THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

254 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
Chik Ahmad was close to Ibrahim and a distant relative of mine. Fuji
Hotel, formerly Amber House, was only for Officers.
Among the guests were several Burmese and Siamese citizens, who,
like us, were being trained for certain tasks. I got on famously with the
Burmese. In our conversations, we found many cultural similarities
between the Burmese and the Malays. For example, both people wear
headgears, sandals and sarongs. The Burmese also ate rice with vegetables
and young shoots. With regard to the Malay language, one Burmese
suggested that the Malays coin a suffix to signify plurals instead of
doubling words. I recommended ‘su’ or ‘zu’. For example, a plural of
angkasawan would no longer be angkasawan-angkasawan, but just
angkasawansu. I wrote to the press in the early fifties with this suggestion,
but my letter went unpublished.
However, I found the Siamese in Fuji Hotel loathsome, as they looked
upon the Malays as inferior. They kept reminding us of past Malay-
Siamese conflicts. One of them claimed that had the British not defended
Malaya, our entire country would have been overrun by Siam. I had to
admit this fact but retorted, “One cannot win all the time.” I argued that
the Siamese independence was maintained because of its buffer state
position. Otherwise they too would have been colonised. The truth was,
I disliked talking with them because I resented the Japanese offer of four
Malay states (Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu) to Siam as a
reward for allowing Japanese troops to invade Malaya through their
country. That alone created bad blood. To my nationalist friends and I,
this was Japan’s biggest betrayal.
I probed this sore point with Ibrahim, Onan and other friends who
were on the Japanese payroll, to gauge their opinions. Ibrahim did not
respond. Onan, however, told me he had told the Japanese off. He had
asked them cynically, “Why take only one shoe from us Malays? Why
not take both our shoes?” This response could only be uttered by a true
nationalist. Malaya was to me a fish the Japanese had cut in two. The
better part of mouth, eyes and breathing organs was presented to the
Siamese on a silver platter. Most of the other half, though it had plenty
of flesh, did not belong to us Malays.
One of KMM’s early objectives had been to regain control over the
Straits Settlements of Singapore, Melaka, and Penang. Now, on top of
those three, we had to strive to recover four states we once had. Is this
the fight that Ibrahim described was “for country and people?” Our
conversation on this Japanese betrayal took place on July 1943 when we
were busy forming the Malai Giyu Gun. The formal presentation of the
four states took place later in October the same year.