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Dream mother: Race, gender, and intimacy in Japanese-occupied Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2021

Abstract

Sheila Allan was just 17 years old when Japanese forces invaded Malaya in late 1941. British leaders surrendered at Singapore in 1942, subjecting hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians to Japanese internment for the duration of the war — including Allan. During that time, she became infatuated with the women's camp commandant, Dr Elinor Hopkins, whom she described as a ‘dream mother’. Her love and admiration blurred the lines between familial intimacy and sexual desire. Meanwhile, Allan was categorised as ‘Eurasian’ by both her Japanese captors and other European captives. She longed to be regarded as British and Australian, like her father. Nonetheless, white women condemned Eurasian women as sexually lax and immoral and questioned their right to be interned. As a result, Allan's desires for a white ‘dream mother’ reveal the fraught nature of racial, gender and sexual identities in wartime and under colonialism. These influenced not only her methods and strategies of coping during the war, but her hopes of finding love and intimacy when it was over. Her story reveals how fragile colonial categories and wartime violence fractured the destinies of colonial subjects, while love and devotion could be life-affirming.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2021

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the University of North Texas, including the CREATE and SCA programmes, for sponsoring the research for this project. The staff at the Australian War Memorial and Bodleian Library provided tremendous assistance with archival materials. Sue Thompson offered indispensable intellectual engagement in Australia. Michelle Moyd, Sue Grayzel, Melissa Shaw, and Tammy Proctor provide ongoing generosity in feedback and moral support. The National University of Singapore and Stanford University (through the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Fellowship on Southeast Asia) have funded my wider research project. Thanks most of all to Kenneth, Jack, and P.T. for their love and patience.

References

1 This article combines interviews and Sheila's published and unpublished materials. Sheila Allan, ‘Journey to Changi and Down Under … diary of events between 8th December, 1941 to 24th. November, 1945, written by a seventeen year old girl’, unpublished manuscript, Private Papers, Australian War Memorial, PR00666 (1942–1992), henceforth Allan Papers; Sheila Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi (Pymble, NSW: Kangaroo, 2004).

2 According to the nominal rolls, Dr Hopkins is 42-year-old Dr M.E. Hopkins from the United Kingdom. ‘Changi and Sime Road Civilian Internment Camps: Nominal rolls of internees’, Cambridge University Archives, RCMS 103/12/22 (1942–1967), p. 183, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-RCMS-00103-00012-00022/183.

3 I refer to her as Sheila rather than Allan due to the fact that she shares a surname with her father, John, and stepmother, Vichim, who are also mentioned throughout the text.

4 Allan Papers, p. 21.

5 Women and men in Changi were separated by a courtyard, with the exception of occasional mixing for labour and cooking. Allan Papers, p. 19.

6 For more on gender and sexuality, see Manderson, Lenore, ‘Colonial desires: Sexuality, race, and gender in British Malaya’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 7, 3 (1997): 372–88Google Scholar; Durba Ghosh, Sex and the family in colonial India: The making of empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

7 Leow, Rachel, ‘Age as a category of gender analysis: Servant girls, modern girls, and gender in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Asian Studies, 71, 4 (2012): 977CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 In the Changi nominal rolls, John Allan is listed as a 53-year-old Australian ‘mining engineer’, accompanied by a wife and daughter. Vichim was categorised as a 36-year-old ‘Aust’, however ‘Siam’ was hand-written next to this. ‘Changi and Sime Road Nominal Rolls’, pp. 23, 173. For ‘Mum’ reference see Allan Papers, p. 10. For more on the convent, see Rebecca Kenneison, Playing for Malaya: A Eurasian family in the Pacific War (Singapore: NUS Press, 2012), p. 68; and Leong Hui Chuan, ‘Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus’ (2018), https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2018-03-21_102336.html. Several biographical details are also available in Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, pp. 2–4; Interview with Sheila Bruhn, Australians at War Film Archive number 1998, University of New South Wales (2004), part 3, 0:30, http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1998-sheila-bruhn?destination=aXRlbXNfcGVyX3BhZ2U9NTAmcGFnZT0zMg. Henceforth UNSW interview, part 1, 12:10 and 25:00; and Sheila Bruhn-Allan, Prisoners-of-War (POWs), National Archives of Singapore (NAS) Oral History Collection, accession no. 002740, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/74d5c6f6-1160-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad, henceforth NAS interview.

