THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

188 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
feted with all kinds of expensive cakes and cookies found at the Club.
Bottles of vintage wine, champagne and liquor lined the shelves, but being
Muslims, none would touch these drinks.
The Japanese officers praised them for their fighting spirit, discipline
and courage, especially when they saw teenager Mohd Mustafa 5 trying
to handle a British bren-gun carrier. Grinning happily, the Japanese
clapped their hands and shouted “Yoroshi!” (good).
My mind went back to an afternoon two years earlier when a white
member of the Club had criticised my presence there. The Canadian Mr
Dawson, Assistant Principal of the School of Agriculture, had taken me
to the Club for afternoon tea after a marching drill. Mr Dawson, who
abhorred discrimination in whatever form, became livid at the unkind
remarks hurled at me. He answered sharply, “We agriculturists always
stick together,” and left the club swearing he would resign his membership.
Mr Dawson, who often spoke about liberty, equality and human
rights, knew what the ‘colour bar’ meant in British Malaya.
After that first decent meal in weeks, the Malay fifth columnists in
Kuala Lumpur were all taken to a two-storey house along Jalan Swettenham
that would now become the KMM House. For his own HQ, Major
Fujiwara chose a nearby bungalow sitting on a hill with a view of three
roads. Members of the IIL (Indian Independence League) were housed
in another building.
In yet another bungalow was another group of fifth columnists,
Indonesian small traders and shopkeepers, mostly from Sumatra, who had
travelled from the north of Malaya to serve the Japanese with the express
purpose of driving the Dutch out of their homeland. Aged between
twenty and thirty, they were being trained by Japanese officers for certain
assignments to be undertaken upon their return to Sumatra. Later that
month, 6 two groups of these Indonesians were sent from the coast of
Kuala Selangor in two small boats, with just the stars to guide them
across the Melaka Straits.
I stumbled upon yet another group of fifth columnists who looked
very tough and were busy gambling. Apparently, they had been brought
by the Japanese from Sungai Golok, a small Kelantan-Thai border town.
They did not know much about politics and were pure mercenaries. I was
told that in peacetime, they were mostly smugglers.
F Kikan officers did not like the various fifth column groups meeting
or talking with one another. But one day, I managed to meet with Pritam
Singh, the IIL leader. This meeting reaffirmed our friendship forged in
Ipoh weeks earlier. After enquiring about KMM and its progress, he asked,
“What political negotiations have been made by KMM President Ibrahim