A Tale Worth Telling is a true story from the days of the second World War in Malaya. It is a tribute to a couple who devoted their lives to education, family and community, and captures their memories of friendship with a Japanese soldier.
by A. Prema, May 2020
“I’m going to India to start medical school at Manipal,” said my best friend many years ago when we were just a couple of months into our Sixth Form at the St. Michael’s school in Ipoh. I remember being sad with her good news, not just about losing a dear friend with whom I had shared many memories as well as pranks. I would miss her laughter and smart banter, but I was also hurt that she hadn’t told me about her plans till just a few days before she left.
We were 16 back then, had done well with our senior Cambridge Ordinary O-level exams and were on the threshold of new paths. We both had parents who valued higher education above the cultural constraints of gender and social conformity. She was taking the fast track to becoming a doctor and I was going to stay home and continue with Advanced A-level studies with hopes of getting into a local university. But then again, this story is not about childhood friendships or how we fared. I want to fast forward through 46 years and tell you about the time I went to visit her parents. They still lived at the same address in a stately bungalow home with a beautiful garden and tree-lined roadway, right next to the Anderson School where Uncle had been a teacher.
I called them Uncle and Aunty as was, and still is, the polite honorific in Malaysia’s multiracial society. It didn’t matter if there were blood ties. Uncle and Aunty, then 92 and 89, had both been teachers and had received many accolades in recognition of their decades of unwavering service and commitment to excellence in molding the intellectual and moral fiber of the children they taught. I went to visit them for many reasons – out of respect and connection to old familial and community ties; on behalf of my friend who lived abroad like many of our cohort of school mates including myself; and also because her parents were always very warm and gracious. Conversations with them were always engaging and thought provoking.
It was 10 in the morning and I had called ahead to see if they were up for some company. I arrived to find both of them comfortably seated at the kitchen table and having their breakfast. Like much of the furniture in their house, the square kitchen table was of solid wood and probably older than even they were. Uncle and Aunty were looking relaxed yet vibrant. They asked about my family and listened keenly, observing my words and mannerisms. Aunty caught me saying “Yeah….,” and the English teacher in her just couldn’t resist a correction. “You mean ‘Yes’, why are you saying ‘Yeah’?” As we sat together, the conversation slowly drifted to the topic of the upcoming national elections and earlier times in the history of Malaya. And then, there unfolded an incredible story which I wanted to share with you.
Uncle, always the consummate teacher, laid the groundwork. “There were rumbles of war in late 1941, the 2nd World War. Many countries were getting prepared for this eventuality. All of a sudden on November 10, there were two significant movements in various places. The British brought two huge warships, the HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales, and strategically parked them on the east coast of the country within quick reach of the island of Singapore so that they could combat with any form of invasion. These ships represented the might of the British Empire. General Wavell was prepared for war but didn’t expect what happened next. Unexpectedly, the Japanese launched a surprise attack and bombed Pearl Harbor, and the world saw Kamikaze pilots for the first time. They flew their bomb-laden planes directly into their targets.”
Aunty, who was quietly listening, interrupted him and said, “You know, they sacrificed themselves for their country, when the plane went down, they also died!”
Uncle smiled and touched her arm lightly, as if to indicate “You’ll have your turn soon enough, I’m the warm-up act.” He continued. “As this was going on, many countries were getting ready for impending war. We too went and bought groceries and stocked up the house. Meanwhile Thailand had always remained neutral and nobody was sure what they would do. The thinking was that if there was any invasion into Malaya, it would come through Thailand.”
“In the meantime, the British were mobilizing their troops with guns and tanks and were taken aback when the Japanese suddenly landed on the East Coast of Malaya just hours before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Over the next few days, these soldiers started moving across the country. What surprised everyone was that the Japanese were coming in hoards on bicycles! This was the first time anyone was seeing an army coming on bicycles. The British went to fight them and there were big fights in different places. For our families, it became very real very quickly. The Japanese bombed Penang on December 11th of 1941 which was the area where Aunty grew up, and then they bombed several towns in the state of Perak including Ipoh and my hometown, Batu Gajah. They continued on and captured areas further south in the country.”
“This girl,” he said, again gently touching his wife’s arm, “was preparing for her School Certificate examination at the Penang Convent at the time. On that December 11th, when the siren went off indicating an emergency and planes overhead, she went and hid under the table in her classroom, just like the other girls. When the sirens stopped, the girls were told to go home. Everyone went off in different directions. Soon, there were no more cars waiting as parents had rushed to the school to collect their children.”
