Kuala Lumpur at War 1939-1945 Read online

  Kuala Lumpur’s Asian community generally did not have the luxury of escape south to Singapore, though a number of the richer Chinese towkays, particularly those involved with fund-raising efforts for the Kuomintang and the China Relief Fund, chose to leave. But this option was not available to many locals and the majority bunkered down, with many small businessmen and shopkeepers shuttering and then defending their premises from within. But there was also a general movement out of the city to stay with relatives and friends living in outlying areas of Selangor. This exodus increased as the Japanese approached the city and as lawlessness and looting took hold. Mr. Sinnadurai, the Chief Clerk of the District Office of Kajang, noted an influx of people from Kuala Lumpur into this small town some sixty kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur, with many of the better educated and wealthier refugees wearing old clothes and seeking to hide their affluence and familiarity with English. It was an early sign of a change in fortunes, with many of those who had fared well under the colonial British about to experience a profound change in their status and social position.

  Slim River and the Decision to Withdraw

  On 1 January 1942, the Japanese continued to pile on the pressure. That day, Port Swettenham was raided and in the sea lanes HMS Kudat was sunk by dive bombers. Kuala Lumpur was also attacked once more, this time by four aircraft dropping bombs and strafing the city with machine gun fire. Meanwhile to the north, the Japanese had circled behind British defences in Perak, using small boats and craft in a ‘sea borne threat’, dropping off two battalions near Telok Intan and then Kuala Selangor. The British responded vigorously with artillery and were able to frustrate, but not deny, the incursion. Meanwhile, a stubborn British stand at Kampar in Perak against the main Japanese thrust was eventually overcome and the British fell back to the last natural defensive position before Kuala Lumpur, the Slim River.

  The battle for Slim River was, in effect, the battle for Kuala Lumpur. In contrast to the established Japanese tactic of an enveloping attack using diversionary tactics, the commander of the Japanese 5th Division relied instead on a concentrated attack focused on the two bridges. On 7 January 1942, after a sharp encounter, they fell. Worse still, the British rear-guard failed to detonate the charges and Japanese tanks rolled over an undamaged bridge; the lead Japanese commander reportedly leaping from his tank and cutting the detonator cord to the explosive charges with his sword. It was yet another debacle and on the northern side of the river a vast amount of materiel and weaponry (‘Churchill supplies’) were abandoned, and many hundreds of troops were cut off behind the lines. A Japanese military intelligence officer later wrote ‘The front gate to Kuala Lumpur, the federal capital, was smashed open in the Slim River battle.’

  That same day the allied military supremo, General Wavell, travelled to Kuala Lumpur to meet the Indian III Corps Commander, General Heath. They went north to assess the situation. Percival later noted that by this stage the 11th Indian Division ‘could hardly be called an effective fighting formation [and] it was only too apparent that they were no longer in a condition to withstand the enemy’s advance and that immediate steps must be taken to withdraw them behind fresh troops for a rest. The decision was therefore taken to withdraw the battle-front without delay to Johor…’. This momentous decision, to withdraw the defensive line to Johor, meant a retreat of some 150 miles and ‘involved the abandonment of the states of Selangor and Negri Sembilan... and also Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the Federated Malay States’. Wavell signalled the Chiefs of Staff in London, ‘I instructed General Heath to hold position covering Kuala Lumpur for as long as possible without awaiting full-scale enemy attack and meanwhile to deny enemy to greatest extent possible by demolitions’. For Kuala Lumpur, the goose was cooked. The disaster at Slim River compounded by the collapse of the Indian 11th Division meant that it was without defence and would be abandoned. It was now a question of managing the retreat and denying the enemy valuable materiel through a scorched-earth policy.

