My Grandfather Was a Rōmusha

[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.

[Whistling]

Jimmy
When you hear this tune, what instantly springs to mind is David Leans’s award-winning movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai. That movie immortalises the story of the building of the Thai-Burma railway during the Second World War. If you’ve watched the movie, you might be forgiven for thinking that the only people who were involved in the building of this railway were POWs, who were the focus of the film. In reality, though, the vast majority of the workforce consisted of labourers from Japanese-occupied Malaya.

My name is Jimmy Yap, and I’m the editor-in-chief of BiblioAsia. In this episode, we’re going to talk about the hundreds of thousands of men from Malaya and Singapore who were lied to tricked, cajoled or coerced into getting involved in the building of what is now known as the Death Railway. Stretching over 415 km, the railway took 16 months to construct. With work starting in June 1942, an estimated 60,000 POWs and some 200,000 civilian labourers slaved under brutal conditions to build a railway. Those civilian labourers were known as rōmusha. The Death Railway got its name because of the thousands of workers who died during its construction. Those men worked with minimal equipment, only picks and shovels. Their living conditions were wretched, and their working conditions deadly. It is estimated that more than 90,000 rōmusha perished by the end of the war. There are few, if any, official records of the civilian labourers, though. What little we know about the rōmusha comes mainly from what is mentioned in accounts written by POWs.

Today, we can put a name and a face to one rōmusha: Kosman Hassan. He was the grandfather of our guest today, Shirlene Noordin. When Kosman left Singapore for Thailand at the age of 28, his wife was pregnant with Shirlene’s mum. She didn’t know if he would return, but she never lost hope. Shirlene has written about her grandfather and his experience in Thailand in BiblioAsia. Shirlene is the founder of Phish Communications, a consultancy specialising in arts and culture. Hi, Shirlene. Welcome to BiblioAsia+. Before we start, can you tell us what does ‘rōmusha’ mean?

Shirlene
“Rōmusha” is the Japanese word for labour. So it’s a rather innocent word. But in the context of the Second World War in Southeast Asia, it’s taken on a different meaning.

Jimmy
Can you give us a quick overview, for the people who haven’t read your article, of your grandfather’s experience working on the railway? When did he start, what did he do?

Shirlene
My grandfather, Kosman Hassan, was my maternal grandfather. Before being taken away to work on the Death Railway, he was a mechanic in Singapore. A car mechanic. My family had a workshop at St Thomas Walk. At that point in time, after the Japanese Occupation, occupying Japanese forces needed workers to work on the railway. Not just the railway, but to do other jobs as well. But this in particular was for the railway and they needed mechanics, people who had technical expertise to build and to repair and maintain the locomotives

Jimmy
The Japanese needed people and so they came to the workshop to get people to work on the railway. Then what happened?

Shirlene
They came and they wanted to recruit my great-granduncle, being the chief mechanic of the workshop. He was already middle-aged by then. He was in his late 40s or maybe early 50s. So my grandfather stepped forward and volunteered himself. Being younger, he thought he would be better suited to go. Besides, my great-granduncle was also the sole breadwinner. The workshop was his. He had a relationship with all the clients and he was the chief mechanic, so it made sense for him to stay. They still needed to earn a living. In fact, my grandfather and another one of their mechanics from that workshop were taken away to Thailand. This was in 1942. I’m assuming mid-1942. June, July 1942, I can’t be certain. I never really asked my grandfather when he was alive when he was taken away. But by looking at records and the dates, I believe it would be around those months.

Jimmy
So he went to Thailand, he worked on a railway, doing various things which you’re going to talk about later. When did he come back?

Shirlene
He came back at the end of the war. And this was a surprise to my grandmother. A surprise, and yet not a surprise, because she waited for him. He was gone all those years. Obviously there was no postcard from him. But she waited. I think it was just about three years. She never remarried. She kind of, I guess, had this hope that he would come back. So it was a surprise. And yet again, not a surprise.

Jimmy
The war ended in August 1945. So he must have come back.

