Looking For Mrs. Peel

இன்றோடுக்டியன்: லூகிங் போர் மற். Peel

2011-07-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

une histoire à propos de Singapour en 1942, la prison de Changi, avec de nouvelles informations sur l'incident Double Dixième basée sur le journal de Dorothy Nixon, bibliothécaire a Kuala Lumpur

டோரதி நிக்சன் ஒரு டைரி, கோலாலம்பூர் புத்தக கிளப் நூலகர் அடிப்படையில் டபுள் டென்த் சம்பவம் பற்றி புதிய தகவல்களை 1942 ல் சிங்கப்பூர், சாங்கி சிறைச்சாலையில் பற்றி ஒரு கதை

cerita tentang Singapura pada tahun 1942, Penjara Changi, dengan maklumat baru mengenai kejadian Double Kesepuluh yang berdasarkan diari Dorothy Nixon, pustakawan di Kuala Lumpur Book Club

डबल दसवीं डोरोथी निक्सन की डायरी, कुआलालंपुर बुक क्लब में लाइब्रेरियन के आधार पर घटना के बारे में नई जानकारी के साथ 1942 में सिंगापुर चांगी जेल, के बारे में एक कहानी

故事讲述在1942年，新加坡樟宜监狱，与多萝西尼克松日记，馆员在吉隆坡读书俱乐部为基础的双十事件有关的新信息

cerita tentang Singapura pada tahun 1942, Penjara Changi, dengan informasi baru tentang insiden Kesepuluh ganda berdasarkan buku harian Dorothy Nixon, pustakawan di Kuala Lumpur Book Club

cerita tentang Singapura pada tahun 1942, Penjara Changi, dengan maklumat baru mengenai kejadian Double Kesepuluh yang berdasarkan diari Dorothy Nixon, pustakawan di Kuala Lumpur Book Club

लूकिंग फॉर मर्स. Peel

2011-07-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

अ स्क्रिप्ट फॉर अ रेडियो प्ले अबाउट थे फल ऑफ़ सिंगापोरे, चंगी प्रिसोंएर ऑफ़ वर कैंप एंड थे दौबले टेंथ इंसिडेंट दुरिंग वर्ल्ड वर २।

ലൂകിംഗ് ഫോര്‍ മര്. Peel

2011-07-29T17:25:00.000-07:00

ലൂകിംഗ് ഫോര്‍ മര്. പീല, എ സ്ക്രിപ്റ്റ് ഫോര്‍ എ റേഡിയോ പ്ലേ എബൌട്ട്‌ ദി ഫല്‍ ഓഫ് സിങ്കപ്പൂര്‍ ആന്‍ഡ്‌ ചാങ്ങി പോ ലൈഫ് ആന്‍ഡ്‌ ദി ഡബിള്‍ ടെന്ത് ഇന്സിടെന്റ്റ് അറ്റ്‌ ചാങ്ങി പ്രിസോനെര്‍ ഓഫ് വാര്‍ ക്യാമ്പ്‌ ദുരിംഗ് വേള്‍ഡ് വാര്‍ ഈഈ.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 2: Is she Coming For Expo?

2011-03-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

Granny in 1967

"Cross my hand with silver pretty lady, if you'd see,
What the future holds in store for you and how soon you will be free,

Cross my hand with silver (if you have none don't be shy)I'll take it out in food or booze (or Gordon's Special dry)

Just cross my hand with silver or call at Cell Fifteen
With any simple offering, (be sure you are not seen)

No cumshaw ever comes amiss but if you have it handy
The fates show true benevolence if first well laced with brandy,

The lines engraved upon your palm are clear as mud to me,
There's fame and food and fortune and a journey on the sea

But a lurking danger threatens and a white-haired lady frowns,
(It isn't Eve or Nella and it isn't Mrs. Chowns.)

Fate draws a veil across the name, but one thing's plain to see,
The danger is averted if you put your shirt on me.

"Scene One: Nixon Living Room Montreal November 1967

SOUND: Television, (Murdersville episode of The Avengers TV Series from November 1967) someone being dunked in water and crunch of eating

Voice on TV: (sx water) You could spare yourself this Mrs. Peel. (sx splash)You know what we want (sx Splash) Who knows you are here?

Martha: Dorothy , depeches-toi,come say goodbye to your grandmother. This is your last chance to see her. She’s leaving for the airport very early tomorrow morning

Dorothy : (sx crinkling of cellophane bag, crunch of junk food being chewed)

Martha: And, adjust the rabbit ears on the TV for Heaven’s sake. All that interference. Mrs. Peel's face is covered in snow!

MUSIC:Red Rubber Ball. The Cyrkle 1966

Scene Two: 2008 kitchen near Montreal Canada

SOUND: food sizzling on stove, radio din, cell with Ode to Billy Joe ringtone.

Dorothy: Blair. Get my cell, would you?

Blair: (distant)grunt

Dorothy: Aghh. Geez. (sx clunk of pan) Hello?

Denise: Dorothy. It’s your Aunt Denise.

Dorothy: Hi. I know. I was just thinking of you, actually. I’m listening to a BBC Documentary - about My Lai. On my laptop. 40th anniversary of the year 1968. Big year in the US. Of course, 1967 was our big year -here in Canada.

Denise: Radio Four, I presume. We never miss The Archers. I’ve rung to say that I received Mother’s war memoir in the post today. I want to thank you for returning it so promptly.

Dorothy: Wow. That’s fast. I just scanned the pages and saved them to CD. I still have a tonne of research to do before I can make any sense of it. Especially the spy business. Did you see that snippet I sent you from the 1963 Malaysia Who’s Who?

Denise: Yes, I did.

Dorothy: But did you notice the twenty year gap? It says Dorothy Forster Nixon: Born 1895 County Durham; Quaker Co-educational School; land girl in forestry WWI. Then it jumps to librarian, Kuala Lumpur Book Club 1935-present with mention of internment at Changi. Nothing about her domestic life as a rubber worker’s wife.

Denise: No I didn't. Odd. Well, I can't thank you enough for all you are doing for my mother.

Dorothy: Well, Granny didn’t get the recognition in the UK. No OBE or flattering obit at her death like the others involved, but she’ll have this, my humble family tribute. I’ll dedicate it to everyone written out of history.

Denise: Yes, to think that the grandchild with whom she had the least rapport is doing the most to keep her memory alive. Must ring off. Short of breath these days. Give my love to your mother.

Dorothy: I will. Bye now. Hmm. The grandchild with whom she had the least rapport. That’s one way of putting it, I guess.(sx plunk of fan, frying sound turns into applause)

Scene Three: Clanranald Elementary Auditorium, Montreal 1967

SOUND: Applause

Teacher (sx mike): Good work Mark Luxenberg and Rebecca Birenbaum. The top students at Clanranald Elementary for 1966/67 . Assembly dismissed. Have a great Expo summer. And please don’t lose your report cards on the way home. Here's Bobby Gimby to trumpet you home (sx scratch of record CA NA DA Song on cheap record player over PA system)

(sx vague sound of birds, children and car radios fade in and out as Ingrid and Dorothy walk by."C'etait Bits and Pieces par le Dave Clark Five. A Suivre Light MyFire, Les Doors... US President Lyndon Johnson meets today with Russian Premiere Alexsei Kosygin in New Jersey at what is being dubbed the The Glassboro Summit....

(sunny ID-jingle) CFCF 600 Montreal...

Silky Woman's Voice: There's a new look in telephones. The new look is the princess phone. It's little, it's lovely, it's light. It's so slender it can fit anywhere.)

Dorothy (VO): 6th grade down. One more year of elementary school to go. I walk the two blocks home to my family’s untidy upper duplex apartment on Lemon Creek Road in the dingy Snowdon district of Montreal (with its row upon row of unadorned brick buildings and only two landmarks worthy of the designation: the glamorous bejewelled Art Deco Snowdon Theatre and the glaring globoid Orange Julep Drive-in Restaurant) in the company of classmate and neighbour Ingrid Singh. Bombay born, Ealing raised, one of the many exotic new Canadians coming to live in my neighborhood.

Dorothy: Let me see your report card Ing.

Ingrid: Let me see yours first.

Dorothy: Nothing to see. Very good in every subject. Not one teacher comment.

Ingrid: Well, I got five excellents.

Dorothy: And a page and a half of teacher comments, I bet.”Ingrid talks back in class and teaches the little ones how to say words like douchebag. Please wash her mouth out with soap.”

Ingrid: H! Ha!. So, what do you want to do when we get home. Go up to Queen Mary Road and play Monkey See Monkey Do?.

Dorothy: Nah, too hot.

Ingrid: Wanna go see if that one-legged hobo is still living in the backseat of the blue Firebird in the used car lot?

Dorothy: Not allowed. And he's not a hobo. He's a war veteran.

INgrid: Spy vs. spy then?

Dorothy: Ok. But I wanna be Emma Peel this time.

Ingrid: No. I get to play Emma. I’m from England. You can be Agent 99 or Honey West.

Dorothy: I wanna be Emma. You’re from India. I’m the one who’s REALLY English. I’m a tall Yorkshire girl, just like Diana Rigg. My dad says.

Ingrid: You said you were born here in Canada. And your father in K-u-a-la Lum-pooor.

Dorothy: Makes no difference. My grandparents are from Yorkshire.

Ingrid: Is you grandmother tall like you and your dad?

Dorothy: I dunno.

Ingrid: Well,I’m much much MUCH prettier than you, so I still get to play Mrs. Peel.

Dorothy vo: Right, then. So Ingrid,with her shimmering swell of jet black hair, flawless mocha skin and blossoming Swedish curves, gets to be Emma Peel, as usual. That's because Emma Peel is really Diana Rigg, an English lady who is undeniably the most beautiful – and possibly the best TV actress on either side of the pond. At least according to critic Cleveland Amory in the April 28, 1967 issue of TV Guide Magazine, the very same issue I have tucked away as a keepsake because April 28, 1967 was also the opening day of Montreal's wonderful world's fair.

Ingrid: So, Emma goes undercover at the British Pavilion at Expo where she hides out with the Mary Quant mannequins. She’s watching out for Russian spies who want to kidnap…ah…Queen Elizabeth when she visits in two weeks. And Honey is a double agent working in the Russian Pavilion.

Dorothy: I’ve been to the Russian Pavilion. All it has inside is machines. Why can’t Honey hide out in Thailand? Their pavilion is shaped like a golden dragon boat.

Ingrid: Don’t be daft. Nothing happens in Thailand. So, my flat is the British Pavilion and your flat is the Russian Pavilion and our bedrooms are where we send our top secret transmissions. On pink princess phones.

Dorothy: I don’t have a princess phone.

Ingrid : It’s pretend!

Dorothy: Next week I won’t even have a bedroom.

Ingrid: Why?

Dorothy: Because my Yorkshire, well, Malaya, grandmother is finally coming for a visit and she gets my brother’s bedroom and he gets mine.

Ingrid: Is she coming for Expo? Is she coming to see the Queen?

Dorothy: I guess.

Ingrid: Where are you going to sleep?

Dorothy: On a cot in the dining room.

Ingrid: So, then. You’ll finally find out if she’s really tall or small.

Giles Playfair, Producer, Writer, Spy?

2010-03-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

Hmm. The information on the Internet is growing exponentially. In 2003, I found one reference to my grandmother and now there are many, many and not just created by me.

Well, today, someone came to my website looking up Giles Playfair, the writer of Singapore Goes Off the Air, published in 1943, that is during the war. This book describes the Malaya Broadcasting Corporation during the siege and describes my grandmother as the only European to stay behind because of loyalty to my grandfather.

I've always found this a little weird as she had a boyfriend, who went back to England. When she left Kuala Lumpur, both my grandfather and this man, Hastings, took her to the train.

Well, way back, when I read Singapore Goes off the Air, I looked up Giles Playfair, a writer, so you'd think there would be a lot on the Internet about him. There wasn't. And he was a wonderful writer. I found his grave in Montmartre.

Today, I looked up his name (as the visitor to my site had done) and there was a snippet from a book about spies during the war, claiming he was a counter-espionage agent in the US in 1946, after he escaped Singapore.

Hmm. The plot thickens. I knew Singapore Goes Off the Air couldn't tell the whole story, as it was published during the war. But now I wonder even more if my grandmother's story is more complicated than breaking the rules at Changi, by passing information from the men's camp to the women's camp, information about BBC broadcasts, passed around only to improve morale.

I mean, she spent a time with Playfair. He stayed in the same apartment for some days.

Singapore Street View Googled!

2010-03-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Names on a Changi card. Trying to keep your humanity in wartime.

Well, Singapore has made it to Google Streetview. I will take many trips there, to get a real feel for things. I know because people fell onto this blog looking up street view Singapore.