  Percival later noted that ‘The military evacuation of Kuala Lumpur had started over a week before but there were still vast quantities of military and civil stores there….pillars of smoke and flame rose in the sky as rubber factories, mine machinery and oil stocks were denied. Small wonder that British prestige sank to a very low ebb among the population.’ Intuitively sensing the change, or perhaps having been formally briefed, on 7 January the Cathay, Odeon and Pavilion cinemas closed their doors. The Rex, however, showed greater resilience and continued to air the Chinese movie ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’, while the Eastern Hotel stoically continued to offer its nightly cabaret and dance; though, with surprising prescience, noted that its Sunday lunch-time dance was to be cancelled (the Japanese entered Kuala Lumpur on the Sunday). Like many other businesses, Storch Bros. jewellers announced that it had moved its operation to Singapore and – optimistically – requested that ‘our numerous customers…. will forward remittances in settlement of their accounts as early as possible’. A few weeks later, Storch Bros. re-opened as Dai Toa Shokai.

  The final pre-Japanese occupation edition of the Malay Mail was issued on Wednesday 7 January 1942. The newspaper had suffered terribly in its task of presenting credible news while under the sanction of the British military censors. Symptomatic of the pressures it faced, in its final edition it simultaneously announced that ‘on the land enemy activity is developing in the Kuala Selangor area with the apparent objective of forcing our troops to withdraw from their position’ while claiming separately that ‘On the Perak Front there is nothing unusual to report.’ Given that Kuala Selangor is in Selangor, and to the south of Perak, the reassuring news about the fighting in Perak must have rung hollow.

  Exodus

  The decision to abandon the federal capital sparked panic and a largely uncontrolled exodus out of the city. The British had been leaving Kuala Lumpur in ever increasing numbers but now the road to Singapore was clogged with vehicles of all types and in all conditions. Amongst the trucks, buses, cars and other assorted vehicles heading south was a steam-roller commandeered from the highway department. The queues out of the city formed a semi-continuous jam to Singapore creeping along at ten miles per hour. The trains continued to run, though the single line railway track struggled to handle the pressures placed on it. During the day trains were strafed by Japanese fighters and were forced to hide in embankments and forest cuttings – an ordeal in the hot tropical conditions. The young Tamil boy, Jayamani Subramaniam, was present to see the evacuation of the colonial British from Kuala Lumpur railway station, fleeing the Japanese onslaught. He noted that many of the women were in tears, carrying babies in their arms and clutching the few possessions they were allowed to take with them. In their reduced state, emotional and having not eaten and drunk, they thankfully received offerings of tea and bread from local Indians. This was a complete reversal of the usual relationship of dependency, with the departing British turning for help and support from Indians at the station concourse. Nevertheless, despite these gestures of humanity, Subramaniam was convinced that most Indians were glad to see that that the British were going.

  The British burned thousands of sensitive documents but some of the more important ones were sent to Singapore for ‘safe keeping’. In January 1942, the Selangor State government - in a convoy of seven trucks - sent all its financial records for storage in a lock-up in the Old Treasury Building in Fort Canning. In May 1942, after the Japanese occupation, two state government officials visited Singapore and discovered that the records had been removed and stacked in an office which was then occupied by the Japanese military. Keen to make space, the papers were sold for $300 to a Chinese contractor, who could no longer be traced. By this simple action, thousands of debtors were effectively released from their financial obligations to the Selangor State government.

  As Kuala Lumpur emptied, and central authority withdrew, looting and arson became widespread. The British had only ever represented a tiny percentage of the population of Kuala Lumpur and S
elangor, and their colonial governance rested largely on the acceptance of their rule by the local population backed if needed (it rarely was) by the authority of the Police. The British had mostly turned to Indian Sikhs and Malays to provide the police constables, corporals and sergeants needed to enforce their rule and sustain their laws (they were chary of recruiting Chinese policemen, largely because they found the Chinese difficult to handle, and because they were the least law-abiding of the main communities). As senior British police officers joined the exodus to Singapore many local policemen, fearful of later Japanese reprisals, quietly abandoned their posts. With the British withdrawal, civic discipline and structures collapsed. Colonial authority, like grains of sand in an hourglass, began to seep away and lawlessness and crime began to increase. The looting of abandoned government offices, shops, hotels and residential properties became commonplace. The two main department stores, Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co. and Robinsons, both in Java Street, were stripped of possessions and trashed, though Cold Storage fared much better – its staff standing guard. Nevertheless, the fires and smoke which resulted from the scorched-earth policy and the looting wafted across a city made ghostlier still by a night-time blackout and curfew. Adding to the sense of foreboding and menace, the city was rocked by the retort of guns and the detonation of explosives; Kuala Lumpur had entered a twilight world of lawlessness and anarchy.

