Commando Edition 17 2023

The following is the story of Elizabet Choy, one of many Singaporean citizens caught up in the
‘blowback’ from Operation JAYWICK and her involvement in the ‘Double Tenth’ incident.
Elizabeth’s story is just one of many of those caught up in the Japanese retribution for JAYWICK.
Reproduced with approval from FEPOW-COMMUNITY.ORG.UK
In
17
1943, a Special Branch of the Kempeitai under
Lieutenant Colonel Haruzo Sumida was charged
with finding the culprits responsible for acts of
sabotage in Singapore, mainly the cutting of telephone
lines and the burning of warehouses. Sumida strongly
suspected that the saboteurs were being organised by
internees in Changi Prison, and made preparations for
a raid on the prison to catch the ringleaders. Sumida's
chief suspect was British barrister Rob Heeley Scott, a
prominent Foreign Office employee who had pre -
viously been detained for his anti-Japanese pro pa gan -
da, released by the Kempeitai, and then later sent to
Changi Prison.
However, neither Scott nor anyone else in Changi
was involved in the sabotage, or with the raid that led
to serious repercussions on 10 October – The Double
Tenth. On 28 September, Scott received a message
from one of his contacts in the city, telling him that on
the previous morning six Japanese ships had been
blown up in Singapore Harbour (now Keppel Harbour).
This was the first major sabotage since the Japanese
had captured the island. The loss of ships in such an
important place was an enormous blow to Japanese
prestige. Scott and his fellow internees supposed that
the saboteurs must have been Chinese guerrillas who
had slipped across the straits from their base in Malaya.
Sumida, however, believed that Scott and his asso -
ciates had planned the operation from Changi Prison.
The attack on Singapore Harbour was codenamed
Operation JAYWICK, the brand name of a popular
lavatory deodoriser, and had nothing to do with
guerrillas or fifth columnists. It had been carried out by
Major Ivan Lyon, A British Special Operations
Executive Office attached to Special Operations
Australia (SOA), witha group of Anglo–Australian
operatives who had sailed from Western Australia to
Singapore in an old Japanese fishing boat, the
M.V.KRAIT, named after a particularly vicious Malayan
snake.
Once within striking distance of the harbour, the
operatives took to Folboats (folding canoes), and
Author: Ron Taylor
paddled into the docks under cover of night. Using
limpet mines, they sank six Japanese ships of 2,000–
5,000 tons, including several tankers, and then slipped
away to their rendezvous with the KRAIT, finally
returning successfully to Australia. (The M.V.KRAIT is
now preserved and on display at the Australian
National Maritime Museum in Sydney), Australia.
The Choys on their wedding day on August 16, 1941.
Photo used with the kind permission of the family.
The Japanese could not conceive that a force could
penetrate their lines of defence and have the audacity
to attack their shipping. Then seven days after the
Double Tenth, Bishop John Wilson of St Andrew's
Cathedral was taken to the YMCA, and placed in the
cell next to Elizabeth. He was severely beaten for three
days before the Japanese accepted that he was not
one of the ringleaders in their imagined conspiracy.
One night Elizabeth saw Rob Scott, by then badly
disfigured as a result of the beatings and water tortures
that he had been subjected to. At the end of one
session Scott was told that he had been sentenced to
death, and was forced to write a farewell letter to his
wife. He was later sentenced to six years' imprisonment
in Outram Road Prison 18 instead, the site where
convicted sepoy mutineers had been detained and
executed by the British Army in 1915.
17
Japanese military police.
18
This was a notoriously hard prison for Allied POWs and many were to
lose their lives whilst being incarcerated and tortured.
32 COMMANDO ~ The Magazine of the Australian Commando Association ~ Edition 17 I 2023