This 'play' Looking for Mrs. Peel, available on this blog in installments and here in its entirety, www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html
isn't a work of art (although I wish it were) but it is a good piece of history, as well as an authentic look into Canada in 1967 and Singapore in 1942, 43. War dehumanizes people, but so does modern life.

I haven't added to the blog, as I am busy dealing with 'the bank'. It's 2010, but I feel I am in a Kafka novel. Just call me "D". My mother died leaving bank owned credit card bills, and the people from the collection agencies are on my back, even though I have no choice but to wait for events to unfold, as per the law with respect to her will and succession. In other words the collection agencies are harrassing me although they have no right at all to even phone me. And the bank had no reason at all to send this to collection, or to send my dead mother threatening letters that the account was seriously delinquent, when they had been notified she had died. The threatening letters are anonymous of course and the contact phone number at the bottom is a fake number or something. It gets rerouted to all over God's creation.

I hate the banks. Who doesn't? So today, I got re-routed six times to find someone to talk to regarding my mother's account at this major Canadian bank. (No need to name it, they are all in it together.)I ended up in Vancouver, although I dialed a Montreal number. The bank makes bazillions, but it can't hire an old fashioned receptionist. (I figure this must be on purpose. They want you to give up on any enquiries.)

This is nothing unusual, it is de rigeur. All big companies conduct business his way, nowadays.

And you cannot blame it on the people who take your call, they are just pawns , over-educated, under employed people with first names only "Hi, I'm Josephine, How can I help you?" (NO ONE is accountable for their actions in big corporations. If you ask for a name, you get a pseudonym. Talk about Kakfaesque.)

I love the fact the voice in the sky always says, "This call is being recorded for quality control purposes." (General idea.) Is this a threat? Or just Big Brother. Today, a goon from the collection agency, was doing his small time thug thing on me, right out of central casting, and he said, "I am recording this." I replied, "So am I." And then he hung up. Quick. I've been contacted regularly by two people from the same agency, who are 'nice' but persistent, who kept asking me 'when can I get the money' when I said the will is in probate. (Indeed, I had no obligation to talk to them at all, it was courtesy on my part.)

I guess this goon was the 'second tier' of polite persuasion, the second turn on the thumb screws. He starts out by saying he is going to have to charge me thousands in interest unless I pay up, not that he wants to. He says I had promised to pay up by now.

Then, I called him on his company's past actions. "If you deal with dead people's accounts, you must know what the law says with regard to succession and wills. It's a process that takes time. I am not responsible for my mother's debts and I am not responsible for her estate UNTIL I am deemed the executor and liquidator. You must know that. Right now I am acquainting myself with my obligations and rights as liquidator on the advice of my lawyer. I suggest you do as well. I can point you to the Government website." He gets angry...starts to say, the law, you wanna know the law? It says creditors have to be paid first. I say "Yes, I know that. That's a no-brainer. Still it takes time."

It's cheesy, by-the-book, George Raft thuggery.

And the minions are just hoping they can close the file before the end of the month so they can get their piece of the action and pay their own debts. I saw the movie Up in the Air. Collections appears to be another industry based on all around human misery. I would use the term bottom feeders but I don't want to insult any innocent sea organisms. I wonder if the guy who has been phoning me up looks like George Clooney. Then at least I can fantasize. Nah. Colin Firth would be better but this guy has no English accent.

I despise the modern corporations' ways of conducting business. They pretend otherwise, (their ads are full of smiling helpful employees and that's what PR is about, fixing image issues) but they have discovered that the small time hoods of the past, the ethically dubious companies, the anti-Eatons' and anti-Birks, had the most success, if success is measured in dollars and cents. (You think they'd all go into porn to make easy money: oh, wait, they did. The program 30 Rock had a joke about that last week.)Intimidation works, I guess. And they just hire thugs while distancing themselves from the methods these companies use, like 'leading citizens' do in the movies. And just try to find someone to complain to: a person with a first and last name, a position he or she can lose, a postal address so you can complain in writing, registered. You know what banks are like? The Borg Collective: giant, indeed, guargantuan adding machines with fleshly human beings attached, although their identities have been removed. Tomorrow, I'll phone up and ask for Seven of Nine, or more likely, 108 of 188838773764564t5.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 4 Flowers in Your Hair

2010-03-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Scene Eight: Nixon Living Room Following day

SOUND: clink of glass on glass, running water, background noise of children on street

Dorothy: (singin) R.E.S.P.E.CT: find out what it means to me.

Dorothy vo: The morning after I empty and wash a dozen ashtrays. The black square obsidian astray; the spotty green Bavarian blown glass one ;the tacky affair shaped like a sea shell from Old Orchard Beach, Maine; the clunky see-through job stamped with the Molson Export Ale logo. Among other classic 60’s designs.

Granny: Martha. Did you see the little yellow Bakelite ashtray? I’m sure I put it by my chair.

Martha: Dorothy must have moved it. It’s her job to clean up after parties. Here’s a nice one with the Rocky Mountains on it.

Granny: No, I prefer the Bakelite one. It fits nicely into my hand.

Martha: Dorothy! Where’s the little yellow ashtray?

Dorothy: (afar) In the hall, on the telephone table, where you like it.

Martha: Well, get it and give it to your grandmother. Right now!

Granny: And Martha, would you shut that window. The racket those Canadian children make. They shout and shriek all day.I’m used to the gentle Malay children at play.

Martha: Certainment (Sx SLAM OF WINDOW SHUTTING)

Scene Nine: Nixon Duplex Another day.

SOUND: French Radio. ID: Ici Radio Canada. Thunder rumblings
Woman on radio: De Gaulle n’a pas le droit de se melanger dans nos affaires…

Dorothy vo: My mother begins to invent excellent reasons during the day to escape.

Martha : (on phone) Vive le Quebec libre. Quelle gros espece de serpent. Je descend dans deux minutes.(sx clack of receiver being replaced)

Dorothy vo: Leaving me trapped alone with my grandmother

Martha: I’m going to Mme. Dufour’s for a visit. Take care of your grandmother.

Dorothy: Where’s Mark?

Martha: He’s gone to Rickie’s to play that Pepper album on his new stereo. (sx slam of door)

(Sx Radio background: That was The Mammas and the Pappas. San Francisco or be sure to wear flowers in your hair. Next, a new crossover song by Bobby Gentry (new promo) The Buddy G Thing: every night from 4-9. On CKGM. It's what happening. So Glob on.)

Dorothy VO: Bakelite ashtray in her left hand, Rothman’s unfiltered in her right, the cranky old crone paces up and down our cramped apartment , absurdly overdressed for late July in black stretch pants and a thick brown turtleneck sweater. Her boobs sag almost to her knees like two spent balloons and her bum is wide and flat like a giant burnt pancake.She shuffles past the dining room where I sit cross-legged on my cot stroking my library books: Ring of Bright Water, Born Free, King of the Wind and Silent Spring, all about animals,all borrowed from the NDG Library for boys and girls, all books I've taken out many times before, and listening to music on my brother's battered Realtone transistor radio.

(Sx Wonderbra jingle: Back ground music:To be free and alive, everywhere that you go.Is to wear what you dare anywhere and to travel with flair and style that will show wherever you go...)

She veers right into the adjacent living room taking eight more slouching steps to the window, and pauses for a spell,above Mummy’s mildewed African Violet on the sill. She scowls at the wind tossed branches of the Maple outdoors. She taps her cigarette ash into the little yellow dish in her opposite hand, then she whips around to look me in the eyes,through the crack in the French doors separating the rooms, the very moment a bolt of lightning rips open the murky slice of Montreal sky behind her. (Sx Thunder) She opens her miserable marionnette-lined mouth as if she is going to speak

Granny: What are yoooou reaaaad...?

Dorothy (vo)but I’m saved by the bell, or more precisely by the buzzer

(Sx DOOR BUZZER. Sound of quick quick steps closing in
Ingrid: Here’s the Tiger Beat you wanted back, the one with Illya and Herman's Hermits.

Dorothy: Can you stay and play a bit?

Ingrid: No, my Auntie Pryanka is here from India. We’re teaching her to walk in high heels. What a riot! Is that your grandmother?

Dorothy: Yep.

Ingrid: She’s a real sun-baked bag of wrinkles. What’s with the frown?

Dorothy: What are you doing?

Ingrid: Playing Monkey See Monkey Do. Have I got the scowl right? The hunchback?

Dorothy: Don’t imitate her like that. She’ll see!

Dorothy: What does she have eyes at the back of her head too?

Scene Ten: Nixon Kitchen. Some days later

SOUND: Whir of Mixmaster

Dorothy vo: And then the old lady oversteps even a visiting mother in law’s prerogative.

Martha: Dorothy, come and lick the beaters. Oh, I meant the other Dorothy of course.

Granny: What are you making?

Martha: Shoofly Pie. Dorothy's favorite. Sugar and spice and everything nice. And French Chocolate Cake. My specialty. 6 eggs and ¾ of a pound of butter.

Granny: No wonder your kids have spots. 6 eggs! What an appalling waste.

Martha: Do you know what I find wasteful. 40 ounces of gin a week!

Scene Eleven: Outside Nixon Master Bedroom
SOUND: muffled arguing. Heaving breathing

Dorothy vo: Generally my mother prefers to air her complaints out in the open, French Canadian style. This closed door business is new to me.

Martha: (muffled) I’m sick of playing happy hostess to your mother. Take her out sometimes, at night.

Peter: grumble

Martha: I know this is your busiest time. But sometimes I think you are just making excuses. Why not go to dinner at Bill Wong’s or Ruby Foo’s. She likes the Chinese so much. Or get tickets to one of those fancy Centennial galas. You work for the Expo. Mon Dieu. Pull some strings!

Peter: grumble

Martha: What a thing to say. Everyone loves their mother. It's only natural.And you haven’t seen her in 30 years, when she took that fameux bateau de banane steerage to visit you in school in England. It's not her fault you ignored her letters after the war.

Looking For Mrs. Peel 5 - Humilating Fandango

2010-03-08T12:36:00.001-08:00

Me and My Aunt Denise

Scene Twelve: Nixon apartment, another day.

SOUND: cooking sound CBS News on the TV

Walter Cronkite: Tens of thousands are expected to March on Washington tomorrow to protest the Vietnam War in what is promised to the the first of many such demonstrations. In a related event, today, a throng of young men descended on the Justice Department to hand in over 1000 draft cards.

Dorothy: Daddy! You’re home! Give me a horse back ride. One two three…(sx slap) Giddyup. I’m Billy Hartak and you’re Northern Dancer.

Granny: Peter, is Place des Arts posh? Are slacks appropriate for the play? I only have… Peter! You’ll hurt your back. She’s much too big to be carried around like that!

Dorothy: Ahhh. (sx plunk of feet on floor) What play?

Peter: grump

Dorothy: I wanna go see Othello

Peter: grump

Dorothy: I do too know lots about Shakespeare

Peter: grump

Dorothy: I don’t care about going to see Jungle Book. That's for kids. I wanna see Laurence Olivier.

Dorothy vo: A few minutes later I signal my displeasure louder and clearer.

Martha: (distant) Supper in five minutes.

Dorothy: You can’t pass

Granny: What?

Dorothy: This is my bedroom and you can’t come in. Eat in the breakfast nook.

Granny: Why, you mischievous monkey child. Get out of the way

Dorothy: No!

Granny: You spotty faced devil. No one tells me where I can and cannot go.

Dorothy: I do.

Dorothy vo: And there we dance ridiculous in the doorway, the shriveled 72 year old sparrow woman and the stringy 12 year old monkey child, palm against palm, elbows akimbo, faces ablaze with indignation, in an inter-generational showdown, of sorts, a humiliating fandango for me, a truly graceless moment suspended in time and space,for although we're ludicrously mismatched in height we're remarkably even in strength. Eventually,my father emerges from the bathroom with a copy of Sports Illustrated conveniently rolled in his fist.(sx toilet flushing)

Peter: HUH??

Dorothy: I need the table. I have to do homework.

Peter: Haa

Granny: Your daughter won’t let me pass.

Peter: HAAA! (sx. Slap of magazine against ass)

Dorothy: Owwww. I AM in my room.
Granny: That girl. That spoiled spidery greasy haired thing. She can never visit me in Malaya. I would lose face in front of my Chinese friends.

Dorothy: I’d lose that face if I were you. You sun-baked bag of wrinkles. (sx thwack)

Marthe: The tomales are ready. Piping hot so take care.

Granny: Insupportable. That ghastly Eurasian girl put her up to it, I wager.

Dorothy vo: Much later that night my father comes to tuck me into my cot.

Dorothy: What’s wrong Daddy? Was the play sad?

Peter: Sniffle

Dorothy: You're raining on me, Daddy.Don’t cry.

