In Singapore, where the timetable for self-government was already set, the test for the expatriate community came when the anti-Communist Labour Party was superseded by Lee Kuan Yew’s left-wing People’s Action Party. PAP had an anti-British agenda and drew on Communist support. In the mid-1950s there is no doubt that Lee Kuan Yew caused considerable apprehension in the expatriate community. In 1957 ‘I remember people saying how awful it was that the PAP … were going to get in, and a number of business houses in Singapore moved to Kuala Lumpur because they reckoned there was no future under Lee Kuan Yew,’ said a professional soldier who served for ten years in Malaya.83 The die was cast, however. After capturing Singapore City Council in 1958, PAP won a majority in the Legislative Assembly at the 1959 elections, becoming the party of government. Lee Kuan Yew was the Prime Minister to lead Singapore into its new self-governing regime. A consummate politician, he mollified the British community by his brand of progressive nationalism. ‘He was incredibly intelligent, he had great vision and was determined to see through what he believed was right for Singapore; and the proof of the pudding has been in the results,’ was the verdict of one English businessman there.84 As to those firms which had moved to Kuala Lumpur, ‘within two or three years they were flooding back’.85 By 1960 the Singapore government was ready to break with its Communist supporters, seeing its future interests in a merger with the Federation of Malaya, which would provide a common market and long-term political stability.
In the meantime, the independence process in Malaya moved with clockwork inevitability. It was a confusing time for the British. Some welcomed independence; others accepted it reluctantly, as Malayanization brought an end to their careers. There were many farewells to be said and painful adjustments to be made by returning expatriates. One admitted, ‘it was difficult to find a new job in the U.K.: it was depressing to find that we were not welcome!’86 Some colonial servants, such as nurses, were able to work out their contracts. Experienced British police and intelligence officers, such as Sir Claude Fenner and Guy Madoc, were too valuable to dispense with at independence. Madoc admitted that ‘The Tunku wanted us to stay on, and we were very happy to stay on.’87 A few officials had already decided to remain in Malaya, Mervyn Sheppard and Sjovald Cunyngham-Brown among them.
‘My Chinese friends were appalled that the British were going,’ said one official. He elaborated the point. ‘The M.C.A. seemed to me to be less than enthusiastic about the prospect of the British “referees” leaving the ring to a Malay government.’88 Nevertheless, the departing British could not be certain of the private attitudes of the Malays, Indians and minority Asian groups towards them. British prestige had been shattered in 1941-2. During the public disorder aroused by the Maria Hertogh trial in 1950 it was rumoured that the lives of Europeans were in serious danger from disillusioned Malays, though this threat never materialized. A Perak planter noted that in the 1955 elections ‘the local Malayan Indian Congress campaigned among estate workers saying, “Vote for us and we will throw the white man out of Malaya”’.89 On the other hand, businessman Jeremy Darby insisted, ‘There was never any question in Singapore or Malaysia of “Whites go home, we don’t want you”.’90 This may have been wishful thinking, for an experienced planter confirmed that while the Emergency lasted ‘Political activity on estates was officially discouraged from the highest level. To have been otherwise could have created very volatile situations within these closed communities.’91
Anticipating anti-British violence on Independence Day, a senior Administrator quietly briefed planters in Muar on the precautions they should take. They planned to withdraw to a hilltop bungalow ‘with good fields of fire. We had a very considerable armoury of semi-automatic weapons and an enormous stock of ammunition, and two armoured Landrovers at our disposal.’92 On the day it was all unnecessary.
