Singapore Bands in Wartime Vietnam

Boon Lai, "American Troops. Singapore Bands. The Vietnam War" BiblioAsia 20, no. 1 (2023).

Boon Lai, The Once & Marvellous DKD, bks 1–3 (Singapore: Mentalworks, 2019–2020).

Joseph C. Pereira, Apache over Singapore: The Story of Singapore Sixties Music, vol. 1 (Singapore: Select Publishing, 2011).

Joseph C. Pereira, Beyond the Tea Dance: The Story of Singapore Sixties Music, vol. 2 (Singapore: Select Publishing, 2014).

Joseph C. Pereira, Legends of the Golden Venus (Singapore: Times Editions, 1999).

Charles H. Waterhouse, Vietnam Sketchbook. Drawings from Delta to DMZ (Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Co., 1968).

[Music playing]

Jimmy
During the war in Vietnam in the 1960s, big-name entertainers went to South Vietnam to perform for American troops. In addition to stars though, a bunch of musicians from Singapore were also roped in. Why did local musicians choose to perform in South Vietnam in a war zone, and what was the experience like? I’m Jimmy Yap, and with me to talk about these musicians during the Vietnam War is Boon Lai.

He's a co-author and illustrator of the graphic novel trilogy, The Once & Marvelous DKD, which is based on these local bands. In addition, he’s also written about these bands in BiblioAsia. Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Boon Lai. How are you?

Boon Lai
I’m good. Thanks for having me.

Jimmy
You’ve written about these guys in BiblioAsia. How did you come to know about them?

Boon Lai
Well, the interesting thing was around 2016, I was producing a short documentary for a Singapore Heritage film fest, and I chose to make a documentary based on Singapore sixties music.

Jimmy
Okay. Did you know very much about Singapore sixties music at the time?

Boon Lai
Well, I mean, just as much as, you know, as anyone who had a passing interest. So, what I did was I got in touch with Joseph Pereira, who actually wrote three books on the subject.

Jimmy
Yeah, he’s practically a local expert.

Boon Lai
Yeah, he’s a local expert in this. And I introduced myself and I said, “I’m interested to just interview you and just have you talk about the sixties music scene.” So, what happened was we spent three or four days at his place at that point of time and afternoons over lunch and tea. We had discussions about, you know, the sixties music scene, how it began right up to how it ended. So that was a good session. He mentioned that “Oh you know, as the music scene died out in the sixties, many of the musicians had to find new ways of making a living.” And he mentioned that some of the bands actually even had to go up to South Vietnam to perform. So as soon as I heard that, as a storyteller, it was kind of like a…

Jimmy
Light bulb moment?

Boon Lai
Light bulb moment. I was struck with this mental image of our Singapore bands, young kids flying in on Huey helicopters, choppers over treetops and then music, Rolling Stones music, blasting as they were, you know, passing by paddy fields and all sorts. That stuck with me. And I went home and I told my wife, I said, “You know what? This is a story that I need to make. You know, it’s going to be either a film or a documentary of some form.” But the fact is that, you know, film and documentary will require a little bit of funding and a lot more process. So, I thought, okay, the immediate way of getting the story together would be to do a graphic novel, because for me, I see the graphic novel as a form of a visualised screenplay anyway.

Jimmy
Right, right, right.

Boon Lai
Yeah. Yeah. So, what happened was right after that, I started my three years of research.

Jimmy
Wow. Did Joseph give you the names of the people who went to Vietnam?

Boon Lai
He mentioned quite a number. Veronica Young, definitely. And then Impian Bateks and then Steve Bala and the Esquires and others like Robert Suriya and Cedric and even Shirley Naya.

Jimmy
Wow, some big names, eh?

Boon Lai
Yeah, big names in the Singapore scene, actually, at that point of time. Yeah. So, I got the names, I went into Facebook and start looking…

Jimmy
Stalking all these guys.

Boon Lai
Stalking, sending them messages. And eventually the ones who responded were the three of them. Right. I think the rest did not get the message or you know, they probably thought I was a stalker. Yeah. So that’s how I got in touch with Veronica, Harris and Steve Bala.

Jimmy
When did these musicians go to Vietnam? In the late sixties, was it?

Boon Lai
So, the ones that we’re talking about like Veronica, Steve, they went up late 1960s. Now late 1960s in Vietnam at that point of time. You can imagine the fighting at that point of time was pretty fierce. So it was getting quite intense. And by some accounts, the Americans even had up to 500,000 troops.

