The Harmony Silk Factory (15 page)

Kunichika did not think like a soldier. He had other ways to fight a war, ways more dangerous than bayonets and bullets. The very first thing he did was to send his agents across the Valley with bundles of cash. They used it to pay for information: who was a Communist, who was in touch with British officers still in the jungle, who was planning a movement against the Japanese. Above all, Kunichika wanted to find out who was the most influential man in the Valley. He knew such a man could be of immense help to him. It took just two days for his men to return with an answer.

Johnny had been waiting for this moment for many months. He wanted to be found; he wanted to be taken to the head of the dreaded Kempeitai. Just as Kunichika had decided, long before he reached these new shores, what he would do if ever he was in this position, Johnny knew too what his own course of action would be. The two men were destined to find each other. Their first meeting had already taken place in their minds, many times over. When Johnny walked into the room and saw Kunichika, he felt comfortable, as if he had known the other man for many years. Kunichika smiled and Johnny bowed slightly. Kunichika knew that he had found the man who could help him achieve everything he wanted. An offer was made and accepted. There was never any doubt as to this outcome. There was no bargaining, no hesitation, no need even to shake hands. For Johnny the price had never been so right.

Johnny called a meeting of the most important men in the Valley. He told them that they had a duty to protect the interests of the people, and that it was up to them to ensure that the Valley survived the Occupation with minimum damage. He had thought about it long and hard, and had come to a difficult conclusion. There were no easy options in war. They had to get on the right side of the Japanese. They had to flatter, placate, and please in order to deceive and survive. They had to accept that the British were gone and the Japanese were their new masters.

The room fell silent.

It is not easy to explain the turmoil that must have ravaged these men’s minds; it is not easy to explain the history of the Chinese and the Japanese. Even I, a man who, as a child, sat on the laps of Japanese generals who fed me boiled rice porridge spoonful by spoonful—even I am aware of the centuries of enmity. Most of these men never thought the day would come when they would have to make such decisions. Some of them refused to believe the state their country was in. The British, they thought, would be back in a few weeks and restore order. But the British did not come back. With every passing day the memory of the country they once knew receded further into the past, and they began to doubt whether they would ever see it again. In this whirlpool of despair and confusion they had no choice but to acquiesce, to defer to the one man who seemed to know exactly what to do.

Johnny instructed these men to collect taxes from the people in their respective parts of the Valley. They were to tax whatever they could: tin, rubber, palm oil, rice, barley, whisky, salt fish, chilli sauce, fermented anchovies—anything. Authority to do so came directly from the Imperial Japanese Army. In the first year of the Occupation alone, the people of the Valley paid $70 million in taxes. This was used by the Japanese to build new fighter planes. If I were a better mathematician I could tell you how much this would be worth today, or how many jumbo jets it would buy. Very many, I am sure.

Every month the money was handed over to the Japanese by Johnny and Chan Toh Kwan, a banker. The Marquis accepted the money graciously, with a touch of embarrassment, leaving the cheque on the table for the duration of the half-hour meeting. Tea was drunk and pleasantries exchanged. Chan’s sons, who were at school with me, would tell people how their father went “mad in the head” during these meetings. He broke out in a heavy sweat and found his throat too dry to speak. He left the talking to Johnny, who had taken over all negotiations with the Japanese. Often, Chan felt so weak and strange that he would have to leave the meeting early, letting Johnny deal with the Kempeitai alone. No other man but Johnny could have done this; no one had Johnny’s conviction. Chan, for example, was terrified of being branded a collaborator. He survived the war and returned to the OCBC afterwards, though he kept a low profile, avoiding public places for fear of being assassinated. Years later, he became addicted to video games and locked himself away, becoming particularly adept at Pac-Man in his old age. He became convinced that people were watching him everywhere he went, that he was being spied upon while in bed and on the toilet. The war broke him, that’s what his sons said. I remember them surrounded by groups of younger boys eager to hear their stories of the war. They were keen to tell as many people as they could about their father, to convince them that he was not a traitor. I don’t think it worked. Once opinions are formed, they are not easily changed. Curiously, they never spoke to me on the subject of war; they never discussed their father or mine. They didn’t dare.

