In Malaya, anti-Japanese feeling intensified at these events, and the Chinese community in Singapore formed an Association for the Relief of Refugees in China, presided over by the influential entrepreneur Tan Kah Kee. Yet the British response to Japan’s aggression was ambivalent. The Anglo-Japanese alliance of the Great War had been allowed to lapse in 1923, and Japanese withdrawal in the 1930s from the League of Nations and from international disarmament agreements was viewed seriously by the British Cabinet. Consequently work on Malaya’s airfields and defences, including the new Singapore naval base, was accelerated. However, concurrently, ‘the policy of H. M. Government in the period 1935-40 [was] to abstain from any action likely to embarrass relations with Tokyo’, and even when the Japanese overran the populous Chinese cities of Canton and Hankow in 1938 the colonial authorities saw Communism as more immediately threatening than the Japanese.3 Labour problems, including strikes during January and February 1940 and an illegal May Day rally in Singapore, were regarded as evidence of Communist subversion, and were firmly dealt with; at the same time, anti-Japanese activity was suppressed.
The government’s compliant attitude towards Japan was not shared by British Malayans, who tended to speak pejoratively of the Japanese.4 The Japanese community in Malaya – over 3,000 in 1931, and at least 4,000 in 1940 – was secretive and self-contained. In the townships, the Japanese monopolized certain businesses. In addition to providing the ‘Marys’, who had long satisfied European lusts (before their trade was stopped by the Japanese government), the Japanese immigrants dealt ‘mostly in teeth and photographs, haircuts and sukiyaki’.5 The British community harboured racial stereotypes of the cunning yellow peril and disdain for a race which produced cheap, imitative products. Conversely, while travelling in Japan in 1921, Maurice Glover, later the editor of the Malaya Tribune, had observed Japanese resentment of ‘all things white’ and ‘was often conscious of hidden antipathy and dislike’.6 In preferring the Chinese, another Englishman in Singapore reflected the general view among Britons in the colony. He admired Chinese self-control in dealing with Japanese commercial rivals (‘I know they hated the Japs’) and their successful boycott of Japanese trades and goods.
The Chinaman is an honest rogue – with him it is a battle of wits, and you have an even chance, but there’s something incalculable about the Jap. He’s altogether too humble and respectful considering how he hates you, and the way he bows and sucks his teeth as you approach is in every way
revolting …
After 1938 I didn’t drink any more Japanese beer or fill my bowl with sukiyaki from the pan. I didn’t watch the Geisha girls dance with a fan, or play at strip-tease to the tune of a mandolin. These and other pleasures, I gave up, not from any personal animosity, but because I loved the Chinese, and was indignant over the Japanese invasion of their country.7
With hindsight, it seems extraordinary that after Japan’s onslaught on China the British government took no firm, concerted action with the other interested nations – France, the Netherlands and the United States – to negotiate a joint guarantee of their Far Eastern territories against Japanese aggression. The expansionist ambitions of imperial Japan were no secret. Singapore officials had been ‘fully conscious of the threat from Japan during the Great War’,8 and Japan’s grand design to dominate the South Seas, stimulated by a culture of militarism and by the decisions of the Washington Conference of 1921, had been leaked to the world in the Tanaka Memorial of 1929. The conquest of China was intended to be a prelude to the expulsion of the white colonial races from South-East Asia, India and Australasia. So again it seems paradoxical that as late as December 1939 Churchill at the Admiralty still doubted whether ‘the Japanese would embark on such a mad enterprise’, and early in 1940 both the Governor, Shenton Thomas, and the Foreign Office advocated that Malaya’s economy should take precedence over strategic defence requirements, since the Imperial Japanese Army ‘was not strong enough to go to war with the British Empire’.9 Whitehall, it appears, ignored the evidence that Japanese penetration of Malaya’s economy was both extensive and politically subversive. The penetration covered many fields, from industry and trade to propaganda and labour relations. A visiting journalist in 1935 noted ‘the potential menace of Japanese conquest and the already existing menace of Japanese trade competition’, which raised the spectre of a head-on clash ‘if the British Empire is to survive’.10 The British government’s failure to act in the East as well as in Europe was, in the opinion of a Singapore resident, the long-term result of the uneasy union of appeasement and pacifism.
