Nowadays, the commander is confronted with too much information, rather than too little, and it is his informed judgment which ultimately decides what is relevant and important.
Hugh Farringdon
The fortnight delay imposed by General MacArthur between 15 August and 2 September gave some Japanese occupation authorities time to destroy incriminating war crimes evidence, which included murdering potential witnesses among prisoners. For some prisoners of war and civilian detainees spread across South East Asia, many in poor health, the delay proved lethal. Two Intelligence Corps died of disease during this period.
By September 1944, Major Guy Turrall had left the Chindits and, joining SOE Force 136, had twice parachuted into Burma. On his second mission in mid-April 1945, his attack on the Kempei Tei HQ at Kyaukkyi accounted for forty-one Japanese and then he arranged for artillery shelling and air strikes that caused more than 900 casualties. On 16 August, he attempted to convince elements of a unit of the 55th Division to surrender; however, it was unaware that Japan had capitulated and he was beaten as a spy and shot at as he tried to escape. Reports of his capture led to consternation at HQ Twelfth Army and South-East Asia Command, both trying to ensure controlled surrenders, until a Japanese staff officer informed the capturing unit that the war was over and then made arrangements for the Kempei Tei to release Turrall near where he had been captured. Interestingly, he had undertaken a similar venture when the Armistice was declared on the Western Front in 1918.
Of the 214 Intelligence Corps killed on active service before Victory Over Japan Day, sixty-eight died in Great Britain. Nine died as prisoners of war in Germany and Austria, with six executed or dying of maltreatment. Twenty-one died as prisoners of Japan with four lost at sea in ships sunk by US submarines. They were among thousands of prisoners being transported to Japan to work in mills, foundries and coal and zinc mines jammed into the locked holds of ships that were ovens in the heat and fridges in winter and lacked adequate food, water and medical supplies. None of the ships were marked with Red Crosses. Lance Corporal William Shaw of 15 FSS had survived the Burma Railway. Of the survivors, Lance Corporal J.D. Smith published an account of his experiences in And All the Trumpets (1968). Of several liberated from Batu Lintang prison camp in Borneo by Australian troops, the South African author, Lieutenant Colonel Laurens van der Post, had maintained morale by organizing a ‘camp university’, with courses ranging from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and had managed a farm that supplemented nutritional needs. When depressed, he once wrote, ‘It is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity.’ He wrote about his experiences in A Bar of Shadow (1954), The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). The film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1982) is based on his experiences. Lance Corporal William Lambert, 78 FSS and a former Palestine Police officer, died in hospital five days after the Japanese capitulation. Known as ‘Palestine Billy’ and the wearer of a rampant Victorian moustache, he was a notable scrounger who disappeared from the camp at night and returned before dawn with a chicken or eggs. He was placed in charge of the prisoners’ most valuable possession – the illicit radio known as the ‘Old Lady’.
Several Intelligence Corps appointed as camp interpreters were often the first to face Japanese displeasure. After Oxford University, William Drower was appointed the English secretary to the Japanese Ambassador in London. Commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1940, his knowledge of Japanese led him to being transferred to the Intelligence Corps and, in June 1941, he arrived at GHQ Malaya and lectured on interrogation. After Singapore surrendered, Drower interpreted for the Australian 2/19 Battalion which was repairing bomb damage and building airstrips in Burma. Its Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Anderson, had won the Victoria Cross during the fighting in Malaya and was the chief staff officer in A Force – the first contingent of prisoners held in Changi Jail to accept a Japanese offer to move to a new location on the promise of abundant food and a healthy climate. It was the Burma Railway. Drower and Anderson agreed that dialogue was more effective than resistance. At the beginning of 1945, the Japanese discovered clandestine links between the prisoners and the outside world and confined the officers to a compound at Kanchanaburi prison camp. When an officer refused an order by a Japanese private to fill his water bucket, Drower mediated with the camp commander, Captain Noguchi, but was beaten and thrown into an underground trench partially filled with water. Denied food and water for three days, racked by fever and aware that he might involuntarily betray the identities of the officers involved in the clandestine activities, Drower struggled to retain consciousness. After Noguchi relented by allowing him two daily rice balls, the camp adjutant transferred Drower to a cell where his fellow prisoners supplied him with vitamins secretly mixed in his food. After eighty days of savage incarceration, Drower was released delirious and in a piteous state. Appointed MBE for his services as a prisoner he became a career diplomat, and later attributed his survival to an extended and liberal education. Captain Noguchi was hanged for war crimes.