Shirlene
Towards the end maybe. Again, these dates. We don’t have a confirmation of the dates when he came back. No one kept records at that time. Many of the rōmushas actually couldn’t find their way home after the war. And my grandfather was just very lucky. He managed to find his own way home through the help of a British military officer called Major Pink. He was somebody my grandfather knew back in Singapore. I’m not sure how, but maybe through his military volunteer service in the British military before the war. And these are all stories that I’ve heard from my uncle. So I’ve tried looking for this Major Pink, but I can’t be certain who he is. There is a British military officer called Pierrepont, Cyril Pierrepont, who was also called Pink, but I can’t be sure whether it’s the same person. A lot of it is speculation on my part.

Jimmy
What did your grandfather do when he was in Thailand?

Shirlene
He said that he was based in Kanchanaburi, that I’m very sure of, because he mentioned Kanchanaburi. And because of his experience as a car mechanic, he had the technical know-how, the expertise, which would probably put him as a mechanic repairing the locomotives and not a labourer on the tracks. This is something I deduced from the research I’ve done.

Jimmy
So he never actually sat around and waxed lyrical about his time in Thailand?

Shirlene
No, not at all. I don’t know whether he was consciously trying to forget his time there. He didn’t regale us with stories. It would come out in bits and pieces. “Oh, that time when I was in Thailand, you know, I was in the jungle and there were a lot of snakes. We didn’t have anything to eat.” Things like that. But not like, “Oh, come, let me tell you a story of my time in Thailand.” As a child, I was always puzzled why he was able to speak Thai.

Jimmy
What exactly did your grandfather say about his time in Thailand? He didn’t say very much but he must have said something.

Shirlene
He did speak about some of the hardships he faced: about the complete lack of food sometimes, about going hungry, about making friends with the locals because I think he was allowed to exit the camp sometimes to buy food. I don’t know where he got the money, maybe there was a barter trade going on. But he did speak about having friends among the local Thai people who helped him with food and medication. Well, at least local medicine that was available to help him and maybe his fellow rōmusha who were suffering. He spoke about how rudimentary the conditions in the camp were, like his bed, for instance. He had to fashion his own bed out of bamboo, very low to the ground. It was always muddy, raining, lots of snakes, lots of mosquitoes. So, disease was rife. And there were obviously a lot of death around him all the time. And one of his duties was to bury the dead the next morning.

Jimmy
He wanted to give them Muslim burial rites?

Shirlene
Yes, as a Muslim, his wish was to give his fellow Muslim rōmusha the Muslim burial rites, but it was just not possible sometimes. So that was, I think, one of the toughest things for him.

Jimmy
I can imagine. It must have been quite hard. We know about the Death Railway because of movies like The Bridge on the River Kwai and all that. But we don’t know as much about the rōmusha. Why is that?

Shirlene
I think this is because many of the rōmusha came from plantations, from the villages. And many were illiterate. Many of the rōmusha who came from Malaya were actually Tamil plantation workers. So they came from the deep plantations of Malaya, and they couldn’t read or write. And, interestingly, they were attracted to the work because the Japanese marketed it as real work with real pay, very good wages. So some of these Tamil plantation workers actually voluntarily signed up, and went on to the Death Railway, to the Thai-Burma railway, with their families. With their wife with their children. Some of the children were actually brought to the camps because they really thought it was a real job, and a job that would pay more than working in a rubber plantation or a palm oil plantation. Nobody knew about the appalling conditions. And some of these Tamil plantation workers actually brought entire families. There is a group in Malaysia called the Death Railway Group on Facebook. I have seen some postings on the Facebook page about the rōmusha children who actually grew up in the camp. Of course, when these Facebook posts were done, they were already in their late 80s, 90s. But they were kids. They went to the camps with their parents.

Jimmy
And they wrote about what they remember?

Shirlene
No, they didn’t write, I think it was just oral interviews. But even even amongst these rōmusha children, I wonder if there are any survivors left.

Jimmy
Right, because it’s been such a long time. Given the paucity of information, how do you reconstruct what happened to your grandfather?

