THE BASE SOCCER 'NUTS'

 Bargadi to Brisbane - Part 3 of 3

3: THE JAPANESEOCCUPATION (1942-1945)

 

The Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II occurred between 1942 and 1945 after the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. The Japanese landed in Malaya on December 8 and made a rapid progress to Johore from where they planned the push to Singapore. General Yamashita was their commander. Military forces of the Empire of Japan occupied Singapore after defeating the combined Australian, British, Indian and Malayan garrison in the Battle of Singapore. The Occupation was to become a major turning point in the history of several nations, including that of Japan, Britain and the then-colonial state of Singapore.

Singapore was the major British military base in South-East Asia and was the key to British imperial interwar defence planning for South-East Asia and the South-West Pacific. The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942, after the two months during which Japanese forces had advanced down the Malayan Peninsula.

The Japanese occupation for me as a kid was both exciting as well as traumatic. As mentioned above, my mother and I had arrived in the Naval Base from India in November of 1941. For reasons that I have never understood, after we arrived from India, we moved our residence from one block to another every two weeks.

When the Japanese invaded Singapore, I was about five years old. Although it is such a long time ago, there are certain things in life that you never forget. And for me, the Japanese invasion of Singapore is one of them

I remember that when they invaded Singapore, there was sporadic bombing of Singapore. From 3rd February, 1942 Singapore was shelled by Japanese artillery, and air attacks on Singapore intensified over the next five days. The artillery and air bombardment strengthened, severely disrupting communications between Allied units and their commanders and affecting preparations for the defence of the island.

As a result of this, the British abandoned the Naval Base without much of a fight. However, before leaving Singapore, the British set fire to the fuel tanks at Senoko in the Naval Base. As we were living in the Naval Base, we could see that the entire sky was lit brightly for a couple of days. We kids thought that they were putting on a show. The bombing continued, and the elders did not know if the Japanese would bomb the civilian areas.  Thankfully, they did not.

I recall that on one Sunday we were at the Sembawang Gurdwara when an air raid started. There were three of us children and our parents quickly pushed us under the high platform used as an alter on which the Granth Sahib, (the Sikh Scripture)was placed. The raid lasted a short time. Fortunately, there was no damage to the Gurdwara.

There were some other Sikh families who were already settled in Sembawang during those days, and the family of Tara Singh Hitaishi was one of them. Tara Singh and my father, together with two other Sikh families from Sembawang felt that it was not safe to continue to live in the Naval Base and they decided to get out from there.  They learnt that Singh Brothers Contractors from the city had a couple of houses in the rubber estate in Jalan Kayu and made arrangements to move into these houses. Tara Singh's daughter, Amarjit who was born in March 1941 was only a few months old at that time. She was their only child that that time.

In the rubber plantation where we lived for 2 weeks or so, there used to be a Sikh Regiment . They had dug underground shelters, and lived in tents. As the Japanese were overrunning the British defence positions, one of the short battles that took place was where we were staying. We were asked to use their shelter as they were engaged in fighting. After a few hours when we emerged, there were wounded and dead bodies everywhere. Defeat was inevitable. The retreating solders gave us almost all of their rations of flour, ghee, lentils,  etc.

One other family, that of Gurdial Singh, went to live with their distant relatives in Paya Lebar. Gurdial Singh's son, Sarban Singh remains a close friend of mine till this day 

After about two weeks, we moved back from Jalan Kayu to the Naval Base, to the houses of the two families (Ghichar and Makand Singh) at the area known as Kampong Wak Hassan in 15^th miles in Sembawang, close to the coast. After about two to three weeks, my family left Kampong Wak Hassan and moved to the Naval Base, leaving Tara Singh's family and the other family at 15th miles. Tara Singh’s family continued to remain at Kampung Wak Hassan for many years after that and that is where their eldest daughter Amarjit got married.

While staying at Kampong Wak Hassan, there was one occasion when a few families went for a walk together one morning and during the walk we came across a big bungalow. It must have been occupied by an high ranking British officer. It appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry as all the furniture and fittings had been left behind. Amongst other personal belongings that had been left behind, there were high heeled shoes, western dresses etc .One of the ladies in her excitement to try out the shoes ended up spraining her ankle. There was also a children's bicycle which was given to me which I kept it till I was twelve. There was also a piano - something that I had never seen before. The families decided to split the furniture amongst themselves. We managed to get a round dining table with four chairs and a side board. We kept this right till the time that my parents left the Naval Base in 1968 after my father retired, as we did not have the means to buy one like that on our own. 

