The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (7 page)

After the first year I changed from “C” block to the better-sited “E” block where I was in a cooler and pleasanter room. But the disorientation must have affected my academic performance. I remember that in one term examination I did not come out top even in mathematics. Nevertheless, in the examinations at the end of the academic year (March 1941), I did creditably, and came in first in pure mathematics.
But Miss Kwa Geok Choo was the top student in English and economics, and probably in history too, her third subject. I scored a little better than she did in the statistics paper, which was part of economics. I knew I would face stiff competition for the Queen’s scholarship.

There were other problems. It was only in retrospect that I realised Raffles College was my initiation into the politics of race and religion. In a British colony that made no distinction between the races, Singapore Malays were accustomed to being treated the same as others. But in June 1940, for the first time, I met significant numbers of Malays who had been born and brought up under a different system. In the Federated Malay States (FMS) of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negeri Sembilan, and even more so in the Unfederated Malay States (Johor, Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Terengganu), indigenous Malays were given special political and economic rights. In the FMS, there were only five scholarships to Raffles College open to non-Malays, whereas the Malays had a choice of more, as they did in the Unfederated Malay States. Of the hundred students admitted each year, 20 were Malays from upcountry on scholarships paid for by their state governments.

There was a strong sense of solidarity among the Malays, which I was to learn grew from a feeling of being threatened, a fear of being overwhelmed by the more energetic and hardworking Chinese and Indian immigrants. One Malay in my year was to become prime minister of Malaysia. Abdul Razak bin Hussain attended the same classes in English and economics as I did, but we were not close friends. He was a member of the Malay aristocracy of Pahang, and was therefore somewhat distant from the other Malay students, who looked up to him. Those I got on with more easily were commoners, two of whom played cricket for the college. Because I had many Malay friends from childhood, my spoken Malay was fluent. But I soon discovered that their attitude towards non-Malays, especially Chinese, was totally different from that of Singapore Malays.

One student from Kedah told me in my second year, after we had become friends, “You Chinese are too energetic and too clever for us. In Kedah, we have too many of you. We cannot stand the pressure.” He meant the pressure of competition for jobs, for business, for places in schools and universities. The Malays were the owners of the land, yet seemed to be in danger of being displaced from top positions by recent arrivals, who were smarter, more competitive and more determined. Probably because they did better and were self-confident, the Chinese and the Indians lacked this sense of solidarity. There was no unity among them because they did not feel threatened.

One incident stands out in my memory. In my second year, there was much unhappiness over the arrangements for the annual Raffles College Students’ Union dinner at the old Seaview Hotel. The non-Malays were incensed at the sharp and cavalier responses of the honorary secretary, Ungku Aziz bin Abdul Hamid, to their complaints. A few students started a move for an extraordinary general meeting to censure him and deprive him of office. But he was a Malay. As the collection of signatures for an EGM gathered momentum, the Malay students rallied round him, and made it clear that if he were removed, they would resign
en masse
from the union. This presented the non-Malays with a challenge. I was approached and asked to make the opening speech setting out their complaints against Ungku Aziz. I had not attended the dinner, and I had no personal quarrel with him. But since nobody wanted to take on this unpleasant job, I decided to do it. The meeting took place on a Saturday afternoon, and all the day students had left, probably because they wished to avoid the unpleasantness. Of those in halls of residence, the Malays turned up in force. The tension was high, and racial feelings strong.

It was my first experience of Malayism, a deep and intense pro-Malay, anti-immigrant sentiment. I made out the case in measured tones, firmly but, I hoped, not aggressively. Ungku Aziz spoke up to
refute all the allegations of rude behaviour. I could sense that the crowd of some 80 students felt most uncomfortable about the confrontation. When the votes were cast, the Malays carried the day for Ungku Aziz, and the break-up never came. But the non-Malays felt they had registered their point. This incident faded from my memory. It was only later, between 1963 and 1965, when we were in Malaysia and ran into similar problems with Malayism, that I was to recall it.

But if it was a time of rivalry, it was also a time for forming lasting friendships. Many of those I first met in Raffles College were to become close political colleagues, among them Toh Chin Chye, a science student one year my senior, hardworking, systematic, quiet and consistent, and Goh Keng Swee, a tutor in economics with a first-class mind, a poor speaker but a crisp writer.

When I started my career as a lawyer in the 1950s, therefore, I already had a network of friends and acquaintances in important positions in government and the professions in Singapore and Malaya. Even if one did not know someone personally, just sharing the same background made for easy acceptance, and the old school tie worked well in Singapore and Malaya, even between Chinese, Indians and Malays. Before the days of active politics, when power was still completely in the hands of the British, I did not feel any personal animosity or resentment from the upcountry Malays. I made friends with many of them, including two Malay sessions judges before whom I later appeared.

It was the easy old-boy network of an elite at the very top of the English-educated group nurtured by the British colonial education system. We went through similar schools, read the same textbooks and shared certain common attitudes and characteristics. The British public school was not the only system that encouraged networking through manner of speech, style and dress and a way of doing things.

3. The Japanese Invaders

I was asleep in the “E” Block of Raffles College at 4 o’clock in the early morning of 8 December 1941, when I was awakened by the dull thud of exploding bombs. The war with Japan had begun. It was a complete surprise. The street lights had been on, and the air-raid sirens did not sound until those Japanese planes dropped their bombs, killing 60 people and wounding 130. But the raid was played down. Censors suppressed the news that the Keppel Harbour docks, the naval base at Sembawang, and the Tengah and Seletar air bases had also been attacked.

The students at Raffles College were agog with excitement. Those from upcountry immediately prepared to leave by train for home. Nearly everyone believed Singapore would be the main target of the attack, and it would therefore be prudent to return to the countryside of Malaya, which offered more safety from Japanese bombers. The college authorities were as confused as the students. Nobody had been prepared for this. Two days later we heard that on the same morning the Japanese had landed at Kota Bharu in Kelantan. Malaya was not to be spared after all.

