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Playing a part in Singapore’s defence is WWII survivor’s lifelong passion

SINGAPORE — He was only 10 years old when Singapore fell to the Japanese during World War II in 1942, but in the three-and-a-half years that followed, Mr Alan Wong Hiong Boon “went through life as an adult”.

Mr Alan Wong with a painting he drew depicting the Japanese invasion of Singapore in World War II. He has taught art in secondary schools and is now a relief art teacher at Northbrooks Secondary School. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

Mr Alan Wong with a painting he drew depicting the Japanese invasion of Singapore in World War II. He has taught art in secondary schools and is now a relief art teacher at Northbrooks Secondary School. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

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SINGAPORE — He was only 10 years old when Singapore fell to the Japanese during World War II in 1942, but in the three-and-a-half years that followed, Mr Alan Wong Hiong Boon “went through life as an adult”.

A time of food shortage, he and other students spent some of their hours in school planting tapioca. Outside of it, he sold cakes made by his mother to earn some money.

There was also the apprehension of not knowing what was going to happen next, and conforming to the rules put in place by the Japanese.

His family survived the war and Mr Wong, now 85, has spent much of his adult life contributing in various ways to the defence of Singapore.

“If a person can live in a country in peace ... in safety, I think that’s one of the best things you can have in life,” he said.

“Anyone can go anywhere 24 hours a day and feel quite safe about the whole situation. I think that’s a plus point for us.”

After secondary school, he trained part-time for a year at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and went into teaching in 1951.

He taught at Tampines Primary School, and then spent about a decade at Serangoon English School.

Fighting fit, and with an adventurous streak, the young Mr Wong volunteered to take charge when Serangoon English School was one of 10 institutions selected to start the National Police Cadet Corps (NPCC).

Secret societies were a problem at the time, and the NPCC sought to steer students away from delinquency and gangsterism.

“I was also a scoutmaster, so I was working with students, and doing this kind of adventurous thing was (part) of my out-of-work time,” he said. “It wasn’t designated as duty in those days, it was voluntary.”

The teachers in charge of the NPCC had to head to the Police Training School to learn marching and foot drills, Mr Wong recalled.

He was then seconded to the People’s Association as an instructor at the National Youth Leadership Training Institute, where he taught community work and how to decorate community centres.

He also conducted unarmed combat classes for trainees — youth fresh out of secondary school who had been selected to work at the People’s Association, and whose jobs were to organise community activities and promote racial harmony.

A British Council grant came along, and Mr Wong headed to the United Kingdom to learn about youth leadership.

A year after he returned, he was seconded to the Ministry of Home Affairs around 1967, where he became Assistant Commandant (Training) of the National Service Vigilante Corps.

NS had just started, and conscripts who were not soldiers or policemen were placed in the Vigilante Corps for citizenship training, he said. Their duty, which later became civil defence, was initially to assist the police in maintaining order on patrol.

Mr Wong’s job was mainly to plan, organise and deploy the men, who were taught skills such as firefighting by professionals. His men were attached to the Singapore Fire Brigade, the airport fire service, and the Port of Singapore Authority.

“So when there was an oil spill, my men would be in action,” he recalled. By the time he retired in 1983, Mr Wong was Deputy Commandant (Civil Defence).

Equally active as a senior citizen, he has taught art in secondary schools and is now a relief art teacher at Northbrooks Secondary School.

He is working on a book, and has done sketches and paintings of everyday life in Singapore set in the time he grew up — people flying kites and playing football, for instance — as well as scenes he vividly remembers of the Japanese invasion.

“I’m trying to write my book, and it has a lot to do with what happened in the past, and you can’t get photographs like the (artwork) I did of the Japanese taking hold of (people in) my village to become human shields when fighting the British,” he said.

Mr Wong hopes that his experiences will encourage the younger generation to be more concerned with “whatever threats that may be facing us from time to time”.

He added: “They should be mature enough to work together to make sure that Singapore is peaceful.”

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