9 UNSW interview, part 1, 34:00.

10 For more on her religious inclinations, see UNSW interview, part 1, 27:00 and 31:00, and part 2, 7:30. For more on Eurasians in Malaya, see Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 14–15.

11 Mrs Elizabeth Choy, interview by Samuel Sng, NAS Oral Histories, accession no. 002827 (16 July 2004), Reel 1, 12:31.

12 Zena Tessensohn interview by Dr Daniel Chew, NAS Oral Histories, accession no. 000391 (Jan. 1984), 14:01.

13 UNSW interview, part 5, 30:00.

14 UNSW interview, part 1, 29:00.

15 Walker, Kristy, ‘Intimate interactions: Eurasian family histories in colonial Penang’, Modern Asian Studies, 26, 2 (2012): 310Google Scholar.

16 Stoler, Ann, ‘Sexual affronts and racial frontiers: European identities and the cultural politics of exclusion in colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, 3 (1992): 544–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Stoler, ‘Sexual affronts’, pp. 515–16, 521, 525, 532–3.

18 Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, ‘African-American women's history and the metalanguage of race’, Signs, 17, 2 (1992): 254CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Stoler, Ann Laura, ‘Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31, 1 (1989): 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Yap, Felicia, ‘Sex and stereotypes: Eurasians, Jews and the politics of race and religion in British Asia during the Second World War’, Social Scientist 38, 3/4 (2010): 75Google Scholar.

21 Walker, ‘Intimate interactions’, pp. 325–6.

22 Ibid., pp. 311–12, 325–6.

23 Ibid., p. 324.

24 Liesbeth Rosen Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question: The colonial position and postcolonial options of colonial mixed ancestry groups from British India, Dutch East Indies and French Indochina compared’, Historische Migratiestudies 6 (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2018), https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/62456, p. 14.

25 Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question’, p. 12.

26 Stoler, ‘Rethinking colonial categories’, p. 145.

27 Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question’, p. 22; Walker, ‘Intimate interactions’, pp. 325–7.

28 Walker, ‘Intimate interactions’, p. 312.

29 Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question’, p. 20.

30 Walker, ‘Intimate interactions’, p. 312.

31 Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question’, p. 14.

32 Anne Spry Rush, Bonds of empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to decolonization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Kate Imy, Faithful fighters: Identity and power in the British Indian Army (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019).

33 John Mitcham, Race and imperial defence in the British World, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 2.

34 Allan Papers, pp. 2–3.

35 Ibid., p. 4. In an interview with UNSW, she states conversely that her mother was ‘very gentle’, ‘very religious’, and ‘quiet’ as well as ‘strict’. This included chasing her with a stick, tying her to a tree, and washing her mouth out with soap (UNSW interview, part 1, 10:30). Her father and mother met at a Masonic meeting (UNSW interview, part 1, 19:30). For more on Freemasonry and interracial sociability, see Lynn Hollen Lees, Planting empire, cultivating subjects: British Malaya, 1786–1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 154.

36 Allan Papers, p. 4.

37 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 96–7.

38 Securing passage on a ship rarely brought safety. One of Sheila's opportunities to sail was on the ill-fated Vyner Brooke alongside famous Australian nurses, which sank after a Japanese attack (NAS interview transcript, pp. 6–7). Many evacuation schemes from British colonial Asia were undermined by sharp racial prejudice. Eurasians were often refused passage or sent back to colonies after evacuating. Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, p. 78.

