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©New Sunday Times (Used by permission)
by Himanshu Bhatt

Lim Kean Siew, the political stalwart of the 60s, reflects on the seeds of Merdeka planted in the hearts and minds of the Malayan people during World War Two, writes HIMANSHU BHATT.

IT was Dec 13, 1941, and a young man was up on Penang Hill when he found himself having a ringside view of a dogfight between Japanese bombers and British fighters.

Lim Kean Siew, who was then 19, watched as two single-seater RAF Brewster Buffalos tried to defend themselves against a perfect Japanese bomber formation.

The sight, Lim remembers today, was pitiful. One British plane was shot down while the other turned tail and fled south.

What Lim was witnessing was just the beginning of a series of events that would sow the seeds of nationalism to open the way for independence in Malaya.

In fact, Lim who is 85 today, says that the fever of nationalism brought about by the Japanese invasion spread across the Asian region among all affected former European colonies.

For the eventual occupation by the Japanese opened the eyes of Malayans that the British were not supreme after all. The British could be beaten.

"The myth was gone," Lim says, "the reality was that the people had to look for their own leadership."

"A new awareness was thrust upon them and a new people with faith in themselves was born."

Lim, who became Malaysia’s opposition leader when he headed the now-defunct Labour party and Socialist Front in the 60s, has expressed much of his views on the origins of nationalism in his autobiography, Blood on the Golden Sands.

After the Japanese took over Malaya, a local movement of resistance arose, inflamed by the brutality of the Japanese.

The momentum of this resistance carried on after the Japanese left, countering the British in a way that was not done before the war.

In effect, it was World War Two that opened the gates for Merdeka.

Lim was studying at Raffles College in Singapore when the Japanese dropped bombs on Singapore on Dec 7, 1941.

He was a student in Singapore at that time with "almost the entire crop of post-war leaders of Malaya and Singapore of my generation".

His peers included (Tun) Abdul Razak, Ungku Aziz, Lee Kuan Yew (who in later years wanted him detained for political reasons), (Tun Dr) Hamdan Sheik Tahir, Robert Kuok and Raja Azam Shah, the grandson of the Raja DiHilir who was said to have assassinated J.W.W. Birch.

The earliest signs of British weakness came when a communiqué was issued two days after Japanese planes bombed Singapore.

The communiqué issued by British intelligentsia said that air reconnaissance had established 24 Japanese transports were moving along the southern Thai coast escorted by warships, seemingly to land troops in Singora, Pattani and Kota Baru.

"Thus all the transports that were located in the air reconnaissance of Dec 6 and 7 are now apparently engaged in these landings in the Kra Isthmus and in northeast Malaya," the communiqué said.

But even though it was then known that Japanese troops were coming towards Malaya, the British were still badly prepared for an attack.

The Japanese troops landed in Thailand some days later, but there was still no reinforcement against them as they came through the Isthmus of Kra to attack the British border base at Jitra, Kedah.

"There was no reason why the defences should have been caught by surprise that night," Lim says.

Lim rushed back to Penang from Singapore, only to find it was completely defenceless except for a few pillboxes and a gun emplacement — without guns — in Batu Maung in the south.

"The island was full of unwarlike people who had not even been trained for civil resistance," he says. "It was full of Babas and Nyonyas who knew no nationality and were happy to be British subjects."

So when the Japanese attacked, the locals had become completely disillusioned with the might of the British to lead.

"It was something they had not experienced before and they had no guidance from the government," Lim says.

"Leadership was wanted, if only to control the exodus which filled all the three main roads out of the city. It seemed as if the police had been rendered incapable.

"The government appeared to be in much the same state of shock as the rest of the city. In an emergency this was least to be expected of a responsible government.

"It was unworthy of Britain, an indignity she could never live down."

Lim still vividly remembers going passing the General Hospital on his way home. "The sight that greeted me was something out of a horror film," he says.

"Though it was only soon after the bombing, the hospital and its corridors and approaches were already filled with the dead and wounded of the bombing to whom help could possibly never come in time.

"But it was heartening to see that the hospital was still functioning."

The reason for this became obvious later. The medical superintendent of the hospital, whom Lim remembers as Mr Evans, was the only one among the British who did not desert his post.

"He refused to evacuate and stayed on duty till his post was taken over by a Japanese Medical Officer a few weeks later."

Evans was later taken away to a labour camp. No one knew what happened to him.

Japan was driven by a programme to establish its self-styled Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere for Asia.

"And when Japan invaded the countries of Southeast Asia, she did more than just begin a war against the West. She opened the eyes of the West to the power of the East."

But more than that, she also opened the eyes of the Asian countries she colonised.

When Japan eventually surrendered, she left them with an awareness of their own need to be independent.

"It would be interesting to speculate what would have been the outcome had she given those countries the freedom they were promised and become their friends," Lim now says.

"They did not know that we were a country divided among ourselves, without a strong sense of national unity and with different racial and cultural awareness which they could easily exploit.

"They treated everyone with the same hostility, disrespect and contempt, uniting all in their dislike of the Japanese nation."

What is remarkable is there was no consciousness of a Malayan identity at that time.

Malaya then consisted of nine Unfederated and Federated Malay States, and the Straits Settlements colonies of Singapore, Penang and Malacca.

Though the Malay rulers were not happy under the British, there was a feeling they needed them as a safeguard against migrating Chinese entrepreneurs and settlers, Lim says.

"This was as much the general expression of the Malay associations formed by the more feudal hierarchy."

The British, however, took advantage, under the circumstances, with guile.

The calculating British, says Lim, agreed to replace the Malayan Union agreement of 1946 with the Federation of Malaya which brought back the symbolic status of the sultans just two years later.

The British needed to exploit as much rubber, tin and other resources as possible to repair their war-torn economy and hence they delayed independence for Malaya.

"They were very clever," he says. "The federation takes a long time to mature and a lot of people to agree to action."

But however divided they may have been, the war had by then already solidified a nascent aspiration for independence among all Malayans which had begun to simmer even before the war.

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