The year was 1941. It was September. The Japanese soldiers were at The southern tip of Malaya, preparing to invade. General Percival was the Commander of the British Commonwealth forces during the Malayan Campaign. My paternal grandmother was living in the kampong by the river and she was heavy with child. My grandfather was working in Malaya and was not home. The talk in the market was that that the Japanese would invade soon. Rice was scarce. People were hoarding food items.

Unbeknown to the British, the guns protecting the island were pointing the wrong way. When the Japanese rode their way through the thick Malayan forest and stationed themselves to attack, the British blew up the causeway to buy time. Undeterred, the Japanese crossed the river on their rubber dinghies. It was on such a night my father was born. My grandmother turned off the lights in the house. She gave birth in the dark of the night without anaesthesia. When the baby was born, she only had energy to wrap him in her blanket to muffle the crying. Then she passed out. She awoke in a pool of blood. The umbilical cord was still attached. She took a scissors, sterilized it on the tip of a candle flame and cut the cord herself. My father was born.

My first aunt who was in her early teens was married off to my uncle who came for her on a bicycle in the night. There was no dowry, no ceremony. All that my grandmother wanted was for her daughter to be safe in marriage as she had heard of Japanese soldiers taking and raping young unwed girls in those dark days.

Young men were rounded up and taken to the beach, lined up and shot. To make sure none survived, they were bayoneted. The bodies were then washed away.

This is one of the many stories told to me by my mother. And I know as my boy listens to it, he hears for himself the horrors of the times lived in our nation's collective history.