A Different Sky (33 page)

Then, picking up his pen he began to show Raj how to form each stroke of the intricate Japanese script, amused at his pupil's first inelegant efforts. ‘Soon you will be an expert, and will help me live up to my name, Shinozaki.
Shino
means China,
zaki
means cape, as in Cape of Good Hope, and my first name,
Mamoru
means protector: Chinese Cape of Protection. It is quite a responsibility to have such a name in these difficult times.' Shinozaki gave a wry smile, watching Raj laboriously forming each Japanese character with his pen, and continued.

‘Last night I worked until one in the morning preparing passes, and they are already all gone. Look, it is not so difficult to copy my Japanese characters. You write, I write, and then I will stamp my seal on them all.' Shinozaki pushed a pile of paper across the desk to Raj. For the rest of the day this work absorbed them both.

When Raj reached Defence Headquarters the following morning for his second day of work, he found Shinozaki waiting impatiently for him. ‘We have our first important job. Bishop Devels says Catholic people are in danger in the Geylang, Katong and Upper Thomson Road areas because soldiers there are acting roughly. He wants his people, especially the children, bussed into town to the convents for safety.'

Raj was busy all morning arranging for school buses to bring children to the Bras Basah area, into the safety of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. He wore his Defence Headquarters armband like Shinozaki and kept out of the way of soldiers. Later, he went with Shinozaki to meet Bishop Devels. They had to leave the car some distance away as the road was being cleared of bomb rubble. As they walked from Queen Street towards the convent where Bishop Devels waited, they passed a row of small terraced houses from which came shouting and screaming. Two soldiers appeared in a doorway with several young Chinese men, and marched them down the steps with bayonets at their back. A woman ran after them, pleading with the soldiers. Shinozaki stopped and stiffened as he stared at the scene, Raj standing anxiously beside him. Then, abruptly, he hurried
towards the woman. Seeing Shinozaki, she gave a desperate cry and ran over to him.

‘Mr Shinozaki, help them,' she implored, pulling on the diplomat's arm. Shinozaki at once sprinted after the soldiers, shouting to them in Japanese. The men came to a halt and turned their bayonets on the diplomat, who pointed repeatedly to his Defence Headquarters armband as he spoke. Finally, with a show of ill grace, the soldiers released their prisoners and walked angrily away. Raj watched as the woman and her brothers bowed repeated thanks to Shinozaki before returning home.

‘That woman used to work in the Japanese Embassy,' Shinozaki explained when he returned to Raj, still breathless from the altercation.

‘Why were the men being taken away, had they done something wrong?' Raj asked as they continued on to the convent, unsure of what he had just witnessed.

‘They're rounding up all Chinese men between the ages of fifteen and fifty for screening; everyone must gather at one of the concentration points. They are not going about this in the right way,' Shinozaki admitted, lips pursed disapprovingly beneath his small moustache.

‘This is all Lieutenant-Colonel Tsuji's doing; he is in charge of planning and action,' Shinozaki confided. ‘They want to search out all anti-Japanese elements, people who supported the China Relief Fund and young men who joined the Chinese volunteer forces to fight against us Japanese; it's a clean-up operation. They are also looking for communists and other undesirable people who will undermine the new Singapore. All this is being done for the people's own good, but who will understand this?' Shinozaki worried as they walked along.

The strangest thing of all since the Japanese arrived was the unexpected silence: no aircraft or bombs. Cicadas rattled in the garden and there was no need to wonder now if the sound was the distant trail of a shell. Instead, there was fear of a different kind. Mei Lan had been forbidden by Lim Hock An and Second Grandmother to continue working at the General Hospital. Japanese soldiers had brusquely entered another hospital, the Alexander Hospital, and because it was a British military hospital they had massacred patients, doctors and nurses in a vicious bloodbath.

Although not subjected to this form of aggression, the General Hospital was in chaos after the staff were ordered to remove every patient within twenty-four hours to free the facilities for wounded Japanese troops. Soldiers with bayonets at the ready stood everywhere.