Just before Merdeka Day it was announced that whilst there would be suitable ceremonies and celebrations in Kuala Lumpur, celebrations in other parts of the country … would be restricted to a reading of a proclamation by District Officers and a flag-raising ceremony at District Offices. Other celebrations would follow, area by area, in a sequence defined by the availability of security forces to provide fully adequate cover. Thus the day itself was to be a normal working day on the estate, and that is what it was. My bungalow was well stocked with food and water … but apart from that the European staff went about their work as usual, carrying arms only as the individual’s personal daily practice in view of the Emergency. There was just a steady day’s work and, being the last day of the month, all the routine of declarations of rubber harvested and palm oil processed and preparations for calculating the pay of the workers. Not a shot nor a shout, but quiet satisfaction of a good day’s work done, and so ended British rule in Malaya.93
Others were caught up in various kinds of celebration. From Muar Police Station, Robert Duffton watched fireworks over the river. On his estate in Negri Sembilan, Donald Macpherson and his colleagues had a huge bonfire of army residue from the nearby camp, which was being moved, and there was a public party with ronggeng girls in Bahau town. Schools celebrated the day with sports, concerts and dances. At Sungei Buloh in Selangor, Christina Browne recalls, ‘the estate was gaily decorated and there was a Sports Day with prizes for all’, while the leprosarium, known as Valley of Hope, held a competition for the best-decorated ward.94 In Penang, Britain’s oldest colonial possession, there was an unexpected outpouring of emotion:
The Deputy High Commissioner … let it be known unofficially that he hoped that most of the British residents in Penang would actually attend the lowering of the flag on the eve of Independence, and so we all turned up for that. But to our utter and complete amazement when we got down to the Padang on the waterfront … there must have been 100,000 people there – Chinese, Malays, Indians, everybody you can think – many of them in tears, crying profusely before British rule had come to an end. Despite all the great things ahead of Malaysia, they were really desperately sad to see Britain’s rule of Malaya go. It was a very moving occasion … 95
The principal celebrations took place by right in the new Merdeka Stadium in the capital before an ecstatic crowd. Planter Jim Winchester summed up the situation as the British saw it. ‘Much pomp and circumstance and good will in Kuala Lumpur. A feeling that it was time to let go and that the country has been well served by Britain, and was being left well endowed and in good hands.’96
Though the era of British political influence was over, Merdeka did not mark the end of the British presence. Under the Anglo-Malayan Defence Pact, the Director of Operations, General Sir James Cassels, led a force of British, Commonwealth and Malayan troops in the final operations to prise the remaining insurgents out of their jungle lairs. By the end of 1958 it was estimated that only 250 soldiers of the MRLA were left in Malaya, and, after his party’s re-election in 1959, Tunku Abdul Rahman felt the time was ripe for peace. Chin Peng’s admission of military defeat in a directive to his supporters enabled the Malayan government to raise the restrictions on the last ‘black’ areas, with the exception of the Thai border. The end of the Emergency was declared on 31 July 1960. From the British perspective, this marked the end of a long and turbulent saga that had begun when, at the end of 1941, with British military power collapsing, groups of young Chinese Communists, belatedly released from gaol, had volunteered to infiltrate the mainland and harry the Japanese in their advance down Malaya, the cornerstone of the British Empire in the Far East. After the transfer of political power to the Malaysian people in 1957, Britain’s last commitment, the conclusion of the Communist episode, was now effectively honoured.