The people of the Valley paid their taxes because Johnny said they had to. It was hard, but they trusted his wisdom. They were not siding with the Japanese, they were not funding the war against their brothers in China, he said; it was merely a matter of survival. In secret lectures he told them they were fooling the Japanese into believing the Valley was friendly. They had to be patient while their boys in the jungle mounted a campaign to topple the Japs.

Trust me, he said. Believe me.

And to this day I think people still believe what he said.

N EARLY AUGUST 1942 Johnny began to organise a top-secret, top-level meeting of the senior commanders of the Communist Party. An underground movement had already established a guerilla army called the Malayan Anti-Japanese People’s Army. Johnny must have thought of the name. It was ridiculous and overly grand for a group of malnourished, badly equipped Chinese adolescents camped in the jungle. Few people could remember or pronounce the name, and even its acronym was often forgotten. Nonetheless, this band of guerillas proved to be a hardened bunch. They attacked police stations and ambushed groups of Japanese soldiers returning from nights out at the army brothels. Once they even succeeded in kidnapping and killing a mid-ranking Japanese captain. The Valley was full of talk of British commandos who had stayed on behind enemy lines to train and organise these guerillas. People whispered about a $20 million reward for the head of any white man found in the jungle. Some villagers even claimed to have seen British soldiers alighting in twos and threes from small boats along the mangrove coastline.

Sixteen men formed the Supreme Central Committee of Communist commanders. The majority of them lived and fought in the heart of the jungle, but a number of them led double lives. Like Johnny, they were men of commerce and industry. It took many days for Johnny to spread word about the meeting to these men. With Japanese ears in every village, the old network of communication had become slower and more cautious. The news seeped slowly across the country, whispered by hidden mouths into invisible ears. The sense of anticipation grew with every whisper.

Johnny has summoned us to a meeting.

Johnny has been in touch with the British.

Johnny has weapons. He has plans.

A date was set: 1 September.

A place too: the massive catacomb of limestone caves lying just beyond the southernmost tip of the Valley.

The caves are a million years old and their secret depths have always inspired extremes in the hearts and minds of those people who come here. That is why, for over a century, Hindus have worshipped here at the shrines of Subramaniam and Ganesh. Once a year, the most devout of them paint their faces and unclothed bodies and walk barefoot over glowing embers of coal; others pierce their noses, cheeks, necks, and arms with immense skewers upon which fruit and other offerings are balanced.

It is just as well that worshippers come every year to this holy site. The layers and layers of devotion might someday erase the evil of that single day in 1942.

I felt the sadness of that day when I visited the caves myself. I went there on the day I found out what my father had done. I stood in a corner of the innermost cave, tucking myself in beside a small shrine, hiding behind the many-armed figures which guarded its entrance, just as Johnny’s men must have done that dreadful day. My shoulder scraped flakes of peeling paint onto the damp floor. The smell of camphor soot filled my head and I closed my eyes. I stayed, as those men had, until the last of the visitors had gone and the afternoon swiftly became evening. The men had mingled for some hours among the other visitors to the caves. I could see them all around me, lurking in the shadows, barely perceptible in my mind’s eye. They glanced at one another now and then, catching one another’s eye for a brief moment before moving on, gazing emptily at the painted walls and ceilings. Slowly, they established who was present. Fifteen leaders, each with several lieutenants, forty-four men in all.

The most important of all, though, was not yet there.

In the heart of each man, doubt began to creep. Where was he? Had he been caught and killed at last? Forty-four was a very bad number, very unlucky for all Chinese, even Communists. It meant: death.

Night fell quickly, as it always did, but this time it felt blacker and deeper than ever before.

One man broke the silence, whispering out into the dark. “Friends, comrades, who is here?”