‘The General Hospital is not a military hospital so they've spared everyone here, but we've orders to get out. Over a thousand patients are being discharged. Those who are too ill to go are being sent to Woodbridge Mental Asylum, which is being cleared of its patients to make way for us. I will be going there with them,' Cynthia explained to Mei Lan as they worked in the Admissions Room. In the hospital people were running here and there as convoys of ambulances were loaded with the sick, ready for transfer to Woodbridge.

‘Why are you staying on?' Mei Lan asked, fear rushing through her. Already, British doctors and nurses, some with stethoscopes still about their necks, were being loaded at bayonet point into open trucks to be taken for internment to Changi Prison.

‘I'm a local nurse; I'm not in immediate danger. Besides, it's my job, I don't have a choice. Patients need me. Your position is different and you must do as your grandfather says,' Cynthia insisted, calm as always, showing no hesitation.

It was time for Mei Lan to go home, Cynthia thought. Whatever lay ahead would take a toughness of nerves she felt Mei Lan did not have. As a volunteer, Mei Lan had worked diligently but she came from a background of privilege and was clearly unused to the menial demands of nursing; at home Cynthia knew Mei Lan's old
amah
still fetched and carried and slept on the floor by the side of her bed. The jobs she had been required to do – the dressing of wounds – the handling of dishes of vomit or effluvium, the washing of sour perspiring bodies, picking maggots from wounds, were things that nothing in her life could have prepared her for. Yet, Cynthia observed, Mei Lan had persevered, overcome her repugnance for these tasks, and could be relied on in most situations. Cynthia called upon her often and there was an easy relationship between them now, although Howard was rarely mentioned in more than passing reference.

‘Go quickly now, and take care of yourself.' Cynthia gave Mei Lan a small push.

For the first time Mei Lan was relieved to do as she was told, and gratefully fled the turmoil of the hospital. The sight of rough, squat
Japanese soldiers shouting orders and waving bayonets filled her with terror. As she drove herself home in her own small car, avoiding the usual potholes and shell craters, corpses and fallen cables, she found there were now Japanese staff cars, horns blaring, to be avoided as they roared about the city. At a roadblock a Japanese sentry came forward and peered at her through the car window. She met his eyes and held her breath but eventually, with a lewd smile and incomprehensible remark, he waved her on. As Bougainvillaea House came into view she found herself limp with relief.

‘Stay inside!' Lim Hock An yelled when he saw her, knowing this time she would not disobey.

Only Ah Siew or the houseboys went out each day trying to find a piece of fish or some vegetables for them. JJ had returned to Bougainvillaea House after the surrender, limping back covered in mud and blood, but alive. Now he was lying sick and weak in bed after the terrifying experience of combat. Against all inclination, pressured by his grandfather, he had finally joined Dalforce, Tan Kah Kee's group of last-minute volunteers from the Chinese community. In terrible conditions and with little ammunition, they had fought bravely at the front line taking heavy losses. From his recruitment into Dalforce to the decimation and disbanding of the desperate group had taken all of eight tumultuous days. JJ was full of anger.

‘It was madness to send us there. We were without proper guns and not trained to fight; we had only a few days of drilling.' His once carefully combed and pomaded hair was now cropped close to his head, giving him the look of a plucked chicken.

‘I suppose it will be something to talk about over a drink at the club when things are back to normal again,' JJ decided as he began to rally.

Lim Hock An's old friend Tan Kah Kee, initiator of Dalforce and JJ's grim experience, driving force behind Japanese boycotts and the China Relief Fund, had hurriedly left Singapore before the surrender. Before leaving he had advised Lim Hock An to accompany him. ‘We will be wanted men because of our opposition to the Japanese. Come with me to Indonesia, or go somewhere else; go anywhere. Whatever you do, get out of here,' Tan Kah Kee had urged.

‘What will they do with an ancient like me?' Lim Hock An argued apathetically; he could not imagine he would be seen as a threat.

‘You have China Relief Fund documents. Better burn them,' Tan ordered before he fled to Sumatra.

This much Lim Hock An thought pertinent to do. Smoke rose from a tin drum in the garden all one afternoon, black ash collecting on the windowsills of Bougainvillaea House. Even as he watched the documents burn, Lim Hock An worried not about himself, but about his jade and opium, hobbling anxiously about their burial ground, kicking extra leaves over the roots of the replanted bougainvillaea bushes.

T
HE 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.