Gurdial Singh and his family also returned from Paya Lebar to Sembawang after about 2 weeks. 

After the constant moves, there was a degree of normalcy after we settled back into the blocks in the Naval Base.  After about a month or so, things settled down, and my father and other men managed to get jobs with the Japanese. My father got his old job working on the same crane that he drove before the war. 

Other families too began moving to the Naval Base as there were many blocks that were empty, and there were no restrictions on where one could move into.

As was to be expected, families began moving and living close to those whom they knew.  About seven families, including Gurdial Singh's family moved into Block 56. Separate blocks were allocated for the single men and those whose wives and families were not in Singapore. They stayed in block 64 and block 29.

As the families got to know each other better, the level of interaction and socializing grew. They would do things including go for walks and do other things together.

There was a huge difference in the way that the Japanese treated the Chinese and the non Chinese in Singapore during the Japanese occupation. There was no love lost between the Japanese and the Chinese because of the history of warfare between China and Japan and this hatred was carried over to the way the Chinese were treated by the Japanese in Singapore.  The Nanking Massacre, (December 1937–January 1938), that took place during the during the Sino-Japanese War was still very fresh in the minds of the Japanese and this hatred found expression in the way that the Singaporean Chinese were treated by the Japanese.

The Indians& Malays on the other hand got treated very well. This was largely due to the alliance that Subhas Chandra Bose had formed with the Japanese. Bose was a noted Indian politician in the fight for India’s independence from British rule. He formed the (Azad Hind Fauj or Free India Army) to fight for India’s freedom. On 21 October 1943, Bose proclaimed the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India at Cathay Cinema Hall in Singapore. With help from the Japanese, he re-organised and rejuvenated the Indian National Army. After their occupation of Southeast Asia, the Japanese supported Bose’s fight for an independent India.

The Japanese used to give us balloons which when blown were huge. On one occasion, my father took my balloon away from me and punctured it without telling me why he did that.  He did however warn me not to accept any more balloons form the Japanese. As a five-year-old kid, I was perplexed, and dared not defy my father. It was only much later that I discovered that that these "balloons" were actually condoms.

The British dockyard in the Naval Base was divided by the Japanese into two parts: Gunjgu, which was just inside the main gate. This was where the main dock and its associated workshops were located. The second part was Kosakubu which was near Deptford ground and SNSO.

The Japanese made the British prisoners of war do all the menial works like cleaning the toilets, sweeping the roads, cutting the grass etc. They did this I believe mainly to show the Asians that the Asians were the masters of the whites. After the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Japanese prisoners of war were forced to do the same.

The Asian living quarters were in blocks, about which I will give you more details in part 4. NB was a hilly area, and some of the blocks (e.g. 51-59) were double storied. The upper storey were the living rooms. Underneath was divided into 3 sections. In the middle was a bomb shelter made of thick concrete. The other 2 thirds were left empty for people to use as recreation. The back ¼ or so was sloping, like a terrace.

Because of this, these blocks had large empty areas beneath them. The Japanese fenced these off and stored all their non- military goods and materiel in these areas. No one dared to break in as everyone knew the harsh consequences that would result if they tried to do so. The British had built the blocks on terraces, as the land was on a slope.

Life was not easy, but the Japanese continued to provide the facilities provided previously by the British: rent free accommodation with flush toilets with free water and electricity. This helped a lot.

Some blocks had common bathrooms with large concrete tanks divided by a partition for males and females. Electricity was cancelled at night to precent detection by bombing aircraft. No kitchen fires were allowed after dark. Even the ventilation gaps at top of the rooms were papered by the residents, so that they could use candles and other light sources. Most of the residents kept their doors closed and windows open at all times, for ventilation, as there was no danger of thefts occurring during the Japanese occupation.

The Japanese had ordered that all civilians passing a guard house/gate had to bow and salute the Japanese soldiers who stood there. Anyone was caught not complying was punished according to the mood of the Japanese in charge at the gate. The Chinese had more severe punishment. There was a new concrete guard house at the junction of Kowloon and Canberra Roads, just next to the old Labour Office.

The Japanese had different modes of punishment. The minimum or least severe was a flick of the finger on the forehead. They held the middle finger with their thumb and released the finger strongly and rapidly.  Although it seemed negligible, it was actually very painful. The next form of punishment was being beaten with a cane or a bamboo stick. An even more severe form of punishment was where they would fill up your intestines with water through a hose via your back passage.