In keeping with the principles of the Atlantic Charter outlined in the 1942 Declaration by the United Nations, the Allies generally agreed that at the end of hostilities, civilian governments were to be returned to colonial administrations as soon as authorities were in a position to maintain services, pending the restoration of self-government, and there were to be no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people. However, several nationalist movements and communist groups took the opportunity to bid for power before the administrators returned. In South-East Asia, an emerging factor was Indian soldiers returning from leave being subverted by Indian nationalism.
The Malay Communist Party had been formed in 1930; however, its politics saw it being outlawed by the colonial authorities. Like most communist movements, it was well organized and formed the bulk of resistance after Singapore surrendered and, during the occupation, sheltered evaders, hosted Force 136 and other intelligence organizations’ operations, and was the most effective organization in resisting the Japanese. During the fortnight delay, its leader, Chin Peng, briefly seized power and amassed a sizeable quantity of Japanese arms, ammunition and war stores. The coup d’etat collapsed when plans to land Fourteenth Army on the west coast of Malaya in Operation Zipper changed to one of liberation, with landings in Singapore and Malaya. 753 to 760 FSS were trained specifically for the invasion. As the Field Security prepared their plans, they were issued with Arrests Lists of wanted Japanese and collaborators.
Grouped under the command of Captain Reginald Isaac MC, 566 (HQ XV Corps) and 565 (14 Indian Division) FSS landed in Singapore on 3 September and had the unpalatable task of advising Allied prisoners in Changi Prison and elsewhere that they would not be released immediately in case they were tempted to seek revenge on their captors. On the same day, 358 FSS (which was formed at Wentworth in September 1944 and had been at Trincomalee in Ceylon on Travel Control Security and 589 (IV Corps) FSS landed at Georgetown, Penang, from the cruiser HMS Nigeria, and requisitioned a headmaster’s house before moving into the former American Consulate. Arresting Kempei Tei, collaborators and others on their lists, they seized Japanese police and security records. Meanwhile, several politicians and businessmen on their White Lists were asked to form a civil administration. Eventually, 589 FSS assumed responsibility for Penang Island and Wellesley Province and provided detachments at Butterworth and Balik Pulau. In one unfortunate incident, an NCO driving a jeep containing a wanted Australian deserter and two cabaret girls was involved in an accident in which both girls were killed.
Morib Beach near Port Dickson, south of Kuala Lumpur, was the scene of several landings. Of the three Field Security sections that landed with the 25th Indian Division on 9 September, 581 FSS lost most of its transport engulfed by the sea. Nevertheless, the section found two 1-ton trucks and rejoined the Divisional Headquarters at Kluang before moving to Kuala Lumpur, where CSM David Devitt requisitioned a school by chalking the words ‘Reserved for FSS’ on the doors, much to the annoyance of several Staff officers seemingly unable to exert their authority on the upstart section. A few days later the section accompanied Divisional Headquarters north to Taiping, where the HQ Japanese Twenty-Ninth Army had been located. Aided by Force 136, the section arrested several individuals, collected political intelligence, provided security coverage for visiting VIPs, and searched for mass burials and the graves of Allied servicemen executed by the Japanese. Several labourers working in the docks were denounced as Kempei Tei. A ‘turned’ spy, Mamoru Shinozaki, helped during interrogations. Instructed to crack down on the Malayan Communist Party harassing the local population and liaising with the survivors of the British Malayan Police Force, an important contact was a senior police officer who had been running sources within the Party before Singapore surrendered. Also set up with Divisional Headquarters was 606 FSS. Its CSM John Davison helped investigate war crimes committed by Kempei Tei Captain Watanabe, who had been implicated in several atrocities. One incident included torturing the wife of a doctor who had treated Force 136 and guerrillas by roasting their child over a fire. He was executed with the same rope that he was instructed to wash. Meanwhile, 571 FSS concentrated on screening captured members of the Indian National Army and women of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, either for repatriation or to send to the Forward Interrogation Unit at Bidadari prison camp for further investigation. Sergeant Oliver Seymour recalled that the women were more frightening than the men. During the visit of Pandit Nehru to visit Congress members in Singapore, Seymour and another NCO acted as his bodyguards.
