Reviving the ‘Japanese Fortress’
To Chai Weng Huat, 50, everything about it was just a vague memory.
“My Ah-Gong (grandfather) would know best,” he said. He told J-on that he always played by the lake beside it during his childhood days. To him, in fact to most of the villages there, it was merely an unfinished building exposed to ruin.
“Many of us have no knowledge of its history but according to the older generation, the ‘Japanese Fortress’ was supposedly intended to be built as a monitoring tower to safeguard their military base,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to online sources, the ‘Japanese fortress’ was a carbide factory for ammunition use nonetheless there is no exact record of its function. Some parts of the fortress were believed to have been destroyed by the Communist Party of Malaya as a show of anger and hatred towards the Land of the Rising Sun.
“In fact there were two buildings of the kind but the other was destroyed. This (the ‘Japanese Fortress’) was left uncompleted after the Japanese surrendered,” he said, adding that there was another underground passage project at the length of six to seven meters which was abandoned by the military troop.
Chai said the Japanese army base, now converted into the house of a family, is a semi-brick and wooden house linked by the tunnel.
“We can’t see the tunnel anymore since entire passageway has been sealed, so was the ‘Japanese Fortress’,” Chai said this was done in the interest of children’s safety.
Malim Nawar, also known as Sungai Kunyit carries the legend of a famous healer named Alim who used sanctified water to treat illness, is a place well divided into territories of the Malays and Chinese.
Apparently there is a gap between the two major ethnic groups since the Malays mostly reside in Kampung Tanjung Bangkung whereas the Chinese in New Villages as J-on observed an awkward interaction between Chai and the residents of Kampung Tanjung Bangkung – thanks to the colonialist policy and its relocation effort.
Preferred to be known as Mak Putih, a Malay lady in her 80s who resides by the Japanese fortress at Kampung Tanjung Bangkung told J-on that her brother loved to run around in the tunnel when he was still a child. Minutes later, her brother, Cu, joined in the conversation.
“There’s nothing inside. It’s just an empty passage, that’s all,” he said tersely.
At the age of twelve, Mak Putih on the other hand recalled the time when the Malays, Chinese and Indians were paid to carry red bricks from one place to another for the construction of the ‘Japanese Fortress’.
Mak Putih too, contributed her effort in the building process albeit the fear in her heart might cause her to retreat at any point of that critical moment.
“I was terribly afraid of the Japanese soldiers but not because of whom they were. It was the fear that my parents had that pressurised us to have to be afraid,” she said, adding that she only chose to work for the Japanese for the wage promised to support her financially burdened family.
With the demise of the intruders, peace in Tanah Melayu was restored. After a long haul of struggle to be freed from the grip of colonisation, independence was finally granted onto the country.
But words like ‘triumphant’ and ‘victorious’ all seemed too heavy. To Mak Putih, life still went on as it was. Fears, struggles and worries come and go like a never-ending cycle. She said the country’s independence did not etch deeply in her memory as she was only a simple kampung woman.
“But to be able to determine our own government, I believed this is definitely something positive,” she expressed a sign of relief with a prideful smile - at least there was tiny sparks of sincerity I felt when this simple woman gave an enlightened meaning to her words.
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