15
A Campaign of Cards
During the early hours of Monday 8 December 1941 the Japanese invading forces landed from choppy seas near Kota Bharu, in the beautiful and unspoilt state of Kelantan. Their official orders were to rescue Asia from white tyranny and aggression. In no time the town’s European residents ‘were awake with the
roar of guns and the rattle of musketry up and down the beaches six miles away. Very soon there were also the sounds of aeroplanes in the sky. At 1.05 a.m. as we paced our verandahs and looked eastwards, the awful certainty was borne in upon us that the foreboding of the past 20 years had become reality.’1 A faint moon rose in the cloudy monsoon sky as Hudsons of the Australian Air Force attacked the landing craft, but the troops of General Yamashita’s 18th Division forced their way inland through a thin line of coastal mines and pillboxes defended by a gritty battalion of Dogras of the 9th Indian Division. In Singapore the Governor, Shenton Thomas, seemed unperturbed. ‘Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off!’ he allegedly told General Percival.2
The Volunteers of Kedah and Perak reacted very differently: ‘that morning’s news came as a great shock’, shattering ‘the carefully fostered belief that it was impossible to land a military force on the east coast, especially during the monsoon’.3 In fact, well before dawn the Europeans of Kota Bharu had been driven to the railhead at Kuala Krai. Within hours the Japanese landed unopposed at Singora and Patani in southern Thailand, poised to bypass the sate of Perlis and make a double thrust through Kedah down the western flank of Malaya. It was a classic operation, the stuff of war games played by soldiers at both the War College of Tokyo and the Imperial Defence College, Camberley. Seeing that it was already too late to implement Operation Matador, the contingency plan to contain the Japanese in Thailand, Malaya Command issued a warning: Japan had made ‘a grievous mistake’. ‘We are ready … our preparations are made and tested … We are confident. Our defences are strong and our weapons efficient.’ Britain was committed ‘to defend these shores, to destroy such of our enemies as may set foot on our soil’.4 The next ten weeks would expose the futility of these assertions and the momentous deception perpetrated on the people of Malaya.5
More immediately, the Indian brigade group at Kota Bharu was unable to defend the airfield, which was hastily evacuated, leaving behind a working runway and stores of bombs and petrol. By one of those ironies that litter this episode, on that morning of 8 December the Straits Trading Company in Province Wellesley was due to reopen full production at its Butterworth tin-smelting works, which had been closed since the Slump of 1932. Kota Bharu changed everything: rapidly the labour force evaporated, leaving peacetime commerce in ruin. On Tuesday the 9th the main British aerodromes of northern Malaya – Alor Star, Sungei Patani and Butterworth – were badly damaged by Japanese dive-bombers, and at a stroke the Allied force of 110 aircraft in this sector was reduced to fifty. To top this, the squadrons at Kuantan were withdrawn that same day to Singapore, and Kelantan’s remaining forward airfields, Gong Kedah and Machang, were abandoned on 10-11th December. In three days Britain had surrendered her air power in northern Malaya.
The consequences proved catastrophic. As reports of Japanese landings were received in Singapore, Admiral Sir Tom Phillips, Commander-in-Chief of Britain’s Eastern Fleet, ordered his squadron to proceed to the Gulf of Siam. Its vulnerability was apparent too late. Though the order to reverse course had been given, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were caught by eighty-five Japanese bombers in the South China Sea on the morning of Wednesday 10 December. Deprived of air support from the east-coast airfields, the two capital ships of Force Z were torpedoed from the air and sank with the loss of 840 men, including Admiral Phillips and Captain Leach of the Prince of Wales. The impact on morale throughout Malaya was immediate and devastating. People wept, struggling to come to terms with Britain’s worst naval disaster of the war.6 Churchill himself was profoundly shocked: ‘As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific … Over this vast expanse of waters Japan was supreme.’7
The unfolding drama of the Malayan campaign has been recorded by dozens of those involved – regular servicemen, volunteers, journalists, civil servants, Britons, Australians and Japanese.8 On the British side it was a chronicle of disaster, of individual resourcefulness, heroism and initiative, of struggling in vain to rise above collective inefficiency and blind muddle. In those first three days the pattern of the whole campaign was established. First, the bemused European civilian population was hurriedly transported south. (It was hit-or-miss as to whether non-Europeans were evacuated.) The British regulars, with half-trained units and totally lacking air cover and heavy armour, tried to hold their ground and counter-attack, but could not contain the steady Japanese advance supported by tanks, superior reconnaissance and fighter-bomber aircraft. Guided by local informants, the Japanese forced back the Indian and British troops repeatedly before the demolition of bridges, supplies and installations could be completed, driving their way down the well-built roads of western Malaya. Whenever they met resistance, the Japanese infantry swiftly infiltrated the surrounding jungle, outflanking the British and Allied defence lines. By exploiting their prior intelligence of Malaya’s coasts, they cut behind the Allied front in surprise amphibious manoeuvres, splitting Percival’s forces in pincer-attacks and cutting off pockets of troops to be mopped up later. Against these tactics, time and again the raw, demoralized forces of Malaya Command fell back to alternative defensive positions, until fresh Japanese pressure forced another withdrawal. From the battles of Jitra, Kampar, Slim River and Muar to the struggle for Johore and Singapore, the litany of dig in, fight, stand to the last round and the last man, waver, regroup, destroy communications, retreat to another defensive line was repeated the length of the peninsula.9 To the civilian Volunteers the impotence of the military was incomprehensible. As M. C. Hay (Malayan Civil Service and Lance-Bombardier in the FMS Volunteer Force) protested, ‘It was one of the features of this incredible campaign that if a handful of Japanese were reported in our rear the whole British army must perforce retire – infantry, guns, and armoured cars – often without firing a shot.’10
Meanwhile the war in Kedah began with a ‘blitz’ of airfields on 8 December. Civilians in northern Malaya were utterly bemused. Ken Hardey was only a boy; Pelham rubber estate, which his father managed, was on the Thai border. He later tried to remember what happened.