In early October, 358 FSS drove to Sungei Patani in the northern state of Kedah on the border with Thailand, where its detachments conducted military security activities and monitored race relations and the economically important price of rice. The FSO, Captain McLean (Intelligence Corps (India)) supervised the exhumation of 100 Chinese summarily executed by the Japanese in March 1942 near Sungei Patani and attended their formal burial on 4 December. In February 1946, the section joined 74th Indian Division and remained in the border region until briefly despatched to Indonesia in 1946. On its return, it was one of seven sections deployed to Burma. Until 1946, 592 (Lines of Communications) FSS was located at Shwebo at the head of the Burma Road into China. Five members made an official visit to China, probably to liaise with Chiang Kai Shek’s nationalist forces. After incidents of sabotage, 591 (Lines of Communications) FSS was attached to the US Army Operating Battalion and provided security for the Bengal to Ledo railway. In March 1947, 358 FSS deployed to Mandalay and absorbed 760 FSS and three Burma Intelligence Corps NCOs of an Anglo-Burmese sergeant and two Karen corporals, who were regarded by Sergeant Seymour to be indispensable language assets. Important roles were to monitor communist guerrillas based in China and encourage good relations with the pro-British Karen, Chin and Kachin hill clans, who had given unstinting support to Fourteenth Army. A rubber plantation employee provided credible human intelligence to the extent that the communists placed bounties on the section, but the NCOs were unimpressed by the measly amount offered. The Rangoon detachment investigated the nationalist Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League and its militant Peoples’ Voluntary Organisation led by General Aung San, the founder of the Burmese Communist Party and initially regarded as a collaborator but who was now regarded as a political leader able to govern Burma. Also, 760 FSS collected political intelligence on the effect that the prospect of Indian independence would have on Burma. Meanwhile, 568 (7th Indian Division) FSS flew to Bangkok and was heavily involved in debriefing prisoners of war who had worked on the Burma Railway until it was relieved by 357 FSS in August 1946.
Both 355 (Ceylon) and 759 FSS landed on 10 September and drove north to Kuala Lumpur, where they requisitioned 9, Swettenham Road. There is a suggestion that 355 FSS contacted the Force 136 group led by Major Freddie Spencer Chapman. Chapman (Seaforth Highlanders) had been a key figure in Malayan resistance to the Japanese. Captain D.J. Coupland (Intelligence Corps (India), the 759 FSO, was one of nine officers invited to witness Japanese officers surrendering their swords on the Victoria Institution and Kuala Lumpur airfield. The section discovered a Kempei Tei training camp in jungle outside Kuala Lumpur and arrested several Japanese. On 22 September, 756 FSS landed at Port Swettenham. Its FSO, Captain E.H.R. Evans, also attended the surrenders. Its war crimes investigatory work saw it deployed east to Kota Bahru and, within six months, it was deep inside Thailand at Hadyai collecting political intelligence at considerable risk because it was isolated from support.
In November 1945, HQ Field Security Selangor was formed to administer the detachments in Malaya and Penang. It concentrated on war crime investigation until mid-1946 when it changed to targeting the rising red tide of communism and detected armed Malayan Communist Party cells in Johore. Even when 1 FSS unearthed credible evidence of guerrilla caches and training of young villagers near Muar, the colonial authorities failed to take the threat seriously. The Singapore sections were eventually grouped into the Singapore Security Bureau (SSB) under command of Reginald Isaacs, now promoted to major, and covered Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Malayan affairs and the investigation of war crimes.
Captain James Navin had the unusual task of defending Japanese suspected of war crimes. Transferring from RAF Volunteer Reserve aircrew to the Army in 1944, he was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps and learnt Japanese in Karachi before being sent to Singapore, where his first task was to decipher jottings made by a captured colonel in his field diary. The colonel was happy to help until it dawned on him that the contents could lead to his conviction. Navin then joined the War Crimes Investigation Team and, compiling files on Japanese prisoners held in Changi, highlighted those who admitted to war crimes and those who were believed to have been involved. Soon after the War Crimes Court was established in Kuala Lumpur, Navin was appointed a Defence Advisory Officer to assist Japanese lawyers in an early statement to convince the defence that the Allies wished to give defendants fair trials. This meant gathering statements and issuing sub poenas to witnesses summoned from throughout Malaya. The acquittal of the Governor of Kuala Lumpur Prison proved Allied intent. Although at least 600 Allied prisoners had died, witnesses stated that he had done his best and documents indicated that he had gone to extraordinary lengths to feed the prisoners at a time when starvation was rife among the civilian population. In the trial of two Kempei Tei for the murder of twenty civilians in a jungle clearing, Navin was unable to convince the captain to breach his military code and he was executed, even though the evidence proved his sergeant major was directly responsible; he was jailed. When it was proven that a Kempei Tei officer accused of water torture had actually released suspects, such was his perceived notoriety that there was a near riot when he was given eight years and not the death penalty.
