Mabel Price decided to risk the Atlantic crossing with her two young sons. It was a brave decision, for in September the City of Benares, carrying ninety child evacuees to Canada, would be torpedoed with only thirteen survivors. However, in July the Prices left Liverpool on a Cunard liner, accompanied by a strange ‘ghost ship’ and a destroyer. Mother and son told the story. ‘We sailed in convoy to Canada. Our ship suffered slight damage by a torpedo attack in the Atlantic.’ ‘The ship shuddered which was frightening … One evening about two days out to sea we noticed the destroyer was no longer with us, nor was the ghost ship, and the feeling of depression overtook the passengers. On awakening one morning we were astonished to see icebergs not far off and we realised how far north we had sailed to avoid any more trouble.’ ‘We travelled by rail from Montreal to Vancouver where we were met by my Father,’ Norman Price recalled, ‘returning across the Pacific via Auckland and Sydney.’ Much to their surprise, the ‘ghost ship’ reappeared in Sydney harbour: it had been carrying to Australia recalcitrant prisoners of war, who had to be held below deck. ‘Whilst crossing the Tasman [Sea] it was rumoured that a German “raider” was in the area [having already sunk their sister ship], so we flew by Empire C class flying-boat to Penang.’34
In Malaya, fund-raising measures had already been initiated:
A Patriotic Fund devoted to war charities was started and well supported: it was soon followed by a War Fund from which gifts to the Imperial Exchequer were made for conducting the war, and this again attracted considerable contributions. All through the country the women organized sewing parties and purchased the materials from their own contributions. There was a rush to subscribe to the War Loans.35
The Patriotic Fund received contributions from all the racial communities. A leading Ipoh barrister organized the Fund in Perak: John Woods sold home-made jigsaws and his own knitted goods to raise money, while his wife, Lydia, worked in a ‘Wool and Sewing Depot’ in the town, boasting that ‘we sent home 13,000 garments in the last batch (3 weeks’ work)’.36 Nancy Wynne was another worker. ‘We went to Johore Bahru where I attended a meeting of the Patriotic Fund, Women’s Section … We are making mosquito nets for the troops in the Middle East now, besides the knitting and hospital sewing … I am waiting for the material to start the same here.’ January 1941 saw her ‘very busy sewing for the Patriotic Fund’ and also helping to organize a dance at the Masonic Hall in Segamat in aid of the War Fund. ‘I think we raised about $1,200 which was quite good for such a small place … We made 500 sandwiches ourselves and begged curry puffs, sausage rolls and pork pies … Mrs Kennison and myself did the decorations. We used all her pot plants, lovely maiden hair ferns and jungle ferns, and masses of red and yellow cannas.’37 April saw the launch of Salvage Week, when ‘everybody is asked to bring all the waste paper, tinfoil, empty bottles and the like … The paper goes to India to be repulped, the metal will be offered to U.K. and what is not wanted there will be used here, the bottles go to the General Hospital.’38
Yet some felt that greater efforts could have been made. The generosity of the Malayan Chinese to the Patriotic Fund (to which the rickshaw owners gave $1,000) and to their own China Relief Fund showed how the Europeans lagged behind in their giving. Instead, ‘the usual dances and tournaments were held, causing an enormous amount of expenditure on petrol and drinks which seemed not quite the right approach’.39
Business was good and it was easy to be ‘patriotic’, but there was very little, if any, ‘giving till it hurts’, as was witnessed by the income tax controversy … It must have been toward the end of 1939 that H[is] E[xcellency] first suggested the introduction of this tax: it met with a howl of opposition from every business interest in the country. All manner of arguments were brought to bear against it … In the Federated Malay States it was confidently stated that even if the colony accepted the tax they would not, and all the Unfederated Malay States refused to have anything to do with it. After dropping the original bombshell, H.E. went home on leave to England … The opposition was allowed to vent its fury, boil over, and simmer down: then on his return from leave H.E. began a policy of quiet propaganda … Eventually the bills authorizing the tax passed more or less smoothly through both the Colony and F.M.S. Legislatures, much to the surprise of the rank and file in the country. The rates were not high … And so … the business, rubber and tin sections of the community managed, in spite of taxation and restrictions, to make a very good thing out of the war.40
