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The
Bloodiest
Chinese Massacre during WWII
(Part 3 of 7) |
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Some who can cheat death
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The very fortunate minority
Case 1.
One such person was Chua Choon Guan, a taxi driver, who lived at 105
Koon Seng Road. He had been detained at the Jalan Besar Football
stadium concentration centre and selected for execution because of his
physique. "They had a liking for those who were well built and
they took us all out," Choon Chuan would later recall.
Trussed up and pushed to the water's edge at Tanah Merah Besar, Choon
Guan suffered machinegun wounds to the side and legs. He
survived because he was knocked unconscious in the first salvo.
Several of his fellow prisoners then collapsed dead on top of his
prostrate body. In death they camouflaged him from the prying
eyes of Japanese soldiers seeking to deliver final bayonet thrusts.
It was dark when he regained consciousness. The incoming tide
was washing over his face. He extricated himself from beneath
the corpses, found a sharp rock on which to cut through his bonds, and
then crawled to safety.
Case 2.
At one collection point along Jalan Besar a young man in his early
twenties had been selected for execution. He was ordered to join
a group that had been set aside and would later be taken away
and ultimately driven to one of the selected beach killing sites.
The young man instinctively felt he was in serious trouble.
Before joining the group he asked to go back to the collection centre
to retrieve his "other important things". The Japanese
consented.
In an interview with the Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun nearly fifty
years later, he recalled how he had hidden for a few days before being
released. "I was lucky because those who were collected never
came back. They were shot and massacred. So my good luck
was to be allowed to go back to collect my things", he explained to
his interviewer.
His name is Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore. On such a
slender thread once hung the island nation's political destiny.
Undoubtedly, besides his plain lucks, Mr. Lee is proved to be a very
smart man with a sharp foresight.
Case 3.
Wong Peng Yin was a group of 120 Chinese men and youths who were
driven to Tanah Merah Besar Beach from Victoria School in the late
evening. There they were roped together in groups of five, and
ordered to march into the water. As the 24 separate bunches of
men struggled across the sand, they noticed bodies from previously
executed batches littering the foreshore.
Through shock and fear, the tragic little groups began reacting
differently. Some moved straight ahead into the water.
Some lagged behind. Some stumbled to the left; some wandered off
to the right. For a while there was clearly confusion within the
Japanese firing squad about the targets spreading so widely.
Peng Yin had waded two hundred yards across the shallows before the
machinegun and rifle fire erupted. He and several others in
different groups dropped into the water and were able to struggle free
of their ropes. They swam out to the sea, protected by the
oncoming darkness, then veered to the right in the direction of a
fishing village further along the coast. There Peng Yin came
ashore and rested the night in a squatter's hut.
The next day, he was cautiously making his way back towards his home
in Klang Road when he ran into a convoy of lorries in Siglap Village.
In the backs of the lorries, just as he had been the day before, were
a large number of Chinese men, their hands bound behind their backs.
Peng Yin hid in the village from about 9am in the morning to 2pm in
the afternoon. More lorries arrived. He dared not move for
fear of being spotted and dispatched to a firing squad a second time.
Throughout the five hours he stayed concealed, Peng Yin heard frequent
bursts of machinegun fire coming from a small hill alongside Woo Mon
Chew Road, another of the execution ground chosen by the Japanese.
Case 4.
Detective Kang Thiam Huat, from the CID was one of the policemen
arrested by the Japanese to the Victoria School football field on
Tyrwhitt Road where their details were taken down. Fearing the
worst, Thiam Huat provided a false name. It was not long before
he was singled out and given a fierce beating for misleading the
authorities. The Japanese guards then pushed the battered but
unbound detective into the back of a lorry with a number of other
Chinese male prisoners. The drive to the 6th milestone, Changi
Road, was fast and in convoy with other similarly loaded lorries
carrying a total of some 300 to their executions.
It was late evening when they arrived at the beach. It was also
high tide and the vehicles were able to maneuver fairly close to the
water's edge. Thiam Huat watched as the first to alight were
tied into groups of four. When it came his turn to get down, he
dashed for the sea. As he dived beneath the surface he heard the
sound of machine guns opening fire. His dive sent him bumping up
against corpses of those shot earlier. Using the bodies as
shields he edged his way into deeper water and eventually escaped by
swimming down the coast into the darkness.
Case 5.
Mr Chan Cheng Yean was a Singapore Volunteer soldier. His unit
was captured, separated by race, and marched from Race Course Rd to
Tanjong Katong Rd. They were placed under the sun in an open
field until three or four lorries came and brought them to Bedok.
There were 90 of them divided into groups of three men, all standing
in front of an open trench. They stood close to each other until
there was no room to move. Then they were shot, group by group.
Mr Chan, who stood with the second group, was shot in the knee, and
fell into the trench with the dead. "They went down like toy
soldiers", he recounted.
He held his breath while the Japanese soldiers came around to check
and bayonet the bodies. The incident took 20 minutes. He
heard footsteps moving away and waited another 15 minutes before he
tried getting out. He pushed against the planks that were placed
on top of them and untangled his legs from the bodies to crawl out.
He was the only one alive.
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