In September 94, 357 and 604 (20th Indian Division) FSS flew to Saigon with the 20th Indian Division, as the advance guard of the Allied Control Commission, to manage the surrender of 70,000 Japanese and the repatriation of Allied prisoners and internees, mostly French, held in French Indo China (now Vietnam). But Major General Douglas Gracey was instructed to ignore the communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh, who had been supplied by the Americans and had fought the Japanese. Tension in Saigon had escalated when 1,700 former French prisoners of war rampaged through the city but when the local population, who had welcomed the liberators, realized that French administration was to be re-established, extremists attacked the British. With bad weather delaying flying in the whole Division, Gracey mobilized and armed Japanese troops awaiting repatriation and placed them under command of Allied officers until the seaborne force landed. Captain Frost, who had taken over 604 FSS from Captain Ogden, recalled driving around Saigon in his jeep with armed Japanese troops providing close protection. His section was supporting 80 Indian Brigade. His Annamite Detachment Section in the mountains on the border with Laos lost an experienced investigator when Sergeant Jock Watt was assassinated on 11 November 1945, on the fourth attempt. The nationalists had proclaimed Watts to be ‘Public Enemy No 1’. His killer committed suicide in his cell. Watt’s obituary appeared in The Times of Saigon of 4 December. After five months, 604 FSS left Saigon with 80 Brigade by troopship.
After landing in Madagascar in 1942, 29 (Combined Operations) FSS moved with 29 Brigade to India and established an intelligence office at Combined Operations Force Headquarters. Several NCOs underwent Japanese language training and then, in February 1945, it joined 36th Division in Burma as the Divisional Field Security section and deployed detachments with 26, 29 and 72 Brigades. On one occasion, Sergeant Halfhide and another NCO were given the apparently suicidal job of escorting about 100 Burmese, trapped behind the Japanese lines, to safety. Filled with NCOs fluent in Japanese, including WO2 Lionel Brazier and Sergeant Dick Rolfe, who had both lived in Japan before the war, in September the section reformed in Karachi as 29 FSS and joined 551 (Chittagong Port), 583 (Calcutta Aiport) FSS and 36 (Australian) FSS in the British/Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan in April 1946. Responsible for counter-intelligence, war crimes investigation and military security in the Kure prefecture, some NCO linguists were detached to the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre. While 551 and 583 FSS remained on the mainland, 29 FSS moved to Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku and then, in mid-1947, absorbed NCOs from the disbanded 551 and 583 FSS. On being disbanded later in the year, it left Field Security representation in Japan to the Australians.
After the liberation of Hong Kong by Admiral Harcourt’s naval task force, a ten-man FSS, commanded by Captain A.E. Southwaite landed with 3 Commando Brigade on 30 August 1945. Initially, it had difficulty finding appropriate accommodation until it requisitioned a house on Argyle Street on the northern outskirts of Kowloon. Its main role was to screen about 2,000 of the 750,000 returning refugees per day, debrief prisoners of war and arrest war criminals. In early 1947, the section moved to Whitfield Barracks on Nathan Road, Kowloon, where it remained for twenty years. At the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, 40th Division was formed in Hong Kong as a deterrent against Chinese designs of seizing the colony.
If there was one country where European prisoners of war and expatriate civilian internees awaiting liberation faced significant hostility, it was in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Two days after the Japanese capitulation, two nationalists, Ahmed Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, supported by Japanese officers who had been preaching independence during their occupation, proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia with the intention of ejecting the Dutch colonial authorities. On 2 September, Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, as Supreme Commander, South-East Asia Command, issued orders to Headquarters Eleventh Army Group:
You are instructed to proceed with all speed to the island of Java in the East Indies to accept the surrender of Japanese Imperial Forces on that island, and to release Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees. As you are no doubt aware the local natives have declared a Republic, but we are bound to maintain the status quo that existed before the Japanese invasion. I wish you God speed and a successful campaign.