During 1940, unknown to the public, the British Cabinet’s thinking on the defence of Malaya underwent a critical change. Earlier strategies placed Malaya second in importance to the British Isles, but in the autumn of 1940 a statement of Malaya’s defence needs by the Chiefs of Staff was surreptitiously overruled by Churchill, to be replaced by a new set of priorities deriving from the War Cabinet, abetted by Whitehall, putting Malaya below the Middle East and Russia. The heavy losses of men, planes and armour in France, at Dunkirk, and in the Battle of Britain, forced a reduction of Far Eastern defences. In Malaya and Australasia this policy switch was later considered to be a shameful breach of faith. Commitments to defend the whole of the Malay peninsula with 556 first-line aircraft and twenty-six battalions of troops were reduced in October 1940 to 336 aircraft and ancillary support such as anti-aircraft and motor torpedo boats, which would be in place by the end of 1941 (any deficiency in air reinforcements to be made up with ground forces). This was a landmark decision. The policy of defending all Malaya had been abandoned in favour of all-out defence of the fortress of Singapore with 160 obsolete or obsolescent planes, the equivalent of three and a half weak divisions, no tanks and too few guns. It was, as the furious Secretary for Defence in Singapore stated, a case of a plan that would be impossible to implement, ‘for the defence of an imaginary country against an imaginary enemy with imaginary resources in circumstances which were quite unimaginable’.41 The logical responsibility for Malaya’s subsequent unpreparedness clearly rested with the British government, led by Winston Churchill, who later famously admitted, ‘I ought to have known. My advisers ought to have known and I ought to have been told and I ought to have asked.’42
In the meantime, with the coming of New Year 1941, the European civilian population faced other changes calmly. Petrol was rationed, and there were the inevitable grumbles at the club over the rising cost of living and tax increases on beer, whisky and cigarettes. The first trial blackouts had been held before the end of 1940. Unexpected difficulties hit a trial run in Perak when the Malay kampong involved was lit up by the mass light of fireflies; others complained privately of the problems of blacking out open-plan bungalows. But in Singapore ‘we became accustomed to the siren. We even treated the blackout trials as fun, and got into the way of throwing what we called “Blackout parties” – soup, sandwiches and sausages rolls, eaten under a dim lamp hanging so low that only a little of the table shone under its light, and the whole of the room was in darkness.’43 People learned to combine duty and pleasure. Singapore’s cinemas were packed, as George Formby, Vivien Leigh, Deanna Durban, Anna Neagle and Gary Cooper kept audiences entertained. Alex Cullen, a Singapore surveyor and an officer in the Volunteers, attended to his normal office work and Volunteer meetings, but found time for the Scouts, sailing his yacht at the Royal Yacht Club and watching the latest films: ‘I’ve just come from a first house at the Pavilion,’ he wrote to his wife, in Australia, ‘“Penny Serenade” … We rocked with laughter for minutes on end … I had to wipe my eyes.’44 As reinforcements of Australian, British and Indian troops arrived in late 1940 and early 1941 to support the resident British and Malay battalions, the sense of security increased. In Segamat, Johore, Nancy Wynne observed, ‘We have seen thousands of lorries and equipment passing here lately … We sit on the balcony and watch them go.’45 The Wynnes, like many British couples, were glad to do their bit by giving free hospitality to the new arrivals. The Sims were encouraged ‘to see husky-looking Australians around in the towns’, a
nd remarked how Penang ‘was full of soldiers, mostly Punjabis and the hotel was packed with bored-looking officers’.46 On the other hand, ‘Social life … was affected [for the better] by the arrival of the Indian army and some British regiments. It seemed to be a constant round of parties.’47
When cinema newsreels showed the bombing of London, the evidence of Britain’s isolation divided opinions. ‘I think we were fairly evenly divided into two camps – those who believed we should escape the war, and the others who knew we shouldn’t. Most civilians had no idea how strong or how weak we were … Hadn’t Britain spent millions of pounds building up Singapore’s security?’48 Rumours became myths. People were confused. Could the island of Singapore really be a fortress, a new, bigger and better Gibraltar? Was it true that the great guns of Singapore naval base were fixed and faced out to sea? What of the wonderful jungle aerodromes that would guarantee Malaya’s defence? Were the Japanese so short-sighted and their air force so inferior, as the propagandists proclaimed, that they would not be able to fly at night? Despite some doubts, many civilians believed that to be pessimistic was unpatriotic. ‘Malaya is prepared,’ Nancy Wynne wrote home in March 1941 with a touch of defiance.49 In May there was still a feeling that ‘the Japs would stay on the fence’, though ‘everyone has his own special choice of dates for the big one, varying from about 14 days ahead to next Spring’, noted Alex Cullen.50 As late as June, ‘If there was trouble here we should certainly go short of a lot of things which are imported but … I really don’t think there will be anything here, we have certainly plenty of protection and I am sure we should be quite safe.’51
