The Plantation - Di Morrissey [85]
But some of us, myself included, were worried about the Japanese. We knew that the Jap community had been busy for years, poking about in the jungle around the estates. They also had holdings at important rail and road junctures, in mining areas. One could hardly avoid noting the ore that was being shipped to Japan those past years, undoubtedly to be put to use in making armaments. Later we found out that their business organisations were not only sharing important information with their government, but were a cover for spying and intelligence gathering and other political activities. Small businesses were established at convenient locations where they could observe the activities – or lack thereof – happening at the aerodromes, ports, around the bays and coastline, in the jungles and the swamps. We had been carefully observed, measured and our metier taken since the 1930s. Too late we learned of secret caches of arms and bunkers hidden in rubber estates owned by the Japs. We had been complacent to our cost.
Blame for this ignorance can be placed at many feet, for when information was being collected by natives, telling planters of Japanese activity in the jungles and the remote coast and islands, along with the observations by fishermen, rangers and miners, and sent to the authorities in Singapore, it was, sadly, ignored. Even when I raised the subject with other planters about the rumours swirling around Malaya, my views were considered to be alarmist.
But little did we know that the defence of Malaya had been scaled down by the heads in Whitehall. The war in Europe was considered far too serious to give any thought as to what might happen in their far-flung eastern empire. However, we, in Malaya, pressed on, doing our bit with petrol rationing, rising prices and the inconvenience of routine blackout trials. Even when the Japs moved into Indo-China, the administration did not feel unduly threatened. The feeling was that, ‘They wouldn’t dare! And if the Nips made any move, we would be ready for them.’
Why did they say that? We had so few defences which, we later learned, were in all the least strategic positions. But anyone who dared to question was pooh-poohed. Everyone with any authority, any connection with the military, became so puffed up with their own importance, so petty minded, bureaucratic and downright insufferable, that the tokenism of our war efforts were laughable. Sometimes I really did indeed think that our society was becoming rather like something from a Noel Coward play or from the pages of a novel by that dreadful Somerset Maugham. Nonetheless I felt I had to do something constructive and I joined the Perak Volunteers. My father wanted to do his bit, but I talked him round. Staying put, I thought, was the best thing for him to do.
Then on December 8th 1941, we were stunned to hear that not only had the American fleet been destroyed at Pearl Harbour, but that the Japs had landed at Kota Bharu in northern Malaya. They were also bombing the main airfields in the north-west of the country, destroying half of the Allied aircraft stationed there. Three days later we heard news that was considerably worse. The battleship Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse, which had been sent to reinforce the British defences only days before, had been sunk with a huge loss of life. Morale dropped.
The consequences of these Japanese actions were catastrophic. As the disaster continued to unfold, my father and I sat in the evening peacefulness at the end of another balmy day, enjoying a stengah on the verandah as flowers fell lightly to the grass in front of us. My wife and her visiting sister gossiped quietly while they sat and knitted