Cold Blooded Murders (28 page)

Mr Francis Seow opened his case. He
addressed the Court for about three hours. His first witness was Corporal Albert
Brendan Kitchen, a Royal Air Force photographer stationed at the RAF station at
Seletar, Singapore. He testified that he took 63 photographs of Pulau Senang
during the afternoon of 13 July, and later handed the negatives to Inspector
Maurice Oh. S.V. Rajan, a police photographer, gave evidence that he took 18
photographs of various scenes on the island. Five photographs were of four male
corpses.

Before adjournment at 4:00
pm
that afternoon, the Judge asked for
the co-operation of counsel in not smoking in Court. There was a notice to that
effect. “If you start smoking I will leave the Bench,” he warned. He also
ordered that counsel must not talk to the accused in Court. Counsel would, of
course, want to discuss matters with their clients and the prison authorities
would make arrangements for them to see them at any time, either before the
Court sits or after the adjournment. When Ball began to protest, the Judge
reminded him that the trial was ‘quite a major operation’. He promised counsel
that proper arrangements would be made for them to see their clients privately,
not in Court.

Few of the accused could speak English.
Simultaneous translations had to be organised in Chinese dialects and Tamil.
The Judge asked the Court authorities to arrange for extra microphones. Counsel
on the second morning of the trial also took the opportunity to raise another
important matter. Could a short adjournment be made at 11:30
am
, ‘as some of us’, said Koh, ‘may not
have as strong a kidney as the others’.

Judge Buttrose: If you feel any
discomfort during the sitting, Mr Koh, do please stand up and let me know. I am
not going to make a 10-minute break a feature of the day. If the jurors feel
discomfort they can also let me know.

Another defence counsel sought the Court’s
permission for the accused to have paper and pencil with which to make notes.
The Judge at once agreed. Then came the question of whether the accused would
take pencil and paper back to prison. Crown Counsel said no; but did not object
to the accused taking in an exercise book with the pages numbered. But pencils
could not be taken into prison. The Judge agreed. At last, during the afternoon
of 19 November, the trial of the 59 men began in earnest when Major Peter
Lionel James was called to the witness box. He was asked about the note he
wrote in April to Dutton about work hours.

Mr Braga: The conditions on the island
were such that they were being slave-driven, driven like beasts of burden
rather than human beings? It was the injustice and unfair treatment they were
receiving that brought about this incident?

Major James: I cannot agree with you.
In my opinion there was no slave-driving. The place was run in what I consider
the most enlightened manner. In fact I would not mind saying too enlightened.

Mr Braga: It was the corruption, the
injustice, the forced labour that brought this about?

Major James: No.

Mr Francis
Seow: Major James, you visited Pulau Senang regularly.
Did
they look like slaves?

Major James: No, they were always
cheerful. Pleased to see me.

Crown Counsel: Did anyone appear
undernourished?

Major James: Quite the reverse. They
were all tanned by the sun and they looked to me almost like a collection of
weight-lifters, big hefty fellows.

Major James was asked if he knew Dutton
well.

“I knew him intimately.”

“How would you describe his ability as
superintendent of the island?”

“He was a natural leader of men. He was a
born leader. He was a most accomplished engineer. He was a man with the most
effervescent personality, a man who was afraid of no task, a man who was
prepared to give his most and best to what he believed in. He was never happy
unless he was outside doing things himself. He designed everything. There was
nothing on Pulau Senang which was not designed or built by him.”

Dutton joined the British army as a boy,
came to Southeast Asia with Mountbatten’s forces, took his discharge in
Singapore and joined the Singapore Harbour Board police. In 1947, he joined the
Prisons Department. James said that Dutton was a natural leader. If there was any
good in a man he would bring it out.

James described Dutton as an extremely
humane person. He would call upon James often and ask him to try to help find
work for men released from Pulau Senang. “He would ask me to intercede with the
Central Investigation Department (CID) over certain individuals released to the
Work Brigade and had got into trouble with that organisation and were in
immediate danger of being detained all over again. If a man had genuine trouble
at home, Dutton was quick to apprise me of the facts.”

James said at Pulau Senang detainees led
more or less a free existence: they moved about freely. They could play games.
They could swim in the sea. It was better than Changi Prison. If a man went
back to Changi as a criminal detainee, the maximum time out of his cell would
be about four hours a day. They lived in dormitories on Pulau Senang: in
Changi, in cells.

James said he did not see the urgency for
the jetty being finished. Dutton on the other hand was most anxious to complete
it and to get it into operation. Dutton said he was expecting bad weather. He
feared that the tide would move, pass over the jetty unless he hurried up.

James explained to one defence counsel that
the long-service prisoners from Changi were used at Pulau Senang as storemen,
clerks and checkers. They did not take part in the riot. About 200 detainees
were not involved. There were some 300 there altogether.

Major James emphatically denied that any
detainee, or detainee’s relative, ever complained to him about being overworked.
He didn’t agree they were overworked. Following talks with his staff, he felt
there was no reason for the tempo of work to continue at such a pace. He was
aware that they had been working extremely hard, and he wanted to tone it down.
He emphatically denied that Dutton was a slave driver. He was one of the
kindest men he had ever met.

James was asked if he did not agree that the
violence on the island was an outburst of human intolerance.