The concentration of the Japanese in certain areas, notably in the Unfederated Malay States, was a subject of public comment. Japanese holdings tended to be at key road and rail junctions, in the mining districts of Trengganu and Kelantan, and in a concessionary arc around Batu Pahat and Kota Tinggi, Johore, from which they gained a detailed knowledge of strategic sites which was later to prove critical. Already, in 1935, Bruce Lockhart had noted how ‘every second day, a Japanese steamer goes out from Batu Pahat carrying away from under our very noses the ore which Japan lacks in her own country, and which she doubtless uses for some form of naval or military armament’.11 Japanese prospecting had also opened up a lucrative trade in manganese, bauxite and wolfram, all used in armaments production. By the late 1930s Malaya’s export trade in iron ore to Japan exceeded 2 million tons per year. An English couple confirmed how this trade was allowed by the authorities to continue up to the approach of the Pacific War. In November 1940 Alfred and Nancy Wynne were holidaying in the government bungalow at Endau on the Pahang-Johore border when they were awakened by a loud noise. ‘All night long motor boats were pulling strings of barges along the river carrying iron ore to a ship anchored off the bar. We met the captain, Norwegian, and the engineer, British (Welsh, Alfred thought) in Mersing and they had just arrived from Vladivostock and were taking ore to Japan.’12
Meanwhile several organizations, such as the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Museum in Singapore, served as cover for political activities. They worked in tandem with a network of Japanese companies, headed by the Nissan group and the Ishihara Sangyo Kaiun Kabushiki Kaisha (ISKKK), with its Singapore subsidiary, the Southern Godown Company, which was involved in the notorious Kaseda-Kizaki espionage case of 1934.13 Japan operated a multifarious system of political warfare. In 1934-5 a number of prominent Malays, including members of the Johore ruling family, were invited to Japan on official visits in attempts to curry favour. Return goodwill tours of Malaya by Japanese officials served as cover for intelligence gathering. Japan’s fishermen, nosing their way among the estuaries and creeks of Malaya’s coastline, performed a similar function on behalf of the Japanese navy. Informants also came from the ranks of Asian labour on Japanese-controlled estates. On the eve of the Pacific War the British swooped on a secret organization called KAME, which, allied with the Malay Youth Union, had forged a fifth column among middle-class Malays in the Unfederated States of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu. Information on Japanese espionage was collected by the Special Branch of the Straits Settlement Police, but, as one expert admitted, it was impossible to know how much went undetected.
Rumours of Japanese activities were commonplace as early as 1934. Secret fortifications and armaments were found sited on the Japanese-owned Pengerang Rubber Estate in Johore, uncomfortably close to the Singapore naval base. Talk of Japanese spies operating in the guise of barbers, photographers and planters circulated in European circles during the 1930s.14 In Sitiawan, ‘The local Jap barber, obsequious and kow-towing … built himself a little shop overlooking the aerodrome where he had a perfect view of its total lack of defence,’ Katharine Sim remembered.15 ‘We were, I suppose, a little complacent,’ added Leslie Froggatt, knowing that ‘the Japs were there too, measuring the swamps and the jungles, the beaches and the bays, watching, working, never relaxing in their preparation for our destruction.’16 Sometimes encounters reached the English press, but
to avoid a political ‘incident’ most espionage agents were quietly expelled from Malaya in the pre-war years. However, Japan learned the propaganda value of the press: the Eastern News Agency was established in Singapore in October 1938, followed six months later by a Japanese-owned newspaper, the Singapore Herald, to counter the Tribune. Thanks to the benevolent censorship in the colony, this low-cost paper, aimed at the English-speaking Asian community, was able to disseminate its bogus patriotic message up to the very outbreak of hostilities, reinforced from February 1941 by propaganda broadcasts from Tokyo and Taihoku purveying false news items to sow racial discord and undermine morale.
