A Doctor in The House: A Memoir of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (14 page)

All I could think of was how Japan would now have to surrender. There would be no opportunity for them to carry out any scorched earth tactics during their retreat through Malaya, as they had threatened to do. We would be spared and that was all I cared about. I knew nothing about the effects of nuclear fallout then. No one did. Even the US assumed it was safe as long as you were a long distance away and were not blown up by the explosion. The long-term effects of nuclear fallout were only discovered much later, when those exposed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered from radiation sickness and developed various forms of cancer. Had the US known how destructive they were, would it have refrained from using nuclear weapons? Were nuclear bombs used because the enemy was Japanese and not European? The Allied carpet bombings of German cities such as Dresden were undoubtedly devastating, but I don’t think the Europeans would have visited such a horrible fate on their own kind.

Still, the two atomic bombs forced the Japanese to surrender. The Japanese field commanders, not knowing the extent of the devastation, could not believe their country was surrendering. They wanted to keep fighting, so the Emperor of Japan had to send Count Terauchi, one of the imperial court officials, to convey the decision to surrender to the Japanese commanders in Southeast Asia. In several places, the Japanese soldiers committed mass suicide rather than face the humiliation of defeat.

I was elated when the Japanese Occupation ended. It meant I could go back to school. Unable to wait, I broke into the school building and vandalised it by signing my name with charcoal all over the walls of the assembly hall. I felt like Zorro, slashing my initials everywhere. It was childish and later, when the school finally did reopen, one of my teachers Mr Lim Chien Chye roundly scolded me and made sure I cleaned up the mess. But that did not dampen my excitement, especially when I found out soon after that my Junior Cambridge Examination papers, which I had sat for just before the war broke out, had reached England. With the war now over, the examination results were announced and I discovered that I had passed.

I had gone through a war, a World War, and seen two foreign armies occupying my country. It was a strange and unique experience, and it had a profound effect on me. It shattered many of my perceptions of things and many of my beliefs. The White Man was not as invincible as I had thought. He was not as smart as I had believed. He could be outsmarted and defeated. Deep down inside me a new feeling stirred. I became more conscious of my origins, my Malayness. I began to resent the dishonour and the humiliation of my people and my country. I saw how historically it was always the vassal of powerful countries, occupied, colonised and transferred from one country to another at will. I also saw how Malays were regarded as people of no consequence, their land as mere property to be literally traded or given as gifts for services rendered by foreigners to other foreigners, and even kicked and abused mercilessly for not deferring to others.

These various feelings did not crystallise at one single moment or with immediate clarity. They came slowly, with no order or sequence. But they formed the basis of my reaction to the Malayan Union, and helped to propel me into politics with deep commitment.

ENDNOTES

[
1
] A British high-speed light bomber plane used extensively in the early days of World War II.
 

[
2
] A regiment of the British Army founded in 1881.
 

[
3
] A national English-language broadsheet newspaper.
 

[
4
] Another English-language newspaper.
 

[
5
] The first jet fighters designed by a German aeronautical engineer Willy Messerschmitt.
 

[
6
] Used in both world wars, the German military aircraft were designed by Hugo Junkers.
 

[
7
] Jitra was a strategic town in Kedah. The Jitra line extended for about nine kilometres from the beach on the left to the mountains on the right.
 

[
8
] Sukarno went on to become the first President of Indonesia from 1945-1967.
 

[
9
] A disorder of the nervous system, caused by a lack of Vitamin B1.
 

[
10
] An estimated 180,000 Asian workers and 100,000 Allied prisoners of war were forced to work on the railway, which stretched over 415km between Burma (now Myanmar) and Thailand.
 

[
11
]
Syonan
was the Japanese word for Singapore.
 

[
12
] Subhas Chandra Bose was one of the most prominent leaders of the Indian independence movement against the British Raj. He was elected President of the Indian National Congress for two consecutive terms.
 

[
13
] Ras Behari Bose was the President of the Indian Independence League and head of the first Indian National Army founded by General Mohan Singh.
 

I read about the Japanese surrender in the newspapers more than a week after it happened. As a symbol of Japanese surrender, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, handed over a samurai sword to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten on the steps of the Court House in Singapore on 12 September 1945. Humiliated by the surrender of their commander-in-chief Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival in Bukit Timah, Singapore, in 1942, the British were determined to make an elaborate, well-publicised show of the Japanese defeat.

A large number of local Chinese gathered to watch the ceremony on a field facing the Court House. Their feelings were clear: the hated Japanese had lost and it served them right. That meant that not only Malaya, but China too would be liberated from the Japanese.

The Malays, on the other hand, seemed unmoved by the surrender. I was told that they simply looked on at the solemn and momentous spectacle. I do not remember celebrating nor did my friends and other people in Alor Star appear jubilant. True, 
Tanah Melayu,
 our homeland, was now free from the Japanese, but for the Malays it was just another change of colonial masters. We were happy the war was over, but that was all. We were back to being under British rule.

All I could think about was going back to school. I was 19 years old by then and missed the company of my friends and schoolmates, many of whom had returned to their 
kampung
 during the war. A few had died. My close friend Aziz Zain, who had lived near my house, had contracted a high fever when he was 16 and passed away. Medical treatment was not available during the Japanese Occupation.

As soon as school re-opened, I was re-admitted to Standard Nine. I remember all of us crowding into the classroom on our first day back. Most of us were not wearing the school uniform of black shorts and white shirts. Later, when we had time to obtain our uniforms, my family could not afford to buy cotton shirts for me, so I wore a white T-shirt instead. I would continue to do this throughout my remaining time in school. Our class master was Mr Zain Rashid, whom I remember well. He was a remarkable man who spoke English meticulously. All of our old teachers returned as well, except the geography teacher Mr M. Veeramuthu, who had died during the war.

