While living in Singapore, (I was about 10) I found myself in hospital with a Chinese resistance fighter, who had been condemned to death by the British government, and who was, apparently, in a really bad way of health, and so the British government felt that he was too ill to be executed!
He was in hospital to get him into good health and then the British would take him out and hang him!
As I spoke Chinese (I went to a Chinese school – that will be a subject of another post https://ozthoughtsblog.com/2016/02/03/more-colonial-life-singapore-again/) and his guard was a Sikh who didn’t speak a word of Chinese, so I found out what was planned for him and it has made a real impression on my ever since as a heartless example of how governments work.
He explained how the British had promised a bunch of Chinese to stay in the jungle as they were losing it to the Japanese and when the British came back (!) they would pay them handsomely to continue the struggle on their behalf.
So in due time, when the fortunes of war went around and the British came back to Malaysia, the Chinese came out of the jungle and went to the British to be paid……
But the British had no intention of paying them, and kept putting them off with all manner of excuses. So in the end, the Chinese simply went back into the jungle, and took up arms against the British Planters instead of the Japanese.
The Chinese Communists were not involved in the beginning, but quite quickly became involved, as part of their struggle against the British elsewhere.
It was a real introduction to the way governments work for me.
OZTHOUGHTS 