大象传媒

By Benjamin Chikola

Today they forced us all to sing the Japanese national anthem. I was angry, it isn't my national anthem. Of course, I didn't know the words, so I tried to copy the teachers and I mouthed the rest. They even made us face towards Japan which was confusing because I don't even know where Japan is. I'm so worried I might have to start speaking Japanese all day at school, like the older kids have to.

Mother called me and told me to take some food to my father, so I took the bowl full of steaming noodles to him. He was sitting on the hard floor, worry all over his face. Father reached out his hands and I put the bowl gently into them. "Father, are you ok?" I asked. "I'm getting used to it now, the darkness, the boredom. Don't you worry about me" he replied in a trembling voice and he ruffled my hair.

He'd been so lucky not to be captured when the others were. Many of them didn't make it and the rest were suffering in Changi prison. When the Japanese had invaded Singapore my father, with many of the other Malayan soldiers, had fled. He came home and hid in the maid's room- a narrow, gloomy cupboard at the back of the apartment. I'm not sure how to feel about what he did. I am disappointed in him for failing his men, but I am so relieved that he's alive and at home.

The next day I had just got home from school and was telling mother how I had seen a weary old man forget to bow down to the Japanese soldiers as they marched down the street. Without warning a powerful looking soldier had slapped the old man hard on the back and the man stumbled to his knees. BANG BANG BANG! Five hostile looking soldiers burst into the room without waiting for our reply. They immediately started stamping around searching in the bedrooms, knocking over furniture, throwing open cupboard doors and shouting at us threateningly. "Where's your husband?" they demanded of my mother. I was so terrified, I couldn't stop myself shaking. What was going to happen to my father if they found him. I watched as two of the soldiers swung open the door to the maid's room. I gasped and wanted to shout at them to stop.

After a couple of minutes, they came out of the room with faces that were red and raging. They hadn't found him. Where had he gone? "This won't be the last time we come," one of them growled as they all stomped out of the front door.

That evening, we sat on the sofa waiting for our friend to knock and tell us that the coast was clear. Father had been hiding on the veranda when the soldiers came but we knew that we wouldn't be safe here anymore. The knock came. The time had come to leave Singapore... maybe forever...