The Japanese Occupation  remembered by Brother Ultan Paul

Source : Bro Ultan Paul in his Diamond Jubilee book

The Japanese Occupation by Brother Ultan Paul

Brother Patrick O'Donovan was waiting for me at the station, my first encounter with the man who was to be my Director for some nine years. We got into two rickshaws and very soon arrived at St Michael's about half a mile from the station. The first member of the community to greet me on the veranda was Brother Thomas Francis 0' Brien. He casually remarked, "You are wel­come to the community".

I very soon settled down to my room, which was partitioned off from the Sub-Di­rector's room - Brother Edmund McCullagh's , by a simple curtain. Things were quite primitive in many respects in those days. To remedy this Brother Patrick had undertaken the task of building an extension to the school, comprising classrooms, a chapel, suitable rooms for the Brothers and a Boarding section. Little did we realise that 3 September 1939 was to see the outbreak of World War Two.

We all went to Church for Benediction that Sunday evening in our Chevrolet Car .14 122 driven by our chauffeur Mr Choong Ah Yew. When we returned from church we sat down on the corridor listening to the latest news from BBC and were astonished to hear Neville Chamberlain declaring war on Germany. War was not to start in real earnest till some months later, but that very night while walking up and down on the front field, two police officers asked to inter­rogate Brother Rupert Kunselmann, a Ger­man. Brother Patrick accompanied him to the police station. We were expecting all sorts of eventualities and were agreeably surprised to see them coming back in good time.

It turned out that Brother Patrick had to give an undertaking to guarantee the good behaviour of Brother Rupert. This was readily given.

Brother Patrick struck me as one who had set his mind on improving academic standards right from the very start of his tenure of office. He once remarked when examining the report books of the boys on Mondays that I must have been very lenient in the correction. I then asked him to set a test for the students in English. He said he would not only do so but that he would correct it himself. This he later did and seemed pleased that all the boys in the classes passed his examination

When the Japanese arrived in Malaya...................

1.       We dismantled most of he laboratory fixtures – sinks, taps and pipes etc – and stored them under the stage, handing the key to the mandor – Anthony Samy, for safe keeping.

2       All the chapel pews and accessories together with the large bronze statue of St La Salle in front of the building, were also salvaged and stored in a special shed constructed by Fr Francois beside St Michael’s Church.

3.       Being German, he was the only Brother in Perak to be officially employed , not as a teacher, but in the Institute of Medical Research.

4.       He was asked among other things to produce soap, make an alcoholic drink from pineapples or some other fruit (he called it schnapps!),  and obtain car fuel from rubber seeds.

5.       He was fairly successful with the car fuel, provided the engine was started with petrol, but the sticky nature of the rubber made engine maintenance a problem.

6.       The station at Kuala Lumpur was teeming with Indian soldiers of the 25^th Indian       Division and any chance of Brother Director Patrick getting on to the train      seemed rather slim.

7.       I suggested he stay put while I jumped across the barrier with his luggage, only to be stopped by an Indian soldier.

8.       My few words of Hindustani did the trick. I told him that Bara Sahib has to go to Ipoh to start a famous school and surely there was one pace for him. “Te Gai, Archa Sahib” said he and Brother Patrick got on to the train.

    I remember Brother Edmund Pasanha getting hold of a box containing his excellent history notes now sodden by  the rain and throwing the entire consignment over the balcony saying as he did so “that’s the end of the British Empire”.

The Japanese Era at St Michael’s Institution ,Ipoh

by Brother Vincent Corkery

The Japanese forces landed at Kota Baru 8 December 1941 just as the senior classes at SMI were finishing their Cambridge examination.  The scripts reached Cambridge safely, but the results were not published till 1945 – the longest wait for anxious candidates.

Within days the retreating British regiments reached Ipoh and were billeted at St Michael’s. The annals of the British Army record that it was at St Michael’s that two British regiments – the East Surreys and the Leicesters – were amalgamated into ‘The British Battalion’.  The British troops left early morning 23 December accompanied by a group of Michaelian St John Ambulance members and their teachers, to provide first aid under very dangerous war conditions. The teachers included Mr Lim Kean Hooi and our popular scout master Mr E. E. Fitzpatrick. Sadly the latter died in action. 