Mr J.F. Augustine, the most senior teacher, was appointed our temporary headmaster. He was a Eurasian from the Philippines and he had a family big enough to fill all the positions in a football team. Mr Augustine also taught English, and he always gave me good marks for my work. It was he who made me Chairman of the Literary and Debating Society and Editor of the school magazine, 
The Darulaman.
 My first editorial for the magazine was a commentary about the war and the Japanese. I set out to write a grand piece, beginning with “Much water has passed under the bridge” to show how good my English was. But Mr Augustine thought it was bombastic, perhaps because I had insisted on using big words, so I had to revise it.

He was headmaster for only a few months when he was succeeded by a young Englishman, Mr G.E. Marrison. Although Mr Marrison was only in his late twenties, he was considered more senior than all the other Malayan teachers. He was a linguist and picked up Tamil very quickly by talking to the hawkers in the canteen. He became a priest a few years later and I attended his ordination at St Andrew’s Cathedral in Singapore when I was at medical college.

I did not play games much in school because I was not very good at them. Even in football you have to know how to pass the ball to another player. But I did play rugby. Rugby does not require skill, just the willingness to get hurt. I don’t think I was a good player, but I could pick up the ball with my hands and run. I enjoyed the push and shove of the scrum. I was a member of the team in medical college as well, and was a reserve player for the Singapore All Blues—though I never got a chance to play.

Textbooks were not available so soon after the war. We had to share notes and whatever old books there were. The Japanese had destroyed the science laboratory too, so the school did not begin teaching science subjects again. Whatever I knew of science, I had learned before the Japanese Occupation. This would later prove a handicap for me when I studied medicine. But at the time not being able to study science did not worry me. I did not know I would be going on to study medicine. In fact, I did not even think I would make it to any form of higher education.

Mathematics was my favourite subject. It bothers me greatly that my own children and grandchildren are reliant on calculators and not adept at mental arithmetic. My father was very particular about mathematics and used to tutor me and my brother at home. Mathematical skills are absolutely essential in life, especially in business. I had reasoned that because the Chinese boy grows up behind the shop counter where he has to calculate the change, he is more skilful in mathematics. The Malay boy in front of the counter does not need to do any calculations after his purchase. My argument may be simplistic but this regular exposure to the exchange of money must necessarily make the average Chinese boy better at mathematics than the Malay boy. I myself often did not count the change after purchasing items from local shops.

When I was still very young I could hear the Chinese shopkeeper behind my house shaking his abacus for good luck when he opened for business in the morning. Someone told me that if you went to a Chinese shop first thing in the morning, you could name any price for what you wanted to buy because the Chinese believed it was bad luck to turn down the first sale of the day. I tried it one day, and named a ridiculous price for something, I don’t remember what. Of course, the shopkeeper said no. Today no abacus is used and I am sure that Chinese shopkeepers do not shake their calculators. But I remain committed to the empirical method, to trying things out and testing what I am told.

In school, we went back to studying the history of the British Empire. They had not yet changed the curriculum for the Senior Cambridge Examination. But we did not discuss the Japanese defeat of the British during the war. History was supposed to be about the past, not current events—that was the teacher’s attitude anyway. I still find history fascinating. It has so many lessons to teach us that can be applied to our own times.

I did not, and still do not, remember historical dates very well. I did not want to clutter my brain with too many things and dates were among what I chose to forget. Unfortunately, I also tend to forget people’s names, an unforgivable shortcoming in a politician. But I was good at history in school and obtained an “A” in the Senior Cambridge Examination. I also did well in geography and mathematics, the former because during the war I had pored over maps of European towns and cities where great battles were fought.

But, though I was regarded as a good student, my teachers did not quite like me. I was perhaps “too-clever-by-half”, as they say. I wasn’t the obedient type, and obedience was what they looked for when choosing a student to be head boy or prefect. I was not made a school prefect until just before I left. My teacher Mr Lim, who had admonished me for vandalising the classroom, recommended me and told me to accept the position because it would help my prospects for employment or a scholarship.

As I settled back into the routine of classes and studies, memories of the war remained. We had all expected the British to win and I had waited eagerly for them to return to Malaya. But creeping into these memories was an increasing disillusionment about the 
Orang Putih
. They were not the invincible people I had thought they were and I was also unhappy that they had taken no action against Thailand for allowing Japanese troops to land on its coast and march down the Isthmus of Kra
[1]
 to invade Malaya.
 

There was also the matter of the Malay States being British protectorates before the war. In 1909, Kedah had been among the last of the Malay states to accept British protection. It too entered into one of those ridiculous treaties which handed administration of the state over to the British for as long as, according to the words of the treaty, there was “the sun, the moon and the stars”. The Malays did not seem to mind the permanency of these agreements – they could not imagine that the future might be different. They embraced British rule for eternity with no way out.

The British had clearly failed to protect the Malay States and their Rulers from Japanese occupation. This failure should have made the treaties null and void, or at least prompted some re-negotiation ending the permanency clause. Yet when the British returned, the Malays acted as if the treaties were still valid. The Malay Rulers, especially those who had ascended the throne during the Japanese Occupation, were afraid that the British might not recognise their legitimacy. Far from questioning continuing British claims in Malaya, they were only too willing to submit to British rule so long as their own positions were assured.