de l’union française de l’Indochine à l’Afrique (Paris, 1955), cited in Susan Bayly, ‘French anthropology and the Durkheimians in Indochina’, Modern Asian Studies, 34, 3 (2000), p. 603, n. 49.
13. Germaine Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon, following the Allied occupation in September 1945’, WOS special file RG 59, lot file 59 D 190, Box 9, US National Archives, Washington, DC. We are grateful to Professor Christopher Goscha for making this available.
14. SACSEA, ‘Note on relations with surrendered Japanese forces’, Gracey Papers, 4/1, LHCMA.
15. ‘Medical History of Allied Forces in French Indo China’, September 1945–February 1946, Gracey Papers, 4/7, LHCMA.
16. Marr, Vietnam, p. 526.
17. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 3.
18. Ibid., p. 8.
19. Ibid., pp. 1–2.
20. Gracey’s minute in SACSEA to Cabinet, 23 September 1945, ‘Indo China Intelligence’, WO203/4431, TNA.
21. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 18.
22. Ibid., p. 19.
23. 12th Army to SACSEA, 27 September 1945, enclosing despatch from McKelvie, dateline Saigon, 25 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA; cf. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 20.
24. Leclerc to French Minister of War, 24 September 1945, in SACSEA to Cabinet, 24 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
25. See Christopher Goscha, ‘Belated Asian allies: the technical and military contribution of Japanese deserters (1945–50)’, in Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco (eds.), A companion to the Vietnam War (Oxford, 2002), pp. 37–64.
26. Reynolds News, 30 September 1945.
27. Francis Wheen, Tom Driberg: his life and indiscretions (London, 1990), p. 221.
28. Driberg regularly received copies of the nationalist ‘Viet Nam news’ and other publications and notices of nationalist activities in France and Indo-China; see Tom Driberg Papers, S3, 1–3, Christ Church, Oxford.
29. Minutes of a meeting between General Gracey and Vietnamese representatives, 10 October 1945, Gracey Papers 4/18, LHCMA.
30. Gracey to Slim, 13 October 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
31. SACSEA to Saigon Control Commission, 24 September 1945, ibid.
32. Mountbatten to Driberg, 4 October 1945, Driberg Papers, Christ Church, Oxford, cited in Wheen, Tom Driberg, p. 219.
33. Slim to CIGS, 6 October 1945, ‘The future of Indo China’, CAB 121/741, TNA.
34. Political report 13 September to 9 November 1945, Saigon Control Commission, Gracey Papers, 4/8, LHCMA.
35. Gracey to Leclerc, 12 December 1945, Gracey Papers, 4/11, LHCMA.
36. ‘Medical History’, Gracey Papers, 4/7, LHCMA.
37. ‘To Indian Soldiers’, leaflet, Gracey Papers, 4/20, LHCMA. There were also leaflets directed to British and French soldiers, some in Vietnamese and some in French. The catalogue of Gracey’s papers also refers to pamphlets in Hindi but we were unable to locate any of these.
38. ‘Appeal to the Indian Officers and soldiers among the British troops’, Gracey Papers, 4/20, LHCMA.
39. Reynolds News, 30 September 1945.
40. Everard to M. E. Dening, 30 October 1945, ‘Indians in French Indo China, etc.’, WO203/5650, TNA.
41. Appendix to report, apparently by M. S. Aney, agent of the government of India, ‘Report on conditions of Indians in Fre
nch Indo China’, early 1946, WO203/6217, TNA.
42. Viceroy’s telegram enclosed in SACSEA to Cabinet, 2 September 1945, WO203/4431, TNA.
43. Times of Saigon, 1 December 1945, WO203/4584, TNA.
44. Times of Saigon, 15 January 1946, ibid.
45. Gracey to Slim, 5 November 1945, Gracey Papers 4/11, LHCMA.
46. Krull, ‘Diary of Saigon’, p. 21.
47. Andrew Roadnight, ‘Sleeping with the enemy: Britain, Japanese troops and the Netherlands East Indies, 1945–46’, History, 87, 286 (2002), pp. 245–68, p. 248.
48. Sir John Anderson to Prime Minister, 8 August 1945, CAB126/76, TNA.
49. P. S. Gerbrandy, Indonesia (London, 1950), p. 26.
50. Frances Gouda, Dutch culture overseas: colonial practice in the Netherlands Indies, 1900–1942 (Amsterdam, 1992), p. 237.
51. This is evoked wonderfully in Takashi Shiraishi, An age in motion: popular radicalism in Java, 1912–26 (Ithaca, 1990).
52. For this, see Peter Carey, ‘Myths, heroes and war’, in Peter Carey and Colin Wild (eds.), Born in fire: the Indonesian struggle for independence: an anthology (Athens, OH, 1986), pp. 6–11.
53. Harry J. Benda, The Crescent and the Rising Sun: Indonesian Islam under Japanese occupation, 1942–1945 (The Hague, 1958).
54. Goto Ken’ichi, ‘Modern Japan and Indonesia: the dynamics and legacy of wartime rule’, in Peter Post and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma (eds.), Japan, Indonesia and the war: myths and realities (Leiden, 1997), pp. 14–30.
55. Burton Raffel (trans. and ed.), The Voice of the Night: complete poetry and prose of Chairil Anwar (1993).
56. Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, Java in a time of revolution: occupation and resistance, 1944–46 (Ithaca and London, 1972), pp. 2–10.
57. Ali Sastroamijoyo, Milestones on my journey: the memoirs of Ali Sastroamijoyo, Indonesian patriot and political leader (St Lucia, 1979), p. 120.