Honouring our fallen heroes

Tugu Negara depicts five figures representing the allied forces and two prone figures representing the defeated communist forces.

TUGU Negara or the National Monument commemorates our heroes who died in the nation’s struggle for freedom, mainly during the Japanese Occupation and the Emergency.

Few people know that the first monument was not the one in the form of human figures, but a tall concrete column situated in the middle of the roundabout along Jalan Tugu in Kuala Lumpur.

In the 1960s, Jalan Tugu was known as Cenotaph Road. It was named after a monument at the intersection of the road and Victory Avenue, which is now called Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin.

The British administration set up the first monument, a 10m flat grass-covered ground, to commemorate the wars and fallen heroes.

It was moved to the present site when a flyover was built in 1964 linking Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin and the Parliament roundabout.On the monument are the words “To Our Glorious Dead’’ along with the dates of the First World War (1914-1918), Second World War (1939-1945) and Emergency (1948-1960).

The monument was later replaced with Tugu Negara, an idea presented by Malaysia’s first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj in 1963 after he visited the Marine Corps War Memorial during his visit to the United States in 1960.

The bronze figures of soldiers standing and supporting their fallen comrades was opened on Feb 8, 1966. It was proclaimed a memorial park dedicated to the 11,000 people who died during the Emergency.

The bronze figures – regarded as the largest bronze monument grouping in the world – are the work of Austrian sculptor Felix de Weldon, who also made the Iwo Jima Monument in Washington DC.

The sculpture depicts seven figures. Five of them represent the allied forces in various poses – holding the Malaysian flag, armed with a rifle and bayonet, armed with a machine gun and tending to a wounded compatriot. The other two figures on the ground represent the defeated communist forces.In 1975, the RM1.5mil monument was renovated after it was damaged in an explosion believed to have been caused by suspected communists.

Every year on Warriors Day, which falls on July 31, the King, Prime Minister and heads of the military and police pay their respects to the fallen heroes by laying garlands at the monument.