Dorothy vo: Expo ends. The leaves on the Maple trees turn red, yellow and orange and fall in great mouldy heaps in the gutter. Soon, the inevitable first blast of wintry weather.

Scene Thirteen: Nixon Living Room November 1967
SOUND: radio talk show

Announcer: (sx jingle. "Give the family its joys and they'll all agree. Give them RCA TV." Donut VO It's Colour Preview Days at RCA. No money down on new models starting at 329.00 Offer lasts until Dec 15th.)A blizzardy November 19 in Montreal. How will the pound sterling’s dramatic drop affect the Canadian economy.We’ll be talking to two experts..

Dorothy vo: My last real memory of my grandmother mirrors my first.

Dorothy: Mummy, look out the window. Granny is out in the snowstorm in her shoes and socks.

Martha: Yes, she’s taking a taxi to the Liquor Commission. I told her to wait for Daddy. Old people can be so comical, sometimes.

Dorothy: Yes, so comical. She’s ugly and old and says mean things. And she drinks like a fish.

Martha: What did you say? Ma petite bonjour. Don’t ever let me catch you talking like that again, especially about family. Your grandmother is a lady, all my friends say so.

Dorothy: But she sent Daddy away to England at 5 years old to live with strangers who didn't want him, and he had holes in his trousers and he had to beg “Please more porridge”at school, just like Oliver Twist.And he got locked in a dark cupboard when he was bad.

Martha: I think your father exaggerates sometimes. Memories can be like that. We can’t judge your grandmother's life. She’s had some very hard times too.

Dorothy: Like what?

Martha: Oh, she had to sit for a long time cross-legged in a small room with lots of men and she wasn’t allowed to talk. During the war.

Dorothy: That happens to Ingrid all the time! At detention after school.

Radio guest: Certainly the American Administration must be concerned. The White House doesn’t want the British to pull out of East of Suez entirely.(fade) I wouldn’t be surprised if some feverish back room negotiations are going on right now.

SOUND: radio being tuned
Announcer 1: 1965: Singapore has been expelled from Malaysia just two years...

SOUND: Radio being tuned
Announcer 2: 1963: A new country was born today. Malaysia comprised of The Federation of Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore. SOUND: radio being tuned

Announcer 3: 1960 The twelve year old Communist Emergency in Malaya has been ended

SOUND: Radio being tuned
Announcer 4: 1957. Malayan Independence has been declared.

SOUND: Radio being tuned
Announcer 5: 1955: The UK is giving 6,000,000 pounds to The Federation of Malaya to offset the fall in the price of tin and rubber and to underwrite the cost of erecting villages for Chinese squatters

SOUND: radio being tuned
Announcer 6: 1948. A State of Emergency has been declared in The Federation of Malaya as 3 European Planters were murdered by Communist Chinese insurgents yesterday.

SOUND: Radio being tuned
Announcer 7: 1946. A war crimes trial gets underway in Singapore in March, related to atrocities committed by the Japanese Secret Police at a civilian prisoner of war camp located at Changi Beach. Former expatriots are supplying testimony for the prosecution under oath in London this month.

War, Torture and Denial - So it goes.

2010-03-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

My grandmother, in her cell at Changi Civilian Internment Camp. 1942. She was one of only three women involved in the infamous Double Tenth Torture Incident at Changi in 1943. Her story has been erased from history - until now.

So, the CBC is running this headline: Canada wanted Afghan prisoners tortured: Lawyer. To quote Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote about the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse Five, "So It Goes."

If this is true, it would constitute a war crime, says the lawyer, Amir
Attaran.

"Horror, stark and naked permeates every aspect of this story," said the Prosecutor at the Double Tenth War Crimes Trial in Singapore in 1946, where many Japanese Gestapo were sentenced to death. I have that at the beginning of my play, on this blog and available in full at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html

My story, Looking for Mrs. Peel, on this blog in 9 installments, with links to YouTube movies, contains first person testimony about the Double Tenth incident, which featured waterboarding, electric shock, and other creative horror.

Were the Japanese "snake-eyed devils" as my grandmother liked to describe them, or were they doing their job in order to extract very important information for their war effort? Well, my grandmother survived (barely) without (she claims) giving anything away. The fact that her operatives weren't taken and tortured likely proves she is telling the truth. Tough broad.

It's odd, I watched Lawrence of Arabia last night, and the Omar Sharif character is telling Lawrence, Peter O'Toole, how they kill their own rather than leave them to the enemy. "We are considered insurgents and not soldiers, so we are not covered by the Geneva Conventions," he says. In other words, these wounded Arabs would be heinously tortured to extract information by the British.

Lawrence then has to 'mercy kill' one of his beloved helpers, a young boy.

As a student of history, I tend to believe the worse about this. History repeats itself over and over. The frightening part is that this war on terror is a war with no forseeable end. No treaties to be signed, although many at NATO are calling for a truce with the Taliban. (But then they'll find another enemy.)

BBC Four radio last month had a story about brainwashing research going on in Britain in the 60's. (I believe the CIA conducted the same at McGill.) At the time, MacMillan, the Prime Minister, denied all in Westminster. (Actually, he used rhetoric to avoid 'lying' outright.) Examine the past to understand the present. That's all you have to do.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 6: The Trees are Exploding

2010-03-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

Bit from Dorothy's Memoir

Scene Fourteen: Westminster Commissioner of Oaths office

SOUND: Office Noise

Clerk: : Please be seated Mrs. Nixon. I see you have come all the way to Westminster from Cumberland. And in January! It all must be quite a shock. How long have you been in England?

Dorothy: Two months

Clerk: This should not take too long. All you need do is read your testimony in front of Mr. Cramden, the Commissioner of Oaths, and I will type it.

SOUND: Telephone Rings Clerk: Ah, she’s quite frail. I hate to send her back out. Yes, fine. There’s been a delay. Instructions from the barristers. Shouldn’t be long. Would you like some tea or water?

Dorothy: Tea, please.

SOUND: Clink and clang and tap water splash.

Clerk: I see that you are the wife of a rubber planter.

Dorothy: Yes

Clerk: A large plantation?

Dorothy: No, well, yes, at one time. But tin has taken precedence over rubber lately

clerk: My mother’s Canadian cousin, Sydney moved to a Malayan rubber plantation as a new bride, before the Great War. It was either that or the Canadian West,you know, but she was afraid of the bitter cold, and wild Indians.

Dorothy: Ah?

Clerk: Her husband got all caught up, those early days, in the frenzy of rubber speculation. Automobile tires, you see. She left him, though, after only a few years in the tropics. Returned to Ottawa.But had he given up his Asian mistress, she might have stayed longer.

Dorothy: Uh Huh.

Clerk: The original plan was for them to go out there and make a fortune and both return home as soon as possible, but with the boom of 1910 over and the price of rubber so unstable and the frightful cost of living over there, the dream soon faded.

Dorothy: Yes,

Clerk: Her daughter Emelia was born out there. Do you have any children?

Dorothy: Yes, three. My eldest was in the RAF. Ferry Command Based in Montreal. He's been demobbed and he's back at Oxford. I’ve been trying to contact him.

Clerk: How old would he be now?

Dorothy: 22, or 23. Born October 1922. .

Scene Sixteen: Flashback.Europe Hospital Kuala Lumpur.

SOUND: baby crying.

woman muttering "Rubber London. 18 cents. How will we manage?"

Nurse: A big fine rosy pink boy you have there, Mrs. Nixon.

Dorothy: Thank you, Nurse.

Nurse: Sister Ellen. Normally, Mrs. McLeod, the District Medical Officer would normally pay you a visit, but she’s been run off her feet setting up the KL infant welfare program.

Dorothy: I understand.

Sister Ellen: (sx paper flapping)I see that all went smoothly. A natural delivery. You may be a tiny woman, but you have the pelvis of an Empire Builder.

Dorothy: A loathsome man, that Dr. Wood. I asked him about hiring a native nurse and he lectured me on the duties of the Imperial wife. I am to be a homemaker and a social weaver, it seems, not a layabout and gadfly.

Sister Ellen: Damned if we do.Damned if we don’t. That’s a woman’s lot I’m afraid. And that goes double here in the colonies.

Dorothy: And my husband will have something to say about that 500 dollar fee. Outrageous. What did he do to earn that?

Sister Ellen: He applied the latest scientific birthing methods in a somewhat hygienic setting.

Dorothy: Scientific methods!

Sister ellen: Would you have preferred to have a Malay midwife deliver you baby? On a mat on the floor of your bungalow. I hear they like to chant over the afterbirth.

Dorothy: The fan on this side of the ward is broken. It’s hot as Hades in here. And the mosquito nets are torn. Why was I put in Second Class?

Sister Ellen: Two many malaria cases in the first class ward. Probably. Well, Dr. is discharging you anyway.I see you are going to a Hill Station for a postpartum confinement?

Dorothy: Yes. I am doing it the Chinese way.

Sister ellen: Excellent. No need for a home visit, then.. Still, I will leave you some information on the best infant formulas.

Dorothy: Thank you sister. But I would still like to talk to Mrs. McLeod about a nurse. I have my hands full running the bungalow. So many visitors.

Sister Ellen: She’ll advise you to get a good British nurse, or nothing. Native nurses are little help. They need constant supervision. And even if you find a reliable one, do you want your son’s first words to be AYAH and not Mama? Enjoy him while you can, Mrs. Nixon. It’s the tragedy of colonial life, having to part with our little ones so young. For their own good, of course.

Scene Seventeen:Westminster Commissioner of Oaths Office

SOUND: window opening

Clerk: I think I’ll open the window a smidge. Splendid countryside in Malaya, as she described it. Misty blue-green mountain ranges. Fiery fairy tale flower-scapes, Birds as big and bright as Chinese kites. It must have been glorious to spend your days surrounded by such proof of God’s Majesty. Such natural beauty.

Dorothy: Nothing beautiful about a rubber plantation. A bleak tree laboratory, really, complete with daily bleedings.

Scene Nineteen: Rubber Plantation.Verandah

SOUND: loud pops monkey shrieks.

Dorothy:(reading under her breath) The Planter's Store: Tapping knives, earthenware latex cups, acetic acid, coagulation sprayers and sprays... Bush's coagulating and bleaching powder. Immediate separation and clotting of rubber at the same time giving a fine light colour. ...Of Interest to planters: reduce your factory costs by sending your rubber rolls to us for regrooving. We have special machines to turn, grind, recut grooves. Maybe he would be interested. (sx. paper tearing).

Denise.: Ayah? I mean Mummy.

Dorothy: Denise. What are you doing on the verandah so early. 5.30.
Father has only just left for work.

Denise. : I can’t sleep. The trees are exploding.The monkeys are all fighting over the blijakozas.

Dorothy: Seed pods. Denise. Say it in English. There’s nothing to be afraid of. The seed pods are popping open and falling to the ground.
It’s nature’s way.

Denise: What are all the coolies doing way down there? They look like ants.

Dorothy: They are lining up for muster. They are starting their work day. Rubber only runs in the morning.

Denise: When I am big, can I help the Mummy tappers clean the tree milk from the cups like the coolie children?

dorothy: Latex, Denise. No, the Tamil children have to work with their mothers and fathers. You and your brother are luckier. You get to go to school soon. Now,let’s go find Ayah.

Scene Eighteen: Westminster Office. SX Ambient Office Sounds.

Clerk: No, the jungle was no place for a woman back then. Too lonely. Nothing to do but write letters, maybe garden.. The Man of the House out working from dawn until past dusk. Still, back in Canada she missed having the huge airy bungalow and all those servants. A Malay driver, a cook, a Chinese lady’s maid and two houseboys who pinched money from her. But that was to be expected.

Dorothy: Yes, we’ve all heard the clichés. The proud lazy Malay, the pious eager to please Tamil, the shrewd hardworking Chinese.

Clerk: Ah, let me see how much longer he’ll be

Scene Nineteen: Rubber Estate 1937

SOUND: Sound of singing in Chinese and radio with poor reception

Announcer: And that concludes our hour of Hindustani music on the Britith Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. Right after the midday rubber and tin prices, a discussion of Harvey Firestone's efforts to raise rubber in Liberia. But first,this: Up Country listeners. Are you tired of poor reception and interference from Tokyo and Saigon? Well, a reminder that powerful new 1937 Marconi wireless sets and receivers are available on easy payment plans.

dorothy: No, not turtle soup. Yes, Muligatawny is fine. If you can find some guinea fowl at Cold Storage for under 1.00 buy it. Serve it roasted. Nicky? About that auction sale today, Anna could really use the Singer hand sewing machine to make some extra money. But even if the bidding is very low on the Crosley Shelvador refridgerator, we can't justify it.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: Yes, I did promise Kajan I’d try to persuade you to promote him to teacher. We have 11 older children on the lines now, and as you know, regulations state we must have a primary school.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: I do not see this as interfering in Estate Business. Kajan is very keen to improve his lot and there’s no work recruiting these days. He is the only Tamil we have who can read and write well.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: Upsetting the natural order of things? Courting scandal? Don’t be ridiculous.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: What’s wrong with putting ideas in their heads if they are the right ideas?

