ON DECEMBER 8, 1941, one of Sybil Kathigasu’s neighbors popped his head inside her door. “Have you heard the news, Mrs. K?” he cried. “It’s war! The Japanese have bombed Singapore!”
Sybil—“Mrs. K.”—was not surprised by this report. But it still filled her with a cold dread she tried to hide from the rest of her family. She wanted to be a source of strength for her physician husband, her elderly mother, and her three children, who all lived together in a house at the center of Ipoh, a bustling Malayan town.
During the next few days, Sybil—a nurse and midwife—was encouraged by the stream of military convoys she saw pass through Ipoh’s streets, their trucks loaded with Malayan soldiers heading north to fight the Japanese who had landed there.
After they had gone, Ipoh became so quiet, its residents could almost imagine Malaya was not at war. That would soon be impossible. On December 15, while traveling north of Ipoh to visit a patient, Sybil noticed planes circling high off in the distance. Her driver said they must be British Royal Air Force planes.
Sybil Kathigasu before the war. Media Masters Publishing, Malaysia
They weren’t. When she was finished attending her patient, Sybil was told that the Japanese had just bombed Ipoh.
She returned to a devastated town and a wounded husband. His wounds were not life-threatening, however, and he was quickly discharged into her care. Sybil drove him and the rest of her family to a small structure away from the center of Ipoh, where she hoped they might be safe, out of the range of the Japanese bombers.
When the Kathigasu family emerged a few days later, several things were quite clear. The war was going badly for the Malayan forces in the north; the Japanese were pushing them south. There was no longer any reason for the Kathigasus to stay in Ipoh; it was deserted, and nearly all their patients had fled.
They joined the throngs of refugees fleeing south, until they came to a little village called Papan. They found a small house on the town’s only street and opened a medical clinic there as well.
The Japanese entered Papan on December 28. Their occupation was brutal. The soldiers raped so many Malayan girls that Sybil made her 20-year-old daughter Olga dress as a man. Many less fortunate young women were raped and abducted, never to be heard from again.
The occupying Japanese administration forced the Malayans to abandon Western culture and replace it with Japanese. Malayans had their homes searched regularly to ensure no one still owned pictures of the British royal family, the flags of any Allied nations, or even American record albums.
The Japanese were also obsessed with persecuting Papan’s large Chinese population. They would randomly round them up and make them stand for hours—sometimes days—in the hot sun without food or water. Many collapsed, and some died.
A guerrilla movement was born out of this persecution. The Chinese guerrillas near Papan fought the Japanese occupation by assassinating Malayan collaborators who were betraying their fellow Malayans to the Japanese. Large Japanese offensives would then be launched against the guerrillas. But when collaborators continued to meet their doom from hidden assassins, everyone knew the guerrillas were, in the main, alive and well.
One day, they asked Sybil for help.
“It’s the guerillas, Mrs. K,” said Moru, a young Chinese man acquainted with her. “Some of them are sick and wounded, and need medicines. They knew you don’t like the Japs. Will you help?”
Sybil knew the Japanese penalty for helping a guerrilla was severe. If she agreed to help them, she would be endangering not only herself but her beloved family. She already possessed a radio with which she regularly listened to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), another highly illegal activity in Japanese-occupied Malaya. How much should she risk?
She told Moru to come back in an hour; she would have some medicine ready.
“I could not approve of some of the guerillas’ methods,” she wrote later, explaining her decision, “but this was war.”
Moru became the link between Sybil and the guerrillas. Because he had been training as a teacher before the war, his declared reason for being at the Kathigasu home so often was to tutor Sybil’s five-year-old daughter, Dawn.
The always crowded clinic was the perfect place for the guerrillas to come for mild to moderate ailments or with requests for information, messages, or warnings. The guerrillas, dressed as farmers, did not stand out in the crowd. And because Sybil spoke several Chinese dialects, there was nothing to arouse the suspicions of collaborators on seeing her in constant conversation with Chinese villagers.