Within days, the hostels were nearly empty. Lectures were suspended, and students asked to volunteer for a Raffles College unit of the Medical Auxiliary Services (MAS). I volunteered for the MAS, and cycled daily from my home (in Norfolk Road since 1935) to my post in the college three miles away. We were not provided with uniforms – there was no time for that – but we were each given a tin helmet and an armband with a red cross on it and paid a small allowance of about $60 a month, for which we worked on a roster round the clock. We were organised into units of six. There was no fear. Indeed there was barely suppressed excitement, the thrill of being at war and involved in real battles.

But the war did not go well. Soon stories came down from Malaya of the rout on the war front, the ease with which the Japanese were cutting through British lines and cycling through rubber estates down the peninsula, landing behind enemy lines by boat and
sampan
, forcing more retreats. Large numbers of white families – planters and civilians with their wives and children – began arriving from across the Causeway. There must have been important Asiatic families too, but they did not stand out. They would have moved into the homes of friends and relatives, or quietly sailed out of Singapore from the Tanjong Pagar wharves, fearing revenge from the Japanese for having helped the British, or for having contributed to the South China Relief Fund supporting Chiang Kai-shek’s resistance to the Japanese on the Chinese mainland.

By January the Japanese forces were nearing Johor, and their planes started to bomb Singapore in earnest, day and night. I picked up my first casualties one afternoon at a village in Bukit Timah. Several MAS units went there in Singapore Traction Company buses converted into ambulances. A bomb had fallen near the police station and there were several victims. It was a frightening sight, my first experience of the bleeding, the injured, and the dead.

At about 8 am on 31 January, Maurice Baker, a fellow student from Pahang, and I were sitting on the parapet of the Administrative Block at Raffles College, on standby MAS duty, when suddenly there was an earthshaking explosion. We were both stunned, and I said spontaneously, “That’s the end of the British Empire!” Professor Dyer, the principal of Raffles College who was just passing by on his way to his office, heard me, looked away, and walked on.

That same morning all British forces withdrew to the island from Johor. Next day, the papers carried photos of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the last to march across the Causeway, to the sound of “Highland Laddie” played on their bagpipes, although there were only two pipers remaining. It left me with a life-long impression of British
coolness in the face of impending defeat. The Royal Engineers then blew open a gap in the Causeway on the Johor side. That was the explosion Maurice and I had heard. But they also blew up the pipeline carrying water from Johor to the island. The siege of Singapore had begun.

As I cycled home one morning, still wearing my tin helmet and armband, I passed a line of military lorries parked in Stevens Road. Standing beside them were some tall, very dejected-looking Australian soldiers wearing broad-brimmed Aussie hats. They looked frightened and demoralised. I stopped to ask them how close the front was. One soldier said, “It’s over; here, take this,” and offered me his weapons. I was startled and shaken. Could it be this hopeless? I refused the weapons and tried to comfort him by saying that no battle was lost until it was over. But for that Australian group, the battle was lost. I did not know what horrifying experiences they must have had.

After the war I read that several battalions of Australian troops were sailing to the Middle East when their ships were diverted to Singapore. They arrived just three weeks before the fall of the island, were sent upcountry and quickly beaten back. They had expected to do battle in the deserts of North Africa, probably in Libya against Rommel’s forces. Suddenly they found themselves in tropical jungle, facing the Japanese. It was a tragedy for them, and a disaster for the morale of the British and Indian troops they were supposed to help.

Meanwhile, my father, who was working as superintendent of the Shell depot in Batu Pahat, some 100 miles to the north on the west coast of Malaya, had been told to evacuate it. He had returned to the island in his baby Austin before the Causeway was blown up. We still hoped that Fortress Singapore would hold. I believed there would be many casualties, but that the British would dig in and eventually we would be rescued. But every passing day – indeed, every passing hour after the first week of February – I felt more and more in the pit of my stomach that Singapore was not Malta, and it could not support a long siege.

In the middle of January, the schools were closed. As the shelling got nearer to the city, my mother proposed that the whole family move to her father’s house, which was further out and so less likely to be hit. I supported the move but told her I would stay and look after the house in Norfolk Road while continuing to report for duty at the Raffles College MAS station. I would not be alone as Koh Teong Koo, our gardener, would stay at Norfolk Road to guard the house while I was on duty at the college. He was also the rickshaw puller who had taken my brothers and sister to and from school every day since 1937. We had built an air-raid shelter, a wooden structure dug into the ground and covered with earth, which my mother had stocked up with rice, salt, pepper, soya bean sauces, salt fish, tinned foods, condensed milk and all the things we might need for a long time. Money was not a problem because the Shell Company had generously paid my father several months’ salary when he was ordered to evacuate the oil depot at Batu Pahat.

Amid these darkening horizons I went to the cinema several times when off duty. It helped me to escape the grim future for a couple of hours. One afternoon in late January, I sat through a comedy at Cathay cinema. In one scene a bomb that was supposed to explode fell apart with a small
plop
. It was a dud. As the casing broke open, a sign was revealed – “Made in Japan”. It was bizarre. For the past two months Singapore had experienced the devastating power of their bombs and their shells, yet here I was watching this film making fun of the Japanese – they were supposed to be bow-legged, cross-eyed, incapable of shooting straight or building ships that would stay afloat in a storm, able to make only dud weapons. The unhappy truth was that in the two months since 8 December they had proved they had the daring, the power and the military skills to stage the most spectacular successes against British forces. Many years later, Winston Churchill, the war-time British prime minister, was to write of the fall of Singapore, “it was the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history”.