Poem and background to Teo Kah Leng. For teachers and students to use for teaching historical contextualisation and WW2 history on Singapore.

1. I FOUND A BONE (1955)
By K.L. Teo
I found a bone at Ponggol Beach
Half buried in the sand
And bleached as white by the sea and sun –
I picked it up with my hand.
It was as brittle as light
As coral in the sea;
It once had been an arm like mine,
And had a hope like me.
“I had a hope, for life is hope,
My days were young and fair;
I had a faith in fellowman,”
The arm bone did declare.
“But then there came a fateful day
To shatter hope and faith;
‘Twas Nineteen hundred forty-two,
February twenty-eighth.
“Barbarian hordes had overrun
This fair and sunny isle;
They herded me and friends of mine
Like a pack of creatures vile.
“A futile dream was hope in life,
And faith in fellowmen!
We’re driven like sheep to Ponggol Zoo,
And never heard again.
“They strung us each to each in a line,
With hands behind us tied,
And stretched us on the sandy beach
To face the rising tide.
“My brother stood upon my right –
A friend he was to all;
He leaned a little to my side,
And merely whispered, ‘Paul’.
“He had a wife and children small,
Five altogether told;
I was my mother’s youngest son,
And she was blind and old.

2. “Where was the other brother of mine?
Him too did those brutes take?
Good God, keep him from murderous hands
For his and mother’s sake!
“Is this the way of faith and hope?’
I muttered in my breath;
‘Must guiltless blood be made to ebb
In such inglorious death?’
“I am the way of life, your Hope,’
I heard a voice reply;
‘Know I am hanging on a cross,
And Calvary is nigh.;
“A machine gun spat a volley long,
A bullet whizzed through me,
And I was dragged down by the line
That dropped before the sea.
“I heard my brother groan and die,
I heard approaching feet;
And ah! I felt the welcome steel
That stopped my heart to beat.”
I held the arm bone in my hand,
And let my warm tears fall;
My brothers were slain at Ponggol Beach,
My brothers Peter and Paul.
From Teo Kah Leng (2016), I Found a Bone and Other Poems. Singapore: Ethos
Books.

3. About the Author: Benedict Teo Kah Leng
(1909- 2001)
Benedict Teo Kah Leng was born in Singapore to a Teochew Catholic family. He had
3 brothers and 6 sisters. His father, John Teo Hong Ngee, was an emigrant from
China. The elder Teo was born in 1864 and arrived at an early age and later lived in
Serangoon, which had been a home for Teochew Catholics fleeing religious
persecution in China in the mid 19th century. Hong Ngee later became a Chinese
teacher in the Chinese section of Holy Innocents’ English School where he sent his
children to be educated.
Benedict Teo Kah Leng grew up speaking Teochew at home but was sent to Holy
Innocents’ English School (HIES) where he immersed himself in the English
Language and achieved success both as a pupil and later as a teacher. After
graduating from HIES, he entered St Joseph’s Institution, another Catholic English
Language school at Bras Basah Road. He passed his Cambridge School Certificate
Examination in 1927 and went into teacher’s training, and returned the same year to
his alma mater as a teacher where his elder brother Kee Leng had already been
teaching since 1924.
Teo was best known as an English Language teacher but taught other subject as
well, probably including sports. Some pre-war newspaper articles record his
participation in badminton tournaments.
When war broke out, Kah Leng lost two of his brothers in the Sook Ching campaign.
Both his elder brother Kee Leng and younger brother Poh Leng disappeared on
February 28, 1942. The Japanese had rounded up Chinese men on February 28. All
Chinese men between the ages of 18 and 50 had to report to various screening
centers and many were subsequently executed. They were killed perhaps because
they were teachers and considered to be possible subversive members to Syonan-
To. They were likely among the 300 to 400 Chinese civilians who were shot on
February 28 at Punggol Beach, and among the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 who
died during the Sook Ching campaign.
As the sole breadwinner of his extended family which included the wife and children
of his deceased brother, Kee Leng, his own unmarried sisters and eventually the
children of one sister and her husband who died during the war, Kah Leng had to
work for the Japanese in order to make a living. He was learnt and taught the
Japanese language at HIES which had been reopened as a Japanese school. He
had to deal with the sorrow of losing many members of his family, especially that of
his blind mother, who had already been bereaved of her husband before the
Japanese Occupation. In April 1944, his mother passed on as well.
In 1944, Teo and his entire family migrated to Bahau, an agricultural settlement set
up in the Malayan state of Negri Sembilan during the Japanese Occupation for
Chinese Catholics and Eurasians. The original plan was to allow the settlers to grow
their own food and to enable them to escape the constant surveillance of the
Japanese in a new settlement. However, due to poor conditions and lack of
resources at Bahau, the settlement failed to thrive. Kah Leng and his family suffered

