Nona Baker, by Y S Lee

Hello, friends. I'm currently time-travelling in the colony formerly known as Malaya. I'm interested, specifically, in the Japanese occupation of Malaya during the Second World War and how different groups of Malayans responded to the threat.

Here in the west, many people don't learn about WWII's Pacific theatre of war at school. Certainly, my own education focused on France, Britain and Germany, with a dash of Russia and Italy, and a rousing finale by the United States of America. However, there was also a Pacific War and its Axis aggressor was Japan. The most famous incident in the Pacific War, the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941, was just one part of a multi-pronged assault. On that same night in December, the Japanese simultaneously attacked Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. The next month, the Japanese turned their attention to Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and northern Australia.

When the Japanese invaded Malaya in December 1941, the local population was an ethnic mixture of aboriginal peoples, Malays, Chinese, Indians, and a small percentage of white (mainly British) colonists who controlled the colony's industry, politics and, of course, wealth. In the prelude to one of military history's most ignominious defeats, the British failed to take the Japanese threat seriously. Their attitude is well represented by the the Governor of Singapore, Sir Shenton Thomas: when informed of the invasion, he reportedly said, "Well, I suppose you'll shove the little men off." Far from shoving the little men off, however, "Fortress Singapore" fell to the Japanese in just 70 days.

By the time the British surrendered to the Japanese in February 1942, nearly all white civilians had evacuated - and had done so, very conspicuously, at the expense of the local non-white population. One remarkable exception to the white flight was Nona Baker, "a parson's youngest daughter" from Dunstable, Bedfordshire.




Nona Baker first travelled to Malaya to keep house for her brother, Vin (V B C Baker), who was general manager of a mine at Sungei Lembing, "the single largest tin mine in the world". Before the war, her brother was the most powerful man in the region, universally called Tuan Besar, or "Big Master" in the Malay language. Nona became known as Missie. Vin Baker seems to have been a classic Victorian paternalist in his management of the mine and his workers. Nona believes that "he was a king and father to the people, and they certainly adored him".

When the Japanese invaded, Vin couldn't conceive of a British defeat. Even as the Japanese advanced rapidly south through Malaya, Vin refused to leave his community. He made plans to hide in the jungle with Nona: after all, it would be only a matter of weeks, or perhaps a couple of months at most. Three trusted workers built Missie and Tuan Besar a hut in the jungle and stocked it with a primus stove, paraffin and tinned food. Still, denial prevailed. When the Japanese Army rolled into Sungei Lembing, Vin and Nona were quite rattled: "In the hurry of our departure, I had seized the tool kit from the car and taken it with me, instead of carrying something which might have been of some use." They also forgot to bring any reading material, an omission they bitterly regretted during their long, idle days in hiding.

As it turns out, they weren't in hiding for a few weeks or months. Nona Baker remained in the jungle for THREE YEARS. Despite the danger of being caught by the Japanese or betrayed by spies, their faithful servants visited them every ten days in the jungle to bring them fresh food, coffee, paraffin and news. (The servants also had Vin's false teeth repaired, again at immense personal risk: the dentist who fixed the dentures recognized that they were made in Europe.) After the first year, Vin and Nona's supply of money ran out and they took the decision to go live among the orang bukit, or "hill people": a euphemism for camps of Communist guerrillas who lived in the jungle and actively resisted the Japanese occupiers.

Nona and Vin were welcomed by the Communists, both out of principle (Nona says that she never saw a refugee turned away by guerrillas, even when food was extremely scarce) and financial savvy (Communist leaders recognized that they could raise funds locally, using Vin's name). For three years, Nona and Vin lived as very few white people had ever done, in Malaya: on terms of relative equality with local people.

In 1944, Vin Baker died of illness - a combination of malaria, dysentery and beri-beri. He'd suffered from bouts of depression since going into hiding, and these must have contributed to his weakness. What's much more remarkable is that Nona Baker survived. She gives a few dutiful reasons for her persistence: wanting to demonstrate that not all British were cowards and quitters; looking after Vin; the need to tell her mother, after the war, how Vin died. But there must have been something beyond that - an essential desire to learn, to know, to live. Despite her self-effacing explanations, Nona Baker was an extraordinary woman.


The 1959 edition, published by Constable

Nona Baker was briefly famous after the war, when she was delivered into the care of Force 136 (the equivalent of SOE in Southeast Asia), contributed information to Freddy Spencer Chapman's report on local Communist organizations, and returned to England. But it was only in 1959 that she felt able to dictate a memoir of her time amongst the Communists. It's called Pai Naa: The Story of Nona Baker. (Pai Naa, the name she was given by the guerrillas, means something like, "White Nona".) Nona Baker remains the only documented white woman to have survived the war by living in the jungle. While it is true, as she admits, she was only "busily saving my own skin", it is remarkable to have her even-handed portrait of life amongst the guerrillas. It's an intimate record that otherwise wouldn't exist.

