Lest We Forget: Kranji War Cemetery

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past: some unfamiliar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Hi, everyone. My name is Jimmy Yap, and I’m the editor-in-chief at BiblioAsia, a magazine of the National Library of Singapore. Today, we will be discussing a very sombre topic: the Kranji War Memorial. Situated on a hill along the northern coast of Singapore, the Kranji War Memorial is both a military cemetery, as well as a memorial to the thousands who died fighting the Japanese during the Second World War but whose bodies were never found. The numbers are staggering. The cemetery has more than 4,000 graves, and the memorials name over 24,000 people who are not buried in Kranji but who are remembered there. Here to talk about this with me is Janice Loo, a Librarian with the National Library of Singapore. Janice has done research on the cemetery and written about their lives and their deaths in an article for BiblioAsia. Today, Janice will talk about what she’s found about people like Corporal Raymond Lee Kim Teck of the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, one of the first to die when Japan bombed Singapore in December 1941. About Second Lieutenant Adnan Saidi and the over 200 soldiers from the Malay Regiment who fought and died at the Battle of Pasir Panjang. About Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Lyon, who commanded Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau. And about Mr Sim Chin Foo, who joined the volunteer unit, Dalforce, and who fought in the Battle of Bukit Timah. These names may not be familiar to many of us, but they made the ultimate sacrifice in the defence of Singapore. Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Janice. Let’s jump right in. In Singapore, we always refer to it as the Kranji War Memorial, but it’s more than a memorial, isn’t it?

Janice
There’s a very large complex there that’s a memorial, but it’s also a cemetery. And it’s located in, well, Kranji, that’s why the name is Kranji War Memorial. But aside from the war memorial, there’s also a state cemetery and there’s also a cemetery for non-World War Two burials. But we’re just focusing on the Kranji War Memorial and cemetery component.

Jimmy
Why was Kranji chosen as the site for this cemetery-cum-memorial?

Janice
There was an existing cemetery there because there was a hospital that was established during the war. And so there was an existing cemetery for the people who died at the prisoners-of-war hospital. In the wider context, Kranji was kind of like a military area – it was transformed into a military area in the 1930s. So there was some relevance to the war.

Jimmy
Tell us about what the cemetery-cum-memorial consists of. And the biggest is the Singapore Memorial?

Janice
Yeah, the biggest is the Singapore Memorial. I think it’s a bit abstract to listeners, but just imagine the design of the memorial is like a big plane sitting on a number of pillars. So that’s right at the top of the hill. The Kranji War Cemetery contains over 4,400 burials that are marked by headstones as well as five memorials. So the five memorials are the Singapore Memorial, the Chinese Memorial, the Singapore (Unmaintainable Graves) Memorial, the Singapore Cremation Memorial and the Singapore Civil Hospital Grave Memorial.

Jimmy
For the listeners who want to know what it looks like, Janice’s article in BiblioAsia has a photograph of the memorial – an aerial view which shows…

Janice
The layout of the place.

Jimmy
It’s actually quite interesting; I was staring at the photo. The Kranji War Memorial, as you said, contains over 4,000 graves and commemorates about over 20,000 people who died.

Janice
Yeah, who died, but I think their bodies were not recovered.

Jimmy
Or they were in other cemeteries, perhaps.

Janice
Yeah, or they were in other cemeteries and it was just not possible to…

Jimmy
To put them all in the same cemetery. Clearly, in some ways, it’s a very important cemetery. But to me, it doesn’t seem to occupy a very large place in the Singapore imagination. Would you agree?

Janice
I can’t speak for everyone, but for myself personally as someone who grew up in the 1990s, and probably other people who grew up in that era – you remember The Price of Peace, right? That Channel 8 production which is very much about the suffering during the Japanese Occupation. I think [for] many Singaporeans, the key thing that they relate most to, or that sticks in their mind, is the kind of violence and the suffering during the period of Japanese Occupation: the Sook Ching massacre and how people lost their family members. It’s still a very painful experience, a very painful memory. But because the Kranji War Cemetery is more of like a military kind of cemetery, it commemorates the people who died in the Battle for Singapore.

