Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Read online

  Kuala Lumpur at War

  1939-1945

  A History of Kuala Lumpur and Selangor

  During World War Two

  Andrew Barber

  KARAMOJA

  Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Malaysian Moments

  Malaya the Making of a Nation 1510-1957

  Penang under the East India Company 1786-1858

  Penang at War 1914-1945

  First published in Malaysia in 2012

  Copyright © by Andrew Barber

  Maps by Lileng Wong

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles, reviews or publications.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material used or cited in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher would be pleased to hear from them.

  Karamoja Press - AB&A Sdn Bhd

  Suite A-6-3 Plaza Mont Kiara

  50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

  Design by Lileng Wong

  Printed by United YL Printers Sdn Bhd

  To Dick and Gill Hart

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the staff of Arkib Negara in Kuala Lumpur, the British Public Records Office at Kew, the Imperial War Museum in London and the National Archives of Australia for their help and advice. Michael Thompson, Anthony Cooper, Jonathan Moffatt, A. Gunanathan, Michael Pether, John Nicholson, Andrew Hwang, Mark Disney, Datuk Bertie Talalla, Ronnie McCrum, Mason Nelson, Paget Natten, Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah, John Nicholson, Ellen Shustik, Elizabeth Cardosa, Dato Arrifin Yacob, Charlie Chelliah, Dato Henry Barlow, Merlene Narcis, Dr. Loporte Khoo, Roger McGowan and Dr Tim Harper were all very supportive. Mark Wheeler and Anwar Yusoff at ConocoPhillips have generously continued their support of my work and the Lighthouse Children’s Home by sponsoring copies of the book. Working as a guest lecturer on Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth gave me the time and peace in which to make great strides with the writing, and my thanks go to Tim Wilkin and Keith Maynard. The Committee of the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Malaysia have kindly offered to host the book’s launch. Puan Sri Elizabeth Moggie critiqued the text with wonderful focus and attention and acted as an intellectual ‘conscience’, delving into the sourcing detail and not letting go until she was satisfied! Her help was enormous and I am indebted to her for the time and effort she devoted to the project. Lileng Wong, having survived four earlier books, once again proved a great partner in crime, undertaking all the design work, maps and printing responsibilities. Vithya Muthusamy proved an engaging, fun and somewhat quirky research assistant. Caroline, my wife, was as ever a willing and demanding sub-editor, who waded through more versions of the book than she cares to remember. It was in many ways a team effort but any errors, either of fact, omission or interpretation are, of course, my own.

  Illustrations and Images

  The front cover is adapted from an image in the war-time magazine Fajar Asia courtesy of Arkib Negara. The 1935 Kuala Lumpur town map is courtesy of John Nicholson. The remaining photographs and images are from Arkib Negara or the author’s collection. The maps were compiled by Yong Aun.

  Introduction

  This book is about the experience of war on Kuala Lumpur. It is not a ‘military history’, in the sense that there was very little fighting, either when the Japanese entered the city in January 1942 or when the British returned in September 1945. Rather, the focus of the book is on how conflict, the Japanese occupation and the return of the British impacted on the city and its people. The three years and eight months of Japanese governance wrought huge change and were a tilting point in the history of Malaya. As the capital city, Kuala Lumpur was a central player in these changes. This is the story of those years.

  The war impacted on individuals and communities in very different ways and there was no single or uniform narrative. Rather, the war years present a hybrid of varied, complex and often contradictory experiences. For example, while one fleeing British family might make it to Singapore and safety on a departing boat, others might spend the war in an internment camp, or worse, embark on a vessel sunk by the Japanese in the sea-lanes outside Singapore. Similarly, a local girl might find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time as the Japanese rounded up victims for their ‘comfort houses’, while others would survive the war unmolested and unharmed. In general, the Japanese occupation of Kuala Lumpur is remembered for its brutality but some local residents formed close and friendly relationships with Japanese civilians stationed in the city and recall their politeness and exquisite manners. If nothing else, war is capricious.

  It is, however, possible to use some big strokes, particularly when assessing the impact of the war on individual communities. We can, for example, say that the Chinese - Japan’s historic enemy - were targeted for notably brutal and systematic repression at the hands of the dreaded military security police, the Kempetei. The Indian community, though not seen as the enemy by the Japanese, was treated with malign expediency, and many thousands of its young men were dispatched to work, and to die, on Japan’s ‘death railways’. Kuala Lumpur’s Malay community suffered the least, but the war was nonetheless a period of strain, poverty and disorientation. War also brought experiences that were common to all. Particularly in the latter years of the war, shortages and famine were commonplace for all communities. These were the ‘tapioca years’ when hunger and starvation were prevalent.

  In researching this book I have been struck by a general lack of interest in the war by Malaysians, particularly of the younger generation. Unlike in Europe and the United States, which have perhaps been overly occupied by these years, most Malaysians seem disconnected and disinterested. One explanation could be that it was perceived not to be ‘our war’, and that Malaya was seen simply as a battleground for power hungry empires. There is some truth in this, and certainly Malayans were the innocent victims of events and forces emanating from well beyond their shores, but to blank out the lessons and consequences of the war is, surely, a step too far. For one, many Malaysians lost family during the conflict and they deserve better recognition and commemoration.