“This small little girl was just going on 14…..she was born in 1928. Her home was not in Penang. She had to get back across the water causeway to her home in Butterworth. So, with no other options, she started to walk across the streets and saw dead bodies and people injured and dying. She walked in a daze, like in a dream, hoping to just reach the ferry that she always took to get to school and to go back home. She finally reached the wharf and there were no ferries in sight. They had either been stopped or bombed. But she saw a barge. Some good Samaritan had brought a barge and said ‘Siapa mahu pulang rumah ke Butterworth? Who wants to go home to Butterworth? They can get on this barge. So, without thinking, she just jumped on the barge, reflexively I think as she wouldn’t have consciously done it. “
“As she has told me this story many times over the years, I feel that I ‘experienced it myself. She got off at the Butterworth wharf and then started to walk home to her house at Bagan Luar Road.”
Aunty quietly interjected, softly but firmly, “It was C5. C5, Bagan Luar Road.”
Uncle acknowledged her interruption and added, “Yes, C5” and continued. “Her parents as you can imagine were so worried and were anxiously waiting outside wondering what might have happened to their daughter. And then they saw her coming. They were simply overjoyed and hugged her. They were so glad to see she was well and had made her way safely home.“
He wasn’t ready to stop talking in relating her story. “Meanwhile, they could see that there were droves of soldiers coming, they were Japanese soldiers. They came on bicycles, an incredible and perhaps marvelous idea, with two to three men on one bicycle, one fellow in front, one fellow at the back. Whenever they spotted a bicycle anywhere around, they hopped off, confiscated it and that’s how they got more and more bicycles and kept going. During this time, the Japanese captured and occupied several key places in the country which included some major clashes. Finally, they occupied Singapore and General Wavell had no choice but to take the white flag and surrender. The Japanese took over the whole of the peninsula in addition to Singapore and they were making their way westward hoping to capture India and other East Asian countries towards their vision of one world order and an Asia for Asians.”
Uncle looked over at Aunty and said, “Now we’re coming to where I can hand the story over to you to continue with your own words and memories.” But, no, he wasn’t quite done yet and added, “See the Japanese had set up one of their military headquarters in Butterworth. Whenever you saw them, they were always dressed in their brown and green uniform and cap.”
To Aunty, he said, “OK, now you can start your story,” as he turned and looked at her impishly. “You can talk about how that Japanese soldier came to your house, how you became friendly with him, how he helped your mother and loved your whole family, how you studied the language from him and liked him so much, how you got all your qualifications in Japanese and then taught Japanese, and all that Aoyagi Masau did for your family, how he didn’t want to commit hara-kiri when the war ended….now, you can continue Ma’am.” Those were his exact words said with so much affection and endearment as well as pride that he had gotten the prize. He got to marry her, she was his one and true-life companion, not the other guy from way back then.
He pushed his chair back and slowly walked out towards the main living room. I suspected that he wanted to give Aunty the physical and mental space to share her own views and for him to not be tempted to interject and interrupt her own recollections.
Aunty laughed with exuberance and I could sense the love and familiarity they shared, of really knowing someone as your spouse with many years of shared experiences together. She picked up the thread from where her own thoughts had been as she listened to his recount of past events and his memory of what she herself had shared with him many times over their 65 years of marriage. Earlier I had learned about how they met and got married. Uncle had been a roommate with Aunty’s brother when they were both studying in Singapore. Uncle had already decided that he wanted to marry someone who had her own professional interests and who wanted to work at something rather than being a housewife. Seeing photos of his friend’s family, admiring her beauty and learning about Aunty’s academic excellence left no doubt in his mind about whom he wanted as his future wife. And so it transpired.
Aunty began her narration. “I was at the St. Theresa’s Convent school in Butterworth, it was named after Mother Theresa. I studied there till Standard 7 and it ended there because they didn’t offer higher standards towards the junior and senior Cambridge examinations. So, after the Standard 7 exam, you had to transfer to a school which offered these higher level classes. I had many friends whose parents didn’t want their children to travel every day from Butterworth to Penang by the ferry to go the school there. Most of my friends who were Chinese and Indian –there were no Malay girls in my batch — didn’t continue their studies; they started to work or they got married.
“My father on the other hand said, ‘My daughter is only 14.’ See, I had been a good student and skipped two classes, going from Standard 2 directly to 4 and then I also skipped Standard 5. I was first in all my classes in spite of being the youngest because of the two double promotions; most of my friends were 16 and 17. So my father didn’t want me to stop studying. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter, there’s a ferry, my daughter must go on studying and she can take the ferry across to the school in Penang.’”