Jimmy
How many times did you go down to the cemetery?

Janice
The funny thing is the first time that I went there, we actually encountered a tourist who was laying flowers at the headstone. I don’t know how we ended up chatting with this person. It was not his first time here, but he comes back every year to just lay flowers at this tombstone. Not that he’s personally related to the dead person. I think he just found it very sad, perhaps. Maybe on his previous visit when he saw the age of the person who passed away, and he was probably around his age, I guess he felt moved by that. So every time he comes back to Singapore, he would lay flowers at the grave of basically somebody who’s not even a family member or anything. So that really left an impression on me. If you’re just reading a description about the cemetery at home, and of course there are a lot of photographs online, but none of the photographs adequately capture the scale of the cemetery.

Jimmy
Exactly. It’s enormous, right?

Janice
Yes, it’s enormous.

Jimmy
It’s quiet, and it spreads out. That was what hit me about the cemetery: it’s just the scale and the serenity of the place. So actually that’s interesting. Did you look up their names before going to look for them in the cemetery, or was it the other way around?

Janice
I looked up their names. There’s the Commonwealth War Graves Commission that maintain a database of the date that they’re commemorated and also buried in various parts around the world. So you can just go to database and you can just download an Excel sheet of all the names that are commemorated and buried at Kranji War Cemetery.

Jimmy
Maybe we can go back to some of the people who are buried there. One of them was Raymond Lee Kim Teck of the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force. How did you find out about him? As you say – you mentioned earlier – he’s one of the first few people who died. He died on the 8th of December of 1941.

Janice
Yeah, during the initial air raid. Basically he was in a trench with his colleague and then he jumped out, and I think he jumped out too soon and he got hit. But I think Raymond Lee is just one. I feel I’m really barely scratching the surface here. I only came across Raymond because his name is mentioned in accounts of the war. So basically the research process of looking out for these individuals is you read through the research, and then you find these sort of interesting mentions of people and their acts of bravery. And then you search up the Commonwealth War Graves Database and see whether they were actually buried there.

Jimmy
Other famous people who are commemorated there include Lieutenant Adnan of the Malay Regiment.

Janice
He’s commemorated on the Singapore Memorial because unfortunately for him and many of his fellow soldiers from the Malay Regiment, their bodies were not recovered. I mean, it’s very sad, unfortunately, but at least their names are inscribed somewhere permanently.

Jimmy
I think you also mentioned a lady – Madam Cheng Seang Ho.

Janice
Yeah, Madam Cheng.

Jimmy
How did you find out about her? She wasn’t buried there.

Janice
She survived the war, but her husband didn’t. I think I read about her [Madam Cheng] in the book by the architect, I think it’s just a very compelling and very moving account that really demonstrates the kind of far-reaching effect of the war – that, yes, there were people who died, but then there were also the people who… The family members who survived and had to live on with the pain of that loss.

Jimmy
Actually, you mentioned, I think, in your article that during the opening of the Kranji War Cemetery, that’s how people got to know about her – because she broke down and started crying, right?

Janice
Yeah. Yes, correct. It was reported in the news. Just to give a little bit of background: Madam Cheng Seang Ho joined the Chinese Volunteer Force with her husband Sim Chin Foo after the war. I think after the war started or something like [that]. They were both in their 60s, but they decided to join.

Jimmy
I’m not in my 60s yet but I don’t think I would pick up arms, but clearly we are different people, right? In their 60s, they are picking up arms to defend.

Janice
After the war, when her story was reported in the papers, they kind of described how she and her husband put up a very brave front at the Battle of Bukit Timah and they were like shooting, shooting from behind tree stumps or something like that. Then after that, I mean, they survived that, but afterwards I think the husband was caught by the Kempeitai. Yeah, by the Japanese, and he was tortured and he died. But I think his body was never recovered, so his name is actually commemorated on the Singapore Memorial.