Shirlene
From reading accounts of the British by the British POWs. They were the ones who were able to give full accounts of their experience in the camps. And they would mention the rōmusha conditions because they would be working on the same tracks or in the same workshops. The camps were separate, though. The British POWs, the Americans or the European POWs were separate from the rōmusha. And many of these accounts give some mention, very little mention in passing, of the rōmusha. A particular account is a book by Dr Hardie.

Jimmy
What’s his name again?

Shirlene
Dr Hardie. I forgot his full name. [Robert Hardie]

Jimmy
He gives an extensive description of what happened?

Shirlene
Of the camps, the nearby camps.

Jimmy
And he talks about the rōmusha.

Shirlene
Yes. The information about the rōmusha, even the written accounts about the rōmusha, were very few and far between, tucked away in the stories, tucked in-between the accounts of the POWs.

Jimmy
Of course, you’re gonna write about your own life. So this is just stuff that you see around you.

Shirlene
Exactly. They were obviously very sympathetic to the rōmushas’ plight, but there was nothing they could do either. There were some accounts where they tried to help with medicine. But beyond that I think it would have been impossible to help them improve conditions because they themselves were…

Jimmy
In pretty dire conditions.

Shirlene
Exactly.

Jimmy
Speaking of that, you mentioned earlier that a lot of rōmusha didn’t make it home. Not because they died, but after the war they had to make their own way home. What happened after the war?

Shirlene
After the war, when the Japanese surrendered, the British POWs were able to organise themselves to find their way back. And obviously there were military reinforcements sent to Thailand to look out for the POWs and to liberate the camps. So there was a group of military officers who went up and down the railway line, looking for POWs and to record what had happened. Interestingly, this account I read from a Japanese interpreter who was part of the Japanese, I think, the Kempeitai. He was a translator with the Kempeitai who witnessed the torture of the POWs in the camps along the railway. So he was part of this group. He was brought together with the British military officers as a witness.

Jimmy
Oh, I see. After the war?

Shirlene
After the war, going up and down the railway line, pointing out where the camps were, pointing out what happened. He wrote a book called Crosses and Tigers, about his experience as the interpreter during wartime and then his experience just after the war going up and down the railway line. And his regret also for his part in the Thai-Burma Railway.

Jimmy
Okay, so the POWs had structure and assistance from outside to get back, but the civilians, the rōmusha, did not.

Shirlene
No.

Jimmy
So what happened?

Shirlene
They were left to look for their own way back. And how do you do that? I can’t imagine. I mean, with no money and being malnourished. You don’t speak the language. How do you do that? How do you even find your way back? Even though Thailand is not very far, now with hindsight we know that it’s not very far from Singapore or Malaysia.

Jimmy
It’s not like you have a car or you can just drive back from Kanchanaburi to Singapore.

Shirlene
Exactly. And probably some of them didn’t even know where they were, had no idea of the geography, the area they were stuck in. So how did they find their way back? So some of them just pretty much stayed on, I believe. And the lucky few managed to find their way back. I don’t know how many. My grandfather and the other mechanic from his workshop survived. And they found their way back. I guess they must have stuck together. I believe it was because they were mechanics and they had this very technical job, useful skills that the Japanese needed.

Jimmy
Right, because it doesn’t make sense to get a mechanic and make him break rocks and dig holes.

Shirlene
Exactly. So they would repair not just the locomotives but also I suppose the trucks, lorries, all the vehicles needed to support the work. So they managed to come back only because of this encounter with Major Pink who helped him organise his trip back to Singapore. I don’t know how that happened. By boat, by train or by foot, I don’t know.

Jimmy
So your grandfather just suddenly appeared at the door.

Shirlene
He suddenly appeared one day. Okay, this is the stuff of legend. Apparently, according to my grandmother, one day he just appeared at the front gate. He was there. Yeah, it’s a kind of “Hi, honey, I’m home”, and she was surprised. This was my entry point into this whole story. Because my grandmother would say this and I would be like, “Where was he? How did he come? Where did he come from? Why did he disappear for so long?” And that’s when things unfolded bit by bit. And that’s how I really pieced everything together. My thought was always “Thank goodness, you did not remarry.” That would have been uncomfortable.