Jimmy
It’s not a small number.

Boon Lai
From my research, what I found was that there were many little bases formed along the coast, right from Saigon, all the way up to the DMZ [demilitarized zone]. Each base was technically a little city on its own. Built with American money, American technology, and all of that. So, that was kind of situation that we had – intense fighting, the Vietcong were gaining ground. They were pushing from the west towards the coast. Kind of like sandwiching American allies. And the “best” part was, well, they were conducting guerilla warfare, so there was no way you could tell [who they were] – they would come in plain clothes. They looked like everyone else you could identify. This is enemy. This is friend. So it was kind of an edgy situation.

Jimmy
American troops were fighting and, of course, you know, dying. But entertainers were actually sent to these camps to entertain the troops. Right. So, I’m guessing, you know, did they get rotated and have a bit of R&R in-country? Is that what happened?

Boon Lai
Well, I think the US military thought that “Okay, well, it’s a very stressful situation”, right? I mean, you have soldiers who have been drafted at a very young age, right? Coming in from, you know, some rural parts of America, haven’t even seen the world, prior to that, arriving in Vietnam. And suddenly it’s a total shock. Right. And I think the level of stress must have been pretty intense that they thought, “Okay, you know, one way to relieve that stress or to give them a sense of connection back home is through entertainment.” Back then, you know, it was still the early days of television. You didn’t have iPhones. The only thing you had was basically radio and records. So, music had been a very big part of their lives.

Jimmy
Hence, like, Good Morning Vietnam.

Boon Lai
Exactly. So, a lot of audio back then, you know, not as much visual yet. They had their entertainment on a regular basis, almost nightly basis, whenever they could get it.

Jimmy
Right.

Boon Lai
What you had were our performers who were assigned to travel up from, you know, from Saigon. And then they’d hit each individual base as they went up. And they would be performing for the soldiers.

Jimmy
So you mentioned in your BiblioAsia article that there were a number of local musicians that went up to Vietnam specifically, Veronica Young, Impian Bateks and Steve Bala Siren, right? And you know, these were young musicians who decided to go up and do gigs in South Vietnam. It was in the middle of a war zone. Why did these people decide to do something that sounds, on hindsight, pretty dangerous?

Boon Lai
Well, I think we have to remember they were really young, in their early twenties. So, if you think about the Singapore sixties music scene, people like Veronica Young and Impian Bateks, that was during the golden age of Singapore music that started around the sixties and then peaked around [mid-] 1960s and they had recording deals.

They had, you know, pretty well-paying gigs, great performances in Singapore and even further afield. Now what happened was that pretty much died down towards the towards the end of 1960s. And just imagine, these guys were not qualified at that point of time. Singapore was in its early days of building itself up, right? We were not that economically strong at that point of time and they had to find means of earning a living, right? So as soon as they got offers, from recruitment agents – and we are talking about not small amounts of money. They were going to be paid in US dollars and in quantums of what, at least three to four times of what they were earning in Singapore.

Jimmy
Wow. Okay. That’s a significant incentive.

Boon Lai
Money was a very big motivation, right? They had to consider their own futures, their families, they had to support family as well. But I think there was also a tinge of, “hey, this is something new”, right? This is something new. This sounds exciting. You know, it’s like a promise of adventure. And being young and in the sixties, on top of that I think the prospect of, you know, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, and going into the jungle and doing all of that was just a little bit hard to pass up. But then again, having said that, not every band accepted the offers. There were those who basically turned the offers down, because, you know, they thought it was too dangerous, or the family or the parents did not allow them to go.

Jimmy
These trips to South Vietnam – they were arranged by, you said, recruitment agents?

Boon Lai
Yeah, they were arranged by recruitment agents, so, okay, I’ll go into the technicality a little bit because I think it’s worth understanding the bigger picture. We know now that show business and the business of entertaining US troops was a very, very big business, right?

There was definitely a lot of money pumped into the region from the US at that point in time to prop up the war efforts in South Vietnam. And one of the ways entertainers were brought in was the official way: they would go through the USO, the United Services Organization, which kind of supports the US military needs, right?

Jimmy
Entertainment needs.