  Scorched Earth

  On the whole in Kuala Lumpur, the British avoided the debacle that had accompanied their withdrawal from Penang, in which valuable equipment and stores had simply been abandoned and fallen into Japanese hands. The large arms depot at Batu Caves was cleared, with ordnance either sent to Singapore or dumped in the sea or in nearby mining ponds. Fuel was a particular problem because it was mostly held in petrol drums. It was difficult to transport because of its sheer bulk and was denied to the Japanese by the simple expedient of puncturing the drums.

  To attempt a managed withdrawal following the disaster at Slim River, the British established a rear-guard position at Serendah, some thirty miles north of Kuala Lumpur. Soon after dawn on 10 January, the Japanese 5th Division attacked Serendah in strength, using air support and deploying the usual tactic of a central thrust with strong enveloping of the flanks. They were faced by the 28th Indian Brigade, plus a ragtag of other units. Meanwhile to the west, the 6th/15th Indian Brigade covered the roads south of Batu Arang and along the coast a composite force from the ‘Lines of Communication Area’ covered Port Swettenham. It was a thin, stretched and demoralised line intended simply to slow and frustrate the Japanese advance and to allow an orderly retreat from Kuala Lumpur to the new defensive line being established far to the south in Johor.

  There was nonetheless tenacious fighting. From the 28th Indian Brigade, there was hand-to-hand fighting involving the Gurkhas and a battalion of the 3/17 Dogras which led to heavy casualties. General Percival, the Commander of British Forces, described it as ‘another fine battalion [which] had lost much of its fighting value’. The defensive action at Serendah was important from another perspective in that it was the first time that the British and their newly-trained Chinese Communist allies fought together. But it was an inauspicious start. The Chinese rapidly moved from supporting the front-line troops to becoming an insurgent ‘stay behind’ force as the front moved south and their active contribution was largely anonymous. The guerrillas slipped into the nearby jungle though were later able to return and cache much battlefield debris.

  The Selangor Volunteers, as befits a local force, were amongst the last to depart Kuala Lumpur. On 10 January, through deserted streets, Pte. Littledyke’s rearguard group entered the Selangor Club, an icon of British colonial rule. Colloquially known as the ’Spotted Dog’, it was empty and half-drunk glasses of beer and unfinished meals bore witness to the sudden panic that had swept the club as news of the Japanese advance on the city spread amongst the assembled members. Littledyke’s colleague, Lt. Thornton, noted that ‘denial work’ was in full flow as ‘explosions and pillars of smoke’ followed the scorched-earth policy. Thornton and his men were anxious to get away before dark; they eventually managed to flee the burning city around 9pm by one of the few bridges left intact and drove through the night to Port Dickson, where the rest of the Selangor Volunteers had assembled at the Port Dickson Club and where ‘some well known Volunteer officers were busy forgetting the war in liquid’.

  Late that same day, following their defensive actions at Serendah, the remnants of the 28th Indian Brigade withdrew through Kuala Lumpur to a reserve area that had been established at Tampin in Negri Sembilan, some seventy kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur. Meanwhile there was heavy fighting down the coastal road as the Japanese sought to cut the Kuala Lumpur- Port Swettenham road and railway line. Most of the British troops managed to escape and by 11 January the important docks, warehouses and facilities of Port Swettenham were in Japanese hands. This left the Indian 6th/15th Brigade covering the Batu Arang area, which had only been lightly engaged by the enemy, to provide the final rearguard cover through Kuala Lumpur. At 4.30am on 11th January the Brigade blew the last bridge in the city centre and then withdrew to Labu, west of Seremban. Meanwhile, just ahead of the advancing Japanese, Sergeant Jim Gavin of the Royal Engineers, who was part of Spencer Chapman’s stay-behind organisation, spent the morning of Sunday 11 January happily strewing booby-traps and fixing grenades on trip-wires inside key buildings and military locations in and around Kuala Lumpur. The road south was full of vehicles abandoned due to lack of petrol and Sergeant Gavin and his team worked their way out of Kuala Lumpur, blowing vehicles up until they ran out of explosives. They were the final unit of a retreating army. It would be three years and eight months before British forces were to re-enter Kuala Lumpur.