Nicky: Bark

dorothy: I know the Tamils want their children to work with them, but as this Depression proves, we can’t promise to keep them in work forever.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: I know I am not a missionary but if the shopkeepers of the Central Indian Association aren’t interested in helping their lower
castes, we Europeans will have to.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: Now that our last child have been sent away, what am I to do, stand behind the Cook all day? The Bungalow runs itself.

Nicky: Bark

Dorothy: Fine. I will find something to do, off the estate. If that’s how you want it.

Scene Twenty: Westminster Office

SOUND: office

Clerk: And were you on the plantation when the Japanese invaded?

Dorothy: No, I was at the Book Club.

Clerk: Book club?

Dorothy: The Kuala Lumpur Book Club. A library. I was secretary. We
had just moved our offices to the Padang,the green, where all the important government buildings are located, so we were expecting it.

Clerk: The bombings, you mean.

Dorothy: Yes. Boxing Day 1941. The Japanese planes usually passed overhead and bombed the aerodrome, but this time it was different.

Scene Twenty-One: Flashback, Box Day 1941 Kuala Lumpur Book Club

SOUND: artillery, planes

Woman: What’s that sound?

Dorothy: Our anti-aircraft guns up on the roof. The planes are bombing us this time. Find shelter!

SOUND: Loud sounds of roof collapsing, desk being thrown around etc

Dorothy: sx(Scream)

Scene Twenty-Two: Westminster Office

SOUND: ambiant office noise

Dorothy: I was thrown under a shelf. My desk overturned. My typewriter pulverized. My car outside crushed. Afterwards Marion, the ARP Warden and I collected the casualties. 4 dead. 3 wounded.

Clerk: And then you headed for Singapore?

Dorothy: Shortly afterwards.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 7 -Deserting Friends

2010-03-02T15:52:00.001-08:00

Changi autograph book.

Scene Twenty-Three: Batu Caves Estate near KL

SOUND: crowd sounds

Dorothy: Last train? Military orders?Women and Children? So soon? I can’t. I can’t leave now. The bungalow is filled with evacuees and I promised Marion that I’d see his family safe..

Phone: Blah blah

Dorothy: What kind of an example are we British setting for the Asiatics if we leave at the first sign of trouble?

phone: grumble

Dorothy: Kuala Selangor landings? On what? Bicycles? Tanks in the rubber Plantations? Where’s all this airpower that’s supposed to back up the sea power in support of the land power?

Phone: blah blah

dorothy: The navy blames the army, the army blames the air force. The British blame the Americans. The Civilians blame the Military. Whatever happened to cooperation? I refuse to evacuate. I’ll stay back and defend our estate with the men.

Scene Twenty-Four: Train Kuala Lumpur to Singapore

SOUND: women children talking wailing, screech of iron on iron

Woman 1: Why are they stopped?

Woman 2: It’s a relief not to hear that infernal screeching. Have they been riding the brakes the whole time?

Dorothy: The train is being driven by survivors of the Prince of Wales and Repulse.

Woman 2: Ah, sailors, not engineers. Help me will you get my bag from the overhead. It’s so dark.

Dorothy: What’s that sound?

Woman 1: Bottles clinking, I suspect

Woman 2: Absolutely right

Dorothy: You’ve filled your suitcase with booze! Good Show! But the irective was to pour the stuff out, to keep it from the looters. Not bring the bottles with us.

Woman 2: No one can accuse me of deserting my friends. Dorothy, meet
Johnny Walker, Captain Morgan. Meet Dorothy.

Dorothy: You are a bloody genius

Woman 1: Let’s have a drink ladies. It will probably be our last.

Dorothy: To Singapore and safety.

Scene Twenty-Five: Westminster Office

SOUND: door slamming, man huffing and puffing

Clerk: Ah, Mr. Cramden. This is Mrs. Dorothy Nixon, our witness for the prosecution at the Double Tenth War Crimes Trial.

Mr. Cramden: Croak

Dorothy: Good afternoon.

Cramden: Croak

Dorothy: Can I finally start?

Clerk: Yes (sx begins to type as Dorothy speaks)

Dorothy: I, Dorothy Nixon, wife of Robert Nixon, Manager of Batu Caves Estate with permanent home address at Seafield House, Crosby,near Maryport, Cumberland, make an oath and say as follows: I was in Singapore the time of capitulation of the British forces to the Japanese, February 1942. I had arrived on the island, the impenetrable Fortress, as we saw it,in mid-January, a few days before the Japanese invaded. I ran into a roommate, a friend from Kuala Lumpur, Margaret Robinson,who was working at the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation.. She had a flat in the Cathay Building, the tallest building in Singapore and the European nerve centre, although owned by a Chinese millionaire. She told me they needed help at the MBC radio station, on the 5th floor, as that organization had just been setting up when Malaya was overrun. I was glad to have something useful to do. My job was to time records in the studio but on February 8, many staff members decided it was time to get the hell out so I was called upon to do more

Scene Twenty-Six: Malayan Broadcasting Corporation Offices

SOUND: Busy radio office sounds

Woman: Dorothy, the staff is stretched to the limit, it seems. Can you fill in.

Dorothy: And do what?

Woman:: Announcing. You have a lovely voice.

Dorothy: I am an amateur.

Woman: Well, you will fit right in, then. I should show you this letter in the Straits Times. A listener, just a few months ago, called us, quote, very likely the worst radio station in the world. But, now, it is our time shine, to be the Daventry of the East in earnest.

Dorothy: What do I say?

Woman: Say anything. Be inspirational.(sx door slamming)

dorothy: This is Dorothy Nixon, librarian at the Kuala Lumpur Book Club. You may know the book club, as it is an institution in these parts. Although if you are not a member of the expat community you may not, for the library counts mostly Europeans among its members. I am planning to change that and bring in members from all KL communities, the Chinese Indian and Malay. I know the book club has a bit of a reputation for supplying low brow literature to thrill starved planter's families,a kind of opiate of the literate, but I assure you many of our clients have excellent taste in books. Books are wonderful things, a person’s most precious possessions. A good place to look for inspiration in a time of difficulty. Courage, for instance. There are many books about courage…A finer example of courage you won’t find anywhere, is Marion, our Indian ARP officer at the Book Club. When the bombs first fell he went about his
business in an efficient and quiet manner, although clearly green with fear. I hope his family is listening. They would have been very proud to see him. (Sx record being put on)

Woman: Sorry, Dorothy. We have to interrupt. We’ve just received word from the Singapore authorities that bomb shelters are to be built - for the Asiatics.

Dorothy: A little late, with the Japanese overrunning the island and after many days of wholesale bombardment of their neighbourhoods..

Woman: Well, I phoned the authorities to ask if we could blow up the Mount Pleasant transmitter before shutting down our operation in Singapore and the Governor ’s people assured me that, despite appearances, all is far from lost.

Dorothy: Maybe I believed that two weeks ago, last week, even yesterday, But not today. Look around. Singapore is in flames.

Scene Twenty-Seven: Westminster Office

SOUND: (sx typing) Westminister Office.

Dorothy: The next day all staff, European and Asian, were given their last paycheques.I refused to evacuate despite the pleas of my my friends.

Woman: You must come with us. They've commandeered 3 sampans to
Batavia for the remainder of the MBC staff. We have a good chance of
making it.

Dorothy: No. I cannot. My husband, Nicky, is in the LDC and cannot leave, so I will not either. He's lost his entire life's work.

Woman: Many of us are leaving our husbands behind, Dorothy. Think of your sons, Peter and Michael in England. Denise too.

Dorothy: They would want me to stay, I know it.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 8- Facing my Fears

2010-03-02T15:49:00.001-08:00

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: "Good news" I told Giles, the Head of Entertainment, as he passed me the keys to his Morris before scrambling for the harbour, "My husband has been given permission to come live at the Cathay. Aren't I lucky?"

I then volunteered as VAD in the 10th Australian General Hospital, which moved into the cinema of Cathay building February 10. A real baptism of fire, as they say. Still, mostly, I held the hands of dying men, sang them songs. Sometimes I shaved their beards or washed their dirty feet.The situation in Singapore City was getting more chaotic by the hour. Many dozens of seriously wounded or burned were being carried in on stretchers, lifted up over the carcasses of crushed automobiles at the hospital entrance. The Cathay building was under constant bombardment: The hospital couldn't display a Red Cross Flag as the Army Corps Headquarters was installed there. The nurses had been evacuated as it was felt their services could be put to better use in another theatre: as most of the orderlies had scurried off and taken shelter in the basement, to drink and play cards, tensions were at flashpoint.

Scene Twenty-Eight: Flashback. Hospital

SOUND: hospital sounds, chaos, the cries of the wounded

Orderly : growl

Dorothy: What was that you called me. A bloody Pommy?

Orderly: growl

Dorothy.: That’s simply not true. I do not favor the English patients over the Australians. I spent all last night with that Australian private who was trying to tear off this bandages. And the night before I raided surrounding flats for supplies for everyone. Where do you think all these silk bed sheets came from? The Chanel No. 5 I've been using to mask the stench of putrifying flesh?

Orderly: Growl

dorothy: How can I? How can I feed that Welshman. His jaw has been blown off. His lips have gone gangrene! There’s nothing but green jelly where his mouth should be! (Crying)

Orderly: Softer Growl

Dorothy: I know. I know. But if you won’t take a break, neither will I.

Scene Twenty-Nine: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: On the Sunday, the Japanese concentrated on bombing the Cathay Building. We we received over a dozen direct hits! Smoke filled the building. On February 15, The British Capitulated. The hospital was given a few days reprieve and then forced to move to Changi. On February 21 I was interned at Katong and then later moved to Changi. I had to walk nine miles to get there carrying my luggage.

Scene Thirty: flashback. Changi

SOUND: enormous din of prisoners

Dorothy: Dr. Jamieson? What is this?

Dr. J: Rules of Conduct for Changi Civilian Internees courtesy of Mr.Asahi the Nipponese Commandant. You can read them out loud for all the newcomers.

Dorothy: Ladies. Ladies please. Doctor Jamieson has asked me to read out the following rules for Internees. One: The behavior and attitude of the internees towards the Nipponese authorities will be obedient and respectful. Two: When the Nipponese come into the room, Internees must bow and stand to attention. Three: No internee shall approach the Nipponese authority directly, communicating only through the Camp leader. Four. NO lights on before 7:30. Lights out 10:30. Five All civilian subjects will do the necessary work inside the camp for their welfare.Six: Communication between the Men’s Camp and the Women’s Camp is strictly forbidden.

Internee: Is that all? Sounds just like me old boarding school.

Scene Thirty-One: Westminster office

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: I first worked in the library and then took a turn as floor Representative. I was elected deputy Women’s Representative in the Women’s Camp from January to June 1943. I had lost out to Dr. Mary Jones, a specialist in tropical pediatrics, for the post of Women’s Representative by three votes. The deputy is a sort of Administrative head, dealing with supplies, budgets, rules and regulations.

Scene Thirty-Two: Committee Meeting Changi

SOUND: women around a table whispering

Dorothy: Expenditures. Central Fund. So far. Food 283,00, Tobacco
and Cigarettes, 52,000, Medical supplies, 30,500; Communication with mens camp executive: One free issue egg per person per week: From now on funds to be spent on rice polishings, ground nuts, pulses and dahls and not on eggs.

Woman: What? Are we to eat like the Hindus now?

Dorothy: The camp doctors assure us these provide better dietary value for the money.

Women: Ridiculous! I can’t believe it.

Dorothy: As for the request for kennels for our dogs, the Men's Camp believes this to be unimportant. Timber is scarce and needed for building projects like the Men's Sanitorium. On a disturbing note, books have been disappearing from the reference library. It is believed that the paper is being used to make cigarettes. Please remind the women under you that the sign of a civilized society is how it treats its books.Lastly, a cable has been sent to the Canadian Prime Minister, acknowledging his Christmas greetings and asking for assistance from the Canadian Red Cross.

Woman: If the Americans would share their baskets we wouldn't have
to go begging from the Canadians!

Communication with the Nipponese Command. They have agreed to have
toilet paper and kotex added to the list of essentials for new internees.They have agreed to have a piano tuner come into the camp. They have allowed one lecture a week from the Men's camp. : the Lecture Series commences on February 1st with "The Lighter Side of the Law" by Timothy Morgan, and on the 7th there will be a talk on Television. Most welcome news of all, they have permitted us sea bathing excursions, once a month. Now to address the complaints about women spending too long in the showers. Shower time will remain the same,two and one half hours in the morningn and the same in the afternoon. If anyone feels that some are abusing their
privileges the official channel for making a complaint is through their floor representative.