I am,
the whispers multiplied, coming together as they did. Brief silence, all men waiting for the voice they most wanted to hear.

Hands on pistols: a figure approaching from the mouth of the outer caves, barely outlined in the darkness. Is it him? someone asked. I don’t know. Can’t tell. Listen. A steady, heavy tread, confident, afraid of nothing. No man had a walk like that. No man except Johnny.

The men relaxed their grips on their weapons. None could see the smiles on the others’ faces. They stood huddled together in the dark, lambs awaiting their shepherd.

A flash of light, blinding, colourful. Smoke. Gas! Quick, boys! They dropped to the floor, fumbling and clutching at their clothes, tearing off their shirts to cover their mouths and noses. Pistols drawn, they searched for the invisible danger through stinging eyes. The thundering, whipping, cutting crack of machine-gun fire.

Johnny, where’s Johnny?

They fired into the smoke, slowly choking and suffocating. Some of them stood up and were instantly felled.

Fight on, fight on, they urged each other. They did not fear death.

Johnny will save us.

That is what they believed right to the end.

One by one they were cut down. A few ran screaming from the burning fog and were bayonetted by Japanese soldiers as they emerged from the mouth of the cave. When at last the smoke began to thin, the Japanese searched the caves with torches. The streams of light danced on the wet and bloody walls and shone in the eyes of the survivors, who were arrested and taken away. They spent many weeks in Kempeitai jails, where two of them committed suicide: one broke a spoon in two and cut his own throat with the jagged pieces, and the other threw himself into a dry well in the prison compound. The other survivors, for the sake of a few pathetic pieces of information, suffered torture of varying lengths of time and severity. And then all were executed, either beheaded with a sword or shot in the back of the head.

The Malayan Anti-Japanese People’s Army would never be the same again. Twenty-nine of the most important Communists in the country were killed at the caves, and another fifteen arrested and executed. Of the sixteen commanders only one survived. One. The Famous Chinaman Called Johnny.

Rumours (no doubt perpetuated by Johnny) spread quickly. The most popular version of the story was that Johnny had miraculously escaped the Japanese ambush by fighting his way through a cordon of soldiers and had scaled a sheer limestone crag a hundred feet high before disappearing into the forest. Others said that Johnny had been seen in the heart of the Valley, fifty miles from the caves, late that afternoon; that he had found out about the Japanese plans to attack the caves and had tried to use his connections to prevent the massacre. And there were a few who insisted that they had seen Johnny late that evening, his clothes bloody and riddled with bullet holes; he had simply walked through a hail of bullets and emerged unscathed. There was nothing the Japanese or anyone could do to him. People reminded themselves what had happened when Tiger’s shop burnt down. Remembering the events of that day gave them comfort. Their trust was safe with Johnny.

Only I among all these people know the truth. I have had the help of books, official records, memoirs; I have history on my side. If the poor uneducated people of the Valley knew what I knew, Johnny’s life would have turned out very differently. I know, for example, that no one but the sixteen commanders—no one—knew the date and location of the meeting. I also know that during the Occupation, when no one had any money and tens of millions of dollars in crippling taxes were being poured into the Japanese treasury, my father built the Japanese-Malayan Peace Monument on the site of the smoking ruins of Tiger Tan’s old shop. It was made of carved sandstone and marble, paid for by my father’s personal funds. He bought a new motorcar and smoked cigars with Japanese generals. He searched the Valley for the biggest, most expensive building and turned it into the most famous palace of sin in the country. He named it the Harmony Silk Factory. It was the envy of every man, woman, and child in the country.

THE FUNERAL OF A TRAITOR is a tricky thing, particularly if that traitor was someone close to you. You may be tempted, as I was, to avoid it altogether as a sign of protest at the crimes that person has committed. But if that person is your father and you are his only son, you have no choice. If no one else knows that he was a traitor, then your protest becomes meaningless. So I stood alone throughout the three-day ceremony, locked away with only my terrible, secret knowledge for company.