4. from bad housing and hunger, living mostly on tapioca and vegetables in Bahau.
They were constantly faced with fear of diseases, the most common of which was
malaria. Teo himself suffered from bouts of malaria at Bahau.
Teo survived the poor conditions and he returned to Singapore after the Japanese
surrender in August 1945. He returned to teach in HIES in 1946 to teach English
Language, literature, scripture, art, mathematics and General paper. In 1959, when
HIES was renamed Montfort School, Kah Leng became the principal of the primary
section and remained in that position until 1964. He was involved in teaching,
administrative duties and remained passionately committed to the school’s
fundraising activities which involved organising annual “funfairs” to raise money for
new school facilities. Outside of HIES, he was also involved in teaching English to
adults in the Lembaga Gerakan Pelajaran Dewasa or Adult Education night classes
which provided adults with the opportunity for further education and to increase their
literacy levels.
Teo was also a devout Catholic. He attended mass daily at Catholic churches and
sang in the choir on special occasions. At Sunday masses, he served as a lector and
warden. He was also involved in Catholic organisations like the Society of St Vincent
de Paul and St Joseph’s Dying Association. He also helped to raise funds for the
building of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church along Highland Road in Upper
Serangoon.
Teo was a model-educator in Singapore’s school community but he was also
constantly reminded and agonised by the war-time trauma that had befallen his
fanmily and those of his school colleagues. Other tragic events happened after the
war which pained him, namely the deaths of Mr Leong Koo Chye, then the principal
at Monfort’s primary section and his long time colleague at HIES and the death of his
own son, Christopher. His son died from tetanus at age 12. Such tragic experiences
may have led Teo towards poetry in the post-war period.
His reflections about Malaya’s natural environment and his religious beliefs, as well
as his dedication to form are found in many poems he wrote. They are expressed in
rhythmic lines and rhymes which may have given him a means of dealing with his
own psychological scars. His readers, as well, many of whom experienced the
horrors of the Japanese Occupation, would probably have also felt the healing
function of his poems.

5. Holy Innocents’ English School Staff, 21 June 1938
Front Row: Mr T.N.K. Menon, Bro Adolphus, Bro Louis Gonzaga, Bro Vincent, Mr Tay Kheng Hock
Back Row: Mr W. Masang, Mr Leong Koo Chye, Mr D.F. Ess, Mr C.M. Thalap, Mr Lim Peng Chan, Mr Teo Kah Leng, Mr Cher Poh Chia
Teo Kah Leng in 1966

6. Unearthing the Poem
The poetry of Teo Kah Leng was ‘refounded’ only in 2015. It has a strong parallel
and contrast to one of Singapore’s most famous poetry – F.M.S.R. – written by his
brother, Teo Poh Leng, who was killed during Japanese Occupation.
F.M.S.R. :For a long time, people around the world did not know who the writer to
F.M.S.R. A Poem (published in 1937) was. The poem describes a train journey from
Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on the Federated Malay States Railway (FMSR). It was
claimed to be the first published book-length English poem by a Singapore author.
The writer was published alongside famous poets like Robert Frost and W.B. Yeats.
His poems won the approval of British poet Silvia Townsend Warner and Cornish
poet Ronald Bottrall. It was described as “a pastiche of T.S. Eliot.”
Writer of F.M.S.R: The author of F.M.S.R. had disappeared at the start of the
Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1942 but in 2014, a Japanese scholar Eriko
Ogihara-Schunk stumbled across the astonishing fact that Francis P. Ng was the
pseudonym for Teo Poh Leng. That led to her discovery that Teo Poh Leng had died
in the Sook Ching campaign during the Japanese occupation and laso Teo Poh
Leng’s poems.
Forgotton poems: Research scholars like Eriko argue that the poems Kah Leng
wrote was ‘forgotten’ and marginalised because more established writers and poets
of the post-war period from the University of Malaya (currently University in
Singapore) may have felt that Kah Leng’s poems were too conventional. They
preferred to emphasise free verse. Kah Leng’s poems—more accessible in style and
subject matter—however gained a wide audience among students in the 1950s and
1960s. It was published in his school annual and Young Malayans magazine. The
Young Malayans was a magazine for Malaya’s English-medium school teachers and
pupils throughout the 1950s and 60s
The Poem: I found a bone: The 1955 poem ‘I Found A Bone” is perhaps the best
example of how Kah Leng dealt with the psychological scars of the Japanese
occupation. It is the best example of how his poetry has the potential to evoke and
heal the pains of the war. Appearing in his school annual, the poem recounts the
Sook Ching massacre at Punggol Beach and the deaths of his brothers Kee Leng
and Poh Leng, or “Pete and Paul”, their Christian names. By directly addressing
these horrific events, his poem represents and contributed to the collective attempt
made by Singaporeans aimed at bringing to closure the agony of the war and to
move on with life.
Adapted from: https://www.ethosbooks.com.sg/products/finding-francis-a-poetic-adventure
https://iseas.edu.sg/medias/event-highlights/item/3695-seminar-on-after-finding-francis-teo-kah-lengs-malayan-poetry-in-the-
era-of-decolonisation

