Recalling Dad’s incredible life

His memoirs, though incomplete, are timely and relevant reminders for us today.

I HAD left it at least 10 years too late, which fills me with profound regret, but I have finally done it: I have edited my late father’s memoirs.

He passed away in 2016, but long time readers of this column might recall the stories I told of him that were extremely popular. To this day, I still meet readers who remember Dad from the columns.

Wong Heck Ming, like many of his generation born in the 1920s, led a very interesting life.

He was born in Singapore to immigrant parents from China. As a teenager, he fled to Batam Island during the Japanese Occupation, went on to join the Special Branch of the police force – to his family’s great dismay – and fought during the communist insurgency. He was also in the thick of things during the May 13, 1969 racial riots.

All this is covered in his memoirs, which he wrote over a course of a few years. Sadly, after recalling his life up to the late 1970s, he ran out of steam and stopped writing in 2001. He had written most of it by hand before typing on a computer.

A few years later, my sister Claire got the nearly 70,000-word manuscript transcribed into a Google document and shared it with her siblings.

I have always wanted to edit it since I was the journalist-editor in the family. But back then, I was still working very long hours so I parked the memoirs away and largely forgot about it.

That was the huge mistake I made because I should have encouraged Dad to complete it.

With his passing in 2016, his memoirs will forever remain an unfinished family masterpiece. It is indeed that because he has brilliantly chronicled what life was like for a poor immigrant family who left China trying to make a better life in 1920-30s Singapore.

He was in his 70s when he wrote his memoirs and his recollections were astoundingly good. He could describe the homes he lived as a child and the surroundings, the names of his school teachers and classmates, as well as the mischief he got into with his brothers.

Even more vivid is his account of the years the family spent on Batam where they evacuated to just before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1941.

We children always knew Dad was good with his hands, from building and repairing just about anything to growing fruits and vegetables and even rearing animals. Indeed, these were all skills he learned during the four challenging years he lived on Batam from the age of 15.

He and his brother were city boys, but for survival’s sake, they had to quickly learn to repair an abandoned farmhouse without nails, clear the jungle to grow food and learn to fish in crocodile and shark-infested waters.

There was also the constant danger of malaria, as Dad writes: “Malaria was then raging among the villages. Our family suffered it in varying degrees with me the most affected. My malarial bouts usually lasted about two weeks that left me completely debilitated. I slept on a bed in the sitting room next to a window that opened to the footpath that served as a ‘highway’ to and out of the village centre. The mortality rate was high and I could see the coffins of those who died from malaria passing by the window almost daily.”

Dad also tells a hair-raising tale of how he, along with his father and brothers, had to hide in the outhouse of their isolated farmhouse because of the threat of roaming robbers: “It was standard practice to retain all human excrement in a pit for fertiliser, hence the pit was always half full of excrement literally boiling with maggots. I shall never forget that horrible sleepless night and to this day, I can still recall the awful stench that permeated my hair, body and clothes. In the event, the robbers did not turn up and never was I more glad to see dawn.”

He also learned to slaughter animals for meat, including pigs, iguanas, pelanduk, pythons and other livestock. For survival, all animals were fair game, and he tells it matter-of-factly, “I even had to dispose of a cat for its meat and instead of slitting its throat, I hanged it till it was dead – which took a very long time indeed.”

He remembers many colourful characters also living on Batam, like the “one-armed, pock-marked chap named Kai Keng” who, despite his handicap, could still handle farming tools and was a skilled fisherman.

“Kai Keng taught me quite a bit of jungle craft such as how to make traps for iguanas, pelanduk and wild boars. A trick he taught me was to use a bean as bait for fish,” reminisces Dad.

His memoirs also filled me with sadness because he had so many missed opportunities, be it in his education or his career as a police officer. I also came to know his family better. His parents had nine children together, but they had a very unhappy relationship with his mother mostly absent. His oldest brother was a rascal in their youth but later helped Dad financially.

That was probably Dad’s greatest difficulty and constant struggle – earning enough for the family. Despite being a poorly paid police officer, he resisted all attempts to bribe him and never abused his position. In his times of need, he was able to get by, thanks to his two most loving and caring siblings, his eldest sister Bessie, and second brother Heck Sing. Dad indeed pays tribute to my late Uncle Sing, who became a highly respected doctor in Singapore, for repeatedly trying to improve Dad’s lot and helping him financially.

Dad gives an insightful account of the fight against the communist terrorists (CTs). He was the first Chinese Special Branch officer stationed in the so-called Black Areas of Labis, Kluang and Segamat in Johor at the height of the Emergency.

He describes the dangerous police-cum-military ambushes in the deep jungle and the capture of CTs for interrogation. He had several close calls when the CTS tried to kill him, and he unflinchingly recounts how they had to take a body part like the head or hand of terrorists killed in the jungle back to the police station for identification. No wonder nothing bloody ever fazed Dad!

There are of course some personal bits, like how he met my mother – whom he was very protective of, but they also had quite a difficult marriage because Mum was very high-strung and sensitive. It wasn’t easy for her too as she was just 19 when they married and Dad was often away on duty.

I also got “introduced” to the many people he met who would become life-long friends, including British military and police officers. He was generous in praise to those who were honest and hard-working, and scathing about fellow officers who were lazy and corrupt.

He also touches on the 1969 racial riots and tells it as he saw it, wryly noting, “The true story of what actually happened has never been told, nor – as far as I know – had any competent and impartial body been tasked to make an in-depth study of it.”

While the memoirs are very well detailed, there are still many gaps and missing personal information that are quite impossible to fill with his passing. And that is why I regret so immensely my procrastinating on editing the memoirs.

Still, his experiences on Batam and during the Emergency alone make for fascinating, absorbing reading. At this point, I am unsure what will become of the memoirs, whether the family may self-publish all or parts of it.

After all, the war years would be quite fitting for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II next year. Ditto, his communist fighting days, as 2025 will also mark the 65th anniversary of the end of the Malayan Emergency.

These two momentous 20th century events that changed the world and shaped our nation must never be forgotten – and Dad’s memoirs are timely, relevant reminders to us in the 21st century.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own.