Then in July 1941 the prospect of a Pacific War moved closer as Japan’s assets were frozen by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. There was talk in Singapore of ‘the present trouble blowing into a real do’.52 Earlier, in 1940, the Japanese had flexed their diplomatic muscles to force the temporary closure of the Burma Road, China’s lifeline to Western supplies. Further skilful manoeuvring early in 1941 had forced Vichy France to concede the occupation of Indochina by crack Japanese troops. Japan now had an airbase a stage nearer Malaya and a naval base at Camranh Bay some 700 miles from Singapore. In the light of subsequent events, British colonials would feel betrayed by this concession, but for the moment there was no panic. In July 1941 Alex Cullen was saying, ‘I don’t think myself that the Jippons [sic] will dare try anything more for a bit, unless in desperation, which would bad enough, of course, though quite fatal to them in the long run.’53 Unruffled, Nancy Wynne also wrote home, ‘The Japanese have just occupied Indochina which brings us much nearer but I don’t worry much because we are ready for them here.’54
However, defence now figured more and more in conversation. The government took appropriate steps to build up food stocks, particularly rice (though sharp criticism was voiced about the siting of the stores).55 Leslie Froggatt, returning to Singapore from an Australian business trip at the height of the general embargo on trade in essential commodities, remarked how ‘Gas courses and fire drill began and first aid and emergency dressing stations were springing up … All our women friends flung themselves wholeheartedly into lessons on blood, bones and bandages. Bridge dates, Mah Jong and morning teas slowly slipped back, and their time was spent on lectures, parades and practices.’56 By 1941 English women were working alongside Eurasian and Asian women in the Passive Defence Services, in First Aid and Home Nursing, and in the Medical and Transport Auxiliary Services, while the older age group of European men enlisted as ARP wardens (in charge of air-raid precautions) and auxiliary fire fighters or enrolled in the Local Defence Corps as officers and NCOs in charge of Asian volunteers undertaking guard duties at vulnerable sites like bridges and power stations. Prominent unofficials, such as G. W. Seabridge, editor of the Straits Times, and F. D. Bisseker, General Manager of the Eastern Smelting Company, pressed the government on civil defence. The Tribune urged for more action to build slit trenches and air-raid shelters to protect the urban population should war come. In some areas Passive Defence was quite inadequate. In Kedah, for example, the local defence system
was swamped out by red tape. In Province Wellesley the Resident Councillor disapproved and took good care to see that nothing was done … There was considerable rivalry and bickering between the various branches, especially in the smaller places, over personnel. A more unified control would have led to much smoother working … In Penang the Resident Councillor again proved an obstructionist: as one example of his strange mentality he refused to sanction expenditure on fire hose, the supply of which was utterly inadequate … The organisation of one important service … was disgracefully neglected in the early stage with the result that it never really functioned smoothly: this was the air observation corps.57
As for the Volunteers, they had attracted a core of keen members in the 1930s from across the whole of the British community. Most of them took the business seriously, training in their spare time on an unpaid basis. There were very few of what G. J. O’Grady identified as ‘slackers’, and in his view the majority made first-class soldiers. At their first embodiment in August to September 1940, the Johore Volunteers were exemplary: ‘Discipline was very strict … the standard of drill, smartness etc. was amazing … The Quarter-Guard would have done credit to any regular unit.’58 But if Regulars tended to be sceptical of civilians in uniform it was understandable, for elsewhere in Malaya the training lacked credibility. It