Woman 2: If you ask me some women seem to enjoy exposing themselves
in public.

Dorothy: Well, the long queue lines for meals and showers and the like are only going to get worse, I'm afraid. The Nipponese have warned us to expect a rush of new internees.

Group: No. How many. Impossible

Woman Two: How many?

Dorothy: As many as 900. Including 72 children. That will mean three
to a cell.

Woman one: Intolerable.

Dorothy Procedure as follows: New internees are to be registered in the school room by the office secretaries aided by some volunteers. They will be asked basic information only. Where are you from? Husband? Children? Any utensils. Bedding? Women with children will go to E Upper and Women with girls over 13 to the Carpenter’s shop to be claimed as cellmates. New arrivals who remain unclaimed will be assigned cellmates by the housing committee.

Women: I’m going to sleep in the Rose Garden. I have dibs on the Chapel.

Scene 32 1/2 Schoolroom. Murmur of voices

Dorothy: Name?

Woman: Mrs. J.P. Smithy

Dorothy: Born?

Woman: Kuala Lumpur

Dorothy: Education?

Woman:. St. Margaret’s Harrow and Pension at Lucerne Switzerland

Dorothy: Children?

Woman: Yes

Dorothy: Ages?

Woman: One Year Nine Months

Dorothy:Husband?

Woman:In POW camp. Gordon’s Corporal

Dorothy: Are you happy here?

Woman: No!

Dorothy:Why?

WOman: Husband not here and I do not like prison

Dorothy: What about food?

Woman: I am not ill, but not good food and not enough.

Dorothy: What about child?

Woman: Better food than us. But not enough. Could do with more food. Are you a doctor?

Dorothy: No, I am merely the Women’s Deputy Representative.

But I do not wish to be interviewed. So good day.

Scene Thirty-Three: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: I was elected Women’s Representative, in June 1943, responsible to the Nipponese for the conduct of all 300 or so women at Changi Internment Camp. I had the freedom to leave the women’s camp for daily visits to Tominaga, the new Nipponese Commandant, a round-faced toad of a man. Unlike the Men's Camp Representative, who chose to avoid confrontations with the Nipponese Command,I made a point of making a daily visit to Tominaga's office. It was the only way to face my fear. Every day I would demand insulin and other medicines for the sick women. And every day I would be denied, with a sharp slap to the face. One day he punished me for my persistence by having me to fill up a giant blackboard with tiny "N"'s and "O" s. On my walk back from Tominaga's office I would usually stop by the Men’s Camp, on official camp business, of course.

Scene Thirty-Four: Flashback. Men’s Camp Office. Changi

SOUND: Radio being tuned

Dorothy: Let’s see, I have GRH 9.81 mc/s 30.53 m or try GSL 6.11
mc/s 49.10 meters.

announcer: This is World Affairs on the BBC Overseas Service. A Talk with Wickham Steed. A few days ago our Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in a speech to the American Congress, assured the American people that the British will be fighting the war with Japan until the conclusion. One wonders why he had to make such a speech. Could it be that the average American (fading) is unaware that we are fighting …

Scene Thirty-Five: Changi

SOUND: Background din of crowd, paper being torn from typewriter

Man: Grumph

Dorothy: Thank you, Norris, but I need only one copy

Man: GRump

Dorothy: I have decided that this News will be passed on in the Women’s Camp orally. I will have my distributors memorize the basic facts from this news sheet and then I will destroy it.

man: ??

DOROTHY: They can draw pictures as a memory aid. For instance, in this case, a picture of a boat.

Man: HMMM

Dorothy: Yes, I am convinced this is for the best. Some internees have been too cavalier when it comes to distributing news. They think it’s a sort of schoolyard game. I am taking no chances. Man: HHHMMM??

Dorothy: I’ve chosen four of the most sensible woman in the camp to be my distributors. All reliable married women. No power hungry spinsters among them.

Man: ??

Dorothy: Sorry,I will not give you their names. They don’t even know who the others are.

Man: Growl

Dorothy: I can’t be bullied into revealing who they are. And, yes, I am well aware that Mary will object to the secrecy. But I once caught her reading a newssheet to Lady Drew, out in the open. Mary is a dear but she can be quite scatterbrained at times.

Scene Thirty-Six: Changi Women’s Camp

SOUND: Loud din of prisoners

Dr Jones: Mrs. Nixon. I’ve heard from Dr. Geeson that BBC broadcasts are coming into the Men’s Camp. Such good news for us. With the tensions here at such a fever pitch. I hear you were involved with the scuffle between the ladies in the Carpenter’s Shop.

Dorothy: Yes, Mary I never thought I’d need a Sikh guard to protect me from one of our own.

Dr. Jones: Were you hurt?

Dorothy: No. Kicked and bitten on the arm. That’s all. Rather droll in retrospect. Mrs.Maloney had a vicious disagreement with another of the Eurasians, Mrs. Dock, over a morsel of chicken she'd scrounged, and Mrs. Dock ran of to complain directly to Tominaga. I chased her down but arrived too late. She had already flung open the door of his quarters and caught him taking a shower. I wrestled her to the floor in the doorway. Tominaga's guard arrived and joined us on the ground for a group grapple. All this with our esteemed Commandant howling bloody murder in the background. I was blamed for the incident of course. Spent two days in the lavatory with the two women. Lucky I was there, otherwise they would have killed each other.

Jones: Well, hopefully this BBC business will raise morale. I volunteer of course to be one of our distributors.

Dorothy: Mary, I’ve already chosen my distributors.

Jones: Who are they?

Dorothy: Only I will have that information. No doctors among them

Jones: No doctors? But we are the natural leaders here.. The Nipponese respect us. Where would you be without our expertise in nutrition and tropical disease. We are ideally placed to pass on information to the camp population.

dorothy: I’m sorry Mary.

Jones: You were my deputy. We worked together. You know you can trust me.

Dorothy: Mary. You are busy enough with your statistic-taking and caregiving to the newborns. Don’t be offended. I wouldn’t divulge this information to Timothy,either.

Jones: You wouldn’t tell the Men’s Camp Rep? He must have been livid. He believes the women’s camp is under the jurisdiction of the Men’s Camp.

Dorothy: Well,men never think women can do anything. They don't understand how we women are better practiced at making do under
confinement.What did Maugham write? The soul of man wanders through infinite reaches of the universe and she, woman, seeks to imprison it?

Jones: You are obsessed about secrecy! Still upset about the incident
with Lady Drew and the News.

Dorothy: These are BBC Broadcasts.

Jones: I am able to be discreet. You know that! Tominaga told Mrs. Rose he loved her poems, by the by. Finds them amusing.

Dorothy: He's only impressed with her Ivy League credentials. The Japanese are such snobs.

Jones: Well,that's one step better than the average colonial, wouldn't you say? Who judges a woman's worth by her husband's social standing. As the wife of a mere rubber planter you surely can appreciate...

Dorothy: Well,And Mrs. Rose has no business going over my head either to talk to Tominaga. Typical American. Wanting all the perks of power without the responsibility.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 9- Tales of Torture

2010-03-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

Dorothy in her cell: "Heaven by comparison"

Scene Thirty-Seven: Westminster Office

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: On the tenth day of October, 1943, there was a peculiar atmosphere in the Nipponese Office. They took the roll call list from me but did not go through it. I was then told to go back and wait in the Rose Garden with the other women. We all stood a long time in the sun. Two women fainted from the heat. Then I heard the sound of marching feet in the Girdle walk Soldiers rushed in and surrounded us. Two familiar looking Nipponese Officers arrived with 3 I had never seen before. Obviously Kempetai. A Japanese woman interpreter accompanied them. They asked me all manner of ridiculous questions.

Scene Thirty-Eight: Rose Garden

SOUND: Silence

Man: Hiss

Interpretor: Mrs. Nixon. Are there any radio in the women’s camp?

Dorothy: Of course not. They are strictly forbidden.

Man: Hiss

Interpretor: Have you heard of any in the men’s camp?

Dorothy: No. How could I have?

Man: Hiss

Interpretor: What do you know about Japanese tankers being sabotaged
in Singapore Harbour.

Dorothy: Nothing.

man: Long Hiss

Interpreter: You are to instruct the women to return to their cell block and wait outside in an orderly line as we search each cell.

dorothy: Fine. But as Women’s Representative, I insist on being present at these searches.

Woman: Mrs. Nixon. I must speak to you.

Dorothy: yes

Woman: (whispering) I must get back to my cell before it is searched.

Dorothy: Why?

Woman: My diary. I left it out in the open.

Dorothy: Diaries. What is it with you women and your diaries? Do you realize how many hours I have spent in the Nipponese office defending the contents of various diaries? Maybe you should be made to suffer for your sloppiness.

Woman: Please Mrs Nixon. More people than me will be harmed if the Japanese read my diary.

Dorothy: What guilty secrets are you hiding? I’m to accompany the Kempetai on the search. I’ll see what I can do.

Scene Thirty-Nine: Inside Empty Changi

SOUND: belongings being thrashed about man: Yelling

dorothy: It’s a stethoscope. What can you possibly find suspicious about a thing like that. The person in this cell is a doctor. Doctors use stethoscopes to hear into people’s chest.

man: yelling

DOROTHY: You don’t understand a word of what I am saying. Do you?
Well, interpret this. See me jump up and down. See me point to my privates. Please. I need to go to the loo.

Man: Harrumph

Dorothy: Where’s her cell? There’s the diary.Right out in the open.
(sx pages turning) My God. Names. Places. Secret communications in the camp. What fools some females be! Ah. (reciting) I am certain it is Mrs. Nixon who is bringing the News into the camp. She could have me killed! (sx ripping of paper) Where’s the dustbin?

Scene Forty: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

dorothy: The Kempetai then conducted a cell by cell search. After it was over, I arranged for a late supper for the women. I stayed in the office, pretending to type whenever a guard passed. After that I turned off the light and hid and waited my chance to sneak over to the Men’s Camp. Timothy Morgan was still trying to figure out who’d been taken by the Kempetai. Gradually, it became clear it was the men from the Radio Racket....ah, might I take that last sentence back...Thank you... A few days later more men were taken, Timothy included ,as well as two from the omen’s Camp, Mrs. Rose, Camp poetess, and Dr. Mary Jones

Scene Forty-One: Changi Camp

SOUND: (birds chirping)

Mrs. Crawford: Mrs. Nixon! I’ve heard they are searching Dr. Jones’ belongings. First Mrs. Rose than Dr. Jones. That means they will come for us too!

Dorothy: Calm down, Mrs. Crawford. Remember, I am the only one who knows you were one of my distributors. And I promise you,no,I make an oath, that no matter what happens, if the Kempetai do come for me,too, I will never ever give you away.

Scene Forty-Two: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: Almost six months passed. Then Dr. Jones and Christine Rose were returned to the camp. A few days later, on April 2nd I was called to the Nipponese Office. As I was no longer Women’s Representative I was relaxed about it, I assumed I was to get a wireless message. Instead I was arrested by the Kempetai and taken to the YMCA in a car with McGowan and Peters from the Men’s Camp. I waved to Nicky, my husband, as I got into the car, and tried to smile, as if everything were fine, but I knew I was in for it.I had heard rumours of the YMCA. Beastly rumours. All three of us were escorted to a basement room and told to sit at small school desks
and then we were interrogated.

Scene Forty-Three: YMCA Basement

SOUND: Yelling

Dorothy: I told you. NO ONE gave me any news. There was no NEWS

Man: Yelling

Dorothy: Sometimes I collect rumours floating around and write them down and distribute them, to make the women feel that they aren’t
totally cut off from the world. That’s all.

Man: Yelling

Dorothy: I’ve never heard anything about Japanese boats being blown up in the harbor. I’ve never seen any radio receivers or transmitters in the camp. I am not engaged in espionage and I know no one who is. Sx SLAP.

Man: Yelling.

Dorothy: I don’t care who gave me away. People will admit to anything under extreme conditions.

Scene Forty-Four: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy : I was not hurt during this episode. I was screamed at, cajoled, bribed with food,even threatened with beheading but not physically harmed. After many exhausting hours of interrogation I was taken with McGowan and Peters to a Cage in the basement and put in with 20 others, all sitting cross-legged and looking like something the cat dragged in. Five British men, the others were Malays, Chinese Eurasians and 2 Japanese. Another woman was there, someone I knew: Li Chan.She and her husband had a store and often ran supplies into the camp. I squeezed in behind her.

Scene Forty-Five: The Cage at YMCA

SOUND: groaning of men

Mrs. Chan: (whisper) Believe it or not, this is one of the bigger cages, can’t be more than 20 by 12.