“So, after Standard 7, I went to the All-Girls Convent Light Street School which was on the street named after Sir Francis Light, the founder of Penang.” Aunty paused for a bit as if collecting her thoughts to get her chronology just right. “From my home, I would catch the bus which was very cheap. For 2 cents, the bus would take me straight down to the Mitchell Pier in Butterworth. Oh, Mitchell was the District Officer for Butterworth and many places were named like that, after prominent British officers of the time. At the Pier, I would just show my one-month ticket which my father had bought for me and the ferry would take me over to the Frances Light Pier. On the ferry, I was the only girl; the other students were all boys and they went to a different All-Boys school once we got across. After the ferry reached Penang, there were no buses. So, I had to walk from the Pier, called the Francis Light Pier, to the Convent. It was about a 20-minute walk. I had no umbrella and on a nice sunny day, it was fine, but I got quite wet if it rained. It didn’t matter though, we were so young and it didn’t matter at all if I got wet.”
“I remember the day vividly that Uncle told you about just now. It was December 11th 1941. We were in school and suddenly heard a loud unusual noise, the sound of big engines. The Japanese aeroplanes were zooming overhead and the engine sounds gave way to other sounds. Bombs were falling. It was a terrific and terrible noise.”
“Many of our teachers were nuns who came from Ireland and France to teach us and of course, also to propagate their religion. They were ordered by the Pope to go to different countries and convert as many people from their religion to Catholicism. If they could convert even one person, they felt that the gates of heaven would be opened for them. That’s what they believed. Anyway, they were good teachers and we studied hard.“
At this point, Uncle sauntered back into the dining room where Aunty and I were seated, and he said “You need to tell her about that Japanese fellow. She doesn’t need to hear all the details about your school and you don’t need to convert her either.” And Aunty again laughed easily and said “Alright, he knows more than I remember now because I’ve been telling him this story many, many times. It all happened more than 70 years ago and I’m not sure how good my memory is these days.”
And she picked up the thread again. “So, on the 11th of December, we were in school and we heard the planes flying overhead. They were very loud and one after the other, we heard and felt the vibrations of the bombs. The nuns and other teachers told us ‘Go and hide yourselves.’ But there was nowhere to really hide and it didn’t look like hiding under the desks was going to be of much use but that’s what we did.”
“Doom! Doom! Doom! We were so frightened.”
“Then we heard, a siren, ‘Whoooo.’ We knew that was the signal that the planes had gone and we could come out. I came outside. My classmates, all were girls from Penang and their parents and relatives had rushed to the school to meet them and I saw how they held their hands and took them home. I was left by myself, the only one from across the causeway in Butterworth. I didn’t know what else to do except to follow my daily routine. So I walked along the pavement, I remember passing the shop, M.S. Ali and Company, as I walked. It was so frightening! There were corpses and people on the ground bleeding and dying. I was numb and just walked on to the Pier. There were no boats. The ferries were all bombed. I was desperate and didn’t know what to do. I noticed a raft with two men and they had 2 oars and they just waved and said, “Come, come, come, whoever needs to get across to Butterworth.”
“Several of us got on the raft. We had no money and they said, ‘Never mind.’ We finally reached the Mitchell Pier and again, no transport, no buses, and so I walked all the way to our house. It took a good half an hour, to get to C5 Bagan Luar road, my home. I could see my parents waiting outside and that my mother was crying. My father was consoling her and as I got closer, I heard him saying ‘Don’t worry, Poovayee is a brave girl, she will be alright.’ Suddenly they saw me coming and the joy on their faces was incredible. My mother rushed up and hugged me and said “Are you alright? Are you alright?’ and I remember my father saying, ‘See I told you, she’s a brave girl, she’s a brave girl. I knew you would come back.’ It was such a happy reunion.
Then the war came.
“From 1941, we went through just over three years of the Japanese regime. The Chinese, for the most part, hated the Japanese given the historical tensions and conflict between China and Japan. On the other hand, most of the Indians didn’t mind the Japanese; in some ways, they felt that ‘When the British were here, we listened to them.’ And my father said, ‘The British ran away, concerned for their own lives and safety, and they didn’t think of you and left us here alone. The Japanese have now come so we don’t have much choice but to follow the Japanese rule. We are not going to fight either the British or the Japanese. They are now the stronger force so continue studying, go to school in Penang.’
Since my father insisted, I went back to my school. The Japanese teachers actually were sent from Japan and they taught us at the Light Street Convent. During this time, I only had completed my Standard 7. I started studying Japanese which I found to be a very musical and beautiful language.”