Boon Lai
Entertainment, and everything else, whatever, any kind of, noncombat related. USO would bring in big names back then, like Bob Hope, Nancy Sinatra, for instance, James Brown. And of course, being big names, they were pretty safe. I mean, they knew their way of going about [would be] well organized, well planned. I mean, you can’t have a disaster, right? Yeah. So that would be that one way.

The second way would be independent bands on their own accord, who would go up as volunteers.There were no offers or whatever. They would just go on their own accord, and they would occasionally strike deals with the military and say, “Okay, we’ll perform for you guys. You know, if you can cover our, maybe, accommodation and or even our transportation needs and all of that.”

Now, the third way would be, apparently, each US base was given free rein to arrange their own entertainment. Right, now, this is where it gets interesting because, they were given certain budgets, free rein for them to decide who to engage. It actually created a lot of – it actually created a network that was pretty corrupt in that sense.

And then you had people who heard about this, who heard that, “hey, there’s money to be earned”, right? You had agents popping up and saying, “Okay, good, fine, you guys need entertainers? I’ll go find.” So, there were agents going all over the region, right? Korea, Thailand, we mentioned Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and all of that. And so, when we talk about Singapore, the agents would come over here, and they would visit the clubs, our local scene. And as soon as they saw certain bands, they would approach the band or the entertainers and say, “Okay, would you want to come up to South Vietnam? I think you’re a good match. You know, the G.I.s are going to love you because of the kind of songs that you were performing.”

Jimmy
So, selling them a bit.

Boon Lai
Selling them that, you know, selling that sizzle. And then if they sensed that, okay if they were a little bit worried about certain things, “Okay, fine, we’ll throw a $500,000 insurance in case you are killed or you get, you know, maimed or anything like that.” So, they had ways to try to recruit…

Jimmy
Musicians.

Boon Lai
Musicians. So as soon as the musicians decided to join in, they would get themselves packed up, flown from Paya Lebar airport all the way up to Tân Sơn Nhất, in Saigon back then. As soon as they landed, they would get quickly bundled up, cleared through immigration and checkpoints, and they would be sent to halfway houses in areas like Cholon district, you know, seedy areas and all of that. And, within a few days, these guys would have to, you know, get their instruments ready.

And that was another thing that happened, which I thought was rather interesting as well. For instance, Steve and Esquires, they even had to audition before a committee of staff sergeants. The staff sergeants were determining their rate, how much they could actually command for each performance.

Jimmy
What was the rate like?

Boon Lai
The really good ones – just so happen to be Filipinos – were getting something, if I’m not mistaken, like US$800–US$1,000 per show.

Jimmy
Wow. Significant amount of money.

Boon Lai
Significant. Very significant. Then they’d just wait for the day when they [would] get called up and sent out. Yeah.

Jimmy
So, the Filipinos were getting like 800 bucks a show. How much were the Singaporeans getting?

Boon Lai
Singaporeans... let me, let me try to recall the number.

Jimmy
Not as much as $800.

Boon Lai
Not as much. They were getting like $400, maybe eight. Okay, sometimes.

Jimmy
But still, you know, you multiply that by the total number of shows that you do. Yeah, you know, it’s a significant amount of money. Just give us a bit of an idea, you know, what kind of situations these musicians faced. I mean, they weren’t out in the field playing music, while a battle was raging, for example, right? It’s not what happened.

Boon Lai
I recall once where Veronica told me about a nightly curfew, right? So definitely because Saigon at that point of time was being besieged, technically, they had a nightly curfew. So there an occasion when, you know, she needed help for one of the band members who was sick and all of that.

And [Veronica] had the guts to actually go out, break curfew, go out and try to look for, for a doctor. So, she’s a very gutsy lady. She was stopped, had flashlights and rifles pointed at her and [was asked], you know, “What are you doing?” Someone was shouting at her in Vietnamese, and she couldn’t speak. So that could have gone wrong in so many ways, in an environment as safe as Saigon. Yeah. Things could have exploded at any point of time.

Right. I mean explode literally because there were many cases of bands performing in pubs and clubs and on stage. And suddenly somebody would hurl a grenade at the band – and that’s it.

Jimmy
Oh wow.

Boon Lai
You know, many, many there were many reports of that happening.

Jimmy
They really didn’t like the music or...? This was the Vietcong attack.

Boon Lai
It’s basically anything can happen at any point of time, right, even before they left Saigon. As soon as they left Saigon, things got even more…

Jimmy
Hairy.

