and 1volunteered to find him .
' I walked out of the class and went in search of Brother Patricius and told him he was wanted by the sly Mrs Suzuki . We there and then decided not to go back and Mrs Suzuki waited and waited and kept the whole class in for two hours , hoping that we both would turn up . We never did , but got a transfer through Mr Herman de Souza , then an Inspector of Schools , to go to St Patrick ' s , operating from Telok Kurau School . All seemed well and we attended the first session of the Japanese classes in Telok Kurau , when who should enter the classroom but Mrs Suzuki . I cannot recall what happened after that .' Teaching in the BrasBasah Boys ' School was a frustrating and sometimes alarming experience . In the first place the enrolment was , atthe best of times , only a quarter to a half of that of the pre-war SJI ( 1214 in 1938 ). The actual attendance was lower still . Parents were fearful of sending their children . Some were afraid that their children might eventually be conscripted into the Japanese armed forces . More frequently , families felt that they needed the wages of every one of their members , including the children . Survival , not school , was their priority .
There were also frequent interruptions to the classes . The public celebration of some Japanese festival might take weeks of preparation . The first occasion was the birthday of the Japanese Emperor on 29 April 1942 . All the children in the Syonan schools had to parade on the Padang with Japanese flags and had to sing the Japanese national anthem . The music was sent round to all the schools . Lessons were abandoned for rehearsals . The help of the Police band was enlisted and on the actual day the event passed off very successfully . The children sang to General Yamashita and the Tiger of Malaya was seen to be visibly moved . On the following day the Director received a congratulatory message . Later , in July of the same year , the children tumedoutin VictoriaStreetto greet General Tojo when he visited Syonan , and the boys made 2000 flags for the occasion .
Later still , the teachers were expected to tend vegetable plots in the Botanic Gardens . The school diary records that quite often teachers were away from 10 am to 1 pm , when school hours lasted from 9.50am t03 pm . Teachers also had to do Night Patrol duties and this necessarily meant absence from school next day .
Initially there was an acute shortage of textbooks . In fact , Mamoru Shinozaki wrote some simple language books himself . At first English was banned as a medium of instruction in the schools by the military authorities . Then Shinozaki realised that it was quite impracticable to make Japanese compulsory and he went and begged Mayor Odate to have the order rescinded . This was done . Nevertheless , the constant presence of Japanese soldiers around the corridors of SJI , and the occasional visitation by be-medalled military or naval officers , who had no connection with education , made every day a nerve-wracking experience for the teachers . In fact the Brothers made the best of an impossible situation until the authorities , who had brought in a number of teachers from Japan , gradually gave them less and less to do . Finally , in November 1943 , the European Brothers were told that their services were not required any longer . With no job and no visible means of support the prospect for them looked bleak indeed . So all the Brothers , including the local Brothers , decided to go to Bahau .
By this time the problem of feeding the population of Singapore was becoming acute . Many people showed signs of malnu hi tion . Diseases like beri-beri , pellagra and tuberculosis were on the increase . At this point , Mamoru Shinozaki proposed a drastic expedient : to evacuate the Catholic population from Singapore to a pioneering agricultural settlement in the jungles of Negri SembiJan . Here they would live an idyllic life , growing all their own food . The settlement , to which the Catholics were invited to go , was at a place called Bahau , 132 kilometres southwest of KuaJa Lumpur . Bishop Devals believed that , in the event of an Allied counter-attack on Singapore , the city would be laid in ruins . So he agreed to lead the first group to Bahau and to assume the leadership of the colony . The first party , which included the Brothers from St Patrick ' s and Bishop Devals , left on 28 December 1943 .
The numbers eventually grew to around 3000 . Since they were unlikely to cause any trouble to their Japanese masters , the community was not guarded and it was left very much to work out its own salvation with the resources available .
Brother Christopher Ch en was in the last batch to leave the city , when he and his companions , having sold all their movables , boarded a special train which took them as far as Gemas . Here they went to the house of a friend who allowed them to pass the night under his roof . The next day they took another train to Bahau , and from here lorries took them from the station to the settlement in the jungle .
The Brothers at Bahau lived , with the Bishop , in a long attap hut , at one end of which they had constructed a chapel . They slept on platforms made of rough planks , raised about 75 centimetres from the ground . Here they at once fell in with the routine of the Community .
They used to wake at4.30 am every day . Morning Prayer , Meditation and Mass would take one and a half hours . They then shared a breakfast of hard bread , madeofa maize-likegrain called ragi . With this they had coffee , to which , in their last days in the wilderness , they added a little milk from the goats they had acquired . After this breakfast , the Brothers went off to the tasks that had been assigned to them : some went to the kitchen , some to the gardens where they tended their vegetable plots . At first Brother Christopher spent the entire day boiling water and cooking food for the community of thirty-one Brothers . The work was excessively hard and exhausting . So he and his kitcheners explained to Brother Director that the task was becoming altogether too much for them , and Brother Joseph
38 Memories of5 / 1