Six days later, a Force 136 team that parachuted near to Batavia (Jakarta) on Java reported that nationalists supplied with weapons by the Japanese were determined that there should be no interference from the Dutch colonial authorities and were controlling the administration. However, Japanese units were assembled in concentration areas awaiting orders. In the midst of the chaos were 68,000 thousand Allied prisoners of war and 200,000 internees, many of them Dutch, at the mercy of vengeful extremists; several thousand would be murdered. News was limited because correspondents in East Java were being confined to the Oranje Hotel in the port of Surabaya.
In mid-September 610 FSS had landed with the 26th Indian Division at Padang in Sumatra and, basing themselves in the former Dutch barracks, found that the Indonesian administration tolerated the British but not the Dutch. Nevertheless, fresh rations drawn from the hill station known as ‘Fort de Kok’ had to be protected by the Punjab Regiment or re-armed Japanese soldiers from ambushes. A useful source proved to be the small Netherlands East Indies Field Intelligence Service, which had been formed by former Dutch internees to maintain internal security. When the Japanese formally surrendered in front of the town hall, Sergeant Bob Spiers successfully applied for a Japanese officer’s sword. In 1946, 596 (Lines of Communications, Karachi) FSS absorbed 610 FSS, which had been weakened by demobilization and postings to 356 FSS in Singapore, and became the Divisional FS section. It also administered Intelligence Corps in Sumatra listed for demobilization, which included a sergeant who had served with Force 136 and who turned up unannounced, having travelled across the island on his own.
Meanwhile, 625 FSS landed at Medan and was involved in tracing British agents who had disappeared in occupied Sumatra. Several Kempei Tei were less than forthcoming. They also traced British weapons and ammunition captured by the Japanese in 1942, in one instance, a consignment dumped at sea from an Indonesian boat by the Japanese and recovered next night by local divers. It also sought out former British prisoners of war and detainees to ‘gather as much intelligence of a military or general nature as you can’ on Indonesian political aspirations. In November, 556 (Karachi) FSS, formerly a port security section, landed at Palembang as part of XV Corps reinforcements. One of its NCOs was a Burmese-speaking Chinese lance corporal who, in 1943, had interviewed a large number of Chinese businessmen and students permitted to leave Germany and collected a substantial amount of information on the effects of Allied bombing, the economic situation and on documents used.
Simmering tension on Java exploded on 7 October when the Netherlands East Indies Government rejected political reconciliation and XV Corps was despatched from Malaya to restore order and repatriate military and civilian prisoners and the Japanese.
The 23rd Indian Division landed on Java with its 605 FSS and several sections in late October. The 622 FSS diary reveals that the section had an ‘exciting time’ when it was attached to the ad hoc Buitenzog Brigade on the tactically important road between Batavia and Bandung. Accompanying 49 Independent Infantry Brigade, which was commanded by Brigadier George Mallaby, was 611 FSS, whose FSO was Captain H. Shaw (Queens), a Short Service Commission officer with little FS experience. Arriving off Surabaya on 25 October, the next day Brigadier Mallaby sent CSM Noel Lunn and three sergeants ashore to collect information but, as they walked toward the city noting plenty of evidence of anti-Dutch sentiment, they were bundled into a car by several Indonesians. Although they explained that they were part of a British force ordered to accept Japanese surrenders, repatriate prisoners of war and internees and restore order, they were confined to two bungalows.
Later in the day, Mallaby met with Indonesian mediators to discuss Mountbatten’s orders but HQ 23rd Division, with its experience of the fighting in Burma, disapproved of his conciliatory approach and instructed him to occupy the city and repatriate prisoners and detainees. Next day, tension escalated when the RAF dropped leaflets advising armed Indonesians to surrender their weapons within forty-eight hours, or risk being shot. Although Mallaby explained to the mediators that he had no alternative but obey orders, tension escalated after rumours circulated that a negotiator had been murdered by the British. The extremist Black Buffaloes incited armed response and several representatives of the Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees organization were arrested on fictitious espionage charges and some murdered. In severe clashes, 49 Infantry Brigade lost eleven officers and forty-four Indians killed over the next four days, some massacred when their positions were overrun from want of ammunition and others killed when convoys of released internees were ambushed and drivers and escorts massacred. Ambulances were not spared. Several 611 FSS were based at the Hotel Oranje and, as the fighting escalated, Sergeant John Thompson and two other FS sergeants and a young soldier decided to return to Brigade HQ in a requisitioned Studebaker but they drove into the ambush of an Army jeep at a bridge. Taking cover in an alley, they were captured by an Indonesian policeman who escorted them through a mob to a police station where they were relieved of their Stens and only revolver and spent the night in cells, the second group of Intelligence Corps to be captured by Indonesian extremists. Next day, they were taken to a large house where the abiding memory of Thompson was of the wonderful coffee.
