THE CLEAN-UP OPERATION proceeded briskly and kept Shinozaki busy in an unexpected way; people who knew him, or knew of him, sought him out as a last desperate hope after their men were taken. As and where possible, Shinozaki did what he could to help.
‘The situation is so bad I sometimes fear it might become another Nanking,’ he worried as his car sped along towards River Valley Road.
‘What happened in Nanking?’ Raj asked from where he sat in the front seat, next to the driver.
‘Many terrible things,’ Shinozaki replied, refusing to elaborate. He was sitting in the back with a Chinese nurse who had once shown him much kindness in the Japanese Hospital, during a bout of jaundice. The night before she had come to the Toyo Hotel where Shinozaki was living, to desperately plead for his help. Her father and brother had been rounded up with others at bayonet point during the clean-up operation to find anyone who was anti-Japanese, and taken by soldiers to one of the screening centres from where they had not returned.
On River Valley Road the car drew to a stop beside the large playing field of a school. The ground was open to the sun and fringed only by a few tall trees. The area was filled with a huge crowd of men of all ages, who had been forced to squat in orderly rows. Those who wore shirts drew them over their heads as shade against the roasting sun. Others leaned into the slim shadow thrown by their neighbour, enduring stoically.
Raj got out of the car with Shinozaki and walked to the edge of the field where they silently surveyed the scene. As soon as they were noticed there were cries of ‘Water, water’ from the captives. A man at the edge of the field nearest to them stood up, waving to attract Raj’s attention. He pointed to an older man collapsed beside him. ‘He is sick. Please help. We have been here two days without food or water. We cannot last much longer,’ he shouted.
Immediately, a guard with a bayonet came running up and slapped and kicked the man. Shielding himself against the attack, he crouched hurriedly down again on his haunches. The sick man too was viciously prodded, and made a weak effort to reposition himself. A stench of excrement blanketed the area. Clearly, there were no toilet facilities and, denied the freedom to move about, men were forced to relieve themselves where they squatted. Flies swarmed thickly. They buzzed about Raj, settling on his face even as he brushed them away. The nurse ran repeatedly up and down the road along the length of the ground searching for her family members, unable at first to recognise them in the large crowd of exhausted men. Eventually, she gave a cry and Shinozaki hurried to join her.
‘Father, Elder Brother,’ she shouted, pointing to where they sat. The younger man supported his father, who had wilted against him, and neither seemed to hear the nurse. She started forward, shouting frantically again, but Shinozaki put a hand on her arm to hold her back. Seeing the commotion a young kempei strode up.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded brusquely. As soon as the diplomat revealed his status the man’s tone changed, and he hurried off to call an officer. The nurse stared at the crowd of weary men, biting her lips in distress as her father and brother now waved imploringly to her. Within moments the kempei returned with his superior officer and Shinozaki bowed, polite but determined.
‘I know those men over there. This woman, their relative, is a nurse who has helped many Japanese patients and has worked in the Japanese Hospital,’ Shinozaki told the man.
The officer knew of Shinozaki and the power of his position at Defence Headquarters, and the two prisoners were soon released. They stumbled forward through the rows of exhausted men and the nurse ran towards them with a cry as they reached the edge of the ground. Once outside the roped area they fled with the woman, not looking back once at Shinozaki, much to his disappointment.
‘No thanks, you see. Although, of course, I do not do this for thanks,’ he commented to Raj, before turning back to the officer in charge.
‘Why do these men not have water or food? How long have they been here like this?’ Shinozaki asked sternly, gesturing to the thousands of cowed and silent men.
He demanded to inspect the screening area and was reluctantly taken to a queue of detainees who were being questioned at a barrier point. A row of tables had been set up here to deal with the interrogation, and several large open trucks were parked beyond the area. The soldiers showed no awe of the diplomat, yet they could not ignore his status. The Chinese lined up before the tables ranged from adolescent boys to grey-haired men, the wealthier in good cotton shirts, the poor in frayed singlet vests, all exhausted by their wait in the sun. They stepped forward apprehensively as they were called, clearly in fear for their lives. Soldiers with bayonets at the ready controlled the queue with angry shouts. At the tables the men were required to write their name in a ledger. Some then received a red stamp on their bare arm and were allowed to walk free through the barrier; others were stopped and held to one side, then loaded on to the waiting trucks. Once a truck was full it moved forward with a loud growl of grinding gears. Shinozaki observed the departure of a truck with an angry frown.
‘Why do these men not have water?’ he repeated even more sternly to another officer.
‘They may have been here since yesterday, but we have only now got orders to begin interrogation,’ the officer stiffly replied, and Shinozaki’s usually impassive face darkened.
‘You are interrogating these Chinese men in Japanese. How will they understand Japanese? And how can you know who is anti-Japanese?’ Shinozaki’s thunder was barely contained.
‘We have not got enough interpreters,’ the officer protested, looking towards the tables. Behind the military interrogators stood hooded individuals who occasionally bent to speak in the examiner’s ear. Immediately, the detainee at the table would then be herded to one side, to be held with the group waiting to board the trucks.
