THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

228 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
Visiting Farrer Park
One day, together with Ibrahim Yaakub and several Japanese officers, I
went to Farrer Park, already heavily secured by sentry guards. Chinese
and Eurasian Volunteers were detained on the ground floor of a building
while Malay Regiment soldiers and officers, as well as Malay Volunteer
officers, were kept upstairs. Not a single regular Volunteer was around.
Most chose to discontinue fighting when given a choice earlier on; it was
only natural to want to return home. Upstairs, hundreds of Malay soldiers,
mostly sitting on the floor, surrounded a handful of Malay officers. I
recognised three Malay Regiment officers: Lt Ariffin bin Haji Sulaiman,
Lt Ibrahim bin Sidek (both from my hometown Matang), and Lt Abdul
Wahid bin Judin. These were three of the few commissioned Malay
officers in the Malay Regiment. There were also three Volunteer officers
I knew in the room: Capt. Raja Aman Shah, a District Officer in Port
Dickson; Capt. Yazid bin Ahmad, a senior staff at the Sultan Idris Training
College in Tanjung Malim and Lt Datuk Naning from Melaka.
It was with great reluctance that I visited Farrer Park as I knew I
would be seeing some of my friends who would naturally accuse me of
being a Japanese quisling. When we arrived upstairs, Ibrahim and the
Japanese walked towards the Malay Regiment officers, but I went to talk
to Capt. Raja Aman Shah, who was with Capt. Yazid and Lt Datuk
Naning. Watched by hundreds of regular soldiers, we exchanged courteous
enquiries of “Apa khabar?” (How are you?). Before I go any
further, let me quote an excerpt on Capt. Raja Aman Shah from Tan Sri
Mubin Sheppard’s article ‘A Paragon of Loyalty’, in The New Straits
Times, 28 February 1967:
When the FMS (Federated Malay States) and Straits Settlement Volunteer Forces
were mobilised on December 1, 1941, Capt. Raja Aman Shah could have
remained at his post in Port Dickson (where he was District Officer) but he
immediately applied to be released for military service…. Later, in Port Dickson
on January 10, 1942 where all members of the FMS Volunteer Force who had
retired in the face of military enemy pressure… were given an option of either
returning home or moving south to Malacca and Singapore. Many Volunteers
chose to be released, but Capt. Raja Aman Shah placed loyalty to his unit above
personal considerations and he remained with the reduced force of two Volunteer
companies.
In the month which followed Capt. Raja Aman Shah assisted in the defence
of South Johore and later held a section of the Singapore coastal defence line
near Changi…. When the final Japanese assault was launched on the morning
of February 15, 1942, the FMS Volunteers had been allotted a front line position
near MacPherson Road. Major Cockman, the Company Commander was killed
in action and Capt. Raja Aman Shah took part in hand-to-hand fighting. When