Boon Lai
The bands had no clue what their weekly or even their daily schedules were going to be like. They did have a manager assigned to them, and the manager would go just ahead of them, you know, to different bases, try to book them, get them to play as many gigs as possible, whatever was available.

All they could remember was they had covered, what they described as, hundreds of places. [What] their daily routine was, they couldn’t say because it was so unpredictable. They would be transported to a base. It could be an outpost even.

Jimmy
Not necessarily a “base” base, but it could just be an outpost.

Boon Lai
It could be an outpost. Like, for instance, I think, Steve and Esquires, they basically got into some pretty rural areas as well. This is very interesting. Steve mentioned that they were flown into somewhere in the jungle on a helicopter, and the chopper would land at what they called the landing zone, the LZs, right?

And it was just in the middle of the jungle. They couldn’t see anything else. And they were told, “Okay, set up”, and they were like, “Okay, what’s going on?” So, they just set things up, you know, with their equipment and with the speakers and all of that. And it was just “Who we’re going to be playing to? Monkeys or what?”

But as soon as they started tuning their equipment and all of that, within 10 feet, 15 minutes, soldiers [started coming] out from the jungle.

Jimmy
They came out in their camos. And helmets and weapons?

Boon Lai
Yeah yeah, all covered and all that. They would just come out and for that period of time they would just go crazy. They would just let loose – a lot of, a lot of beer, a lot of drugs, apparently joints, and the band. The band also travelled with strippers, right? Just to spice things up. They had strippers as well.

Jimmy
And, this was dangerous, right? I mean, going to all these outposts was not safe.

Boon Lai
Definitely not safe. So, all of them mention at one point of time, getting shot at.

Jimmy
Yeah, distinctly unsafe.

Boon Lai
And yeah, you know, the Esquires were performing on stage and suddenly they heard a zing, like something just zipping past them. And then when they looked behind at the backdrop, there was a bullet hole. Somebody had actually just taken a pot shot at them.

Jimmy
Oh man. That’s scary.

Boon Lai
Yeah. And then even when they’re on the road travelling to their destinations, occasionally the driver would shout, “Okay, guys, hit the deck!” And that’s it. They had to just sprawl [on the floor] and that’s it. And then bullets would tear through the canvases and stuff like that. It was not safe.

Jimmy
Veronica, as a woman, you know, clearly must have had a slightly different experience, from Haris Hamzah and Steve Bala. You know, can you give us an idea of what that was like?

Boon Lai
In a war situation in that kind of environment, it was pretty dangerous, uncomfortable... Now add to the fact that you have a lot of, stressed-up, young men far away from home, where social order was breaking down and as soon as they see women – it could be singers or even strippers and all of that – all the basic instincts are stirred up right?

Jimmy
Unwanted male attention.

Boon Lai
They got a lot of attention. I mean, they got a lot of attention from the soldiers, of course. Veronica mentioned that the soldiers would find every opportunity to look at you, to touch you. There were also cases where, well, where female entertainers were being friendly with the soldiers, and that led to pretty violent episodes, right? Where it went in a direction that the entertainers had not expected. Right? So, there were cases of, you know, where the soldiers would try to, you know, pressure the women for sex or sexual favours. They would also try to get their way with the women.

Jimmy
But there’s a great story about Veronica defending herself.

Boon Lai
As Veronica mentioned, one night when she was in one of the bases, she was at one end of the barracks, cooking noodles and stuff like that for dinner, for the band and herself. And as she was preparing, cutting up the chili, knife in hand and all of that, suddenly there was a figure that came up to her and grabbed her from behind, very large and big, grabbed her from behind.

Now, being the gutsy lady that she is, she thrust the knife back, stabbed the guy, and he basically bled. You know you got to have a certain kind of gungho characteristic to survive that environment. You’re right. I mean, male or female, you can’t just go in, pampered and all of that and expect to survive.

Jimmy
It was a pretty rough environment.

Boon Lai
It was a very rough environment. The entertainers who made it, made it through, had a steely quality about them.

Jimmy
Yeah, that wouldn’t be me. How long did Impian Bateks play in Saigon, a year?

Boon Lai
Typically it would have been three to four months. Three to four months, kind of to try things out to see if they could survive it.

Jimmy
Literally.

Boon Lai
Literally. And within three to four months, just imagine one day they can do minimum two shows, maybe three.