Dorothy: (sx teeth chattering) You seem surprised?

Chan: Yes, you are the first European woman I have seen here. I saw one other Chinese woman. And I heard rumours of a Portugese woman jailed as well.

Dorothy: Dr. Jones and Mrs. Rose were here at the YMCA for only a day and then kept at Smith Road. They are back at Changi now. In rough shape but alive

Chan: I heard rumours that Timothy Morgan is dead

Dorothy: Yes, I did too. Why are you here?

Chan: My husband and I are accused of smuggling radio parts in to the Men’s Camp. We didn’t of course.

Dorothy: Of course.

Chan: And you?

Dorothy: I don’t know why I am here.

Chan: You seem to know that man over there. The thin one with the abscesses on his arms. Norris? You two made eye contact as you entered.

Dorothy: We did?

Chan: He’s been here a while. He’s starving to death. He will beg you for your ration of rice.

Dorothy: Oh

Chan: Some bloat up like balloonfish, some sink back into their eye sockets. I never thought human skin could turn so many colours: black, blue, white, yellow, red, purple, brown, green

Dorothy: Did they torture you too?

Chan: I got the electric shock but not for many months now.

Scene Forty-Six: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: I heard tales of torture and death in that place, enough horror stories to fill many books. But I never saw any Europeans actually being tortured. The Kempetai took their victims out of the cell starting at ten pm. I could hear screams of agony all night long. It made my skin crawl. Also, a bright light shone in my face so I couldn’t sleep. I was not tortured, although a guard liked to kick me every time he passed. I kept my composure, to set an example for the Asiatics in the cell. If I go to Hell, and it is likely, I won’t be caught by surprise.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 10 Plunge the Blade

2010-03-02T10:58:00.001-08:00

Me and my Aunt Denise 2000.

Scene Forty-Seven: The Cage
SOUND: groans
Dorothy: The bugs. The stench. It’s nauseating.
Chan: See that Malay? He’s had his stomach set on fire. That’s the smell. Burned flesh. Along with the dysentery and Singapore foot. That Chinese over there, he seems luckier than the others. Don’t be deceived. He told me he received the water torture. They tied him to a ladder and kept pushing his head under water to the point where he almost drowned, over and over.
Scene Forty-Eight: Westminster Office
SOUND: typing
Dorothy: And still, no matter how horribly abused, how weak and broken down, all the prisoners remained gentlemen to the end. Politely turning their heads when Li or I went to the loo, a pedestal in the back right hand corner of the cell with a tap above it. We drank and washed from that same place. In turn, I shared my daily ration of rice, but a handful, with some of the men.I myself have always been able to subsist on very little food, but to see men ravenously hungry is one of the saddest sights in the world. Oh how I hate those snake eyed devils for reducing us to this.(crying)
Clerk: Mrs. Nixon. Would you like a break?
Dorothy: No. Not necessary. Almost done. After a month I was released and taken with two others, John Birks, the new Colonial Secretary, the man who had told me, so optimistically, on February 9, 1942, that Singapore could not fall, and a Chinese called Choo to Outram prison to await trial for military crimes. John held my hand the whole way and at one time badgered the guard to get me a cup of tea and Choo was kind and attentive,too, sheltering me from the rain with his arm. When we arrived at Outram I was separated from them and put in solitary in a filthy little cell. The Japanese know how to find a subject’s weak spot.
Scene Forty-Nine: Cell Outram
SOUND: None
Dorothy: Oh, the screams. The screams. I shall go mad. Why won’t they go away. Why can’t I be back at the YMCA with my friends. What day is it? I must keep track. I must find something to do. Why won't they give me a book to read? I’ll write a novel in my head. To keep me busy. I’ll make it a love story…”Susan North gasped as she walked out of the YMCA building into the sunlight.
The fresh air went straight to her head like wine and she felt dazed by the sun after four weeks in a cell in that ill-omened building which smelled of death and torture. For four long weeks, 28 days of brilliant electric light from an unshaded bulb hanging in the middle of the cell; eighteen men and two women had existed in that vitiated atmosphere with no ventilation except for a grating high in the wall at the back of the cell and the the stale air which entered from the corridor which ran along the front of the cells.
It was raining, but the sun was still shining and although the temperature was tropical, Susan shivered in the ragged dress which had fallen to pieces on her as she sat cross legged on the floor. Once and once only had that dress been washed during the month she had been in the custody of the Japanese Gestapo in that building in Singapore that was dreaded by all the inhabitants of the ill-fated city.
She looked at the men who had come out with her: Farraday, gaunt and grey with ragged beard and hair long and curling, swaying on his feet as though he might collapse at any moment; Thompson grotesque and hideous and fat with beri beri; Langley, skinny and yellowish-grey with eyes sunk in great cavities in his face like a living skeleton and the other Europeans all in various stages of emaciation or the ugly swelling of beri beri and the 8 Asiatics, most of them showing the signs of captivity and the scars of torture. She had seen most of them every day and all day long for amonth but seeing them now in the light of the tropical sun she realized the horror of their plight and her own. When they had been called by name and told to come out she had, for one heart-throbbing moment, thought they were being released and sent back to the internment camp which seemed by contrast a veritable heaven.
But when they were herded into a room then taken out to a lorry with the hated Yankee tongued Japanese interpreter, and two guards, she felt that they were being moved to some other torture house. Langley and Farrady helped her into the lorry and gave her smiles of encouragement. In spit of the horror of the situation Susan feld a warm glow round her heart when she looked around the lorry and saw the kindly looks of the men, both European and Asiatic. They were her very dear friends made dearer by having borne the weary days together. They seemed to forget their own misery in her concern for her. She wished as she had wished many times in that past month, that she could do something to comfort them. .
Scene Fifty: Westminster Office
SOUND: typing stops.
Clerk: Mrs. Nixon???
Dorothy: OH. Yes. (sx typing resumes) I was interrogated twice more by the Kempetai. Other than that, for 5 months I saw no one but my Japanese guard who came to bring me food (2 cans of condensed milk a day) and escort me, occasionally to my bath. Well, I rinsed my body under a cold water tap two feet off the ground -with no soap. I gave my scalp a good scraping with my nails, which I had grown long to better pick the nits out of my hair..But, this was all in the open air so it was welcome change. At first I was embarrassed to take off my dress in front of the guard, but soon I got to regard him as no more than a dog or cat. And he wasn’t a bad sort of family pet, when sober.
Scene Fifty-One: Outside Outram cell
SOUND: Bird song tap running
Guard : Grunt
Dorothy: I will not. I will not sit on your lap
Guard : Grunt
Dorothy: Please put your clothes back on. What would your superiors think to see you like that?
Guard : Grunt
Dorothy: Here are your pants. And you boots. And I humbly bring youyour sword.
Guard: Angry grunt
Dorothy: Am I not bowing deeply enough?
SOUND: Sword being pulled from scabbard
Dorothy: Fine. Kill me if you will. Plunge the blade right here, into my heart.
Guard: Bellow
Dorothy: I’ve been threatened with death so often, I almost welcomeit.
Guard: Laughing, laughing, louder and louder
Scene Fifty-Two: Westminster Office
SOUND: Typing
Dorothy: Yes, he was one of the better beasts. He’d sneak me in a sweet or fruit when he could. And on two occasions, at night, when I was sick and delirious with fever, I seem to remember him cradling me in his arms and holding cold compresses to my head… When I was finally released from Outram, a stretcher case, he said he hoped I would make it to my homeland safely and offered me a cigarette, but I refused it. I hadn’t had a smoke in 7 months, but I wouldn’t take one,not then,not from a Jap. I was taken to the camp's new Sime Road location, to their hospital.
The camp was liberated mid September 1945.There were two of them, both tall. And they seemed so handsome and clean and beautifully British. They eyed us up and down and told us we looked lovely , so nice of them, but spoiled it by saying we smelled. We were most indignant and assured them we were very clean. They the food appeared, a tub of rice and a tin of blachang, and this is what smelled. We made them each eat a spoonful but they immediately spat it out and said “What awful muck!” and would not believe that we had existed on this and worse.
Cramden: Grumble.
SOUND: footsteps and slam of door
Clerk: He requires further instructions. We may have to edit your testimony down, it is long. Are you returning right away to Cumberland.
Dorothy: Yes.
Clerk: It's rather mild out there, but that is slim consolation.
Dorothy: Yes, if the Japanese couldn’t kill me the English winters certainly will. I wonder if you can help me. My front teeth. They were loosened by a blow while in solitary. I couldn't get them fixed in Bangalore, where I was sent to recouperate,as I am a civilian. And now I can't seem to get them fixed here in England. Is this how I am to be rewarded for my loyalty? Insupportable!!
Scene Fifty-Three: Lemon Creek Road.
SOUND: Thunder. Radio in background

Ingrid: Is that your grandmother?

Dorothy: Yes

Ingrid: She's a real sun-baked bag of wrinkles. What's with the frown?
Dorothy : What are you doing?
Ingrid: Playing Monkey See Monkey Do. Have I got the scowl right?The hunchback?
Dorothy: Stop it. She’ll see
Ingrid: What. Does she have eyes at the back of her head too?
Dorothy: It’s just not nice. My brother says she was spy during the war
Ingrid: A spy? Like Agent 99. Or like Honey West?
Dorothy: No. Like Emma Peel.
MUSIC: Wonderbra Jingle: We care about the shape you're in. And so does he. SO does he. Wonderful wonderful . Wonderbra. Announcer voice: By Playtex.
Ingrid: Right. Just like Mrs. Peel.
SOUND: The girls laugh and laugh and laugh.

Sound: Ode'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZt5Q-u4crc">Ode to Billy Joe starts playing on the transistor radio.
Quote: Unquote
"They (white colonial women)have possessed (or still possess)all the advantages of wealth but never been trained in the responsibilities,”leadership and courageous example. They are pampered and admired all out of proportion to their desserts in an open market.”
Giles Playfair. Singapore Goes off the Air, 1943"Indeed, the presence of white women in the tropical East sets a problem for which a satisfactory solution has yet to be found. The disadvantages are obvious; an enervating climate, a multiplicity of servants to attend to her wants and nothing to do all day except to seek amusement. I doubt if the white woman will ever be suited to long residence in a tropical country like Malaya, and I cannot resist the contention that her presence in such large numbers, is responsible, at least to some extent, for the decline in the white man's prestige.
Bruce Lockhart. Return to Malaya, 1937
The unsung maiden aunts of the Edwardian era deserve a very special place in British history. There would have been thousands of sad, unfulfilled women who were forbidden to take a career yet where blatantly exploited by the more fecund members of their families. Without these devoted slaves the children of Empire Builders could not have been educated in England because it was impossible to go home every holiday in those days of sea travel."Dr. Cecily Williams: Retired Except on Demand by Sally Cradock. 1983
The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account-book.
Somerset Maugham. The Moon and Sixpence.
Sx Song( Red Rubber Ball) Announcer: 15 men all European died during the Double Tenth Incident interrogations, including the new Colonial Secretary,Hugh Fraser, the Men's Camp Representative, Adrian Clarke and Dorothy's co-conspirator from the Men's Camp in the Radio Racket (the starving man)Middlebrooke. (I've changed the names of everyone there, but all names are well known.)None of Dorothy’s distributors were ever arrested. Supposedly no Asians were killed, although that's hard to believe all things considered. R H Scott, the Eastern Representative of the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation was also tortured in the Double Tenth but he survived. He was accused of masterminding the alleged Radio Espionage Incident at Changi by the Japanese Defence at the war crimes trial. (It pears the 6 or so member of the MBC Board did not evacuate with the other MBC employees.) 8 Japanese Kempetai and informers were condemned to death at the trial, 7 sentenced to various terms of imprisonment,and 7 acquitted. The Kuala Lumpur Book Club was used as a cook house during the Japanese occupation. (Alternate history: Japanese kept it open.)Many irreplaceable volumes, including, ironically, most of the History section, were destroyed. Upon Dorothy’s retirement in 1966 the Kuala Lumpur Book Club had 2,700 subscribers, 1,900 of whom were Asian. At her death in 1972 her private book collection was donated to the Malaysian people through the Malaysian National Library where it seeded their Rare Malaysiana Collection.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 9 - If I go to Hell

2010-03-01T13:33:00.000-08:00

WWII Radio Far East

2010-03-01T13:31:00.001-08:00

Malayan Broadcasting Corporation 1942

In 1940, the British-Malayan Broadcasting Corporation, a private entity, was taken over by the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation, which is described in places as an arm of the British Information Ministry or a quasi-government group.

This aspect of my grandmother's story is probably 'the smoking gun' if there is one. If she was indeed engaged in any bona fide spy activity, it would be because she had worked here during the siege.

(As it happens, my grandmother's memoirs seem to suddenly cut off right when she mentions something about 'the radio racket.'