39 UNSW interview, part 2, 24:00.

40 Ibid., 11:00 and part 6, 41:30.

41 The Rex Hotel may have also been known as the Caledonian Hotel: Joshua Chia Yeong Jia, ‘Caledonian Hotel’ (2019), https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2016-12-06_153253.html.

42 Allan Papers, p. 12.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., p. 13.

45 Ibid., pp. 14–16.

46 Felicia Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia during the Second World War’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society S3, 21, 4 (2011): 487–8, 498.

47 Allan Papers, p. 16.

48 Ibid.; UNSW interview, part 2, 30:00.

49 Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn, ‘Japanese-occupied Asia from 1941 to 1945: One occupier, many captivities and memories’, in Forgotten captives in Japanese-occupied Asia, ed. Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn (New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 10, 13–14. See for example Lim Chuan Kim, letter to Bell (8 Jan. 1946), AWM 3DRL/7415.

50 Allan, pp. 16–17.

51 See for example Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten armies: The fall of British Asia, 1941–1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Catherine Kenny, Captives: Australian army nurses in Japanese prison camps (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1986); Christina Twomey, Australia's forgotten prisoners: Civilians interned by the Japanese in World War Two (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Yuki Tanka, Hidden horrors: Japanese war crimes in WWII (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996); Bob Moore and Barbara Hately-Broad, eds., Prisoners of war, prisoners of peace: Captivity, homecoming and memory in World War II (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1994); Sarah Kovner, Prisoners of the empire: POWs and their captors in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).

52 The number 130,000 was for ‘western’ POWs — which roughly translates to white POWs. This number was assembled by the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Later country-specific estimates prove that this number was low and does not include 60,000 Indian soldiers and 45,000 Filipinos. Extensive detail is given to this question in Hack and Blackburn, ‘Japanese-occupied Asia from 1941 to 1945’, pp. 4, 8, 11.

53 Ibid., p. 17.

54 Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, pp. 82–3.

55 Felicia Yap, ‘Prisoners of war and civilian internees of the Japanese in British Asia: The similarities and contrasts of experience’, Journal of Contemporary History 47, 2 (2012): 320; Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 495.

56 Civilian death rates averaged around 5% across all camps. POW deaths ranged from 16% to 36%. Hack and Blackburn, ‘Japanese-occupied Asia’, p. 15.

57 UNSW interview, part 6, 11:30.

58 This relates specifically to resettlement plans in Bahau organised by Mamoru Shinozaki. Despite plans and expectations for better food and living conditions, approximately a quarter of the Bahau settlers died. See for example, Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 156–7. See also Hack and Blackburn, ‘Japanese-occupied Asia’, p. 2; Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, p. 82.

59 Takashi Fujitani, Race for empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p. 371.

60 Most scholars and activists use the Japanese term jugun ianfu (military comfort woman) or ianfu (comfort woman). Women who endured the experience described it as sexual enslavement or repeated rape. McGregor, Katharine, ‘Emotions and activism for former so-called “comfort women” of the Japanese Occupation of the Netherlands East Indies’, Women's Studies International Forum 54 (2016): 6778CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort women: Sexual slavery in the Japanese military during World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Patricia Pui Huen Lim and Diana Wong, War and memory in Malaysia and Singapore (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000); Ban Kah Choon and Yap Hong Kuan, Rehearsal for war: The underground war against the Japanese (Singapore: Horizon, 2002); Kazue, Muta, ‘The “comfort women” issue and the embedded culture of sexual violence in contemporary Japan’, Current Sociology Monograph 64, 4 (2016): 620–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McGregor, Katharine, ‘Emotions and activism for former so-called “comfort women” of the Japanese Occupation of the Netherlands East Indies’, Women's Studies International Forum 54 (2016): 6778CrossRefGoogle Scholar; For resistance among Asian women, see Datta, Arunima, ‘Social memory and Indian women from Malaya and Singapore in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment’, Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 88, 2, 309 (2015): 77103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 146–7, 151.