One day Sybil received an urgent message from Moru: a guerrilla had been severely wounded, shot twice. One of the bullets, lodged in his ankle, was causing a painful inflammation resulting in a high fever. He was so sick he, would be unable to blend in easily with the other clinic patients. And he needed much more than medicine; unless someone operated on him immediately, he would certainly die. Because the Japanese had ordered all bullet-wound cases reported immediately, taking him to a hospital was out of the question: the penalty for operating on such a wound without reporting it was death.
Sybil wasn’t a surgeon. Her husband was. But even if she could convince him to take the case, how could the wounded man access the clinic? The roads were always guarded by Japanese sentries, and especially so after a clash with the Chinese guerrillas.
Transportation, Moru said, would not be a problem. But would Dr. Kathigasu perform the operation?
Sybil wasn’t sure. But she would ask him. She drove to Ipoh and told her husband he was needed in Papan the following evening.
“Very well, ’Bil,” Dr. Kathigasu said to his wife. “What sort of case is it?”
“Bullet wounds, received in a battle with the Japs.”
“What about the risk, ’Bil?” he asked, clearly shocked. “You know I’m thinking about the children.”
Sybil explained precautions that would be taken: the guerrillas would bring the man after dark, when the local sentries had left the area. The men would enter through the back door, an entrance hidden by high garden walls. Then they would make their presence known by three quiet taps on the door.
Dr. Kathigasu agreed to take the case. On the following evening, about 8:00 pm, quiet knocks were heard at the back door. Two armed Chinese men carried a very sick man inside. One of the men stayed with the patient while the other kept watch outside.
Removing the bullets was difficult and time-consuming—Sybil helped her husband locate the bullet amid the man’s shattered ankle bone fragments—but the operation was a success. The guerrilla recovered at the foot of the mountains in a hut and was taken to the clinic every day for treatment. His companions told curious neighbors that he was from a distant farm and had been suffering from a fever.
After that, a steady stream of seriously wounded guerrillas was brought to the clinic. The local police in Papan were clearly on Sybil’s side: they would often appear near her house at 7:00 pm, behaving as if they were seriously patrolling the area, but they always left long before 8:00 pm, when the wounded guerrillas would arrive.
Sybil tried to keep the knowledge of what they were doing from Dawn. And since her little daughter was usually in bed when the guerrillas arrived, it wasn’t a problem. But then one evening, a horrified Sybil found Dawn in the back room, sitting on the lap of a guerrilla and playing with his empty revolver and bullets.
“What are these for, Mummy?” she asked innocently.
Sybil felt compelled to tell her daughter what was going on. “All those men who come here are soldiers who are sick and need medicine. They are fighting to save us from the Japs…. Nobody must know they are here. If somebody sees them come here, he might tell the Japs and these soldiers will be shot.
“If you love me, you must promise never to say a word about what you have seen here. These men are fighting for us. Whatever happens, we must never let them be killed.”
“I will never tell anybody,” Dawn promised.
“That’s Mummy’s brave girl…. From now on you shall always help me and be the youngest soldier of all.”
After that night, Sybil told Dawn everything, and the young girl charmed all of the guerrillas who visited the Kathigasu home.
One day Moru gave Sybil a serious warning: the Japanese were looking for a Chinese midwife who was apparently helping the guerrillas in the Papan area.
Sybil was not concerned. If they were looking for a Chinese woman, she was safe.
Moru disagreed. “They will learn the truth sooner or later,” Moru said, “and you must not fall into their hands, Mrs. K. We ought to take precautions.”
“We cannot avoid what is to be, Moru,” Sybil answered before changing the subject.
A few days later, Sybil received a letter from guerrilla headquarters urging her to move with her family to the hills. Huts would be built for all of them in a safe area.
Sybil liked the idea, but she decided against it. For one, her elderly mother was too old to endure life in the hills. Also, if the whole family suddenly disappeared, the Japanese would know they had left to avoid Sybil’s arrest and would certainly avenge themselves on the remaining Papan villagers.
She sent her refusal to headquarters. When the offer was repeated through a messenger, Sybil urged him to not worry about her anymore but instead concern himself with preparing his men for the day when the Japanese would finally be driven out of Malaya.
The messenger was silent. He took Dawn on his knee and stroked her curls thoughtfully. Then he said, “We are alive one day but may be dead the next.”