A ceasefire was agreed on 30 October; however, the mediators had lost control and when rumours circulated that the British had surrendered, there was more unrest, particularly around the International Bank Building, which was being used as a company base by 6/5th Mahratta Light Infantry. Mallaby sent his Brigade Major to the area but he, another officer and their driver were murdered. Unaware of their fate and rejecting the advice of his Deputy Brigade Commander, a veteran of the fighting in Burma, not to go, Mallaby arrived by car at the Bank accompanied by two Brigade liaison officers, Captain Shaw, who was familiar with the area, and several Indonesian mediators to explain the conditions of the ceasefire. But the crowd, egged on by agitators, including a Japanese officer, demanded that the Mahrattas surrender and that all British units retire to the agreed safe zone at the airfield. Mallaby was about to enter the Bank to tell the Mahrattas to withdraw when the mob seized Shaw and dragged him toward the Bank. Mallaby and the two liaison officers were then disarmed and placed in his staff car. Controversy surrounds what happened next, most of it focusing on Captain Shaw apparently advising the Mahratta company commander that he was acting under orders from Mallaby that the Bank should be defended. When the Indonesians then deployed a machine gun to cover the front entrance and the Mahrattas were suspicious and opened fire, killing several people, a gunman fired into the car, killing Mallaby. One of the liaison officers threw a grenade, which he had secreted while being disarmed, and then he and his colleague dived into the River Kali canal and spent the next five hours in its brown sluggish water. Although the murder of Brigadier Mallaby encouraged the British to take a tougher line with Sukarno, it seems that the Indonesian agitators realized they had overstepped the mark and among the prisoners released during a truce were the two groups of Intelligence Corps. When the three 611 FSS returned to Brigade HQ, Captain Shaw was no longer the FSO.
By November the situation in Surabaya was so grave that Headquarters XV Corps landed to command operations. It is said that when the all-British 356 (HQ South-East Asia Command) FSS was formed at Delhi Racecourse in March 1944, racing was in progress. While accompanying Lord Mountbatten on a six-day train journey across India to Kandy in Ceylon, one night Sergeant Best doused a fire in an office caused by an electric light left on to prevent mildew spreading to Mountbatten’s uniform and regalia. In March 1945, during the advance through Burma, 356 FSS handed over its security role to 608 FSS and two months later entered Rangoon as a town section with 575 (2nd Division Lines of Communication) and 589 (HQ 202 Lines of Communication) FSS and passed under the control of the Defence Security Officer and was employed in rounding up collaborators. Sergeant Best was on duty at one of Mountbatten’s conferences when a jeep pulled up and two uniformed Burmese alighted. When Best asked for their passes, a British officer told him, ‘It’s OK, sergeant, this is Major General Aung San’. Two months before, he had been on the Field Security Black List.
Now commanded by Captain Tracy (Indian Army), 900 Port Security Section had been formed in Wentworth Woodhouse in 1944 and among its duties was marshalling Japanese troops awaiting repatriation and nightly joint harbour patrols with the Dutch Navy. Meanwhile, 5th Indian Infantry Division also landed at Surabaya, bringing 601 FSS. Formed on 3 October 1945 in Madras, 597 (Cocomada) FSS had been flown to Singapore by flying boat and three weeks later was sharing offices, interpreters, typists, a Dutch liaison officer and several reliable Indonesian police officers, led by Inspector Henry Sneep, a redoubtable Eurasian who spoke Dutch and Malay and had survived the occupation. He had knowledge of the Japanese-trained Islamist Indonesian Republican Army extremists formed into a militia known as Hezbollah. During one raid, the FSO and a sergeant were wounded. In another incident, Sergeant Arden Winch was with Indian troops when they retreated with some haste after extremists commandeered a Japanese tank. Both sections used a police patrol boat crewed by Japanese sailors to search for pirates in the Straits of Madura. Sergeant Burton-Smith of 597 FSS took part in the identification of some of the victims and Sergeant Gerry Rooke and Inspector Sneep arrested two suspects. While investigating war crimes, one suspect, a Japanese admiral, committed hari kari.