Within a few hours Japanese bombers arrived and bombed the railway station and hit a munitions train which kept exploding for days, sending large pieces of molten metal over the school, some hit the building.  The school was machine-gunned by plane after plane.  The Brothers took refuge in a make-shift shelter in the back field. When they returned to their rooms, their belongings were drenched by a sudden downpour. They decided to vacate to the parish house at St Michael’s Church.

Over the next few days they made trips back to the school to retrieve personal belongings, books and records, also the chapel benches and the bronze statue of La Salle high up in the front of the school. 

Br Rupert Kunzelman, a German, was senior science master and he got help to remove all the fittings from the science labs.  These were locked away beneath the stage and the key was kept safely all through the war by the school mandor, our ever faithful Anthony Samy.  When school reopened SMI was the first to have functioning science labs again.  Arrangements were made for Anderson students to use SMI labs in the afternoon till such time as their labs were equipped.

The Japanese entered Ipoh on Christmas Day 1941 and took possession of the SMI building. They decided to transfer the state government from Taiping and make SMI the seat of government for Perak. 

The Brothers’ Quarters on the top floor were reserved for the Governor and staff, and they constructed an air-raid shelter for their use in the existing ground floor lecture theatre.  A huge amount of earth was used together with wooden pillars and beams to make it fully secure.  After surrender this earth was most welcome in constructing the basketball courts.

The school chapel became the state council chamber [Dewan Negri], and the hall became the state treasury.  The large metal door under the stairs on the ground floor seems to have been used for special security, while the metal safe nearby was used by the Governor, and later by the Brother Directors of SMI.

The main stairs has still got the metal clips used to hold the carpet for visiting VIP’s including the Japanese Prime Minister General Tojo.

The first room on the middle floor was used for interrogation, and perhaps torture.  Malaysia’s wartime heroine Sybil Kathegesu was interrogated here at one stage of her detention.  A man who worked in one of the nearby offices claimed later he saw her being flung down the stairs.

Five feet deep circular holes were dug in the back field as air raid shelters, while the front field was greatly diminished in size with the construction of extra roads.  After the war these roads had to be dug up and the stones formed the foundation for our basketball courts. 

A large Japanese flag was placed at the centre of the field and this was the focal point for a daily ceremonial assembly.  Two flag poles have survived.

The Brothers 

With the outbreak of WW2 in 1939, two German Brothers on the staff, Brothers Paternus Seipel and Arkadius Spiekel, were transferred to Manila which was neutral territory, to avoid being interned.  Later they were among a group of 15 Brothers massacred by the Japanese in the chapel of De La Salle University in Manila 12 February 1945. [N.B. Br Rupert was allowed to stay because he had joined the staff before Hitler came to power]

In Ipoh all 8 eight Brothers found refuge at St Michael’s Church. However Br Patrick O’Donovan, Director and two other Irish Brothers Thomas O’Brien and Edmund McCullogh, were soon detained by the Japanese and later transferred to Taiping Gaol, still later to Pudu Gaol in Kuala Lumpur.  In August 1941 they were released when it was realised that Ireland was a neutral country. 

Br U Paul Rosario was transferred to Kuala Lumpur after a year or so, and here he was able to follow Japanese language classes and qualify to teach at St John’s Institution, then a Japanese school.

Br Patrick O’Donovan spent the remaining years of the war in a remote jungle settlement in Bahau, Negri Sembilan, together with 30 other Brothers, as part of a large group of civilians evacuated by the Japanese from Singapore.  Here conditions were extreme, with many dying of malaria and malnutrition.  As soon as the Japanese surrendered Br Patrick was accompanied back to Ipoh by Br U Paul, and at once began the daunting task of reorganising the school.

[Postscript: The epic story of Bahau is available in leading bookshops under the title THE JUNGLE IS NEVER NEUTRAL by Br Patricius O’Donovan. It was on the bestsellers list for some time]