Jimmy
It obviously sounds like he had a very hard life. But at the same time reading your account, it didn’t sound like your grandfather was bitter. Honestly, if it was me I would not be very forgiving. But that’s me. I’m clearly not your grandfather.

Shirlene
No, he wasn’t a bitter man. The experience made him stronger and made him very patient. In my own experience with him, I’ve always known him as someone who was incredibly patient, who never raised his voice. And my uncles said the same thing: never raised his voice, never got angry.

Jimmy
Was he previously a hothead?

Shirlene
I don’t think he ever was a hothead. My grandfather was a very friendly person. And I think this is one of the traits that helped him survive the experience. It just made him a lot more patient. It made him very understanding and forgiving. He never harboured any ill will.

Jimmy
Did he also occasionally speak Japanese to people?

Shirlene
Well, he knew the few words. Swear words. You would hear them in jest sometimes. He would say something in Japanese, which would have been a swear word.

Jimmy
What was interesting was that after he came back, he was a volunteer with the British army before the war. And even after everything he went through, when he was back as a civilian again, he still continued to volunteer with the British military, and with other things as well. Why was he like that?

Shirlene
He was a person with a strong community spirit. And I think this comes from the fact that he was a child of immigrants. His father came from Java via Kuala Lumpur. There were two brothers from Pekalongan in Java. They went to Kuala Lumpur first and then my grandfather’s father, Hassan, made his way down to Singapore, while the other brother stayed in Kuala Lumpur, and then married a Javanese woman who was already in Singapore. So I think being a child of immigrants, he didn’t have an easy life. I’m very sure that they were poor. He was just very grateful for the help and the life he had in Singapore. He was born a British subject in 1914. It was an incredible trajectory from subject to citizen. It was also a very arduous journey because he had to go through so much. The early years of Singapore must have been difficult as an immigrant child. As a child of an immigrant, he was lucky enough that he was sent to school. Then the war, being on the Thai-Burma railway, coming back to Singapore, and then independence. Incredible. I think he was just very grateful to be a citizen.

Jimmy
After he came back, did he go back to working as a mechanic?

Shirlene
No, he came back and became a driver with Dutch Lady Milk. I wonder if that brand still exists.

Jimmy
I think it does.

Shirlene
Yeah. It was a big milk company then and he was delivering milk. From what I understood, there is this account that one of his friends had written about, in a book about the history of Siglap. It’s a book in Malay. He had mentioned that my grandfather, after the Death Railway, had worked in Bangkok. I don’t know how true this is. I think it was after the war ended or after his Death Railway experience. I don’t know where this fits in. I still am not able to verify this. He was driving and doing delivery in Bangkok. Perhaps this was after the completion of the Death Railway and he made his way to Bangkok. I don’t know, everything is so fuzzy.

Jimmy
Part of that is because, one, he didn’t talk about it. And, two, growing up you never thought this was something important. We all grew up with our parents and grandparents. Sometimes we think we don’t want to hear that story again.

Shirlene
Exactly. For me, I guess I was just really too young. I was in primary school, and it just didn’t occur to me to ask. I was just like, “Oh yeah, it’s a story from my grandfather. Incredible that he came back and thank God, my grandmother didn’t get married again.” You know, that kept recurring in my head. You don’t ask until it’s too late.

Jimmy
Looking back, you said he was a very forgiving person. What do you remember most about your grandfather? What do you admire about him?

Shirlene
He didn’t have very much. Materially he didn’t have very much. But he always managed to survive. He came back. In the ’50s and ’60s, he was a driver for Dutch Lady Milk. And after independence, he got a stall in a school next door, in the secondary school.

Jimmy
What was the name of the school?

Shirlene
Chai Chee Secondary School.

Jimmy
Okay, shoutout to former students of Chai Chee Secondary School who remember Mr Kosman. What was he doing? He was working in the canteen, right?