“I studied hard and passed the Japanese exam after two years and was qualified to become a Japanese school teacher. Remember I was just 17 then. I taught Japanese for one year before the war ended and the British came back.”
“During this time, while the Japanese were in Butterworth, there was a soldier, he was not an officer but a very nice man. His name was Aoyagi Masau San. In Japanese, they say Mister at the end which is San.”
“One day by chance, he was passing and stopped at our house and said ‘Moshi moshi…Mizu’, and he pointed at his mouth and looked very thirsty. We understood that he was asking for water and my father invited him to come in. We were frightened to let a Japanese soldier in but my father was kind. After that, Aoyagi Masau San returned to visit us often and grew to love our family and my mother’s Indian cooking. He loved our fermented Idli rice cakes and Thosai pancakes and he said he had never eaten this in Japan.”
“The Chinese were not happy that he came often to our house and said, ‘Why are you all entertaining this Japanese fellow?’ And my father firmly responded ‘Look, the British just left us and now the Japanese are here and we have to adjust to them being the rulers. Let them rule, they are stronger.’ My father took that attitude.
Aoyagi Masau San came often because he liked us very much and he spoke Japanese to us as he couldn’t speak English or Tamil. I found it difficult to understand him and so I asked him to teach me to speak Japanese. So we started with greetings and he taught me to say “Ohayo gozaimasu, Konnichiwa, Konbanwa, and Oyasumi nasai for Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening and Good night.”
The Japanese words just flowed easily and effortlessly from Aunty’s lips. And she continued, “I then asked him how to say ‘school’ and he taught me ‘Kako’ and then ‘Sinsei’ and ‘Saito’ for teacher and pupil. There were six of us children, 3 boys and 3 girls, but I spent the most time with him as I was so interested in learning Japanese. I was now learning Japanese at school but I learned more from conversing with him.” Aunty went on with several more phrases fondly remembering the melodious sounds of his language and all of the Japanese she had learned from him and at school and that she later taught to her students.
“Aoyagi Masau San used to walk to our house from his barracks, the Kempeitai unit, which was near the sea. Our Chinese neighbors would stare and be scared to see him come. We would give him food but he wasn’t allowed and couldn’t bring anything from his office. He was a very nice man, as far as we were concerned. He was always in his khaki green uniform and cap. He didn’t carry a big gun but he did wear a small pistol. I was the only one who was closest to him because I went to Japanese school and knew and liked the language and liked the culture and people from what I was learning. I didn’t associate any of this with the horrors of war. The Japanese were very polite. For instance, a man would stand if a woman was sitting, he wouldn’t sit and I thought that was very polite.”
“He got along well with my mother too. We had an ural at home which is a stone grinder used by Tamils to grind rice into a flour and it is then fermented as a batter to make Thosai pancakes. He saw my mother doing it and he would say “Oka San, Mother, I can help” and she would say “No, no, I will do it” but he would invariably take over and pound and grind whatever she needed. He would say to her ‘If you can do, I can do also. You are a lady, surely I can do.’ He liked to help.“
“He told us that his parents were in Tokyo and that he was keen to go back but that he was sent by the Army to Malaya. He was trained to be a soldier and had trained as a pilot as well.”
“When the British came back, we lost contact with Aoyagi Masau San. But before he left, he did come to our house and said ‘Sayonara, I will come back to see you all.’ He also added, ‘You are part of my family.’”
Uncle was clearly eavesdropping on her narration and walked back to join us. He wanted to provide some context for some of the aftermath of the Japanese occupation. “We knew of one or two Japanese soldiers who did hara-kiri, committing a ritual suicide by pushing a sword into their stomachs since losing the war was a dishonor to their Emperor. Also, as the Japanese were leaving, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army with a Chinese leader, Chin Peng, came out and took over Batu Gajah. They held open courts, they brought people who they thought were collaborators, they convicted a woman as well. Those were difficult times.”
Aunty chimed in again to take back control of her narrative and told me a little more about how her own path unfolded. “I continued my studies when the British came back and finished my Senior Cambridge. I was studying several subjects including English Language, English Literature, Mathematics, History and Geography. Our papers were sent to Cambridge, England, for grading and the results were posted back to us. We also had to do a foreign language and most of my friends took French but my parents had taught me Tamil and my father said I should do that as my foreign language requirement. So, I had 6 As and also passed Art and Drawing. I got a Grade 1 and with the Cambridge certificate, many went to Singapore for University but my father said, ‘You go to Penang Normal Class and train to become a teacher’.”