Most of the info about MBC in this play comes from my grandmother's memoirs and Singapore Goes Off the Air by Giles Playfair, a book that oft mentions my grandmother.

This book was published in 1943, so even if Playfair, Head of Entertainment, knew anything about extra curricular goings on at MBC he could hardly write about it.

There are a couple of other books and at least one cache of letters at the Imperial War Museum I would like to consult to better figure out this part of the story.

In Playfair's book my grandmother says she is staying in Singapore to be with her husband, my grandfather, Robert. But she wasn't exactly crazy about him. She had another boyfriend.

And she is the only European at MBC to stay behind, along with the Directors.

Letters to the Editor of the Straits Times in 1940 and 1941 suggest that the MBC was only a slight improvement on the BMBC. But of course, with such a multicultural audience, in a very shaky time of war and potential invastion, it was very very hard to please everyone and citizens liked to take out their frustrations on the Radio Station, it seems to me.

From Sept 24, 1941, just a few months before invasion: Last night after dinner I went to sit and listen for half an hour to the wireless for entertainment and tuned into London and was greeted by "You will now here the saddest thing of all."......

Another letter around the same time: "Can you tell me what's the idea of the Singapore Station starting to play a record, and then cutting out for talk and then starting another record?"

Another letter: I have no bouquets to hurl at 'said diffuser of things vocal over the ether."

Another: "Racial Riot in the Making:"I notice that the MBC is looking for an assistant announcer who must speak English...Another: Might you tell the announcer at 6 that sanguinary is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable..."And yet another, "About the change in time for the Malay broadcast, I hear roars and crumbles from the Malay audience. The old time was much appreciated as it did not interfere with our prayers." AND SO ON AND SO FORTH..

The Straits Times Archives of the time say that the Director of the MBC went to London in September 1941, just before Pearl Harbour and the Invasion of Malaya by the Japanese. HMMM.

From what I can glean from reading from these letters to the editor, the BMBC was not making money and not able to create the complicated and expensive programming this multicultural society needed. Indeed, it dropped Hindustani programming apparently in 1939, due to lack of subscribers. Remember, with each purchase of a set the listener had to pay a licence fee of 12 dollars. Some wanted this fee dropped to 5 dollars.(It was in 1940 in order to encourage more local listeners!) I am going to take a very safe guess and say the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation was set up due to the war. The British knew they would need to reach the many different cultural groups so that they would remain loyal during the war.

Some other headlines: "Heading into War: A suggestion that 15 readings should be given by MBC was made by Richard Sydney in a talk called "Books and Wartime" at the Rotary Club...May 6, 1941. The preliminary staff of experts from the BBC to the new Malaya Broadcasting Corporation has been completed with the arrival of two women, Ruth Bratt and ME Myers as assistants to the CE)...August 1941. Important new developments in radio broadcasting affecting the whole Far East region are likely very shortly as Singapore becomes the site of a powerful new station....March 1941... extra programmes in Cantonese, Hokkein, and Hindustani.....

As it happens, the Japanese and siege happened all too quickly and the MBC was not at all prepared to give instructions and guidance during those last desperate hours.It didn't help that the British Powers That Be in Singapore and Malaya were not prepared for the cagey Japanese attack despite having 3 times more men, I believe, so they didn't provide BC with coherent instructions.

Read Giles Playfair's Singapore Goes Off the Air for more about MBC during the siege. (He has a very nice modern style.)Noel Barber's Sinister Twilight is the definitive account. And if you want a first hand account, Thomas Kitching's Changi Diary. Some of Kitching's diary was used by Barber.

Children of the Raj - Malaya

2010-02-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

In October of 2008, I wrote an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail about my grandmother, Dorothy Forster Nixon, Changi Internee and Double Tenth victim during WWII,for the Facts and Arguments section of the Toronto Globe and Mail.

In early February, 2009, I received an email with the word CHANGI written in the subject line. The email was from Joan Kitching H, who said that her father Thomas Kitching, the Chief Surveyor of Singapore, had died at Changi in 1944 and left behind a diary which had been transcribed in the 1990’s and published in 1998 by her younger brother, Brian. The book has since become, in the opinion of some scholars, the definitive account of life at Changi Internment Camp, Men's side.Mrs. H also said that the diary mentioned my grandmother once, when she took over as Women’s Rep from Dr. Cecily Williams.

As it happens, Mrs. H. lives in Montreal, just around the corner from where my mother lives! Her daughter lives near me, in an adjacent suburb. The Montreal Anglo community is quite predictable, it seems. And so was the Malaya Expat Community, in the 1920’s.

You see, my late father, Peter (who died a few years ago of Alzheimer's) and Mrs. H. lived parallel lives. My grandparents, Robert and Dorothy Nixon ( he was a planter and she eventually became librarian of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club)and Thomas Kitching and wife Nora, lived in (or near) Kuala Lumpur in the 20’s.

My father was born in Kuala Lumpur in October 24, 1922. Mrs. H was born two weeks later on November 8.(1922, with the publication of Eliot's Wasteland and Joyce's Ulysses is considered by some to be the birth of the Modern Age.) The Kitching children and Nixon children likely played together at family gatherings at the Royal Selangor Club for the next few years.My father was sent away to school in England at the age of five (his sister Denise was only 4). Mrs. H. was sent away one year later at 6 with her older brother Colin who was 8. (Well, actually, they were brought to England by their mothers.)

The Kitching Diary, Life and Death at Changi, describes how hard this was on their mother Nora. Of course, my play “Looking for Mrs. Peel” examines this issue, indeed, it is pivotal to the story.(The story goes my father tried to tie his mother to a chair when she was leaving and that he had 'a nervous breakdown'.)

Lucky for the Kitching kids, they spent holidays with a loving grandmother. My father and aunt were shuttled from one relation to another as no one wanted them.My father was at Oxford (or in between prep school and Oxford) when the war broke out in 1939. Mrs. H had finished her schooling at Harrogate Ladies College in 1940. Thomas and Nora Kitching returned to England that year and decided it was best if Joan and their youngest son, Brian, returned to Singapore with them in September of 1940. That it would be safer. (Colin was in the Navy.)So, the Kitchings were in Singapore (without Colin) when all Hell broke loose in January, February 1942.

The Diary describes the time vividly and Margaret Shennan’s book Out in the Midday Sun (2000) borrows a great deal from Kitching's account. (This is the same book that mentions by grandmother once, in relation to the Double Tenth, and misspells her name, Dorothy Dixon -which, through another happy coincidence, induced me, in 2003, to start researching my grandmother's life.

Entering my own name "Dorothy Nixon" into the Google search engine I retrieved a reference to my grandmother as "the endlessly helpful sectretary of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club".

A man was reviewing Out in the Midday Sun on Amazon.co.uk and correcting Shennan's typo (and omission) for she referred to my grandmother as "Dorothy Dixon" and mentioned her only in relation to the Double Tenth. There is no mention in the book of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club in the chapter on Culture.) Brian is sent away soon after. Joan escapes but two weeks before capitulation on a boat and returns to England. Nora takes a later boat and is, sadly, lost at sea. In England, Joan Kitching meets some Canadian soldiers, who have come to Christmas dinner with loads of food including a turkey, and she marries one of them, Mr.H,of course, in 1945. She comes to Canada in 1946 after the war and settles in Montreal.

My father joins the RAF Ferry Command in 1942(I have his training log which says RCAF -they were interchangeable it seems) and trains in Western Canada. As the Ferry Command is based in Montreal, he spends time there. He meets my mother. After the war, he returns to England to attend Oxford for a year and then returns to our island city in the St. Lawrence in 1947. He marries my mother in 1948. See what I mean about 'parallel lives'?

I visited Mrs. H., a spry 86, a few days ago and she spoke of her early life in Malaya. Yes, they had a Chinese amah. There’s a picture somewhere. Of course, she cannot remember those play dates at the Royal Selangor Club. (All my own aunt recalls is one Christmas at the Club with all the colourful stuffed animals given out as gifts.)

The Kitching Diary has a picture of Thomas, Nora, Colin and Joan Christmas 1925.Mrs. H tells me how they brought their Amah back to England with them at one point and how exotic she must have seemed to the local populace, in the North of England. She explains how people were upset for the Amah wore ‘pants’ and women at that time didn’t wear pants! She recalls how a certain Sultan had a troupe of dancing girls and how he had a dancing girl costume made up for her, which she wore at all the ‘fancy dress’ parties at her school.Mrs. H recalls working as a VAD during the Fall of Singapore (as my grandmother did).

She particularly remembers the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales. It was a terrible moment, as everyone had felt safe knowing the battleship and battlecruiser were in the harbor. When the boats were sunk, the nurses had to open unused cots to accommodate the wounded; they were all covered in a protective goo. The cots had been destined for the deep tropics, and the goo was to keep them from rusting.

Mrs. H. showed me a DVD made by Brian that contains striking 16 mm colour footage of Singapore before 1941. Mrs. H's father was an avid photographer, who always had all the latest equipment. In his diaries he writes of the efforts he makes to preserve his precious suitcase full of photographic memorabilia after capitualation. Ironically, Kitching's final diary entry is on April 1, 1944. In the previous entry he makes mention of two women who have been returned by the Kempetai,(obviously Dr. Williams and Freddy Bloom!) The next day my grandmother would be taken to the YMCA for 7 months of torture. Kitching would succumb but a few days later to esophageal cancer and mistreatment.

Mrs. H. passed on to me a book called Sinister Twilight by Noel Barber, about the Fall of Singapore first published in 1968. Her father is oft mentioned in the book, which is, from what I can see, a definitive account. (The book has recently been re-issued in paperback.)

The book puts the stories of Freddy Bloom and Cecily Williams front and center but doesn't once mention my grandmother -although a passage about the women's walk from Katong to Changi describes a 'tiny matron, under 5 feet, a human dynamo of immense courage" who starts the procession singing There'll always be an England. " This story about the song is oft told, but this particular description suggests the woman was my grandmother.

It's odd that no name is mentioned after such a claim as "human dynamo" "immense courage. It's as if a explanatory paragraph that was to follow was edited out. Then again, if this is a reference to my grandmother, why does the author, Barber,just a few pages later, fail to mention she was involved in the Double Tenth Incident. He claims 'two women' are taken from the camp, not three as was the case.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 10 We Care about the Shape you're In

2010-02-25T04:55:00.001-08:00

Scene Forty-Seven: The Cage

SOUND: groans

Dorothy: The bugs. The stench. It’s nauseating.

Chan: See that Malay? He’s had his stomach set on fire. That’s the smell. Burned flesh. Along with the dysentery and Singapore foot. That Chinese over there, he seems luckier than the others. Don’t be deceived. He told me he received the water torture. They tied him to a ladder and kept pushing his head under water to the point where he almost drowned, over and over.

Scene Forty-Eight: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: And still, no matter how horribly abused, how weak and broken down, all the prisoners remained gentlemen to the end. Politely turning their heads when Li or I went to the loo, a pedestal in the back right hand corner of the cell with a tap above it. We drank and washed from that same place. In turn, I shared my daily ration of rice, but a handful, with some of the men.I myself have always been able to subsist on very little food, but to see men ravenously hungry is one of the saddest sights in the world. Oh how I hate those snake eyed devils for reducing us to this.(crying)

Clerk: Mrs. Nixon. Would you like a break?

Dorothy: No. Not necessary. Almost done. After a month I was released and taken with two others, John Birks, the new Colonial Secretary, the man who had told me, so optimistically, on February 9, 1942, that Singapore could not fall, and a Chinese called Choo to Outram prison to await trial for military crimes. John held my hand the whole way and at one time badgered the guard to get me a cup of tea and Choo was kind and attentive,too, sheltering me from the rain with his arm. When we arrived at Outram I was separated from them and put in solitary in a filthy little cell. The Japanese know how to find a subject’s weak spot.

Scene Forty-Nine: Cell Outram

SOUND: None

Dorothy: Oh, the screams. The screams. I shall go mad. Why won’t they go away. Why can’t I be back at the YMCA with my friends. What day is it? I must keep track. I must find something to do. Why won't they give me a book to read? I’ll write a novel in my head. To keep me busy. I’ll make it a love story…”Susan North gasped as she walked out of the YMCA building into the sunlight.

The fresh air went straight to her head like wine and she felt dazed by the sun after four weeks in a cell in that ill-omened building which smelled of death and torture. For four long weeks, 28 days of brilliant electric light from an unshaded bulb hanging in the middle of the cell; eighteen men and two women had existed in that vitiated atmosphere with no ventilation except for a grating high in the wall at the back of the cell and the the stale air which entered from the corridor which ran along the front of the cells.