Shirlene
He had a stall. I guess he must have balloted for a stall at the canteen, and he sold drinks. This was a man who was a car mechanic, went to the Thai-Burma Railway, became a driver and then decided, “I’m going to sell drinks.”

Jimmy
It was just like he was retired.

Shirlene
I guess he was retired. He did that for a very long time, from ‘65 when the school first opened till the late ’80s.

Jimmy
So a lot of people would know your father?

Shirlene
Actually Najib Ali was from Chai Chee Secondary School and knew my grandfather. So a lot of kids who would have gone through Chai Chee Secondary School would have known my grandfather. For me, he was a man who was very resilient, who would just make the best of a situation. He didn’t whine. But maybe that was the hallmark of that generation. And he just made the best of the situation, selling drinks at a school canteen didn’t make him a rich man, but he was happy. He was really very happy doing it. He really enjoyed doing it, I could see. Having all the school kids around interacting with him. He enjoyed it very much, which is why he he did it for so long.

Jimmy
There is a lovely picture of you and him in the BiblioAsia article. How old were you?

Shirlene
I think I was three. That was the back of the school canteen. So as kids we would visit him to get free coke and free Magnolia milk.

Jimmy
Your story is a story that I think really needs to be heard because we don’t know about these people. We don’t know about the rōmusha and it is a very personal story. How did it feel to have written the story and given a voice to your grandfather?

Shirlene
First, I really have to thank BiblioAsia and you, Jimmy, for giving me the opportunity to do this. The writing of the article felt very liberating for me, to be able to tell the story. It also made me think hard about the experiences my grandfather went through and his life. And when you have to write something down, I think it really forces you to consider many things. And to ask questions. It led me to ask my uncles questions. It was very timely, because they’re all getting old and they’re forgetting. I try asking questions to my mother’s older sisters, who would have known my grandfather before he went to work on the Death Railway. But they were already very forgetful by then, and they couldn’t give me anything. So this really gave me the opportunity, or at least forced me, to ask the questions before it was too late.

Jimmy
It also gave you the opportunity to talk to your relatives. Otherwise you wouldn’t.

Shirlene
Exactly, and it was amazing how they were so willing to talk. I didn’t think they would be because sometimes you encounter “Oh, it was such a long time ago. I don’t remember.” They did that a bit, but the more I pursued with the questions, the more they went, “Oh yeah, I remember this. Oh yeah, he said that.” I had two uncles who were born after my mum. I guess my grandfather must have told them. Because they were boys of the family, he must have told them more than he did my mum maybe. It was good to speak to them because it got me closer to them. They were so appreciative that someone else in the family wanted to remember my grandfather. When the article was published, being of the older generation, the online version didn’t have the same impact as the print version. I gave them each the print version, and they were so touched by it. My uncles texted me to say they cried reading the story. Even my mom who is very stoic and sometimes very unemotional about things – she’s a very strict person – she was very touched.

Jimmy
I guess partly because you pull all these different stories together into one narrative.

Shirlene
Perhaps it was the first time that all these disparate aspects of my grandfather were put together in one narrative. So I really have to thank BiblioAsia for this gift to my family.

Jimmy
You’re welcome. Now that you’ve you’ve done that, what are your plans for the future? What are you going to do?

Shirlene
The research continues. I’m certain that there are Japanese sources, which I have not been able to access. So that would be the next thing to do: find someone who would be able to help me with the Japanese research. I’m sure there’s an archive somewhere. From what we understand, the Japanese actually burned records at the end of the war. All of these were destroyed, records of the rōmusha. This is what I understand. But I think they were quite meticulous about keeping records. And I think somewhere there must be something. So the research continues, and I’m hoping that it can take me towards the Japanese archival material. My husband’s a filmmaker, a documentary filmmaker, and his specialty is dealing with archival materials. So we are planning to produce a film about the rōmushas, maybe through the story of my grandfather.

Jimmy
There has not been any movie about the rōmushas?