“Yes,” Sybil replied, “but if we die to win the freedom that others may enjoy, there is comfort in that.”
A few days later, she was arrested.
The news spread quickly. A large crowd of concerned neighbors gathered around the Kathigasu home, where Sybil had been allowed to get ready before being escorted to police headquarters. Some of the neighbors who had come to say good-bye were Sybil’s patients. She gave them extra medicine and instructions.
Moru approached her with an urgent message: the leader of the guerrillas was ready to ambush the police who were on their way to take Sybil away.
She was touched but again refused.
Just before 8:00 pm, two local constables came to arrest Sybil, apologizing profusely. They took her to Papan’s police headquarters. An hour and a half later, 10 heavily armed and clearly nervous men arrived at the station to escort her to prison.
She was eventually taken to the Kempeitai headquarters just outside Ipoh, where the head of the area’s Kempeitai, Sergeant Eko Yoshimura, interrogated her daily. He knew she’d had a radio, but his main concern was the whereabouts of the guerrillas. When her answers didn’t satisfy him, he beat her viciously. She endured the beatings. She did not betray the guerrillas.
But Sergeant Yoshimura was determined to break her. One day he brought her outside and tied her to a pillar. Then he ordered an officer to fetch Dawn.
Sybil was frantic. “Officer, please leave Dawn out of this.”
“You love your child, don’t you?” he asked. “You can prove your love when she arrives.”
When Dawn came, some officers tied her hands behind her back and a rope around her chest. They threatened to kill Dawn in front of Sybil.
“Speak!” Yoshimura shrieked. “Tell us all about the guerillas or we’ll burn your daughter before your eyes. Speak! Speak! Speak!” He cracked Sybil over the head with his cane.
“Don’t tell, Mummy,” cried Dawn. “I love you and we’ll die together.”
“Is this the bravery of Dai Nippon [“the great Japanese”],” Sybil screamed, “to torture and kill a little child? I always thought the Japanese were cowards; now I know that it is true.”
She was rewarded for her outburst with severe blows to her head. But she barely felt them because she was terrified for Dawn and desperately praying for a miracle.
Suddenly, all the Japanese stood at attention. An officer approached, obviously someone of senior rank. He gave a few short, sharp commands. One of the men freed Dawn, and someone untied Sybil. She rushed to embrace her child.
Then she waved her hand in the air and shouted, “Long live Malaya and the British!” She turned to Yoshimura: “You’ll pay for your crimes when Malaya is British again.”
Yoshimura rushed at Sybil, knocked her down, and kicked her face, again and again, fracturing her jaw.
Dawn was released. Sybil was not. Her interrogations and beatings continued. During one of these sessions, Yoshimura suddenly picked up a heavy wooden bar and beat Sybil across the back with it. One of the blows landed directly on her spine. She fell to the ground and had to be dragged back to her cell. She couldn’t walk.
When her trial came, she was sentenced to life in prison.
On August 16, 1945, a British plane dropped some leaflets in the prison courtyard. They read, “The Japanese capitulated on the 15th August, 1945. Until the arrival of the British military authorities, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army will take charge.”
After the war, Sybil was flown to England, where she received free medical treatment, including 30 operations, designed to heal the damage caused by Yoshimura’s beatings. During this time, she wrote her memoirs and was awarded with the George Medal for courage.
Yoshimura was brought to trial for war crimes on February 10, 1946; Sybil was not the only Malayan civilian he had tortured. In England and too ill to attend the trial, she provided pages of written testimony. Yoshimura was sentenced to death and executed on May 24, 1946.
Although Sybil eventually regained her ability to walk, one day her jaw fracture became infected, quickly leading to septicemia, a fatal blood poisoning.
She died on June 12, 1948.
In 2010, a television miniseries based on her life—Apa Dosaku: The Sybil Kathigasu Story—was broadcast in her home country.
No Dram of Mercy by Sybil Kathigasu (Oxford University Press, 1954, 1983).
Faces of Courage: A Revealing Historical Appreciation of Colonial Malaya’s Legendary Kathigasu Family by Sybil Kathigasu, Chin Peng, Norma Miraflor, and Ian Ward (Media Masters, 2006).