Jimmy
Oh, I didn’t know his body was not recovered. So it was just a commemoration.

Janice
I think the very sad thing… This part, which I didn’t include in my article, is that Madam Cheng’s story kind of came up even before the unveiling of the memorial in the 1950s. She was mentioned in the Social Welfare Department’s annual report of 1947. After the war, she was destitute, needed help from the government. So she approached the Social Welfare Department for help and then they gave her an allowance and they set her up in a flat like a one-room flat in Kreta Ayer.

Jimmy
Obviously the cemetery or the memorial has the soldiers who are involved in Operation Rimau and….

Janice
And Operation Jaywick, right?

Jimmy
Yeah, Operation Jaywick and Operation Rimau.

Janice
The covert operations.

Jimmy
I think Operation Jaywick was…

Janice
It was the first one.

Jimmy
The bigger and the better known one, right? What happened in that operation?

Janice
In 1942, a group of 14 commandos from this Special Z Unit conducted a mission to sabotage Japanese shipping in Singapore harbour. What they did was they actually captured Japanese fishing vessel and they used it to go undercover and they disguised themselves as fishermen. That fishing vessel travelled from Australia all the way to the Riau Islands where they set up a base, and from the base I think they tried to get as close as possible to the Singapore Harbour. They used kayaks to pedal into the harbour and then attached mines to Japanese ships. I think they managed to sink a couple of them, so it was a very incredible mission if you read about it. It’s larger than life. I seem to remember that Operation Jaywick led to the Double Tenth incident. Yeah, because of course after the mines exploded and the ships sank, of course, the Japanese went around on a hunt for the culprits. I guess they thought that it must have been some people in in the prisons. So they tortured people to extract confessions and stuff like that. So unfortunately people lost their lives as a result.

Jimmy
Again, as with many of them, some of the people involved in Operations Jaywick and Rimau were buried in Kranji, but I guess for others their bodies were never recovered.

Janice
The success of Operation Jaywick spawned a follow-up operation that wanted to use the same kind of strategy: disguise yourself and try to slip into Singapore Harbour and attach mines to Japanese ships. But unfortunately because of the stepped up patrols by the Japanese, this plot was uncovered. So this team of 23 commandos… What ensued was this chase in the Riau Islands, and the Japanese managed to capture and then kill 13 men from the 23, and the remaining 10 were captured in jail at the Outram Road Prison in Singapore. They were tried for espionage and beheaded in 1945. So the collective remains of 10 Rimau commandos are actually in Kranji.

Jimmy
So of course Jaywick was successful and nobody was captured. It was Rimau, the follow-up operation, that was in some ways unsuccessful and led to people getting caught and killed. In your article in BiblioAsia, you wrote about Sergeant Gordon Laing. Who is Sergeant Gordon Laing and how do we end up getting his papers?

Janice
What I understand is that it’s totally serendipitous how people decide to donate things to the library. I mean, we’re very lucky at the end of it. Basically, the wife of the donor Dayne Cowan was visiting an exhibition at the National Library in 2019. And I think she got to talk to the curator, and she mentioned that she had these photographs that were related to Singapore and World War Two. So the donor is Dayne Cowan. Sergeant Gordon Laing is his great-uncle. Dayne Cowan got in touch with us, and that’s how we got the materials.

Jimmy Is Sergeant Gordon Laing also buried in [the war cemetery], or did he survive the war?

Janice
No, he didn’t survive the war. He’s actually commemorated at the Singapore Memorial, on column 119. If you look up his name in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Database, you’ll find that he served in the 2/18th Australian Infantry Battalion and arrived in Singapore on 18th February 1941. And then he was immediately sent off to Port Dickson in Malaya for training. They wanted to conduct an ambush on the Japanese troops, but that failed. So I think he was believed to have been killed in an engagement along with 82 other men on that day.