7. About the context: The Sook Ching Campaign
Operation Sook Ching was a Japanese military operation aimed at purging or eliminating
anti-Japanese elements from the Chinese community in Singapore. From 21 February to 4
March 1942, Chinese males between the ages of 18 and 50 were summoned to various
mass screening centres and those suspected of being anti-Japanese were executed.
Reasons for the operation
➢
Sook Ching is a Chinese term meaning "purge through cleansing". The Japanese
term for the operation was Dai Kensho, meaning “great inspection”.
There were several possible reasons why the Japanese military carried out the
operation.
First, the Japanese military were suspicious of the Chinese in Singapore because of
the long-standing tensions between Japan and China, and their own experiences
fighting the Chinese in China since 1937.
Second, many of the Japanese commanders and soldiers were veterans of
campaigns in other parts of Asia where violence and executions were regularly used
as tools to keep the civilian population under control.
Third, the Japanese wanted to prevent anti-Japanese elements from interfering with
their occupation of Singapore after experiencing resistance by Chinese volunteers
and guerrillas during the Malayan Campaign (1941–1942).
➢ The directive
Shortly after the Japanese occupied Singapore, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki
Yamashita issued a directive ordering the Chinese population to report to different
designated areas for screening.
The directive targeted five main categories of Chinese:
(1) members of the volunteer force;
(2) Communists;
(3) looters;
(4) those possessing arms; and
(5) those whose names appeared in lists of anti-Japanese suspects maintained by
Japanese intelligence.
In line with the directive, instructions were issued to Japanese officers on how the
operation was to be carried out. Japanese officers were instructed to screen all “anti-
Japanese elements”, segregate them and dispose of them secretly.
How the operation was carried out
After the directive was issued, notices and posters were put up informing Chinese
males between the ages of 18 and 50 to report to designated screening centres. Men
also went round with loudspeakers to spread the news. These screening centres
were located all over the island, especially in areas such as Chinatown where large
numbers of Chinese resided.
The screening was mainly carried out by the Kempeitai (the Japanese military police)
in the urban areas and by the Imperial Guards Division in the other districts. Initially,

8. the plan was for the operation to be carried out from 21 to 23 February 1942. It was
subsequently extended to 4 March.
The screening process was unsystematic and disorganised. Decisions on who were
anti-Japanese were based on the whims of the persons doing the screening. Oral
history accounts from eyewitnesses describe different screening methods being used
at the various centres. In some centres, victims were selected based on their
occupations, their answers to questions, or whether they had tattoos. In other
centres, hooded informers would point to men who were allegedly criminals or anti-
Japanese elements.
The men who were fortunate enough to pass the screening process were allowed to
leave the centres. They were provided with proof of their cleared status in the form of
a piece of paper with a stamp that said "examined", or through similar stamps
marked on their face, arm, shoulder or clothing.
Some people were spared from the screenings through the intervention of Japanese
official like Mamoru Shinozaki. Appointed as advisor to defence headquarters after
the fall of Singapore, Shinozaki used his position to issue personal protection cards
to thousands of Chinese. In some instances, Shinozaki even personally went to the
screening centres to ask for the release of men who had been detained.
Thousands of other men were not so fortunate. Suspected of being anti-Japanese
elements, these men were loaded into lorries and transported to remote areas such
as Changi, Punggol and Bedok for execution. At these sites, the suspects were
machine-gunned to death and often their bodies were thrown into the sea. In some
instances, British prisoners of war (POWs) were tasked to bury the bodies.
Known massacre sites include beaches at Punggol, Changi, Katong, Tanah Merah
and Blakang Mati (now Sentosa island). Massacres were said to have also occurred
at Hougang, Thomson Road, Changi Road, Siglap, Bedok and East Coast.
Due to a lack of written records, the exact number of people killed in the operation is
unknown. The official figure given by the Japanese is 5,000 although the actual
number is believed to be much higher. Lieutenant Colonel Hishakari Takafumi,
newspaper correspondent at the time, claimed that the plan was to kill 50,000
Chinese and that half that number had been reached when the order was received to
stop the operation.
Aftermath
Operation Sook Ching succeeded in instilling fear among the Chinese population.
After the war, this fear turned into anger.
In 1947, seven Japanese officers were charged during a war crimes trial in
Singapore for their participation in Operation Sook Ching. All seven officers were
found guilty. Two officers, Lieutenant General Saburo Kawamura and Lieutenant
Colonel Masayuki Oishi, were sentenced to death while the remaining five were
given life sentences.
Many in the Chinese community were unhappy with the verdict. The Overseas
Chinese Appeal Committee that represented the families of victims protested that the
sentences were too lenient. They called for the execution of all seven Japanese
soldiers and the arrest of all those who had participated in the operation.
The other matter that deeply concerned the Chinese community was the proper