Well, war started. Didn’t mean anything to us. We didn’t have a telephone. We didn’t have a radio … Can’t recall seeing a newspaper … I don’t know how communications came about, probably by letter, and we were told to move up to Tapah – Tapah being on the main north-south route. I remember staying with my aunt who ran the Rest House there.11
Two planters’ wives from Sungei Patani appeared on the Kedah–Perak border on the 9th: ‘both were very badly shaken by the previous day’s bombing. Apparently a flight of Jap planes had come over the aerodrome before any news of war had reached there, and everybody thought they were our own reinforcements until the bombs started to whistle … News of the fighting was very scanty … even so it was obvious that the land operations both in the east [in Kelantan] and west [around Jitra] were going none too well … the movement of the Kedah government to Kulim was not reassuring.’12 The reality was a good deal worse. With their superior mechanized troops, the Japanese kept breaching the unfinished defences of the 11th Indian Division; and if regulars could not hold the line, there was little the Kedah Volunteers could do.13 By 11 December British positions in both Kelantan and Jitra were effectively lost, but only after contradictory evacuation orders were issued were all Europeans finally ordered to leave Kedah on the 16th. The British Adviser, Mr J. D. Hall, felt it was his duty to remain behind, and had to be forcibly pushed into a car by other government officials. Among the planters who abandoned everything to escape were the Barretts of Kuala Muda Estate. Their home was to be destroyed in the fighting. Like many other British wives, Doris Barrett set off with her sons to drive in stages down the length of Malaya, staying with friends who would themselves in turn become part of the flood of refugees. By Tuesday the 16th, after only a week of action, the British had fallen back to the Muda river between Kedah and Province W
ellesley, leaving Penang in serious danger of being outflanked.
Charles Hartley, an Agricultural Officer in the Malayan Civil Service serving as a Volunteer in the so-called Fortress Reserve at Penang, had no illusions: ‘Penang was called a fortress, which it certainly wasn’t.’14 Even so, listening to the cicadas in ‘the dense velvet black of the tropical night’ vying with the noise of distant firing, Mabel Price, wife of the manager of Whiteaway Laidlaw, found it difficult to believe that the call summoning her husband to Georgetown’s ARP station indicated a real emergency.15 But Penang’s sea defences proved irrelevant and its air defences non-existent, and the island’s fate was sealed in the first three days when Japanese planes attacked Bayan Lepas airfield and Butterworth aerodrome on the mainland opposite. Left without anti-aircraft batteries or fighters, Georgetown was, in official words, ‘absolutely defenceless against air attack’.16 The critical blow came on the morning of Thursday 11 December. Fifty-three Japanese aircraft swooped over the town in waves, blasting European commercial buildings and the congested shophouse quarter; many Asians, unwitting spectators, rushed to open spaces on the seafront and padang, only to be machine-gunned where they stood. In two hours the fire station, the island’s only fire engine, a water main, the dispensary and food shops were all wrecked. The Resident Councillor witnessed the carnage:
Out in the Midday Sun Page 39