I had the curious experience of living in Singapore while it was still a British Colony… Here are some of my memories of that time which might amuse you…….
Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s of the last century, our family lived in Singapore, which in those far off days , was of course, still a British Colony, which in the case of the Malayan peninsular (what is now called Malaysia) meant it was ruled to Britain’s advantage by lower middle class Brits, and in the case of Singapore (which was still part of Malaya), we Brits pretended to rule it, but it was in fact ruled, as now, by the Chinese.
It was a strange place to live in back then, an atmosphere of suffocating Petit Bourgeois attitudes, tremendous racialism – the poor old Indians being at the bottom of that particular heap, a very unpleasant guerilla war (more about that below), and annual racist riots in which the whites were the target of mass hatred and killed, if possible, by hordes of infuriated Muslim Malayans.
A scary Anniversary:
This last was the result of a sad story. When the Japs invaded Singapore, the whites all left as hurriedly as possible, all was chaos obviously, and in this chaos, a small Dutch baby girl got left behind, but was found by a Malay family, who took her in and cared for her. Obviously, being Malay they were Muslims, so naturally, the little girl was brought up as a Muslim.
All was well until the Japs were chased out of Singapore, and the little girl was discovered by the European authorities, and it was decided that she should be sent to Holland to be brought up as a Dutch girl (even though I believe her parents were never found).
So over the protestations of the Malay family who had looked after her during the war, this little girl was sent off to Holland, and put into a Catholic convent orphanage, and brought up further as a good little Catholic.
This infuriated the Malay community in Singapore and the rest of Malaya, so every year on the anniversary of the removal of this little girl, there were terrible riots in which gangs of angry Malayans rampaged around, smashing any European objects they came across, and killing any Europeans they could catch. Scary times. Not least since the cops were almost all Malay, and thus sympathised with the rioters, and looked the other way.
A Guerilla War:
As I mentioned above,there was also a pretty serious guerilla war going on in the jungle of the Malay Peninsular at this time as well.
This was being reported as a “Communist Terrorist War” (those were the bogey men of that period, same as the ISIS now). In fact the origins of this particular war had nothing to do with Communism, but was caused by the duplicity of the then British government – sound familiar?
What had happened was that when the Japs were on the point of kicking the Brits out of Malaya, the Brits recruited a number of Chinese and armed them and asked them to stay behind in the jungle and make life difficult for the Jap occupiers, in return for which, the Brits promised that on their return to Malaya (how about that for arrogance?), they would pay the Chinese soldiers much fine money, give them land to farm and generally look after them.
So these faithful Chinese stayed in the jungle, and with great suffering did exactly as requested.
The Brits duly came back, and the Chinese came out of the jungle and asked to have their promised payment. Reasonably one might think. Sadly,the Brits kept putting them off.
So after a couple of years of prevarication on the part of the Brits, the annoyed Chinese said damn you, turned around, grabbed their guns and went back into the jungle and started shooting Europeans.
This is when the Chinese Communists stepped in and made the battle their own. So the origins had nothing to do with communism, but with broken promises. Also familiar?
An Unnerving Experience:
One small result of this war for me was finding myself in hospital in the bed next to a guerilla fighter who had been condemned to death by the Brits.
I was in hospital for a minor complaint, but it kept me in hospital for a couple of weeks in a public ward which gave me time to get to know this guy a bit (for complex reasons I could speak a fair amount of Cantonese so he and I could talk). He had been captured by the British army, and then tried and condemned to be hanged, but owing to his years in the jungle, he was in very bad health, so the Brits felt he was too unhealthy to be hanged!!! I know, sounds insane, but I promise you it is true.
So he was bunged into hospital to be fed and made healthy again – and once he was in good shape, they were planning to take him out and hang him.
So there he lay in his bed next to mine, with a heavily armed Sikh soldier guarding him 24 hours a day, being fed on vitamins, good meals and all manner of antibiotics to get him healthy enough to be hanged.
We became quite good friends before he was taken away to be killed finally.
Made one hell of an impression on me I can tell you – I was about 9 years old at the time.
Copyright: Tony Cole