Although the colonial authorities were aware of the importance of propaganda, it was the Axis powers who were seen as the enemy, to the advantage of Japan. ‘Every new addition to the defences was boosted. Photographs and articles on troops training were commonplace,’ one official later commented.17 One random example illustrates British naivety. A copy of the Trengganu Government Gazette intercepted in March 1941 on its way to a Japanese investigation bureau contained full details of recent defence exercises in Trengganu. At the centre of Japan’s intelligence operations, espionage and fifth-column work was the Japanese Consulate-General in Singapore, an institution which grossly abused diplomatic privilege throughout the 1930s. The British, on the other hand, had limited resources for intelligence work and it was not until 1941 that a Civil Security Officer was appointed. Yet in 1939-40 the Secretary for Defence, Malaya, knew ‘there were planters, miners and prospectors, foresters and game rangers who could send word of strange things which were happening in odd places’, including ‘an old Malay tracker friend who brought me news of Japanese activities in the northern frontier region’.18 In 1940 a small band of civilians, run by the Chief Game Warden, E. O. Shebbeare, was sent on unofficial forays into Thailand (as Siam had now become) to assess Japanese activity. To the bitter chagrin of this Frontier Unit, the intelligence reports they sent to Singapore were ignored, and, the Secretary for Defence having been effectively dismissed in February 1941, the Unit was disbanded.19 While Malaya lacked a coherent counter-espionage organization it could not hope to contain the Japanese threat.
The real concern of the British in Malaya after 1937 was the deteriorating situation in Europe. The Nazi threat was starkly revealed when Hider’s forces invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1938, and after much diplomatic manoeuvring stormed Poland on 1 September 1939. Two days later, their ultimatum rejected, Great Britain and France had no alternative but to declare war. The news reached Malaya by wireless at 5.45 p.m. that Sunday, 3 September 1939. Shenton Thomas and other prominent citizens were attending evensong at St Andrew’s Cathedral. Marine engineer Leslie Froggatt and his wife, May, had a special reason for remembering that evening, for they had just attended the christening of the three-month-old daughter of some Singapore friends.
We were still drinking champagne … when Neville Chamberlain’s fateful words came over the air, ‘England is now at war.’ The international atmosphere had been particularly tense for some days before that, and although Britain’s decision for war was not unexpected, it nevertheless shook most of us there into a feeling of realism, and our thoughts went back to England … England at war once again!20
In their bungalow in Lumut, the Sims also heard the broadcast.
Sadly we went down to the estuary and sat in the Rest House garden alone. We watched the sampans and koleks corning in against the sunset up the brilliant coloured river. It was so beautiful and peaceful it seemed impossible to believe we were at war at last. The frangipanni petals dropped to the grass one by one and lay there, creamy white and pure; a dog barked in the village … This was the only reality; this beauty.21
Most Britons went though the gamut of emotions as they adjusted to the news. For some the overriding reaction was ‘agonizing worry about parents at home, and our minds were full of horrific pictures of raids and gas’.22 Yet officialdom was symbolically reassuring. The following day the Straits Times – the ‘Tuan’s paper’ – thanked God that Britain was at war, and with sublime insouciance the editorial claimed, ‘At this distance from the scene of battle, with our defences perfected and Japanese participation in the struggle on the side of Germany an extremely remote possibility, Malaya has little to fear.’23 In a broadcast on 5 September the Governor departed from the tradition of 1914-18. He appealed to the people to stay at their posts and urged Europeans not to return to Britain to enlist. Subsequently John Soper of the colonial agricultural service interpreted the situation thus:
September 1939 found Malaya in the throes of a slump: tin output was restricted to less than half of full capacity and rubber was little better … With the outbreak of war, however, there came the demand for American dollars and the realisation that Malayan tin and rubber would provide the best dollar arsenal we had. Both prices and export quotas began to rise, and by 1941 the country was enjoying the biggest boom it had known for years. In the wake of the American dollar the Straits dollar began to flow freely again. Patriotism with profit, the Elysian dream of the exploiter, came true with a vengeance.24
While people threw themselves into work and enjoyed unparalleled prosperity there was little interest in defence: ‘war had not come to Malaya for a hundred years, so why should they worry about it now?’25 On the other hand, some in Singapore did sense that they were living in the Indian summer of colonialism:
We could still lie in the sun as the clean white cumulus drifted by, we could still watch the lightning crack through the sky at night … We could still play golf at five, drink to the setting sun, and dance as the moon came up over the palms. We could still sit in a crowd at a cinema, we could watch a cricket match, and mingle with the masses of Asiatics [sic] who crowded the streets. We could still enjoy life without fear. And yet I know there were some amongst us who felt a certain qualm of uneasiness, that we, on the outside edge of the Empire, could enjoy still the things that England had so willingly put aside.26
For a while fears were lulled as the European war went through its ‘phoney’ phase. If anything, the suspense broke down old social inhibitions. Nancy Wynne, young and recently arrived from England, was surprised how approachable her husband’s superiors were. Referring to one of the wives, she added, ‘I like her very much, she is very friendly and like most people here she has no “airs”. There is very little snobbery.’27 If one event shocked the European community and brought people together it was the sinking of the Rawalpindi on 23 November 1939 by the German warships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The heroic end of this once elegant P. & O. liner was mourned in Malaya. Many knew her like an old friend on the Far East run. Meanwhile, the British sent home food parcels to relatives and friends, and a few began growing their own vegetables. ‘I am going to knit for the navy,’ Nancy Wynne assured her parents. ‘I have finished a balaclava helmet and half a pullover.’28 Elsewhere, in Penang and Singapore life continued normally, with picnics, parties and subscription concerts. Again, Nancy Wynne was in cheerful form:
We are getting a good deal of tennis … this is a very easy-going country … Singapore is a marvellous place to go … Mr and Mrs Emmett gave us a grand time in the big city. They took us swimming in the S[ingapore] S[wimming] Club … It is a fine place and they serve excellent food. The second night we went to the Airport Hotel for dinner and ate fresh strawberries flown from Australia.29
It was when the tempo of the conflict in Europe changed dramatically in the early summer of 1940 that the colonial community understood the meaning of war. Until that point ‘we were still preoccupied with our peace’, one man admitted.30
On May 10 1940, the Bishop of Singapore came to Sitiawan [in Perak] to take the Whitsun monthly services. Nearly the whole district, about 25 people, turned out for evensong … It was then we heard the first rumour of the invasion of Holland … the news stunned us … The ‘phoney war’ was over, we were all now intensely conscious of the reality: Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, so near to England …
The heat and oppression of that terrible night weighed like lead; the threat to England was now clear; fear clutched us.31
But there was worse to come: in June, France fell.
That day will never be forgotten. The shock that England suffered sent out vibrating waves right to the very corners of the Empire, so that even in Malaya, so many miles away, we felt the tremors, and were afraid. Our first thought was for England, abandoned and alone, and in such deadly peril. We read of the plight of the BEF [British Expeditionary Force] in France, exposed to every kind of humiliation and defeat. We followed them in their desperate trial of Dunkirk, we watched in suspense their miraculous deliverance from what had seemed most certain death. We waited for the invasion of Britain as anxiously as if our own soil would be attacked and, with bated breath, we heard the Churchill speech of blood, toil and sweat. We suffered through the Battle of Britain, and we knew that the life of England and the colonies depended on the indestructible courage of those ‘so few’. It was agony to be so far away and so helpless.32
‘Whose blood, sweat and tears?’ asked another bemused Malayan. ‘The tears we could share; but we felt more than ever conscious of our inactivity.’33
There was one group of European men for whom the new situation was infinitely worrying: those whose wives and children were still in Britain. There had been something of a rush home in 1939 to beat the uncertainty and settle children in boarding school, but after the fall of France this trend went into reverse. Some returned to Malaya during the Phoney War. Deck games and swimming pools gave way to the priority of life jackets and lifeboat drill. But once the Mediterranean was closed to British shipping, the choice seemed stark: to face the dangers of Britain at war or to risk mines, U-boats and surface raiders on the long and dangerous voyage back East. Eric Froggatt, rising eight, left England in June 1940, travelling in the Captain’s care via the Cape of Good Hope aboard the steamship Ascanius to join his parents in Singapore. Ken and Geoffrey Barnes travelled by the same route, leaving in July on the P. & O. ship Viceroy of India, their voyage always being associated with their guardian’s favourite tune, ‘Over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz. William Vowler, in a party of forty children, sailed from the Clyde in Blue Funnel’s Sarpedon in the charge of Captain Nelson and two nurses. A strict regime was enforced; the evacuees had to carry their passports and money in waist belts at all times. Henry Malet left his daughters Susan and Jennifer with friends in ‘the safety of Mauritius’ in 1940, although they later moved to Cape Town with their mother.
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