  There have been plenty of books about the Malaya campaign, the fall of Singapore and some about the impact of the Japanese occupation but not, I believe, one specifically about the war in Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding state of Selangor. I hope this helps fill that gap. There will, I am sure, be many errors of fact and interpretation, for which I take full responsibility. But it has been fun researching and writing this book, and I hope others enjoy reading it.

  Chapter One

  War Clouds – West and East

  In late August 1939, German forces were massing on the border with Poland. Just twenty-one years after the end of the Great War, the ‘war to end all wars’, Europe was again on the brink of another all-consuming conflict. That month, Imperial Airways announced that ‘practically all the available accommodation on the routes outbound from England has been sold for some months ahead’ but noted that it was still possible to book flights to Britain. At this stage, Asia looked to be a sanctuary from the impending war in Europe, and assurances from the Japanese that they would remain neutral in any conflict helped buttress this sense of detachment. Travellers were flowing from Europe to the supposed safety and security of the East.

  The tiny British community in Kuala Lumpur, little more than 1,500 strong, listened attentively each evening to broadcasts on the Malayan Broadcasting Service of the BBC carrying the news from Europe. All had experience – either directly
or through family – of the Great War and there was little patriotic hyperbole to accompany the daily broadcasts charting the remorseless descent into war. Instead, there was intense gloom. Amongst those huddled around the crackling buzz of their radio sets was James Mather, a British prison warder at Kuala Lumpur’s Pudu Prison. He lived in nearby official quarters with his wife Dorothy and their young son, who had just turned three. James Mather followed events from home on the BBC with a close attentiveness, always hoping – against the odds – that war could be averted. But he also took solace from the experience of the last war, in which Malaya had escaped with little or no damage. Indeed, it had been a time of prosperity for the colony. It was possible that Mather might be drafted, but even this was not certain as the remote prospect of war with Japan meant that officials like himself would probably find themselves ordered to stay behind in their ‘reserved professions’. Dorothy Mather shared his concerns but was more focused on her young child than on events on the German-Polish border. Kuala Lumpur was one of the more comfortable colonial postings, with modern hospitals and shops. It was nevertheless a long way from home and family support and Dorothy compensated for this through a bevy of servants and the help of the wives of the four other British warders at Pudu Prison.

  Far less concerned by events unravelling in Europe was Samad Ahmad, a writer and journalist who lived and worked in Kampung Baru along the banks of the Gombak River in central Kuala Lumpur. He was part of a new breed of Malay intellectuals and his writings in the vernacular magazine Majlis explored a maturing sense of Malay identity and nationalism. Samad Ahmad was a member of the Kesatuan Melayu Muda [KMM - Young Malay Union]. Inspired by the example of the Young Turks, this small group of Malay professional were intent on protecting their community from the consequences of the rapid modernisation of the economy and arguing that the colonial British had failed to stem Chinese commercial encroachment and increasing political ambitions. It was difficult at this stage for Samad Ahmad and others of similar leanings to conceive of Malaya without the British, such was the depth of their authority and control, but this did not translate into any sense of sympathy for the difficulties they faced. Indeed the opposite was the case; these Malay nationalists believed that justice was finally being meted out to the colonialists who had transformed their homeland, without their consent. Meanwhile, by 1940 some members of the KMM, notably its leader Ibrahim Yaakob, had gone a step further and had secretly established a covert relationship with the Japanese, agreeing to support them in any invasion of Malaya by acting as Fifth Columnists.

  Another nationalist, though of a less radical creed, was Raja Uda, a member of Selangor’s ruling dynasty. He had been present in June 1938 when some 400 Malays formed the Selangor Malay Association (SMA) at a meeting held at the Sultan Suleiman Club in Kampung Baru. After the war he became an early and prominent member of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and later a Chief Minister of Selangor. But in 1938, the members of the SMA could have had no idea that their world, and their political ambitions, would soon be transformed by war. At this stage their goals were much more modest and were centred around the protection of Malay interests and rights, which the SMA perceived to be challenged by the economically aggressive Chinese. Increasing evidence of Malay assertiveness, at least from its professional and educated classes, however, did not necessarily translate into an automatic antipathy towards the British by all Malays. In 1939, an advertisement for recruits for the Malay Regiment, which had been formed in 1934 and was restricted to Malays, resulted in a large and willing response from ordinary Malays living in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. So much so indeed that the vast majority of applicants had to be turned away.

  Meanwhile, at the apex of Selangor’s Malay community, Sultan Alam Shah had also found an accommodation with the British; one in which he was able to exercise his religious and social responsibilities while the British provided funding and support to sustain his royal position. Symptomatic of his close rapport with the British, in May 1940 the Sultan donated £1,000 as a ‘personal war contribution’. Attitudes within the Malay community, therefore, were not monolithic, and although it is now difficult to determine with any confidence the weight and range of opinions, it is safe to say that at this stage the more radical beliefs of the KMM and men like Samad Ahmad were something of a minority – but from this group the seeds of future ambition, once conditions changed, would rapidly grow.