‘Who are the hooded people?’ Raj whispered to Shinozaki. Although he spoke in a low voice the officer overheard and looked at Raj so sharply that he fell silent in fear.
‘Few of our kempei speak a local language. Those assisting us are local people who know the anti-Japanese agitators in their communities. They are hooded to shield their identity as they may face reprisals from their own people for helping us,’ the officer coldly explained.
The methods of determining who was anti-Japanese and who was not appeared arbitrary to Raj. If a man wrote his name in English instead of Chinese he was not given a protective stamp on his arm but held to one side. If he had a tattoo he was asked if he was a member of a secret society, and also held to one side. If he looked down at the ground he was detained; if he looked his interrogator in the eye, he was equally marked.
Shinozaki, in spite of his position of power, was apprehensive himself of the kempetai, and decided to push matters no further. Bowing curtly to the officer in charge, he turned to leave, and Raj hurried behind him relieved to be free of the terrible place. As they walked back to the road, another truck filled with detainees started up its engine. The men, crowded together uncomfortably, fell against each other like skittles as the vehicle moved off.
‘Are they being taken to Changi?’ Raj asked in a low voice, feeling suddenly sick with anxiety. Shinozaki shrugged and did not answer, turning towards his waiting car, jaw clenched hard in anger.
‘What is happening here is a terrible thing, a very terrible thing,’ Shinozaki burst out as the car moved slowly off, making its way past the screening tables with their kempetai examiners and hooded helpers. For the rest of the ride to Defence Headquarters Shinozaki remained silent, and Raj hesitated to question the implications of all they had observed.
From behind a curtain Mei Lan stared out of an upstairs window at the continuous trail of men passing the house, tramping down Bukit Timah on the long walk to the concentration points where they would be screened. Posters about the registration were everywhere, but nobody knew exactly why they were being summoned and fear hung over the town. Fear gathered in Mei Lan too; she slept in a state of tension and awoke equally tense. Thoughts of Cynthia, braving whatever must be braved in a working life under the Japanese, filled her with shame for her own cowardice. It was also difficult to know if the order for Chinese men to assemble at various points in the city was as innocuous as it sounded. JJ, after his recent experiences at the front, had no desire to investigate.
‘It may be a trap,’ JJ said, and his grandfather agreed.
‘Lie low. It will pass,’ Lim Hock An advised and so JJ stayed in bed, pulling the sheets up over his head and smoking the last of his cigarettes.
The Japanese military had anticipated such tactics of defiance. The following day soldiers appeared, searching homes and dragging out reluctant men. They stopped before Bougainvillaea House and burst in through the door. JJ was pulled from his bed in his singlet and shorts without even an opportunity to put on his trousers, which were slung waiting over a chair. He grabbed them as he passed and, with a bayonet pricking his back, was thrust out of the front door and into the sun.
Lim Hock An, when he realised what was happening, came out of his room in a state of wrath to face the soldiers, and was knocked to the floor with a rifle butt. He lay winded; the gun had caught him in the stomach and he thought his ribs were broken. Bertie, who had a partial view of the commotion through a half-open door behind the protective back of his mother, began to jump up and down in excitement.
‘Want to go too. Going with JJ.’ Bertie pushed past his mother to hurry down the stairs after the soldiers.
Mei Lan opened her door when the shouting started, but was unable to discern what was happening. She thought Second Grandmother might have fallen down the stairs, but almost immediately Ah Siew was there beside her, pushing her back into the room, thrusting Mei Lan into the big wardrobe. Ah Siew’s face, glimpsed in the oval mirror as she swung the cupboard door open, dried all protest on Mei Lan’s tongue.
Within moments the bedroom door was flung open and a soldier entered, his bayonet needling the space before him. Through the keyhole inside the dark cupboard Mei Lan watched as Ah Siew looked up with a startled expression from where she squatted innocuously folding a pile of clothes. The man stared at the old woman from beneath his low-hanging brow, and gave a snort of disappointment. Soon his feet were heard padding away along the corridor.
The soldiers next entered Second Grandmother’s room, bayonets again at the ready. Second Grandmother confronted them bravely, her face pinched in terror as she balanced unsteadily on her tiny feet, supported on either side by a slave girl. For a moment the men paused to take in the unexpected sight of Second Grandmother, regal in her embroideries, diamonds flashing in her ears, jade upon her wrists. Then, stepping forward with a loud guffaw, they tore the slave girls from her, as if ripping the wings off a chicken. The girls began to scream. Second Grandmother gave a terrified wail as she tottered and fell, her ivory-topped canes clattering to the floor. Still screaming hysterically, the girls were thrust down the stairs, bayonets at their backsides. Outside, they were loaded into a waiting van that already contained several captive women.
