The first part is her arrangement of her father's (Tham) diaries and documents left from his days in Force 136, a branch under the Special Operations Executive (SOE) that operated in Malaya behind the enemy lines during the Second World War. Tham was an important member of Force 136 that was given training in special operations in China and India before returning to Malaya with fellow operatives in 1943.
The purpose of Tham's return to Malaysia was to set up a communications channel with the British Command, then in India in preparation for an eventual British landing in Malaya. But it was not the intent of this book to explore this issue in depth, rather, Tham's diaries provide readers with a very good peek into occupied Malaya between 1943 and 1945 particularly how the anti-Japanese militias with which Force 136 co-existed, lived and evaded capture. Ironically, this group of comrades would become the Malayan Communists Party after the war and would be pursue with deadly force by the British.
Personally, I feel that the most interesting parts of the books were on the few interactions Tham and members of Force 136 had with the populous. First of all, there was this divide between the Chinese and the other races. The Malays more or less went about life as usual and in fact viewed the Chinese with suspicion (pg. 60). Whether it was because of natural enmity or for fear that the Chinese would bring trouble to them because the Japanese tended to treat Chinese more cruelty is unclear. However, one experience with the Indians is instructive. On one occasion, in order not to arouse suspicion, Tham and his colleagues had to pretend that they were Japanese, shouting unintelligible Japanese, cowing the local Indians into silence (pg. 57). The enmity might therefore have also sprouted from the fact that the Malays and Indians could not tell Chinese and Japanese apart. Secondly, among the Chinese there also seemed to be people who were able to get on with life rather undisturbed by the Japanese, this is contrary to the more common narrative of popular Chinese resistance.
In fact knowing now that the British did not make any serious attempt to retake Malaya, one has to wonder about the agency of Force 136. What exactly did they achieve as operatives in Malaya? The current historical narratives surely make quite a big deal of them. There is no doubt their life was hard and fraught with danger and on many occasions they had to suffer deprivation and pain. But in the end did they matter? This would be an interesting area to explore in future.
Leading the team of operatives was John Davis, CBE, DSO. This Englishman, who could speak Cantonese, not only struck up a good relationship with the members of Force 136, on many occasions he provided strong leadership to the group. Whether it is going off to look for water in hostile territory (pg. 16) or getting everyone out of a the jungle when the local guides were lost (pg. 60), one can see that it was he who the rest of the team looked up to. His story is told in Margaret Sheenan's (2008) book Our Man in Malaya.
The story of Force 136 has been recounted in several books (see for example Chen & Tan, 1995; Taylor, 1989; Trenowden, 1983) and this one adds in a small way to that body of literature. But its contribution is more of a first-hand account of the operatives' life in Malaya. Although it was a bit too brief for me, this serves as a good introduction to a topic that a reader may want to delve deeper into in future.
(Find this book at Goodreads)
Chen, C. and Tan, C. T. (1995). Force 136: Story of a WWII Resistance Fighter. Singapore, Asiapac Books Pte, Ltd.
Shennan, M. (2008). Our Man in Malaya: John Davis, CBE, DSO, Force 136 SOE and Post-War Counter-Insurgency. UK, The History Press.
Taylor, C. G. (1989). The Forgotten Ones of South East Asia Command & Force 136. NY, Hyperion Books.
Trenowden, I. (1983). Malayan Operations Most Secret Force 136. UK, Heinemann.
