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officers to restrain their allies varied dramatically. In Chin Peng’s sphere in Perak, where MPAJA units were perhaps at their most disciplined, the very night that Force 136 officers gathered to celebrate the surrender, with Scotch whisky and Highland reels, Colonel Itu ordered units of the 5th Independent Regiment into the towns that had been abandoned by the Japanese.49 The hidden networks that had sustained the resistance suddenly revealed themselves. Chin Peng’s female comrade, Eng Ming Chin, turned underground workers into a highly effective propaganda troupe of singers and actors. The MPAJA took over the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association in Ipoh as their headquarters: ‘neighbours could hear night after night the squealing of pigs and the death throes of poultry as these were prepared in the kitchen for the enjoyment of the hundreds of jungle fighters…’ They were presents from the poor farmers. Even local capitalists fêted the communists: ‘white skin’, it was said, ‘red hearts’. The coffee-shop owners of the town of Pusing gave the guerrillas free meals for a month.50 In the northern states, which had been placed under the nominal government of Japan’s ally Thailand, both the British and the Japanese were thin on the ground, and the guerrillas had an even freer hand. The occupation of Kuala Trengganu was largely uncontested and in Kedah, the local 8th Regiment, who had not heard the new orders, made an all-out takeover bid; it took Chin Peng’s personal intervention to bring them into line. In Johore in the south, Major H. H. Wright of Force 136 reported that the people’s committees ‘were all-powerful in those small towns’. By the end of October there were 233 guerrillas in his patrol alone, well-armed with Brens, Stens, carbines and rifles. There were no British troops in the area. Wright compared them to the partisans in Albania, with whom he had spent nine months: ‘they were the masters and not me’. The local commanders were unhappy at Lai Teck’s policy. As they marched into the towns, they left their jungle camps intact behind them.51

Around the main garrison areas in Perak and Kedah, senior Japanese officers, impressed by the strict military discipline of the guerrillas, made it clear that they would not stand in the way of the MPAJA if it chose to fight. Japanese police in Kuala Kangsar, Perak, agreed to pass arms in a silent trade, by vacating the police station and leaving weapons behind, including machine guns taken from disarmed French soldiers in Indo-China.52 On one rubber estate in Johore, a Japanese military HQ shared an office with the MPAJA.53 These negotiations were broken off only when news of the new directive was received. This perhaps averted a crisis within the MPAJA: its leaders were deeply split on the issue of co-operation with the Japanese. Some felt that their surrender had changed everything and revealed the true enemy: British imperialism. Others were still governed by their deep hatred for the Japanese. Chin Peng would later estimate that around 400 Japanese went over to the communists.54 Many of them disappeared when they realized that the MPAJA was not to fight. But some remained.

There was another crucial dilemma for the MPAJA. The local armies that the Japanese had raised could now act freely. The Malay radicals, abandoned by their patrons, sent out feelers to the MPAJA. Ibrahim Yaacob later claimed to have initiated the contacts. A-280 strong Malay militia from Singapore moved up towards Kuala Lumpur. It was intercepted by the MPAJA in northern Johore, where it threw the local communist leadership into confusion. With the new policy in mind, it decided not to arm them and the group disbanded into the neighbouring kampongs (villages). Some Indian National Army garrisons in Malaya also approached the MPAJA. There had been mounting tension between Malayan Indian recruits and the north-Indian regulars. The local men were disenchanted by their appointed role in defending Japanese imperialism, and there were many desertions. In Sungei Siput, Perak, a resistance heartland, INA