  Within Selangor’s Indian community, a similarly divergent range of views was also evident. The Indian community was famously fractious and riven by internal feuds. The political outlook of Jayamani Subramaniam, a young Tamil worker from Kuala Selangor, was therefore just one thread in a complex weave of political opinions, attitudes and aspirations. His parents had arrived from south India as indentured labourers to work on a Selangor rubber plantation. He was therefore a first generation Malayan but like many others in his community, whether born in India or Malaya, he retained an abiding interest in political and social developments in his homeland and was deeply influenced by the rise of Congress, the demands for Indian independence and the heavy-handed British clamp-down on nationalist dissent. This sense of grievance was given greater impetus when Jayamani witnessed the hard-line response by the British colonial authorities to a set of strikes by Indian plantation workers in and around Klang in the late 1930s. Unrest had led to clashes, arbitrary arrests and even the deaths of some of the plantation workers, resulting in a bitter hatred by Jayamani towards the colonial British. Though he doubted that war in Europe would materially affect the position of the Indian communities in Malaya, he harboured hopes that India itself was on the cusp of change. He therefore viewed the coming conflict in Europe with the quiet hope that the colonialist oppressors were about to be taught a lesson and that, as a consequence of war, independence for India would be accelerated.

  Not all Indians, even those Tamil labourers engaged in back-breaking and poorly paid work on Selangor’s rubber estates, shared Jayamani Subramaniam’s instinctive opposition to the British. When Jack Ferguson, the British manager of the Sungei Buloh rubber plantation north-west of Kuala Lumpur, was poised to leave, just ahead of the advancing Japanese, he assembled his estate workers and told them what he was doing but promised to return within a few years. The workers shed genuine tears, both on his departure but also when he fulfilled his promise and returned to the estate after the war was over.

  Meanwhile, the Chief Clerk of Kajang, Sinnadurai, had formed an entirely positive view of the British. Sinnadurai was representative of a key component in the colonial machine - the local junior official who carried out at a grass-roots level the policies of the British administration. Sinnadurai spoke and wrote flawless English but was also fluent in Tamil and Malay and was therefore well placed to perform this critical intermediary role. In the Straits Settlements these positions were often held by Eurasians, but in Sinnadurai’s case he was a Tamil speaker of Ceylonese extraction. His loyalties and aspirations placed him firmly on the side of the British, though he only knew them in a colonial setting and the events unfolding in central Europe would have been of concern, but were distant and alien to his understanding and perception.

  One particularly polyglot community that sat somewhat ambiguously in the imperial construction were the Eurasians. The van der Straaten family was Ceylonese, of Dutch Burgher extraction. Of this lineage they were extremely proud, to the extent that the patriarch of the family, ‘grandpa’, took a lengthy family tree with him to Singapore when the family joined the exodus out of Kuala Lumpur. This extended, noisy, emotional, fractious family, almost a clan, was scattered across households in Ipoh, Southern Thailand and Kuala Lumpur. Like many Eurasians, they naturally sided with the British and had complete faith that the mighty British Empire would continue to protect and govern over them. One family member later wrote, ‘There was growing uneasiness about the war, but it was happening elsewhere, and to other people, and anyway, the stalwart bastions of righteousness collectively pe
rsonified as the British government assured us everything would be alright.’ As a mixed-blood family of proud tradition, they railed against any colour-bar and periodic racial slights, but their fundamental loyalties remained with Britain. Philip van der Straaten, working in a tin mine in southern Thailand, had married an Australian, Doris Heath, who lived with him in this remote outstation. Meanwhile, a British tin miner, Robert Eames, married Wilhemina, Philip’s vivacious and beautiful sister, and they had a daughter who was born just before the war in Bangsar Hospital. She later wrote ‘We stood four-square with Mother England. We were collective progeny of a distant yet still glorious realm…’.

  Amongst the Chinese, and equally supportive of the British - albeit out of self interest - was the leader of the Selangor Kuomintang (Chinese Republican nationalists, or KMT), Lee Hau-Shik. A wealthy and prominent businessman, he had responded to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 by raising funds to send patriotic young Chinese volunteers to Manchuria. In the inter-war years, the KMT had publicly backed the marking of ‘humiliation days’, which were key, if unwelcome, anniversaries of military reverses against the Japanese. Much against the wishes of the British - who did not want, at a time of deteriorating relations, to offend the Japanese - Chinese businesses and schools would close and hang flags at half-mast. In Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, ‘humiliation days’ were not marked as vigorously as in Penang and Singapore but the KMT-backed Anti-Enemy Backing-up Society (AEBUS) organised boycotts of Japanese goods and businesses. Within the city, Japanese-owned photography shops, pharmacies and opticians found many of their Chinese customers looking elsewhere, and some suffered a periodic brick through the window as evidence of a more vigorous form of political protest.