“About that time, my oldest brother was studying in Singapore at the Raffles College and Uncle was his room-mate. That’s how we got connected.” She paused and added “He’s such a wonderful husband; I couldn’t have found a better husband. And for all that, I must thank my brother, that he went to Singapore to study and that they became great friends. There was such a physical distance between our hometowns if you think about it. Uncle was from Batu Gajah and I was in Butterworth. We wouldn’t have met if it was not for my brother showing photos of our family. Uncle had asked my brother ‘Who’s this?’ and he said ‘My sister. She’s a teacher at the Bukit Mertajam Convent.’ Uncle wanted a wife who would work and also be able to teach his children when she came home from work. But his family wanted him to marry one of his cousins, some of whom were waiting, hoping that one of them would be chosen as his bride. Fortunately, my father-in-law said, ‘Let him finish his studies and marry whomever he chooses.’ My mother-in-law was not happy with that, but she abided with Uncle’s decision to marry me. Our wedding was in 1952 when I was 23 years old.”
“And of course, we shared everything and I told Uncle all about Aoyagi Masau San. Then sometime around 1973 or 74, we got an interesting phone call. Someone from Japan had written to the District Officer, the D.O. in Butterworth, asking if he knew an Indian family by the name of Navaratnam who lived on Bagan Luar Road? The D.O. thought this was an interesting query and mentioned this to a friend saying, “You’re Indian, do you know who this family might be?’ Lo and behold, that person he asked was my brother who replied, ‘That was my family! We were the ones at that house.’”
“When we got this news, we were so elated. Uncle was of course just as excited to meet this Japanese man who had so captured our hearts. So, our family all got in the car and drove to Penang to a small reception at the Metropole Hotel. Aoyagi Masau San had written to say that he was coming with a group of people and unfortunately couldn’t stay for more than a couple of hours. We were all so excited and eager to see him and have a happy reunion. “
Uncle now felt compelled to add his account of the meeting. “I was so curious to finally meet this man because I think he would have married Aunty if he could have. He was a young boy himself at the time. And there at the Metropole hotel, coming towards us, was a short, old and tired looking man, his body frail. He had several missing front teeth. It was a little sad to see him, his face lined and weary. He must have been thinking of the glorious days of the Japanese army. He was overjoyed to see everyone and he held Aunty. He brought six Japanese dolls and ceremoniously gave them as a gift to each person. We still have the doll. The whole time we were together, I could see the tears rolling down his cheeks; he was choked with emotion and could barely talk. He just shook everyone’s hands. He asked about Aunty’s father and mother and said how much he liked her mother and how much he had enjoyed her meals. It was a short visit and he shared a little about his family, his daughter and son.”
There was no contact with him after that visit.
Some years later, Aunty told me that she was on a flight back from the U.S. after visiting her daughters who had migrated there. “I had a long stop-over in Tokyo and thought it would be nice to visit Aoyagi Masau San and his family. But there was no reply to the letter I had written much earlier which provided all my travel details. So, when I got to Tokyo, I phoned and reached his daughter, Michiko. I asked ‘Where’s your father, Oto-san, Oto des-ka, How is he?’ and I just heard her cry. I asked “Nandeska, What is it? Michiko told me that her father had died of a ruptured stomach ulcer a week after returning from his visit to Malaysia to see us all those years ago. He had been very ill but wanted very much to see me and my family again because we had meant so much to him. I think the feeling to see us had held him up and we too were happy that we were able to see him before he passed away. I remembered him as just a very wonderful person.
As an intellectual and keen mind, Uncle shared some final thoughts about the conflicting interests from the time of the Second World War and extending to the present time. “With the Second World War, General Tojo had an expansionist idea about attacking China and then going on to India bringing all of the East Asian countries under a common authority. The two atomic bombs dropped by the Americans in turn were an injustice against humanity. Things haven’t changed. Greed. Greed is an underlying motive in many things, for money, for power, oil, what have you, always with underlying selfish interests,” he added.
Uncle and Aunty smiled lovingly at each other as we reached the conclusion to their story, one of many rich experiences in their shared lives which they had dedicated to education and their children and community. I saw them as role models of the righteous, moral path towards a higher, uplifted sense of humanity.
Sadly, Uncle passed away at the age of 93 and Aunty misses him a lot. We all do. And, as for their daughter and me, we are still good friends. She became a medical doctor and I became a professor, with our own stories to tell someday.
Acknowledgment: The author is grateful to Datuk Seri N. S. Selvamany and Datin Poovayee Selvamany nee Navaratnam for sharing these memories from their lives, for their love and support over the years, and for the friendship of their daughter who remains a treasured friend.