62 UNSW interview, part 3, 1:30.

63 Allan Papers, AWM, p. 3.

64 UNSW interview, part 3, 14:30.

65 She also identified with Australia, choosing, for example, to embroider a map of Australia with a kangaroo on a quilt that the women in Changi made during internment. UNSW interview, part 5, 39:30.

66 Allan Papers, pp. 15–18; UNSW interview, part 2, 5:30 and 33:00.

67 Walker, ‘Intimate interactions’, p. 324.

68 Bernice Archer, ‘The internment of Western civilians under the Japanese 1941–1945’, in Hack and Blackburn, Forgotten captives in Japanese-occupied Asia, p. 143.

69 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, pp. 490–91; Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, p. 146; Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, p. 79.

70 Allan Papers, p. 16.

71 Ibid., 105. Changi nominal rolls list Sheila as ‘Eur’. for Eurasian, while John and Vichim were both initially considered Australian. ‘Changi and Sime Road nominal rolls’.

72 ‘Changi and Sime Road nominal rolls’, p. 11.

73 Private Papers of Veronica Ann Turner (nee Clancy), Australian War Memorial, MSS1086 (1940–45), p. 103, henceforth Clancy Papers.

74 Private Papers of Constance Sleep and Arthur Sleep, MSS. Ind. Ocn. S. 127–133, ff. 29–39, Bodleian Library, Oxford University Archives, 4, henceforth Sleep Papers.

75 Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, pp. 83–4.

76 Ibid., p. 86.

77 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, pp. 499, 501.

78 Sleep Papers, p. 4.

79 Clancy Papers, p. 103. Sheila also discussed the prevalence of this view in UNSW, part 4, 18:00. See also Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 489.

80 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 501.

81 Allan Papers, p. 33.

82 Alison Oram, Her husband was a woman! Women's gender-crossing in modern British popular culture (New York: Routledge, 2007); Eric Lott, Love and theft: Blackface minstrelsy and the American working class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

83 Clancy Papers, p. 115.

84 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 102–4.

85 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 489.

86 Sleep Papers, pp. 13, 17.

87 Allan Papers, pp. 19–21.

88 Ibid., p. 23.

89 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 498; Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, pp. 74–93, 83.

90 It is not clear from the memoir or the diary if this is Dr Hopkins or not.

91 Allan Papers, p. 24.

92 Allan Papers, pp. 20–21, 27–30, 58–60, 108.

93 Ibid., p. 31.

94 Ibid., p. 66.

95 ‘Motherless Eileen’, unpublished short story written in Changi Prison by ‘E. Bromley’ [Sheila Allan] (19 Jan. 1943), Allan Papers.

96 Archer, ‘The internment of Western civilians’, p. 143.

97 Sheila and Vichim lived together at Changi but not at Sime Road; Allan Papers, p. 126. Theirs was not ‘a loving relationship’, but they were ‘affectionate’. UNSW interview, part 3, 7:00, part 4, 24:00, and part 5, 14:00.

98 UNSW interview, 34:00.

99 Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, p. 87.

100 Seth Koven, The matchgirl and the heiress (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 1.

101 See for example Haggis, Jane, ‘Gendering colonialism or colonising gender? Recent women's studies approaches to white women and the history of British colonialism’, Women's Studies International Forum 13, 1–2 (1990): 105–15Google Scholar; Shome, Raka, ‘“Global motherhood”: The transnational intimacies of white femininity’, Critical Studies in Media Communication 28, 5 (2011): 388406CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anne McClintock, Imperial leather: Race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest (New York: Routledge, 1995).

102 Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, p. 87; Archer, ‘The internment of Western civilians’, p. 143.

103 Laura Doan, Disturbing practices: History, sexuality, and women's experience of modern war (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

104 Allan Papers, p. 71.

105 These changes were also influenced by different approaches of Japanese leadership. Hack and Blackburn, ‘Japanese-occupied Asia from 1941 to 1945’, p. 16; See also UNSW interview, part 3, 8:00, part 5, 17:30; Allan Papers, pp. 30–31, 92.

