大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Cheng Bee Parker and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I remember the excitement generated by the possiblity of war reaching Penang, the siren, the blackout, the enemy planes passing overhead. In one dogfight, my younger brother swore that there were 27 Jap planes and about two R.A.F. ones and one was shot down. The comparatively light bombing of Penang resulted in some civilian casualties.

The Japs landed in Kota Bahru on the east coast to no resistance as the British look-out posts were sited elsewhere. Before the complete takeover by the Japanese, our family decided to seek a temporary haven safer than our suburban residence. Certain town centre dwellers seemed to think otherwise and set up camp in our grounds. Grandpa and his second family of wife, three sons and amah landed on relatives living in a rural retreat called Jelutong, where water was drawn from wells. My widowed mother with us three children, an uncle and our amah took the cable car up Penang Hill to a relative's holiday home called "The Rockies". We had left Ah Beng, our cook, and Beauty, our dog, as guardians of our family residence in our absence. My family stayed at "The Rockies" until word reached us that the Japs were heading for Penang Hill. The cable car had stopped running because there was no electricity to work it, so we perforce had to trek down hurriedly via the railway steps. Penang Hill is 2722 feet high.

Great changes lay ahead in the days of enemy occupation between 1941 and 1945. Schools reopened only to teach the Japanese language and it was compulsory for all males to attend. Many public buildings and private houses were requisitioned. My alma mater converted to a post office and the Convent School became the HQ of the Japanese police force called Kempeitai. The spacious hall of our family home was elevated to the rank of the Daimaru Department Store with its staff recruited wholesale from the peacetime lending department store, "Whiteaways", in Bishop Street. In lieu of rent, we became the recipient of each day's leftover cooked rice that the staff did not manage to eat up. As rationing was in force by this time, it was a very welcome addition to our rice ration. A further benefit to us as enforced landlord was an extra ration of a whole sack of rice.

As time went by, the quality of consumer goods, if still available, deteriorated unless one was prepared to pay black market prices. Legitimate currency went undeground, when our Japanese masters decreed it illegal tender and flooded our island with "banana" notes , bringing in their wake inflation and the black market. People were encouraged to grow their own fruit and vegetables. Fortunately for us, we had land to spare to do just that as well as keep ducks and chicken, thus ensuring fresh eggs and meat on the table. We bulked our precious rice ration by throwing home-grown sweet potatoes along with the rice into the cooking pot. Wheat flour gradually disappeared, so bakers were reduced to using other available cereal flour such as ragi. Didn't our bread weigh a ton! Affordable cooking oil was the foul-tasting palm oil, as coconut and groundnut oils became precious commodities to be used sparingly. Amusement parks, Penang had three, reopened as licensed gambling parks with young and old running the gambling stalls or gamling themselves. Reopened cinemas showed only Japanese films.

I recall one good thing the Japanese did, the profiling of classical music. They encouraged our youths to take an interest in it by holding numerous music competitions and putting any promising musical talent on the air. I had a regular slot alongside my two cousins (a brother and sister) and together we presented a half-hour mixed programme of solos and duets in both the violin and the piano. It was compulsory to include in our repertoire one or two Japanese pieces. We were paid with exercise books, pencils, pens and erasers! I suppose the adult performers received suitable adult gifts.

There were in the early occupation days, horrific tales of Japanese cruelty, of rape, which threw all families with womenfolk, and especially with young girls, into a panic. On one occasion, rumour reached us that the Japanese were conducting a house-to-house search. We womenfolk reacted by rushing out of the house and down a dirt lane by the side of our house to a temporary refuge spot until the danger, if any, had passed.

I remember one surprise early morning round-up of our family and other families and being hustled to the local padang (public playing field) to wait indefinitely for something, no doubt unpleasant, to happen. The entrepreneurs among us saw their opportunity to earn some dollars. In no time at all, there were makeshrift food and drinks stalls doing a brisk business in the baking hot sun. At long last we discovered the reason for the round-up, when some Japanese led out men wearing hoods. It was an identification parade. Fear, I was sure, struck innocent and not-so-innocent hearts alike. I do not know what actually happened to the arrested - imprisonment, torture, death or, by some miralce, release.

Prostitutes and mistresses flaunted their improved "social" status as the kept women of important Japanese men. Other "less fortunate" souls, with dwindling resources, resorted to brokering - selling for commission other people's possessions or even their own. Children were sent out to peddle their mothers' baking and cooking. Still others found paid jobs. All learnt to "see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing" in case of betrayal.

The departure of the Japanese from Penang in 1945 marked the end of long school-less days for us young ones, alas, and a return to an interrupted normal school education.

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