moved . The playing field , which had been badly mutilated during the Occupation , was levelled by an Irish Captain who had a bulldozer at his disposal . In March the Old Boys met and elected Claude da Silva as their President . In April Civil Government was restored , and in May the new Governor , Sir Franklyn Gimson , visited the school and expressed himself astounded by the progress made within such a short time . InJune the usual Corpus Christi Procession was held , as in pre-war years . The familiar routines were being restored .
During the Occupa tion the Japanese had removed the iron railings from around the school . Like the lamp standards in the streets they had been taken away and melted down . Now the school was totally open to the street , so Brother Director caused a twometre wall to be erected round the compound . He felt that this was needed for the sake of security since there had been a Communist-inspired riot near the school in February that year . ( A detailed account appears in Chapter Seven below .)
Between January and April 1946the boys of Raf £ les Institution occupied the Anderson Building in the afternoons . Their own buildings had been commandeered by the military . They moved to Monks Hill School in April and the arguments about who was responsible for the graffiti on the desk tops in the Anderson block ceased forthwith . Finally , in October , Brothers Aloysius , Amedy , Adrian , Peter , [ oseph McNally and Henry O ' Brien arrived from Ireland . Soon the European Brothers , who had not been home for the duration , began to take it in turns to go on leave .
Brother Henry , who in November 1986 had been teaching for thirty-eight years in the Brothers ' Schools , writes :
' We were the first post-war Irish Brothers to come on the missions . We travelled on the " Ranchi ", an old P and 0 passenger-liner-cumtroopship . We were all " greenhorns " with no knowledge of the exotic East , except what we had read or heard about from the older Brothers who had earlier returned . Conditions aboard were rather cramped with fourteen in our cabin , but we survived , and on Sunday , 14th November , we landed at Keppel harbour . It was evening , and we were met at the wharf by Brother [ oseph Brophy , then PrincipalofSJI , and MrS . Subramaniam , its long-serving clerk . Both men have now gone to their reward for lives declicated to education and the administrative work connected with it .
' World War Two had ended only a year earlier and Singapore still showed many signs of the scars the War had left . There were shortages of many items we would now consider necessities of life , many buildings needed " face-lifts " and the noisy buses , trams and other means of travel looked rather dilapidated as they moved over its uneven road surfaces . The main topics of conversation among the Brothers and members of the Staff were concerned with their survival experiences during the war , and we soon found out that narrative essays and stories written by the boys in class were also accounts of their exploits when the Japanese soldiers invariably were the " bad dies " while they themselves were the heroes . Singapore ' s population at that time was around 900,000 , divided racially in probably the same proportions as at present . A large proportion of the Chinese were China-born and among that community men far outnumbered women . There seemed to be a serious housing shortage and a lot of overcrowding . But people were hard working and Singapore was fast recovering as a port and trading centre .
' SJllooked much the same then as it does now , and only a few changes have been made over the years . The School Hall was open on the left and right and was used for Badminton , debates , concerts and other such purposes . There were two iron " corkscrew ' staircases , one between the present Library and the Computer Room , and the other beside the School Cha pel . The Anderson
Builcling had only one staircase at the middle instead of one at each end as at present . The School Offices were downstairs in what is now the classroom nearest the Front Portico . The present Offices and the nearby Science Labs were classrooms - the quietest in the whole school , and fortunately for me , all the classes 1 taught in those days were in that area .
' None of the teachers now on the SJIstaff was teaching when Iarrived , butin 1947Mr . TonyChee Kah Ann , now the longest-serving teacher , joined the Staff while doing Normal Training and in 1949 Mr . Eu Siak Hong joined us in a similar capacity . There were no lady teachers , for some reason , until Miss [ arisen returned from St Anthony ' s Boys ' School about 1948 . We had many changes of staff for various reasons and we must have been very shortof teachers . During most of 1947 , I remember I had only one free period per week , on Fridays .
' At that time SJI was a full Primary-cum- Secondary School . Boys entered Primary One , then were promoted to Primary Two , then went on to Standard One and so on up to Standard Nine , or the Senior Class which was the Cambridge Examination Class . For my first two or three years we had only one such Senior class and many of the pupils were well overage as their education had been disrupted by the War . The 1946 Senior Class seems to have been a very bright one with such pupils as Mr Goh Sin Tub , Mr George Bogaars , Mr Tony Chee , mentioned above , many of them now retired or nearing retirement . 1 The 1947class seems to have been composed of much more limited pupils and our Cambridge results were among the weakest ever , below 50 % obtain-
1 . This cohort also included the late Tseng Yuen Lin ( neuro-surgeon ), his brother lames Tseng Yall Lin , [ ulian Tan ( stockbroker ), [ oachim Chia Yet Poh ( lawyer ), the late HenryHogun , thelateRexMartens , Dudley Dragon and TanChil1Moh .
42 Memories of Sl1