106 Allan Papers, pp. 68, 79, 81, 83, 87, 92.

107 Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, pp. 80, 86.

108 Allan Papers, pp. 58–60, 95. For more on additional captives see John Weekley Papers, Archives from Changi and Sime Road Civilian Internment Camps (RCMS 103/12/15), Cambridge University Archives, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-RCMS-00103-00012-00015/31, p. 31.

109 Allan Papers, p. 85.

110 Ibid., p. 97.

111 Ibid., p. 105.

112 Sleep Papers, p. 15.

113 Allan Papers, pp. 58–60, 105.

114 For additional examples of how war changes understandings of gender and nudity see Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 151, 155; Clancy Papers, Wallet 3, 66/605; Sleep Papers, p. 18.

115 Allan Papers, pp. 100–101, 106; UNSW interview, part 6, 3:00.

116 Ginny Summers and Joyce Edwards were her closest companions. Sheila estimated that roughly a quarter of the women suffered from a mental illness as a result of their wartime experience. UNSW interview, part 6, 38:00, part 6, 32:30, part 7, 23:30.

117 Scheer, Monique, ‘Are emotions a kind of practice (and is that what makes them have a history?): A Bourdieuian approach to understanding emotion’, History and Theory, 51, 2 (2012): 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 Ibid., pp. 208–9, 220.

119 Ibid., p. 210.

120 Ibid., p. 212.

121 Koven, The matchgirl and the heiress, p. 185.

122 Ibid., p. 185.

123 Roper, ‘Slipping out of view’, p. 62; Arunima Datta, ‘Negotiating (im)mobilities in migrations: Cases of Indian travelling ayahs in nineteenth-century Britain’, paper presented at Western Conference of British Studies, Salt Lake City, 19 Sept. 2019.

124 Roper, ‘Slipping out of view’, p. 65.

125 Ibid., p. 66.

126 Leonore Davidoff, Worlds between: Historical perspectives on gender and class (New York: Routledge, 1995).

127 UNSW interview, part 3, 5:00.

128 Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, p. 2; Allan Papers, pp. 33, 107–8; Sheila Allan, Letter to ‘Miss Stewart’ (10 Sept. 1945), Allan Papers; K. Stewart, Matron, General Hospital Singapore, Letter of reference (11 Sept. 1945), Allan Papers.

129 Allan Papers, pp. 107, 118.

130 Yap, ‘Eurasians in British Asia’, p. 498.

131 Allan Papers, pp. 121–3.

132 Letter from P.B. Marriott to ‘Miss Allan’ [Sheila] (21 Apr. 1945), Allan Papers.

133 Letter from P.B. Marriott to ‘Mrs Allan’ [Vichim] (18 Apr. 1945), Allan Papers.

134 Allan Papers, pp. 119, 124–6; UNSW interview, part 6, 14:30, part 6, 17:30, and part 6, 19:30.

135 In later life, she wondered ‘what sort of a life it would have been if my mother was still with me and my father hadn't taken over’. UNSW interview, 24:00.

136 Allan Papers, p. 141.

137 Ibid., p. 125. At Sime Road in May 1945 she learned that people had been referring to her as ‘That slit-eyed Chink’.

138 UNSW interview, part 7, 36:00 and 38:30.

139 Allan Papers, pp. 126–9, 138.

140 Ibid., p. 133. Sheila was later asked about her treatment and said that ‘I was registered as a Eurasian and that was it’. UNSW interview, part 7, 39:00.

141 UNSW interview, part 7, 35:30; Allan Papers, 133.

142 The nominal rolls indicate that Vichim also had a sister, prisoner 2448, in the camp. ‘Changi and Sime Road nominal rolls’, p. 173.