JJ stood with a crowd of local men who had all, like himself, been ferreted out of their homes. Bertie was beside him but was jumping around in such excitement that a burly kempei punched him viciously, pushing him to the ground. The soldiers went back to the house for a further search, but found only the wizened Ah Siew and Second Grandmother, sobbing hysterically. Lim Hock An, who had been lying at the bottom of the stairs, was now on his knees, trying to find some support with which to lever himself to his feet. Thoughts ran confusedly through his mind; he knew he should do something to halt the situation, but was suddenly unsure of what exactly had happened. The soldiers clattered down the stairs and, observing the feeble old man on his knees, set about him again with the rifle butt.
The truck with its cargo of women had already moved off. The group of young men, with much prodding of bayonets, were encouraged to march in the direction of the town. JJ pulled Bertie to his feet and began to explain his brother’s infirmity, but the soldiers responded by slapping his face. Bertie, shocked to see blood spurting from his brother’s lip, took his hand in concern as, two by two, the men began the walk into town. From an upstairs window Second Grandmother leaned out as far as she dared, and began a low desperate keening.
Two days went by and there was no news to be had of Bertie or JJ. For the first time in his life, Lim Hock An felt helpless. He could not pull a string or milk a connection as he was used to doing. Tan Kah Kee was now running for his life, and every other likely friend was lying as low as Lim Hock An. Second Grandmother moaned all day on her lacquer chair, rocking with grief and anxiety. Forbidden to step outside the house, Mei Lan was confined to her room, away from the windows. She lay on the bed and stared out at the distant roof of Belvedere and could not hold back her thoughts of Howard. There was no sound now of the saxophone, and the canal had run inexplicably dry with only a trickle of water between its rough lichen-covered sides. She remembered Howard’s arms about her as she lifted the long-handled net, the grey shelly bodies of the crayfish tumbling into the lobster basket. Was he still at Belvedere, or had he been taken like JJ?
The following day Ah Siew decided to assert herself. She appeared with a pair of scissors and, in spite of Mei Lan’s protests, pushed her into a chair and proceeded to chop off her hair. Next, she produced some old clothes of her own and insisted Mei Lan step into them. The pair of worn black trousers and white top did not disguise Mei Lan’s youth or attractiveness as Ah Siew hoped, and she looked at her in despair. Besides Ah Siew there were now only two ancient houseboys left in the Lim residence, Ah Pang and Ah Fat. They had remained when other servants disappeared as the Japanese neared Singapore. Ah Siew now sought the help of these elderly men, sending them out to scout about town and glean some knowledge of what was happening. The few facts they returned with plunged Bougainvillaea House into further dejection.
At the concentration points Ah Pang and Ah Fat had seen thousands of exhausted men, but no sign of Bertie or JJ. The Japanese military were looking for anti-Japanese elements, communists and criminals, particularly those belonging to the secret societies and men who were volunteers in Dalforce. As they spoke the old men looked down at their feet, not daring to meet their master’s eyes. Two more days went by in further agonised waiting, and still neither JJ nor Bertie came home. Ah Pang and Ah Fat went out again to reconnoitre, and returned with news that all the screening centres had now been disbanded and no one remained at these places.
‘We must continue to wait. Do not give up hope,’ Lim Hock An encouraged them, although he was sunk in despair.
After a few days the military cars drew up again before Bougainvillaea House. Soldiers got out, and also an officer from the kempetai who wore a long sword, distinguishing his rank from the others. Ah Siew had seen the car arriving and again pushed Mei Lan into the wardrobe. The soldiers were not looking for women on this visit: they had documented evidence listing all senior members of the China Relief Fund, and had come to arrest Lim Hock An.
‘Where is Tan Kah Kee? Where has he fled to?’ the officer demanded, pushing old Lim Hock An into a chair and standing over him with a pistol.
‘I do not know where he is,’ Lim Hock An replied and received several slaps about the face for this impertinence.
‘You are listed as a major supporter of the China Relief Fund. You have practised subversion and insubordination to Japan. The sentence for this is death,’ the officer yelled.
Lim Hock An was given no time to protest, no time to collect even a handkerchief. He was bundled out of the house and into a waiting van and the doors were slammed shut on him. Second Grandmother, roused from her sorrowful lethargy, hobbled after her husband on her canes and began to scream at the soldiers. There was laughter at her sudden appearance and some flashing of bayonets, as if she was an animal to be baited. Second Grandmother swayed about precariously and then, finding her balance, raised one of her sticks to the officer who had arrested her husband. The man stepped forward in fury, Second Grandmother was knocked to the ground and a sword was unsheathed above her. From the van Lim Hock An pressed his face to a small barred window and began to shout and rattle the door.
The officer stared down at Second Grandmother who glared defiantly up at him, her gold teeth bared in a grimace, and gave her a sudden hard kick. She groaned and curled up into a ball, trembling and sobbing. The officer laughed, strode to his car and drove off followed by the van. From the back window of the vehicle Lim Hock An kept his eyes on Bougainvillaea House, and his wife lying in the road before it, until both were lost from sight.