There were other forms of punishment and torture which I was fortunate never to have witnesses and this included beheading with a Samurai sword. On one occasion when I was travelling with my boss (see below) in his car going into HMS Terror, I saw five or six heads on a platform along the roadside outside HMS Terror Naval Base Wireless station at Suara. All the heads were of Chinese men. It was known that the Japanese military committed numerous atrocities against civilians, especially the Chinese. During the Japanese Occupation, they introduced the system of "Sook Ching", which means "purge through purification" to get rid of civilians deemed to be anti-Japanese. The massacre is believed to have claimed the lives of around 20,000 ethnic Chinese in Singapore.

The Japanese started a school to promote their propaganda and to teach Japanese. To discourage Western influence, which Japan sought to eliminate from the very start of their invasion, the Japanese set up schools and education institutions and pressured the local people to learn their language (Japanese). Textbooks and language guidebooks were printed in Japanese and radios and movies were broadcast and screened in Japanese. Every morning, school-children had to stand facing the direction of Japan (in the case of Singapore, looking northeast) and sing the Japanese national anthem ("Kimigayo").

The school closest to my home was located behind the Canberra cinema, beside a playing field, which later became a Catholic Church. Sarban, Mohinder and I and others attended this school for about 6 months and we were taught the simpler Japanese alphabet (I think it was called katakana or Kanjikana). In 6 months all of us could read write and speak basic Japanese. We left the school in about early 1944.

Japanese propaganda banners and posters also went up all around Singapore, as did many Japanese Rising Sun flags raised and hung across many major buildings.

After Singapore fell to the Japanese, they worked tirelessly to win the support of the local populace. Films, radio programmes, songs and newspapers were all mobilised by the newly established Department of Propaganda as part of a systematic process of” Nipponisation”. This was an attempt to mould the people of Singapore, In the Naval Base, the Japanese used to screen films and by using the end walls of the blocks as a screen.

There were severe food shortages during the Japanese occupation. We reared some chicken and it was my duty to look after the chicks and chickens, feed them, and collect the eggs. We also planted tapioca near the Asian hospital. Tapioca was the staple diet. Coconuts were easily available. We would boil the kernel of the coconut to make soap. In 1940, the Japanese government had established a food rationing system for items such as vegetables, sugar, seafood, dairy goods, and rice. Rations for adults included only 1.3 to 1.8 ounces of meat and 1.8 ounces of fish a day. As the war progressed, rations dwindled substantially: monthly rice rations fell from 20 katis (12 kg) per person in 1942 to just 8 katis per adult male at the end of the war. Ironically, the diet back then is what we would consider a 'heathy' diet today. People ate less meat, less sugar, and less oil, but more vegetables and seafood.

However, while the diet was considered 'healthy' in today's context, people back then were not eating enough, which led to diseases such as beri beri (lack of vitamin B1); the death rate also spiked during the Occupation - a dark period indeed in Syonan-to.

One of those who fell victim to beri- beri was none other than my own mother. The time when my mother developed beri-beri and severe anaemia was the most traumatic time of my life. I was only seven years old at that time.  She was admitted to Tan Tock Seng Hospital for a month and I missed her very much. My father had to go to work, and I was left on my own. My father used to take a cooked chicken and a dozen eggs for my mother every week. On one occasion when I cried bitterly on missing my mother he took me along. I was not allowed into the ward, but saw her from a distance. Eventually my father donated blood so that she could have a transfusion. During the time that she was in hospital, my father continued to go to work, and I was left to myself. My father used to cook after work, and food was left for me for lunch the following day. On one occasion when I was helping him to get some embers from a neighbour’s kitchen, some slipped and fell on my stomach, burning my skin. I still have the scars. Sarban’s mother used to comb my hair.

I was the happiest child when my mother returned after a month in hospital. This mental trauma has been with me all my life.

The other thing we did as kids was to collect small amounts of rice from the lorries parked near our block. After the lorries delivered their rice stock, there was always some that had spilled on the ground and we would gather that, and managed to collect up to 100 gms on each occasion. Enough for a meal.

Around late 1944, the Japanese started employing young children to be messengers because they did not trust the electronic communication system for telegrams etc between the senior officers, as they suspected these were probably being tapped by the British.

I was one of those who got employed by the Japanese. I was sent to work at the Naval Base HR office, which was the Headquarters of the British Naval Base Police. This was just to the left of the main gate into the dockyard. (Sarban & Mohinder also had similar jobs in other departments.)