143 UNSW interview, part 6, 20:30.

144 Allan Papers, pp. 140–41.

145 Ibid., pp. 136–7.

146 UNSW interview, part 5, 24:30; Allan Papers, p. 138.

147 UNSW interview, part 7, 40:00.

148 Allan Papers, p. 133.

149 Sleep Papers, p. 23.

150 UNSW interview, part 7, 38:30.

151 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, p. 215.

152 UNSW interview, part 4, 22:30.

153 Allan Papers, p. 143.

154 NAS interview transcript, pp. 12–13. This experience had been traumatising for her, because every time she heard a baby cry, it reminded her of the time she saw a Japanese sentry murder a baby in Singapore.

155 Allan Papers, pp. 147–9.

156 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, p. 216. Veronica Clancy hoped that future Australian forces sent to Southeast Asia would ‘prevent marriages between native girls + our soldiers and so prevent the unwelcome half-casts’. Clancy Papers, p. 103.

157 NAS Interview transcript, pp. 14–15. Sheila also admitted that she didn't want to talk about the experience because she nursed some of the POWs and didn't feel it was right to complain about her conditions after seeing them. UNSW interview, part 6, 10:30 and part 8, 1:00.

158 The person who wrote the letter was a Miss Black.

159 Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, p. 78.

160 Clancy Papers, p. 6.

161 Yap, ‘Sex and stereotypes’, p. 78.

162 Kenneison, Playing for Malaya, pp. 216, 218.

163 UNSW interview, part 4, 19:00.

164 Jacobson, ‘The Eurasian question’, p. 20.

165 UNSW interview, part 8, 3:00; Allan, Diary of a girl in Changi, p. 5. She sometimes woke up crying in the night but refused to tell her husband what happened, NAS interview transcript, pp. 12–13.

166 See for example the numerous newspaper clippings in the C.A. Harness Papers, MSS. Ind. Ocn. S. 25., Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

167 Syed Muhd Khairudin Aljunied, Colonialism, violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia: The Maria Hertogh controversy and its aftermath (New York: Routledge, 2009). Nurse Clancy also described a Mrs Bull whose two children disappeared after the sinking of the Vyner Brook. They were raised by a woman in Java but were returned with the aid of Lady Mountbatten after the war. Clancy Papers, 671/17.

168 See for example films such as Bruce Beresford, Paradise road (Twentieth Century Fox, 1997); Jonathan Teplitzky, The railway man (Lionsgate, 2013); Angelina Jolie, Unbroken (Universal Pictures, 2014).

169 Betty Jeffrey, White coolies (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1954).

170 See Harness Papers.

171 Clancy noted that white women ‘were put in the coolie lines’ and would no longer ‘retain their former prestige’. Constance Sleep complained about doing ‘heavy work usually done by coolies’. Her husband, Arthur Sleep, claimed that those in the men's camp were ‘treated worse than slaves’. Sleep Papers, pp. 3, 16.

172 UNSW interview, part 3, 32:00 and part 4, 19:45.

173 Ibid., part 1, 12:00.

174 Stoler, ‘Rethinking colonial categories’, p. 141.

175 Ibid., 141–3.

176 Sleep Papers, p. 4.

177 Allan Papers, p. 147.

178 Liz Stanley, ‘Epistemological issues in researching lesbian history: The case of romantic friendship’, in Working out: New directions for Women's Studies, ed. Hilary Hinds, Ann Phoenix and Jackie Stacey (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 161–72.

179 Bayly and Harper, Forgotten armies.

180 See for example Hank Nelson, ‘Beyond slogans: Assessing the experiences and the history of the Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese’, pp. 23–40; Sibylla Jane Flower, ‘Memory and the prisoner of war experience: The United Kingdom’, pp. 41–56; and Lachlan Grant, ‘Monument and ceremony: The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial and the Anzac legend’, pp. 57–72, all in Hack and Blackburn, Forgotten captives in Japanese-occupied Asia.