RUMBLINGS OF WAR

Japan long had expansionist designs on the territories of Southeast Asia. Plans to invade the Southeast Asia were drawn up as early as the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the Japanese are patient and methodical people. Much time was spent planting spies and intelligence personnel throughout the region in the guise of petty businessmen, shopkeepers, photographers, and even doctors and dentists. Japanese spies were planted throughout the Malayan peninsula and Singapore. Singapore had always had a small Japanese population, many of whom lived in “Little Japan” in the Middle Road area. Japan's military efforts had, since the late 1920s, been concentrated in China. In 1931, it invaded China and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo. In 1937, following the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Japan launched the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The British Government and the European community were blasé about these developments. Confident that once the Singapore Naval Base was complete the Japanese would be kept at bay, British strategists and politicians made a series of fatal mistakes and errors of judgement that would lead ultimately to the fall of Singapore in February 1942. The local community, especially the Chinese, took the Japanese threat more seriously. In 1937, following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, local business leaders, led by the formidable Tan Kah Kee, established the Singapore China Relief Fund. A year later, Tan also set up the South Seas China Relief Fund Union. In 1939, at the request of the Chinese Government, Chinese volunteers from Nanyang (Southeast Asia) were recruited as mechanics and drivers to help transport supplies to China across the Burma Road. This was necessary as many of China's ports had been blockaded by the Japanese. These efforts and activities sensitized large segments of the Chinese community to the imminent threat of Tokyo.

Astute observers of the international situation such as David were becoming increasingly concerned. But the British ruling classes were intoxicated by their own propaganda and luxuriated in their halcyon existence. It was not a question of whether the Japanese would attack, but what could be done to fend them off when that eventuality came to pass.

JOINING THE VOLUNTEER FORCE

In 1854, in response to the Hokkien-Teochew riots, Singapore's European community had initiated the Singapore Volunteer Rifle Corps as an internal security force.