Jimmy
In Malaya?

Janice
In Malaya, yeah. This ambush happened at Nithsdale Estate, south of Mersing. So his body was not recovered.

Jimmy
Thank you, Janice, for running us through the Kranji War Cemetery. Janice, thank you very much for coming in. Don’t think too much, I’m going to ask you very quick questions. Give me an immediate answer. Okay? Coolest person in Singapore history that’s not me.

Janice
Currently it’s Madam Cheng Seang Ho. Since we just spoke about her.

Jimmy
Okay. Which historical figure would you like to have dinner with?

Janice
I don’t really have anybody in mind.

Jimmy
Really?

Janice
Yeah. I mean, I always felt that I just want to have dinner with the people that I come across in the photographs from the 19th century. It could be hawkers or whoever – the really common people. I’m not really interested in having dinner with historical big figures.

Jimmy
What do you think is like the most underrated or intriguing period of Singapore’s history?

Janice
Underrated? I would say our recent past is not so well documented. Because we feel that it’s still very recent, right? And then I feel that we have been collecting a lot of the colonial era that’s quite well studied and all that. But I think moving… Maybe like the ’80s or the ’90s. But I mean, if you ask me what period of Singapore history I would like to be born in or live through, I feel like the postwar period is probably very exciting. Like the ’50s, ’60s when you would see the landscape undergoing really massive transformation on a scale that you wouldn’t see today, because it was a completely clean slate kind of thing. So I thought it would be nice to experience that kind of momentum, you know, the boom days, as it were.

Jimmy
I think maybe it’d be nice to observe, maybe not necessarily experience.

Janice
That’s true.

Jimmy
If you were a farmer and suddenly you get resettled or…

Janice
Yeah, you’re right.

Jimmy
Although of course it does come with improvements to running water and electricity and you stop living in slums. That’s obviously a good thing.

Janice
I’m looking at this from the benefit of today. Because today it has always been a narrative of progress, right? So that is my own bias. Of course, for the people who had to experience these kind of massive changes at that time it must have been very dislocating.

Jimmy
Yeah, I can imagine. I think I would welcome the running water and electricity, but maybe not being resettled. If you used to live in a farm and then you suddenly have to live in an HDB flat, it’s not so fun. Okay, two other questions. Complete the sentence: history is…

Janice
Personal.

Jimmy
Okay, good. And the last question is: BiblioAsia is…

Janice
I’m looking at the editor of BiblioAsia right now and he’s asking me.

Jimmy
Just don’t say boring.

Janice
I’m not saying boring. I’m going to say it’s dynamic because, you know, a lot of things are changing.

Jimmy
Janice, thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+. To learn more about Kranji War Cemetery, check out Janice’s article in the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Janice Loo, “They Died for All Free Men: Stories from Kranji War Cemetery,” BiblioAsia 18, no. 2 (2022).

Athanasios Tsakonas, “In Honour of War Heroes: The Legacy of Colin St Clair Oakes,” BiblioAsia 14, no. 3 (2018).

Wong Heng, “Kranji Memorials,” Singapore Infopedia, published 2017, National Library Board.

Justin Corfield and Robin Corfield, The Fall of Singapore: 90 Days: November 1941–February 1942 (Singapore: Talisman Publishing, 2012). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSING 940.5425957 COR-[WAR])

Romen Bose, Kranji: The Commonwealth War Cemetery and the Politics of the Dead (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2006), 21. (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSING 940.54655957 BOS-[WAR])

Hamzah Muzaini and Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Contested Memoryscapes: The Politics of Second World War Commemoration in Singapore (London: Routledge, 2016). (From National Library, call no. RSING 940.546095957 MUZ-WAR])

“Corporal Raymond Lee Kim Teck,” Commonwealth War Graves Commission, accessed 31 March 2022, https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2228809/raymond-lee-kim-teck/.

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Gibson Analytics. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Janice for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.