Shirlene
No, as far as I know, there isn’t any. I think it’s a pretty difficult documentary to put together because there isn’t any footage. Even photographs are very, very few. And you would always see pretty similar photographs all the time. So I don’t know how we’re going to pull this off. That’s in the pipeline. And I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I’m quite determined to do it. I think this story needs to be told. Not just my grandfather’s story. That story of my grandfather is just a conduit for a larger story. It’s a part of Southeast Asian history that many people don’t know about. I think before it becomes really distant memory, before we all forget, lest we forget, something needs to be done.

Jimmy
I hope you will find the necessary stuff in the Japanese archives, and that you will be able to put this together and create a really exciting and interesting documentary. As you say, it’s very, very important. It is not something that a lot of people know about. Have you gotten any feedback for your article, beyond your friends and family?

Shirlene
I think one of your colleagues, Veronica, forwarded me a comment that they received through the feedback channel. It was a very positive feedback, and it was very touching.

Jimmy
Right. Okay, well, hopefully, this will launch you in a new direction and we will be able to see that movie, you know, in the Oscars.

Shirlene
Okay, maybe we can do it with BiblioAsia.

Jimmy
Maybe we can. I will volunteer to be… I can’t be a rōmusha because I’m not thin enough, but I’ll be something. This is the part of the interview where we ask all our guests the same questions and we try to find interesting answers. So let me ask you, who is the coolest person in Singapore history?

Shirlene
I think it has got to be P. Ramlee.

Jimmy
Okay, why P. Ramlee?

Shirlene
He was a singer, songwriter, musician, actor, director. How much cooler could he have been?

Jimmy
That’s true. Much cooler than me. Which historical figure would you like to have dinner with?

Shirlene
Raden Kartini.

Jimmy
Why Raden Kartini?

Shirlene
She’s a Southeast Asian feminist icon. I think it must have been very difficult for a Javanese woman to advocate for education for girls, given the very strict Javanese culture and society.

Jimmy
What do you think is the most underrated or the most intriguing period in history?

Shirlene
Precolonial Singapore.

Jimmy
Why do you say that?

Shirlene
We’ve always talked about Singapore history starting from 1819. And there is that huge book, 700 Years of Singapore History [Singapore, a 700-Year History].

Jimmy
Yes, published by the National Library. Yes, free plug there.

Shirlene
We go beyond. But we don’t talk about it enough, I think.

Jimmy
I have to agree. I mean, I think it’d be very interesting to talk about Singapore’s history before 1819.

Shirlene
It didn’t all start with Raffles.

Jimmy
Yes, that’s right. What book are you reading now?

Shirlene
I’m currently reading a book by Frantz Fanon – Black Skin, White Masks.

Jimmy
Okay. It’s not a new book, though.

Shirlene
No, it’s not. I’ve read the one in English years ago in university, and I recently found a French copy. The original version. My husband’s French so I found it lying at home as I was clearing up, and I thought, “Okay, I’m going to attempt reading this in French.”

Jimmy
Is your French good enough to read this book?

Shirlene
Well, I’m trying.

Jimmy
Alright. Answer quickly. History is…

Shirlene
A window to our past to understand our present and future.

Jimmy
Okay. BiblioAsia is…

Shirlene
A time-travel machine.

Jimmy
Oh, I like that very much. Thank you, Shirlene, for joining us on BiblioAsia+. To learn more about Shirlene’s grandfather and about the rōmusha, you have to check out her article on the BiblioAsia website. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Shirlene Noordin, “My Grandfather Was a Rōmusha,” BiblioAsia 18, no. 3 (2016).

Robert Hardie, The Burma-Siam Railway: The Secret Diary of Dr. Robert Hardie, 1942–1945 (London: Imperial War Museum, 1984, c1983). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RCLOS 940.5425 HAR-[JSB])

Clifford Kinvig, River Kwai Railway: The Story of the Burma-Siam Railroad (London: Brassey's, 1992). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSING 940.5472592 KIN-[WAR])

Takuma Melber, “The Labour Recruitment of Local Inhabitants as Rōmusha in Japanese-Occupied South East Asia,” International Review of Social History 61, no. 4 (2016): 165–85. (From JSTOR via NLB’s eResources website)

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 Shirlene Noordin and her family for sharing their story.

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