He replied that the outburst was not
personal hatred of Dutton, or revenge against Dutton. “Dutton had to be, had
the misfortune to be, the living embodiment of a system affecting their lives
on Pulau Senang. He represented the authority of the Singapore Government and
in my opinion that holocaust was directly directed against the Singapore
government and the system that detained them.” James repeated that Dutton
represented a system, a better way of life to which these men—‘the scum of
Singapore’— were antagonistic. They couldn’t stand a system which took them out
of their unpleasant habits in Singapore.

James’ explanation of the savage riot was
that the detainees knew that prison accommodation in the State of Singapore was
at an absolute premium: they knew that a prison designed for 2,000 (Outram Road
Prison) was being pulled down. They knew that one man, and one man alone, in
the State Prison Service could build Pulau Senang. They thought that if this
man, Dutton, was done away with and the place destroyed, the Singapore
Government would be in an extreme difficulty to contain them.

James described the island before it became
a settlement as being ‘completely virgin, with the exception of a retired
lighthouse keeper who lived on the beach’.

Dutton first landed on Pulau Senang with a
group of detainees on 18 May 1960. They were ferried to and fro until 1st June
when the working party, selected from Changi Jail by Dutton himself, slept
there for the first time. They camped just off the beach for three months, and
slowly cut their way back through the virgin jungle. Button lived in a hut with
his second-in-command, Jenardaran, 100 yards from the detainees.

Within four or five months, Dutton had
brought over some hens and pigs.

Major James explained that after the first
working batch selected by Dutton, the rest sent over to Pulau Senang were
selected by the Superintendent of Prisons at Changi Prison. They were selected
entirely on the length of time they had been in Changi. They would have been in
Changi at least 12 months. They were sent over in batches of 30.

Nothing had been fixed as to how long they
had to stay on the island. On an average, a man would be there for between
12–18 months before his name went to a Review Board to see whether his ‘conduct
and industry’ were of a nature which would enable the Board to consider
release. Major James was the chairman of the Board. The Board sat every month
and Button had instructions to submit 30 names for consideration every month.
Dutton would be present at the meeting and discuss the man’s record. The police
had the final say on who would be released. Many names were put on the list
eight or nine times before the Board would agree to let them go. This
recommendation would then go to the Minister for Home Affairs. If he agreed,
then the man would be sent to the Work Brigade Camp at Jalan Bamai (on
Singapore Island) where he would work for six months, and then set free. But if
he managed to get a job with an employer after three months, he could go
without delay.

If a detainee infringed the rules of conduct
at Pulau Senang he would be sent back to Changi Jail, where he would serve six
months, and forfeit the period of time he had spent on Pulau Senang.

Pulau Senang was an open prison in the
fullest sense of the word. Detainees were told if they went to Pulau Senang,
they would have to work, it was not a picnic holiday camp. It they did not want
to go they could stay in Changi where their chances of release were, as Major
James told the Court, ‘negligible’. But, explained Major James, if a detainee
at Pulau Senang ‘kept his nose clean and worked hard’, he had an almost certain
chance of getting released.

Mr Ball: Was it a fact that a prisoner
did have the sure knowledge that he could, by his own efforts, obtain his
release? Or could the police overrule that?

Major James said he had no doubts about it,
whatsoever. So long as a man behaved and worked hard, his chances of release
from Pulau Senang were almost a certainty. But, he added, the police had to be
watchful. If kidnapping was prevalent in Singapore (as it then was), the police
could be most reluctant to allow a known kidnapper to be released at that time.
He might be tempted to revert to his old ways again.

Major James admitted that the Ministry of
Education had been unable to send any teachers to Pulau Senang; there were no
organised recreational facilities, and entertainers (a mixed troupe of men and
women) had called at the island once. He said they got so seasick they never
came back.

At first, detainees were paid $0.10 a day,
and then $0.30.

In March 1961, Major James wrote to Dutton
about the hours the men were working. He told him that the settlement had
reached a stage of development where the pace would have to be slackened a bit.
In April 1963, he wrote to him again and laid down the hours the detainees were
to work.

Dutton kept to this scheme for a time when
he became very enthusiastic about certain buildings, when he increased them
again. The first letter read (dated 6 March 1961):

I feel the time has come for
you to introduce a scale of work at Pulau Senang. I suggest 7:30
am
to 12:30
pm
with your usual mid-morning break, and from 2:30
pm
to 5:00
pm
for weekdays and from 7:30
am
to 12:30
pm
on Saturdays and Sundays, and thereafter the detainees are free for
recreational and educational activities.

The second letter was dated 22 April 1963 and
was an instruction. It read:

With effect from receipt of
this order, the hours of work of detainees at Pulau Senang will be as follows:

Weekdays          

7:30
am
to 11:00
am

12:30
pm
to 4:00
pm

Sundays

7:30
am
to 11:30
am

Criminal law detainees will not work on
Saturday afternoons or public holidays but will have normal maintenance tasks.
It may be necessary for certain projects, such as the jetty, which depends upon
tides, for them to work outside these hours. They will be given compensating
time for extra hours worked. No detainee will exceed a 44-hour week without the
written authority of the Director of Prisons.

On 9 July, 1963, 13 detainees, all
carpenters, were sent by Dutton back to Changi Jail. Major James promptly
summoned Dutton to his office and asked him why. Dutton explained that on the
Saturday afternoon these men had refused to work on an urgent job at the end of
the jetty.

A defence counsel asked Major James whether
it was true that men had been ordered to work in the rain without raincoats.

Major James: I can only answer you by
saying that at Pulau Senang I have seen men working in the rain practically
nude, which would be their normal way of working in the rain outside Changi
Prison. Working in the rain in these circumstances on a tropical island could
on occasions be heavenly.