Freddy Spencer Chapman, by Y S Lee

Now that I’ve wrapped up the Mary Quinn Mysteries, my quartet of novels set in Victorian London, I’ve begun researching a new book. This one’s set in Malaya (now called Malaysia) during the Second World War and it’s been a bracing change. One of my favourite historical figures so far is that of Freddy Spencer Chapman. I’d never heard of him before, and now I can’t stop talking about him or recommending his memoir to everybody I meet.

In late 1941, the English naturalist, mountaineer, teacher, explorer, and writer Freddy Spencer Chapman was sent to the British colony of Singapore. Freddy (I’m following the example of his biographer, Brian Moynahan, in calling him so familiarly) was a veteran of two polar geographical expeditions and a British mission to Tibet. Now, in wartime, Freddy taught “fieldcraft” (how to read tracks, navigate by the stars, shelter, find food, and generally survive in the wilderness) to Allied soldiers, first in Switzerland and then in Australia. With British concern mounting about Japanese aggression in southeast Asia, Freddy was the obvious choice to help lead a new Special Training School, 101 STS, in Singapore.

As sometimes happens, the British grossly miscalculated their defense against the Japanese Imperial Army, which conquered the entire archipelago in a matter of weeks. 101 STS was abandoned and the British, soldiers and civilians alike, fled the colony. As also sometimes happens, Freddy and two companions, Sergeant John Sartin and civilian volunteer Bill Harvey, got cut off behind enemy lines and left behind.

For one “mad fortnight”, Freddy, Sartin and Harvey blew up railway bridges, destroyed Japanese military vehicles, severed telegraph lines, and killed roughly 500 Japanese soldiers. According to biographer Moynahan, “the Japanese deployed a regiment to search for what they believed was a squad of 200 Australian commandos”. Sartin and Harvey were both captured; Sartin survived the war in a Japanese POW camp, while Harvey was decapitated for attempting to escape.

At home in England, Freddy was reported “missing believed killed”, until the day in 1945 when he swam out to a submarine off the coast of Malaya and, as Moynahan says, “came back from the dead”. In fact, for three years, Freddy survived in the jungle, training Communist guerrillas who resisted the Japanese occupation and later helping to plan the British attack on Malaya. His exploits sound like the purest fiction, an irresistible, real-life, Boy’s Own Adventure.

Without detracting from these astonishing accomplishments – Freddy deserves Field Marshal Wavell’s praise as “the jungle Lawrence” – I’d like to redress a consistent inaccuracy that seems to permeate the conversation around Freddy. He’s frequently described as a “one-man army”, with the suggestion that he was entirely alone in the tropical jungle. As the last few paragraphs show, this is inaccurate. And from a practical perspective, such a feat would be superhuman. Yet even Moynahan, at one point, succumbs to the sole-superhero rhetoric.

In truth, Freddy was sheltered, fed, supplied, doctored, protected, guided through the jungle, and fêted by hundreds of Communist guerrillas, and indirectly supported by tens of thousands of local civilians who quietly resisted the Japanese occupation. It’s this part of the story – the less glamorous, unfilmic aspect - that’s sometimes glossed over. Hearteningly, this isn’t something in which Freddy participated.

When he returned to England, Freddy published The Jungle is Neutral, a memoir of his time in wartime Malaya. He explains the title in this way: "the jungle is neutral. It provides any amount of fresh water, and unlimited cover for friend as well as foe - an armed neutrality, if you like, but neutrality nonetheless. It is the attitude of mind that determines whether you go under or survive". In this memoir, Freddy writes extensively about his time with the guerrillas, including brief portraits of his closest friends among them. The Jungle is Neutral might be my favourite work of nonfiction, ever, and much of this is because I really hadn’t expected to like Freddy so much.

Before reading it, I was braced for a man of his generation (born 1907): a social snob, an unself-conscious racist, an unapologetic colonialist. This isn’t the case at all. Freddy was immensely curious about the world, entirely willing to judge people on their individual merits and flaws, and endearingly passionate about food, even while suffering from bullet wounds, pneumonia, chronic malaria, ulcerated legs, blackwater fever, tick typhus, dysentery, and I-don’t-know-how-many-other ailments. Here’s how terrific this memoir is: while reading it, I followed my partner all around the house, subjecting him to excerpts. Another measure of how much I love it: before I was halfway through, I was already mourning the fact that it must end.

I joke about Freddy as my historical boyfriend, but I do think of him as singular and special in most ways. Fieldcraft and wartime exploits aside, he remained open to new experiences, new people, new ideas. He clearly valued intelligence, marrying a woman, Faith Townson, who worked for the Special Operations Executive, and whose wartime records remained sealed until this year. And it doesn’t hurt that he was excessively handsome! (Many images of Freddy remain under copyright, but click here for some examples.) For a vivid and pulse-quickening experience of a lesser-known facet of World War II, I couldn’t recommend more highly The Jungle is Neutral.