The two storey building looked after all the HR needs of the residents of the Naval Base. The offices were on the upper level with a Japanese general in charge and he had about twenty clerks. The lower level had rows and rows of boards with hooks for identity tags. Every worker had to pass through this area to pick up his tag, and return it on his way home after work.

After the morning work siren, a clerk and I would check to see which tags had not been picked up and those that had not been picked up would be counted as absent from work. There were not many. Occasionally one or two workers were caught removing their absent friend’s tag together with their own. They were punished severely. I saw some being punished, and it was terrible.

The other duty of the HR was making up the weekly pay packet of the workers. This was time consuming, as the amount had to be checked from a list, and the exact amount put into a pay-packet. I had to help three or four clerks to do this. My other duty was to take written messages from my boss to other top Japanese officers, mainly in the Main Office on the hill. I would take the message and give it directly to the officer, who would break the seal and read it. He would write the reply and seal it, for me to take it back to my boss. I got paid, but more important was the fact that my boss would give me a sack of sugar or rice occasionally, and deliver to my house in his car. He had a flag on his car, with one red dot, probably a brigadier level officer. Similarly, when my father did a good job on one of the Japanese warships, the captain would reward him with some food items.

The Japanese were clearly intending to include Singapore in their expanding empire, and did everything that they     could to erase it's past and rebrand the Island. Amongst other things, they Singapore renamed to "Syonan-to" which meant "Light of the South" and even switched the clocks to Tokyo time. the year was also changed to Showa (year of the current Emperor’s reign), as well as the year reflecting the Japanese year of 2500 plus year history. They also introduced their own currency, which the locals called 'Banana Money', because of the banana tree designs on them.   The Japanese printed banana money whenever they needed it, which led to hyperinflation. The notes essentially became worthless pieces of paper. People would find themselves with huge amounts of banana money, but were unable to use them to buy food.

By June 1945, packages wrapped in brown paper, each containing a thousand ten-dollar notes, had to be used to purchase anything. A kati (600g) of rice cost $5,000 in Japanese currency, up from just $5 (Straits dollar) in December 1941. An electric bulb that cost 41 cents in December 1941 was priced at $210 by August 1945. As cash became practically worthless, doctors, teachers and other professionals took rice and eggs instead as payment for their services, or charged their fees based on the prevailing price of rice.

 

All of this however did not last for long as the American entry into the WW II especially after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, quickly changed everything. This resulted in the Japanese withdrawal from Singapore and Singapore was officially returned to British colonial rule on 12 September 1945. This was formalised by the signing of the surrender instrument at the Municipal Building.

In about middle of June 1945, the British began bombing the Naval Base. There used to be a warning  siren about 15-20 minutes before the raid. I used to run home and join my mother into the shelter under the block. When the raid was over, I would return to work. Block 56 was about 500 meters from the office.

Around late 1945 (it must have been September or so), I saw my boss dressing up in his office in a formal manner, with several sashes, and his uniform with a Samurai, which I saw for the first time. He told me that I would not be seeing him anymore. I was confused. But later in the afternoon, there was a big crowd outside our office. He announced that Japanese had surrendered, and that we will all be paid. Of course by that time the Japanese money was useless. However, I have some Japanese notes, and have attached photos of these.

The British plan to retake Singapore following the Japanese surrender in 1945 was codenamed Operation Tiderace. The British liberation force was led by Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of South East Asia Command. Newspapers in Singapore were finally allowed to carry the text of the Japanese Emperor's speech agreeing to the surrender, confirming what many already knew from listening to All India Radio broadcasts from Delhi on forbidden shortwave radios. The formal surrender was finalized on 12 September at Singapore City Hall. It was a big affair for the Singaporeans because of the sufferings they had to endure for three and a half years. It was time to see an end to their ordeal. So they came in the thousands and waited at the Padang opposite the City Hall building. When the Japanese came to surrender and marched up the steps of City Hall led by General Seishiro Itagaki, the people booed at the Japanese knowing that this time they could get away with it. Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia Command, came to Singapore to receive the formal surrender of Japanese forces in South East Asia.

After Japan surrendered, the actual handing over of Singapore from the Japanese to the British took place in mid-September 1945.

The British arrived a week or two later and resumed where they had left.  The Japanese prisoners of war had to do all the menial work for some time till they were released. I later learnt that an estimated 77,000 Japanese troops from Singapore were captured

My father resumed his work on his “baby” crane, this time under the British. His work was recognised in 1953 with an award of QEII Coronation Medal, and other letters from the Captains of British Warships on which he had worked.

The Japanese Occupation from February 1942 to September 1945 was one of the hardest times in Singapore history.

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