In early 1946, Captain John Morton (Indian Army), the 356 FSO, learnt from an informant that Carla Wolff, the Eurasian mistress of the Japanese Captain Hiroshi Nakamura and now employed as the section clerk, had loot buried by Nakamura in her garden. On 9 March, Morton and CSM Dawson led a raid and recovered gold, jewellery and bank notes worth £9 million (in 1945) concealed in two petrol cans and a trunk. Several months later, claims by Wolff that those who had raided her house had misappropriated the treasure led to a criminal investigation that soured the relationship between Field Security and the military police Special Investigations Branch, particularly when 611 (49 Brigade) and 900 Port Security Section were also placed under house arrest, as were 605 (23rd Indian Division) and 624 (Allahadad) FSS, more because of their association with the two sections than for evidential reasons. CSM Gall of 605 FSS was acquitted after being court-martialled for refusing to attend an identity parade for two Japanese officers. He had been with the 23rd Indian Division in the savage fighting around Imphal in 1944. When the Dutch authorities agitated for information about the allegations, 356, 611 and 900 FSS were exchanged for 358 (Ceylon) and 762 FSS and 481 Port Security Section flown from Singapore. Meanwhile, Dawson had been posted to the British Control Commission in Herford, Germany. He admitted complicity to the Special Investigations Branch and, although he was nearing demobilization, the War Office rushed the legal proceedings so that he, Morton and Tracy could be court-martialled. The two officers were acquitted while Dawson was dishonourably discharged from the Army. A Special Investigations Branch major was convicted on one count of the fraudulent conversion of a currency. The scandal was covered in the Straits Times and by the time that 356 FSS returned to England, the press had picked up the story of ‘Nakamura’s Gold’, particularly in the News of the World. Meanwhile, off Java, Sergeant Fred Halliday and his interpreter had interviewed a Goanese sailor, who had appeared to be agitated during a routine check of a coaster, claiming that he knew of a Japanese officer on an island, who may be important because he had a light aircraft. Within two days Captain Nakamura was arrested by the Dutch authorities.
Following good military intelligence reports relating to numerous kidnappings of Chinese citizens during inter-communal violence in Medan on Sumatra, on 9 May 1946 five 625 FSS and two interpreters, a half-Chinese and a Sikh, both resident in Medan, were on their way to raid a house when they were ambushed and the FSO, Captain Norval Williamson (Indian Army) was wounded in the head. The party sheltered in a house but were captured. Staff Sergeant Duncan Methuen and Sergeant Boris Norman escaped but on their way to seek help from 1 South Wales Borderers were both shot and wounded. During the next six weeks of negotiating their release in exchange for Indonesian prisoners, Williamson died and the Sikh was executed. The half-Chinese survived by pretending to be a British soldier.
Fresh from French Indo-China, 80 Infantry Brigade arrived on the Celebes (now Sulawesi) with 604 FSS and took over from the Australians. Unlike the rest of the Dutch East Indies, the internal security situation was relatively calm, the greatest problem, according to Captain Frost, being the recklessness of local driving. His Indian batman had a leg amputated after a crash.
When XXXIV Corps reformed as Malaya Command in early 1946, eleven FS sections were spread throughout Malaya with four sections and 900 Port Section in Singapore, still reporting to their parent Corps and divisional HQs. At Command HQ, Major Peter Leefe was the GSO 2 (Intelligence). The closure of the Intelligence Corps (India) Depot and School in Karachi, after Indian independence in 1947, led to Malaya Command forming HQ Field Security Wing (Malaya) at 5 Princes Road in Kuala Lumpur under the command of Captain Gary O’Driscoll; however, demobilization saw Field Security reduced to:
• 355 FSS – Central and South Malaya from Kuala Lumpur with detachments in Seremban and Port Dickson.
• 1 FSS – Johore Bahru with detachments in Kluang and Muar.
• 358 FSS – North Malaya including Ipoh and Penang.
• Singapore District – 95, 356 and 566 FSS amalgamated into the Singapore Special FS Section.
No. 1 Interrogation Unit, which was subordinate to Headquarters Allied Forces, South-East Asia Command continued to investigate Japanese suspected of war crimes. Meanwhile, the Malayan Communist Party was continuing to agitate for one-party state for Malaya independence.