Jimmy
Yeah, that many.

Boon Lai
Yes. So, we see the math is starting to work out. Two shows a day over three to four months. It’s not a holiday. Within three to four months they would have done hundreds of performance shows. it sounds impossible, but actually they did it, right? They would have done the hundreds. So, they say after that, three to four months were up, and then they have a choice. There were bands who actually stayed on and renewed their contracts. So, despite the situation, the dangers, and all that we mentioned, they came back.

Jimmy
Money was too good.

Boon Lai
Money was too good. Or it could be addiction. I don’t know. I spoke to Joseph about this, and he said it could be the addiction.

Jimmy
The adrenaline?

Boon Lai
The adrenaline – because that became normal, having spent three months, four months, some up to even a year; some went again and again and again and again, right? Because they felt that, “Hey, if I made it through the first time, I could still do it if I apply the same wit.” Veronica did at least two tours. She went back.

Jimmy
With the Impian Bateks?

Boon Lai
No, the second time she was with another group.

Jimmy
And Esquires?

Boon Lai
They completed the tour, and that was it. Because their experience was pretty intense. They had incidents or situations where they were right in the midst of shelling, bombing and night raid bombing in Danang. They really felt that things were getting really, really precarious for them. So maybe they thought, okay, might be a good idea to heed the signs and just call it quits. There were cases of, many cases of, entertainers getting killed. Yeah, it was not uncommon.

Jimmy
This is all very interesting. You know, so you’re saying that it took you three years to put together The Once Marvelous DKD? What was your research process like?

Boon Lai
I spoke to the guys. I decided that I wanted to get as close as possible to the experience that these guys had gone through. I started with the library. And there was this book called the Vietnam Sketchbook published in 1968, a short series of sketches by a G.I. I thought that was a good starting point because, to have the sketches done by a G.I. of a place, it gave me an understanding of that place.

I did read quite a number of graphic novels as well, by survivors of the Vietnam War. I also read quite a number by [American comic book artist] Will Eisner.

Jimmy
What did the research into all these people, how did that, you know, influence your graphic novel?

Boon Lai
I saw in them the spirit that I suspected was there. For someone to do this, they must have a certain way about them. They actually embodied the spirit of, well, we call it foolhardy, being stupid or, you know, dangerous, being adventurous or being, you know, totally unaware, right? Being innocent. I kind of like the fact that they embodied all the qualities of youth, but put in a situation that is really, really way beyond [them], what [could] they can expect to come out of [it], right?

Jimmy
So now that you’ve completed a trilogy, what are you working on now?

Boon Lai
I’m actually working on the sequel now. This one will be the DKD Cold War. DKD Cold War will be about another young band in the midst of the rock revolution. They have their own personal issues right smack [during] the threat of nuclear annihilation. And I think as teenagers back then, I can recall at that point of time in the eighties, the fear of nuclear war was very real.

Jimmy
Thank you very much, Boon Lai, for coming down to the studio and sharing all this with us. I want to now take this interview into a slightly different direction. So, let me ask you, what’s the hardest thing about creating a historical graphic novel?

Boon Lai
The research was challenging because I think it’s also the way I did the research. I wanted to get in as deep as I could.

Jimmy
Complete the sentence. History is...

Boon Lai
History. History to me is a treasure trove of human drama. I feel it’s a treasure trove of human drama. Yeah, because, well, human drama – presented and framed in a certain way, right? It’s rather subjective.

Jimmy
Okay, historical fiction is....

Boon Lai
The way I did with DKD was, I would look at it as human drama amplified, but inspired by real events. This is humanity at its best, at its worst, right? Yeah.

Jimmy
Okay, cool. Boon Lai, thank you very much for joining us on BiblioAsia+. It’s been a pleasure having you. And I certainly learned a lot. To find out more about the experiences of Veronica Young, Harris Hamzah and Steve Bala and all these local musicians who were at one point young and crazy enough to perform in a war zone, you have to read both Boon Lai’s article in BiblioAsia and also check out his trilogy, which I believe is in the National Library’s collection. Check it out at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. I once again thank you very much for being here and good luck on the fourth book!

Boon Lai
Four, five and six.

Jimmy
Oh wow. Okay, the second trilogy. Hey, good luck then.

Boon Lai
The second trilogy. Thanks very much.

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter . Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

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

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