consisted of one parade a week … very orthodox in nature, weapon training with one day per year on the range, tactical exercises on pre-1914 lines, a non-compulsory camp and a field day to round off the season. The Europeans were mostly trained to the Vickers gun [but] the infantry were armed with Lewis guns and rifles: we never saw a Bren gun, and not until war actually broke out did we acquire a Tommy gun or two. With conscription came some more intensive training in the form of embodiments … but a number of semi-key-men, myself among them, were exempted. In Kedah most of the two months [of the embodiment period] seemed to be taken up by digging trenches round Sungei Patani aerodrome and filling them in again.59
Others also deplored the bungling they witnessed. At Perak in 1940
The Volunteer Camp was on the Ipoh race course and the first announcements about it calmly stated that there would be a few days’ gap in the middle of training so that the races could take place. But later it dawned on the authorities that this was not quite the thing in wartime and the races were cancelled.60
J. S. Potter, who had served with the Territorials in London, grew ever more cynical about the Volunteer system:
I … was at once sadly disappointed with its efficiency … In Malaya, money was spent lavishly on buildings and appointments but was not backed up by man power or enthusiasm; nor was the best use made of limited available man power … and as a result I steered a middle course and performed the minimum number of requisite drills each year which the Authorities regarded necessary for efficiency.
With War in Europe my second term of duty in Malaya was vastly different from my first. Indeed for me it was a period of extreme frustration. Denied war service at Home, I was ‘keyed’ to the estate ostensibly to maintain the flow of rubber … [with] service in the so called Volunteers in our spare time. In my opinion this was not a very practical way of either preparing for war or prosecuting the war effort.
His disillusion was complete after mobilization. ‘One hoped that one’s local knowledge, ability to speak two local languages and previous military experience would be appreciated by the Authorities and fighting services … But not so. I was condemned to running a few lorries in a Motor Transport Unit.’61 And yet, with the exception of Singapore’s Fortress garrison, an Indian battalion and a battalion of the Malay Regiment, Malaya’s defence before 1940 depended on Volunteer battalions of the Malay States and of the Straits Settlements, and skeletal Air Force and Naval Reserve contingents who, even after compulsory service was introduced in 1940 for men between eighteen and forty-one
, totalled no more than 10,000 Europeans. According to dispatches sent by General Arthur Percival, who took over as GOC, Malaya, in May 1941, there was a serious lack of trained units and insufficient experienced leadership, which would amount to a grave deficiency in the defences.
Despite the personal socializing, there was no real empathy between the armed services and the civilians. A Singapore resident recalled a tense conversation he had in 1940 with a Dunkirk veteran serving with the Royal Artillery. John Moore was ‘a quiet, thoughtful sort of chap’ (he did not survive the war), but on this occasion he burst out indignantly: ‘Why do you Singapore people sit with your heads in the sands? … the ships that bring your cigarettes and Scotch expose themselves to every kind of hell for your amusement. England shakes, and you in Malaya sit in the sun tanning your hides, dicing with drinks and sucking your Esquimo Pies.’62 A naval officer was heard to remark that Malaya was ‘a slough of mental despond’; a bemused Australian officer, viewing the formal mess dress and finery of wartime Singapore, felt ‘Either we were crazy or they were crazy. Either there was danger, or there was no danger.’63 But some civilians were growing uneasy about the effectiveness of the defences. ‘We don’t need any more stuffed shirts. Singapore is brimming with ‘em. Every shade. White, blue, grey, khaki … We want planes.’64 Ridicule of the top brass became a habit. Alex Cullen wrote with feeling, ‘If it weren’t so pitifully futile and tragic, it would be almost amusing to see the flutter of the old school ties beginning to be somewhat frayed nowadays.’65 The Governor, Shenton Thomas, had by now forfeited much of his earlier respect. ‘I had a feeling’, Leslie Froggatt observed, ‘that he knew even less about the situation than I did, which could not possibly be.’66 Even the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, was not exempt from comment. ‘I saw Brooke-Popham passing by,’ said a civilian heavily, ‘bit nose, big topi, big moustache, in a big car.’67 And Gordon Snell, one of many who recalled the period wrote:
Out in the Midday Sun Page 28