The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion
The Malaysian Insider :: Opinion |
| My father’s memories of war and other things Posted: 07 Dec 2011 04:47 PM PST DEC 8 — It has been five years since my mother passed away. My father is still hanging on to the old shophouse and various other memories. The last time I went back to Kelantan, we kept talking about various old cakes; some of them I have never seen, but only heard, and some have disappeared from the village and the food market in Kota Baru. He said he used to sell some of them at the coffeeshop. A few months ago he said to me that he wanted to renovate the little "Chinese goldsmith house" my mother left me. Though I resisted the idea at first, later I understood that he needed something to do. Now that little house is fully alive as a kopitiam. My father is very excited about that rented-out shophouse and asked me to buy coffee from there. Since he was not well, I decided to stay the night, sleeping in the living room, formerly the coffeeshop. The whole night I could not sleep, and not only because of the noise from the road which is still being used for transporting goods from Thailand to Malaysia. The whole night my mind dwelled, not on my mother, but this time on my father and me. About how he taught me to make kites, catch those little fishes from the "parit" (irrigation canal) and the "sawah" (padi field), and how to get the cuckoo bird to sing. He was always excited to see the good grades in my school report and my medals when I won sports competitions, but not happy with me taking part in poetry-writing and poetry-reading competitions. He once threatened to burn my poetry collection if I did not stop that interest, a few months before the Sijil Rendah Pelajaran.  Me and my father... he taught me to make kites, catch fish and make the cuckoo bird sing. Yesterday, when he got better after his fever I asked him about his memories of the Second World War, the Japanese Occupation and the Death Railroad. His eyes grew big and excitedly, he started telling us about the war, about how he was working with the British master, Mr Anderson, and how he was forced to work for the Japanese quarry. He had just married my mother when the war broke out and in fact my eldest sister was born during the Japanese Occupation. He went on to tell us about how he helped save five village men from being sent to the Death Railroad in Burma. Every day he had to bring food to them in a hiding place away from the village. That place was also known among villagers as a very ghostly place, where "bomohs" sent bad spirits. That was the last place a villager would want to hide, the Japanese soldiers thought as they knew the Malays were afraid of ghosts. Years and years later after the war, they sent back people from the village who had worked on the Death Railroad, but clearly they were not the same anymore. Most of them couldn't speak and some had simply gone crazy. In my first Malay play that was nominated as Best Malay Script at the Cameronian Arts Award 2007, I wrote about my visit to Singapore with my mother in the 1970s. She thought she saw someone who looked like her long-lost cousin at Masjid Sultan. Her cousin was taken by the Japanese to work on the Death Railroad. When she went back to Masjid Sultan on the next visit, she was told that he had just died a week before. My sisters and cousins only remember the time after the war when they could rent a bicycle for five cents a day. Nothing can be bought for five sen now, maybe not even 50 sen. As for me, I only remember watching "Sarjan Hassan", the Malay movie about the Second World War, with P. Ramlee as the hero. But I wonder how many people actually know and remember the first attack in Malaya which took place in Kelantan, at Pantai Sabak and Pantai Pak Amat, not far from the present Sultan Ismail Petra Airport in Pengkalan Chepa. In fact the invasion was ahead of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Today is the 70th anniversary of that attack. I wonder how much has been written about it. Years ago I met the guy who wrote the book "Japanese Occupation in Malaya", Datuk Mike Wrigglesworth, when he visited my former office in Bangkok, in 2000. The book is about his experience as a British Army war officer in Kelantan and how they fought the war. He went on to stay in Kelantan after the war. When I went back to Kelantan and tried to locate him, someone told me that he had died just a few months before. How much of the story is left with us after our fathers and grandfathers leave us? My father was 15 years old then, now he is 85. How much longer will the memories stay with him? Next to his bed on the side table there's a little fish, "puyu", known to be a small but strong fish, in a clear bottle. It symbolises his strength and sturdiness in facing his hard life. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 07 Dec 2011 04:21 PM PST DEC 8 — "Yes, yes, but can you do better?" Exactly 70 years ago to this day the Japanese military launched synchronised attacks all over the Pacific — including Malaya, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Guam and the United States in Hawaii's Pearl Harbour ( December 7 due to time zone differences) — just like that. The audacity of the move, across the largest ocean in the world, shook the foundations of Western civilisation and dispelled the notion that there is a colour to power. The suffering brought on humanity by the war, and the reign of a Japan willing to fight the colonisers, but unwilling to free the colonised has always been regretted. War without exception is regrettable. My widowed grandmother had to see through the birth of her son, my father, during the Malaya campaign. Yet, the effort expanded by an Asian country to triumph over the military might of the West through organisation, discipline and confidence shattered stereotypes, and raised the question that perhaps nothing is decided in a life except by its participants. Which helps explain Japan's revival after a devastating defeat and American occupation, even without the fascism and an expansive military complex, a nation with organisation, discipline and confidence will advance. Which also explains why Malaysia, as do most Asian countries, look up to the attributes of the Japanese people even if we do not forgive their misconduct during the war. Here today Malaysia is trying to find its way again, just as Japan did those decades ago. Somehow a whole nation has lost its balance. The most potent of defence for a sham of a democracy governed by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government has been two; that they are the only government we've ever known, and that they have given us the lives we have. Somehow, the nature of the statements forces us to consider them. They are grave statements. However, when considered well, and it is plaintively clear that the first one is only a historical fact, not a defence for a bad government. The second is false dichotomy; Malaysians have made Malaysia possible, not the Malaysian government. If anything, the mismanagement of the abundant resource this country possesses which has prohibited us from having substantially better living standards. More so, despite the parochial and feudalistic monopoly, Malaysian families have despite the political and economic repression fought their way through and given child after child a future. Malaysians pay for after-school classes (private tuition) to ensure their children are not victims of a collapsing public schools system their tax monies uphold. And the public have had no say in how our public schools are run; our money, the government's decision. Healthcare is not universal, nor comprehensive. The public has to pass the hat around for treatment, while hospitals heal people by their wallet sizes and pharmaceuticals get plump deals with state facilities. Small businesses have to navigate a labyrinth of ministries, agencies and departments — as more and more of them are created or tasks duplicated — while favoured conglomerates get all the protection possible. Despite these hurdles, a people move forward. And their successes are heralded by this government, as theirs. So the only thing left, almost a desperate indecipherable primal scream, is this: "Yes, yes, but can you do better?" That is the challenge, and I accept. Tomorrow There is nothing limiting us as a nation, as a people. For a duration after the end of BN rule, there will be uncertainty, hesitation and a litany of mistakes. That does not deter change. With organisation, discipline and confidence, things will become better. The Pakatan Rakyat state governments did not reinvent governance, they have just begun to plug the holes in the boat. The best thing about even the small fixes is that they renew the faith in government. A new government does not need to overreach, it needs to do the basics right. There will be no shortage of the Malaysian diaspora returning to rebuild the nation. The time of governing through consultants will be over. Having a large civil service and not using it to do the things it was hired to do is silly. Education, healthcare and jobs must become core objectives. Business policies have to facilitate economic stability and growth, but a protracted process of divorcing government from business ownership will occur. This is crucial also to guarantee there is no more a nexus of power between governing party and big business. The new economy is about ideas, and the end of a repressive regime will free us to speak. Ideas are constructs of speech. The future is not bleak without BN. The future actually becomes possible without BN. Back for good Britain had large nations under its colonial yoke, but none with the combination of wealth and a docile small populace as Malaya. It was a cash cow, an ATM then. We kept Britain from bankrupting after the Second World War. Malaysia started from a position of strength at independence and has declined since. Malaysians know only too well, though skyscrapers are common sights in our capital, so many things have gone pear-shaped. We are disorganised, the government has used wanton spending to cover its inadequacies. We can't get around to be being disciplined — which is a voluntary actualisation — because we spend all our time being afraid of our own government. We haven't been confident for a long, long time, how can we be, when a small group have brainwashed in our schools and daily lives that confidence belongs to the ruling class. Malaysia's time to turn back the clock is at hand. Only those ignorant of the whispers in crowds will say otherwise. I am already looking to a better tomorrow. When an organised, disciplined and confident Malaysia reclaims its rightful place as the land of opportunity for all. * The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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