A great Christian remembered

In the people's war against Japanese occupation in Malaya, there were also individuals who worked in their own ways to expel the fascists.

Ipoh's Eurasian Christian Madam Sybil Kathigasu (1900-1948) was one of them.

Sybil Kathigasu, the wife of Dr. AC Kathigasu as well as grandmother's friend and neighbour, saved the lives of so many poor, sick and persecuted Chinese during the Occupation that her legend became bedtime stories for some grandparents and parents in the Kinta Valley in the 50s, 60s and 70s to bring up their boys and girls as people of brave and upright character like Madam.

During the Occupation, she secretly listened to BBC broadcast, cured the sick and weak and supplied medicines and information to the communists fighting in the jungles and hills near Papan. She (and her innocent husband Dr. AC Kathigasu and daughter Dawn) was arrested by the Japanese Kempetai, severely tortured and, by the grace of God, she did not yield or sell out anybody.

Immediately after the defeat of fascist Japan, armed communist youths carried Madam - whose body had been paralysed by severe beating - out from the torture chamber. She was sent to Britain for treatment but she died in 1948 as the result of the torture she suffered at the hands of her Japanese interrogators. Her body was flown back to Ipoh and buried at the Christian graveyard besides the St. Michael Church which runs my primary and secondary schools, Sam Tet.

While in Britain, she wrote a wartime memoirs No Dram of Mercy but the book has been out of print and circulation for a long time. Recently, a Chinese translation of No Dram of Mercy was published by my friend Ong Choong Lim and became a popular book among Chinese youths.

Despite commercial rivalry and differences of editorial policies and strategies, all Chinese-language newspapers, both mainstream and alternative like malaysiakini and Merdeka Review, gave prominent coverage to the book launch and published either Professor Cheah Boon Kheng's Introduction or my preface. Choong Lim is now working to reprint for a second time the English original.

Madam, we remember your sacrifice.

As I said earlier in this blog, as this is the 60th anniversary of the defeat of fascism and liberation of Malaya, I will specially pray for the soul of Madam during the Christmas eve mass. When I go home for the Chinese New Year, I will also visit her grave to thank her for treating my sickly faher in Papan during the Occupation.