9. burial of those killed in the massacre. A joint memorial committee for Chinese
massacre victims was set up to collect the remains of victims from various sites and
rebury them in a dedicated memorial site.
The issue of reburying the remains of victims of the massacre resurfaced following
the discovery of mass graves in the Siglap area in 1962. Five separate war graves
were found in an area dubbed “Valley of Tears” by the press. Subsequently, more
than 30 mass graves were exhumed and the remains found were placed in funeral
urns for reburial.
Following the discovery of the mass graves in Siglap, the Singapore Chinese
Chamber of Commerce lobbied for the Singapore government to press their
Japanese counterparts for compensation for the massacre. On 25 August 1963, more
than 100,000 people gathered at City Hall to demand that Japan pay compensation
for the wartime atrocities inflicted on the people of Singapore.
Finally on 25 October 1966, the Japanese government agreed to pay S$50 million in
compensation in the form of a S$25 million grant and a S$25 million loan. However, it
was not until 1993 that then Japanese prime minister Morihiro Hosokawa apologised
for Japanese atrocities committed during the war.
Part of the compensation money was used to fund the building of the Civilian War
Memorial on Beach Road. Officially unveiled by then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew
on 15 February 1967, the memorial consists of four pillars representing the four main
ethnic groups (Chinese, Malays, Indians and Eurasians) in Singapore. Although the
initial idea was for a memorial dedicated to the victims of the massacre, the
government decided in the end that the monument should be dedicated to victims
from all communities who had died during the Japanese Occupation. More than 600
urns containing the remains of Sook Ching massacre victims are buried at the foot of
the memorial.
Massacre sites
• Punggol Beach.
• Changi Beach/Changi Spit Beach: Victims were from the Bukit
Timah/Stevens Road area.
• Changi Road 8-mile section (milestone/ms): Massacre site found at a
plantation area (formerly Samba Ikat village) contained remains of 250 victims
from the vicinity.
• Hougang/Upper Serangoon 8 ms: Six lorry loads of people were reported to
have been massacred here.
• Katong 7 ms: 20 trenches for burying the bodies of victims were dug here.
• Beach opposite 27 Amber Road: Two lorry loads of people were said to
have been massacred here. The site later became a car park.
• Tanah Merah Beach/Tanah Merah Besar Beach: 242 victims from Jalan
Besar were massacred here. The site later became part of the Changi airport
runway.
• Sime Road off Thomson Road: Massacre sites found near a golf course
and villages in the vicinity.
• Katong, East Coast Road: 732 victims from Telok Kurau School.
• Siglap area: Massacre site near Bedok South Avenue/Bedok South Road
(previously known as Jalan Puay Poon).
• Blakang Mati Beach, off the Sentosa Golf Course: Many of the bodies of
massacre victims were washed ashore and buried here.

10. Adapted from http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_40_2005-01-24.html

11. In remembrance of her late husband, Dr Hum
Wai, who was killed during the Japanese
occupation, tears streamed down the cheeks
of 80-year old Madam Ng Kuai Chee. She was
attending a special service at the Civilian War
Memorial in Beach Road on 15 February, 1975.
Relatives praying before the 600 urns containing
the remains of civilian victims of Japanese
massacres during the war before the remains
were moved to a new memorial site in Beach
Road for re-burial on 31 October, 1966.
Sook Ching Screening Station at North Bridge
Road, Entrance of Kandahar Street. 1942
NAS: 20080000015 - 0057
http://blogtoexpress.blogspot.sg/2015/05/wh
y-lee-kuan-yew-did-not-remove-eyes.html

12. Bibliography
About Teo Kah Leng
Teo Kah Leng. (2016). I Found a Bone and Other poems . Singapore: Ethos Books.
About the Sook Ching Campaign
Hayashi Hirofumi. (2008). Massacre of Chinese in Singapore and Its Coverage in Postwar Japan. In
Akashi Y. & Yoshimura, M. (Eds.), News Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and
Singapore, 1941-1945. (pp. 234-249). Singapore: NUS Press.
Blackburn, K & Hack (2012). War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore.
(Chinese Victimhood, pp. 135-174). Singapore: NUS Press.
http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_40_2005-01-24.html
http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/d0523464-3a43-4520-a864-f195a8aef418
http://apjjf.org/-Hayashi-Hirofumi/3187/article.html
About the Racial Policies of the Japanese
Kratoska, P.H. (1998). The Japanese Occupation of Malaya. (Ethnic Policies. pp.92-121). London:
C.Hurst & Co. Ltd.