  Chapter Six

  Occupation

  Japanese troops entered Kuala Lumpur early in the afternoon of Sunday 11 January 1942. The first echelon of troops was accompanied by a handful of KMM members who wore an armband bearing the letter ‘F’, which designated them as being affiliated to the Japanese military intelligence body, Fuijiwara Kikan. Their role was to guide the Japanese troops but, more importantly, to liaise and mediate with the local Malay community, to avoid unnecessary clashes and bloodshed. A senior KMM leader, Mustapha Hussain, later noted that ‘Kuala Lumpur town was absolutely lifeless except for the advancing Japanese. Where had all the 400,000 people of the largest town in Malaya vanished to?... Apart from Japanese troops and a multitude of vehicles, there were just a couple of Indians bolting with bales of fabric’. The Japanese found a seemingly deserted city, with fires burning, the result of two days of uncontrolled looting. Government departments, clubs, shops and abandoned homes had all been pillaged and occasional looters could be seen in the distance, bicycles and carts loaded with booty, as they escaped just steps ahead of the Japanese troops. The new Japanese authorities castigated this behaviour and noted in the first edition of the re-launched and re-named Malay Mail New Order that those citizens ‘who preferred to face what was coming than to flee to the jungle or Singapore must feel sad and thoroughly demoralised by the unrestricted looting [which]… the citizens of Kuala Lumpur will find hard to live down’. The tone of outraged civic pride only went so far and a further headline pointedly noted that the ‘penalty for looting is death’. Proving that this was no idle threat, soon after their arrival the Japanese shot dead several looters and placed their heads on poles in Batu Road. This had a salutary impact and widespread looting ended shortly after the Japanese arrival, though the city remained a tense place for some weeks to come.

  RAF Raids on Kuala Lumpur

  The Japanese air force soon moved planes to aerodromes in and around Kuala Lumpur, though some of the first troops to seize the airfields were caught by British booby traps – mines and grenades connected to hidden wires. This slowed things down but within a couple of days the airfields were up and running and were soon to become targets for British counter-attacks. On 18 January, the British une
xpectedly launched a night-time air raid on Sungei Besi aerodrome. The damage was limited but the explosions were loud and dented Japanese claims to have destroyed the British war machine. The next day the British launched a similar attack on Port Swettenham. The Malay Mail described these raids as ‘the last wriggle of the British... they dropped some sound bombs which made a loud explosion but no damage’. On 21 January the British launched one last raid on Kuala Lumpur, which the Japanese derided (probably correctly) as a ‘damp squib’ and in which they claimed to have shot down one raider.

  But the raids, and the failure to curb crime and lawlessness, spooked the Japanese and a night-time curfew was imposed on the city. One Japanese officer, Captain Satoru Onishi, later recalled that he received an order stating that ‘Overseas Chinese are suspected of flashing signals to guide the enemy’s airplanes. Go and investigate the situation’. Onishi was privately sceptical but kept his views to himself. Other Japanese officers were more convinced and two Chinese men were summarily arrested and shot for acting as spies and guiding the British to their targets. Their heads were placed on poles at the intersection of Ampang and Java Streets and a notice placed beneath as a warning to others not to spy for the British. One contemporary witness remembered heads ‘stuck on wooden stakes…. They were covered with flies and were allowed to rot until they fell to the ground where they were left unattended. The stench was unforgettable’. Beneath them was sign stating ‘This man shone his torchlight at an enemy (RAF) plane flying overhead.’