THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

244 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
25
At KMM House: Allegations and Arrests
Thirty years after the war was over, Ibrahim Yaakub explained in a letter
to me why he rejected the family name ‘Bayu’ (short for Bapa Melayu
or Father of the Malays) I had bestowed on him. He wrote: “It was
dangerous and pointless.”
The idea that Malays adopt family names like the Young Turks, was
mooted at a KMM meeting in Kuala Lumpur in January 1942, when the
war was still raging. We saw it as a constructive social change to boost
family solidarity and in line with the practice of many developed nations.
Turkish leader Mustafa Kamal Pasha was named Kamal ‘Ataturk’ or
‘The Father of Turkey’. His best friend earned the title ‘Inunu’ for his
resounding victory against the Allied Forces in Inunu. This practice was
not alien to Malays as some Sumatran families carry family names.
When Ibrahim rejected the ‘Bayu’ honour, KMM member Abdul
Kadir Adabi presented it to me, saying, “You are more deserving, brother!”
As I had no opportunity to use it, I named my son Roslan Bayu and he
continued the tradition by naming his two children Azzlanshah Bayu and
Nadia Bayu. Hopefully, the name ‘Bayu’, a sweet remembrance of my
KMM days, will live on.
The Malay Farm or Kebun Ubi in Singapore
The Jalan Malcolm house the Japanese converted into KMM House was
once a European doctor’s residence and stored many interesting things.
A personally appealing item was a metal tortoise consisting of 13 blocks.
The tortoise, or Kame in Japanese, was significant to us as it was KMM’s
symbol. (Haji Yahaya, a leftist Perak politician, told us that he saw the
same tortoise in Ibrahim Yaakub’s house in Jakarta many years later.)
Books, tomes and a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica lined one wall
of the study. Underneath the house were packet after packet of seeds –
cucumber, ladies fingers, long beans, French beans, gourds and others –
except for tapioca. There were also hundreds of farming tools. I guess