Chang Ta Kang : The Allied Army Came Ashore

"Only a few radios were able to receive news of bombings to liberate South East Asia thus secretly we knew that the Allied Army or Lian Goong would be coming to Sibu anytime. The end of the war was definitely coming. The people of Sibu had suffered so much." my late father told us , as part of our history lessons at dinner time. That was the time we could speak to him, listen to him, and ask him questions. He was a very slow eater and he talked slowly as if he wanted every one to catch his words properly.

My mother was always the silent listener, never butting in or exclaiming a "but". She too had her stories and we had to wait for the time she could tell us when father was at the office working.

He told us that , in his quiet manner, many who were consripted to work in the Sibu airport were almost half dead from starvation and a few had died from heat stroke, especially the older ones. He himself had lost weight and he  felt tired after the war. As he was brutally beaten when he was imprisoned for 10 days by the Japanese, he often felt some kind of twitching in his heart after the war. He said that war was a bad thing.

He had had left China in 1937 after his graduation from Yenching University in Beijing. In fact he was fortunate that he did not stay on in Nanjing. He just missed the Nanjing Massacre as he return to Sibu by commercial ship with some of his Sibu friends. He had never thought of staying on in China as he was expected by our grandfather to return to Sibu to help with the family business.

He had humourously said once that it seemed the Japanese were following his path to Sarawak!

In one of the conversations we had about the Japanese War, he did mention that towards the end of the war, in Sibu, many people felt that the Japanese soldiers had become slightly more lenient and friendly.

"After the atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pamphlets were dropped every where telling us about the end of the war. It was so different from the time when we saw bombs being dropped. But still the sounds of planes flying over head were frightening," my late father had said.

Although quietly there was a group of Allied Z Special Unit conducting intelligence operations and training hundreds of indigenous people to fight the Japanese in guerrilla warfare in the Fourth Division, my father said at that time, the Chinese did not hear anything about it. It was a secret indeed.

The Chinese community just waited for the Allied Liberators, made of Australian and American forces.

The Lian Goong (Allied Army)  brought tinned food, clothes and medicine and distributed them to the civilians. Many people ate tinned pork (ham) for the first time in their lives. My mother did say that the Foochows in the villages had no tin opener and they used the Chinese cleaver(chopper) to cut through the tin.

It must have been a great relief for every one in Sibu, after 3 years and 8 months of Japanese Occupation.  When the war ended, the Foochows called the period, "Lian Goong Shurng Ngiang - the Allied Army had come ashore."

Thanks to the Australian War Memorial Archive, we now know what an Australian Soldier looks like at that time..loose khaki trousers, floppy hat, big gun...

The British Military Administration formally took over from the Japanese on 12th Sept 1945 and managed the affairs of Sarawak, from Labuan.