It was raining, but the sun was still shining and although the temperature was tropical, Susan shivered in the ragged dress which had fallen to pieces on her as she sat cross legged on the floor. Once and once only had that dress been washed during the month she had been in the custody of the Japanese Gestapo in that building in Singapore that was dreaded by all the inhabitants of the ill-fated city.

She looked at the men who had come out with her: Farraday, gaunt and grey with ragged beard and hair long and curling, swaying on his feet as though he might collapse at any moment; Thompson grotesque and hideous and fat with beri beri; Langley, skinny and yellowish-grey with eyes sunk in great cavities in his face like a living skeleton and the other Europeans all in various stages of emaciation or the ugly swelling of beri beri and the 8 Asiatics, most of them showing the signs of captivity and the scars of torture. She had seen most of them every day and all day long for a
month but seeing them now in the light of the tropical sun she realized the horror of their plight and her own. When they had been called by name and told to come out she had, for one heart-throbbing moment, thought they were being released and sent back to the internment camp which seemed by contrast a veritable heaven.

But when they were herded into a room then taken out to a lorry with the hated Yankee tongued Japanese interpreter, and two guards, she felt that they were being moved to some other torture house. Langley and Farrady helped her into the lorry and gave her smiles of encouragement. In spit of the horror of the situation Susan feld a warm glow round her heart when she looked around the lorry and saw the kindly looks of the men, both European and Asiatic. They were her very dear friends made dearer by having borne the weary days together. They seemed to forget their own misery in her concern for her. She wished as she had wished many times in that past month, that she could do something to comfort them. .

Scene Fifty: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing stops.

Clerk: Mrs. Nixon???

Dorothy: OH. Yes. (sx typing resumes) I was interrogated twice more by the Kempetai. Other than that, for 5 months I saw no one but my Japanese guard who came to bring me food (2 cans of condensed milk a day) and escort me, occasionally to my bath. Well, I rinsed my body under a cold water tap two feet off the ground -with no soap. I gave my scalp a good scraping with my nails, which I had grown long to better pick the nits out of my hair..But, this was all in the open air so it was welcome change. At first I was embarrassed to take off my dress in front of the guard, but soon I got to regard him as no more than a dog or cat. And he wasn’t a bad sort of family pet, when sober.

Scene Fifty-One: Outside Outram cell

SOUND: Bird song tap running

Guard : Grunt

Dorothy: I will not. I will not sit on your lap

Guard : Grunt

Dorothy: Please put your clothes back on. What would your superiors think to see you like that?

Guard : Grunt

Dorothy: Here are your pants. And you boots. And I humbly bring you
your sword.

Guard: Angry grunt

Dorothy: Am I not bowing deeply enough?

SOUND: Sword being pulled from scabbard

Dorothy: Fine. Kill me if you will. Plunge the blade right here, into my heart.

Guard: Bellow

Dorothy: I’ve been threatened with death so often, I almost welcome
it.

Guard: Laughing, laughing, louder and louder

Scene Fifty-Two: Westminster Office

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: Yes, he was one of the better beasts. He’d sneak me in a sweet or fruit when he could. And on two occasions, at night, when I was sick and delirious with fever, I seem to remember him cradling me in his arms and holding cold compresses to my head… When I was finally released from Outram, a stretcher case, he said he hoped I would make it to my homeland safely and offered me a cigarette, but I refused it. I hadn’t had a smoke in 7 months, but I wouldn’t take one,not then,not from a Jap. I was taken to the camp's new Sime Road location, to their hospital.

The camp was liberated mid September 1945.There were two of them, both tall. And they seemed so handsome and clean and beautifully British. They eyed us up and down and told us we looked lovely , so nice of them, but spoiled it by saying we smelled. We were most indignant and assured them we were very clean. They the food appeared, a tub of rice and a tin of blachang, and this is what smelled. We made them each eat a spoonful but they immediately spat it out and said “What awful muck!” and would not believe that we had existed on this and worse.

Cramden: Grumble.

SOUND: footsteps and slam of door

Clerk: He requires further instructions. We may have to edit your testimony down, it is long. Are you returning right away to Cumberland.

Dorothy: Yes.

Clerk: It's rather mild out there, but that is slim consolation.

Dorothy: Yes, if the Japanese couldn’t kill me the English winters certainly will. I wonder if you can help me. My front teeth. They were loosened by a blow while in solitary. I couldn't get them fixed in Bangalore, where I was sent to recouperate,as I am a civilian. And now I can't seem to get them fixed here in England. Is this how I am to be rewarded for my loyalty? Insupportable!!

Scene Fifty-Three: Lemon Creek Road.

SOUND: Thunder. Radio in background

Ingrid: Is that your grandmother?

Dorothy: Yes

Ingrid: She's a real sun-baked bag of wrinkles. What's with the frown?

Dorothy : What are you doing?

Ingrid: Playing Monkey See Monkey Do. Have I got the scowl right?
The hunchback?

Dorothy: Stop it. She’ll see

Ingrid: What. Does she have eyes at the back of her head too?

Dorothy: It’s just not nice. My brother says she was spy during the war

Ingrid: A spy? Like Agent 99. Or like Honey West?

Dorothy: No. Like Emma Peel.

MUSIC: Wonderbra Jingle: We care about the shape you're in. And so does he. SO does he. Wonderful wonderful . Wonderbra. Announcer voice: By Playtex.

Ingrid: Right. Just like Mrs. Peel.

SOUND: The girls laugh and laugh and laugh.

Sound: Ode to Billy Joe starts playing on the transistor radio.

Quote: Unquote

"They (white colonial women)have possessed (or still possess)all the advantages of wealth but never been trained in the responsibilities,”leadership and courageous example. They are pampered and admired all out of proportion to their desserts in an open market.”

Giles Playfair. Singapore Goes off the Air, 1943
"Indeed, the presence of white women in the tropical East sets a problem for which a satisfactory solution has yet to be found. The disadvantages are obvious; an enervating climate, a multiplicity of servants to attend to her wants and nothing to do all day except to seek amusement. I doubt if the white woman will ever be suited to long residence in a tropical country like Malaya, and I cannot resist the contention that her presence in such large numbers, is responsible, at least to some extent, for the decline in the white man's prestige.

Bruce Lockhart. Return to Malaya, 1937

The unsung maiden aunts of the Edwardian era deserve a very special place in British history. There would have been thousands of sad, unfulfilled women who were forbidden to take a career yet where blatantly exploited by the more fecund members of their families. Without these devoted slaves the children of Empire Builders could not have been educated in England because it was impossible to go home every holiday in those days of sea travel."
Dr. Cecily Williams: Retired Except on Demand by Sally Cradock. 1983

The soul of man wanders through the uttermost regions of the universe, and she seeks to imprison it in the circle of her account-book.

Somerset Maugham. The Moon and Sixpence.

Sx Song( Red Rubber Ball) Announcer: 15 men all European died during the Double Tenth Incident interrogations, including the new Colonial Secretary,Hugh Fraser, the Men's Camp Representative, Adrian Clarke and Dorothy's co-conspirator from the Men's Camp in the Radio Racket (the starving man)Middlebrooke. (I've changed the names of everyone there, but all names are well known.)None of Dorothy’s distributors were ever arrested. Supposedly no Asians were killed, although that's hard to believe all things considered. R H Scott, the Eastern Representative of the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation was also tortured in the Double Tenth but he survived. He was accused of masterminding the alleged Radio Espionage Incident at Changi by the Japanese Defence at the war crimes trial. (It pears the 6 or so member of the MBC Board did not evacuate with the other MBC employees.) 8 Japanese Kempetai and informers were condemned to death at the trial, 7 sentenced to various terms of imprisonment,and 7 acquitted. The Kuala Lumpur Book Club was used as a cook house during the Japanese occupation. (Alternate history: Japanese kept it open.)Many irreplaceable volumes, including, ironically, most of the History section, were destroyed. Upon Dorothy’s retirement in 1966 the Kuala Lumpur Book Club had 2,700 subscribers, 1,900 of whom were Asian. At her death in 1972 her private book collection was donated to the Malaysian people through the Malaysian National Library where it seeded their Rare Malaysiana Collection.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 9 The Cage

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Looking for Mrs. Peel 8 Bloody Pommy

2010-02-25T04:50:00.001-08:00

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: "Good news" I told Giles, the Head of Entertainment, as he passed me the keys to his Morris before scrambling for the harbour, "My husband has been given permission to come live at the Cathay. Aren't I lucky?"

I then volunteered as VAD in the 10th Australian General Hospital, which moved into the cinema of Cathay building February 10. A real baptism of fire, as they say. Still, mostly, I held the hands of dying men, sang them songs. Sometimes I shaved their beards or washed their dirty feet.The situation in Singapore City was getting more chaotic by the hour. Many dozens of seriously wounded or burned were being carried in on stretchers, lifted up over the carcasses of crushed automobiles at the hospital entrance. The Cathay building was under constant bombardment: The hospital couldn't display a Red Cross Flag as the Army Corps Headquarters was installed there. The nurses had been evacuated as it was felt their services could be put to better use in another theatre: as most of the orderlies had scurried off and taken shelter in the basement, to drink and play cards, tensions were at flashpoint.

Scene Twenty-Eight: Flashback. Hospital

SOUND: hospital sounds, chaos, the cries of the wounded

Orderly : growl

Dorothy: What was that you called me. A bloody Pommy?

Orderly: growl

Dorothy.: That’s simply not true. I do not favor the English patients over the Australians. I spent all last night with that Australian private who was trying to tear off this bandages. And the night before I raided surrounding flats for supplies for everyone. Where do you think all these silk bed sheets came from? The Chanel No. 5 I've been using to mask the stench of putrifying flesh?

Orderly: Growl

dorothy: How can I? How can I feed that Welshman. His jaw has been blown off. His lips have gone gangrene! There’s nothing but green jelly where his mouth should be! (Crying)

Orderly: Softer Growl

Dorothy: I know. I know. But if you won’t take a break, neither will I.

Scene Twenty-Nine: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: On the Sunday, the Japanese concentrated on bombing the Cathay Building. We we received over a dozen direct hits! Smoke filled the building. On February 15, The British Capitulated. The hospital was given a few days reprieve and then forced to move to Changi. On February 21 I was interned at Katong and then later moved to Changi. I had to walk nine miles to get there carrying my luggage.

Scene Thirty: flashback. Changi

SOUND: enormous din of prisoners

Dorothy: Dr. Jamieson? What is this?

Dr. J: Rules of Conduct for Changi Civilian Internees courtesy of Mr.Asahi the Nipponese Commandant. You can read them out loud for all the newcomers.

Dorothy: Ladies. Ladies please. Doctor Jamieson has asked me to read out the following rules for Internees. One: The behavior and attitude of the internees towards the Nipponese authorities will be obedient and respectful. Two: When the Nipponese come into the room, Internees must bow and stand to attention. Three: No internee shall approach the Nipponese authority directly, communicating only through the Camp leader. Four. NO lights on before 7:30. Lights out 10:30. Five All civilian subjects will do the necessary work inside the camp for their welfare.Six: Communication between the Men’s Camp and the Women’s Camp is strictly forbidden.

Internee: Is that all? Sounds just like me old boarding school.

Scene Thirty-One: Westminster office

SOUND: Typing

Dorothy: I first worked in the library and then took a turn as floor Representative. I was elected deputy Women’s Representative in the Women’s Camp from January to June 1943. I had lost out to Dr. Mary Jones, a specialist in tropical pediatrics, for the post of Women’s Representative by three votes. The deputy is a sort of Administrative head, dealing with supplies, budgets, rules and regulations.

Scene Thirty-Two: Committee Meeting Changi

SOUND: women around a table whispering

Dorothy: Expenditures. Central Fund. So far. Food 283,00, Tobacco
and Cigarettes, 52,000, Medical supplies, 30,500; Communication with mens camp executive: One free issue egg per person per week: From now on funds to be spent on rice polishings, ground nuts, pulses and dahls and not on eggs.

Woman: What? Are we to eat like the Hindus now?

Dorothy: The camp doctors assure us these provide better dietary value for the money.

Women: Ridiculous! I can’t believe it.

Dorothy: As for the request for kennels for our dogs, the Men's Camp believes this to be unimportant. Timber is scarce and needed for building projects like the Men's Sanitorium. On a disturbing note, books have been disappearing from the reference library. It is believed that the paper is being used to make cigarettes. Please remind the women under you that the sign of a civilized society is how it treats its books.Lastly, a cable has been sent to the Canadian Prime Minister, acknowledging his Christmas greetings and asking for assistance from the Canadian Red Cross.

Woman: If the Americans would share their baskets we wouldn't have
to go begging from the Canadians!

Communication with the Nipponese Command. They have agreed to have
toilet paper and kotex added to the list of essentials for new internees.They have agreed to have a piano tuner come into the camp. They have allowed one lecture a week from the Men's camp. : the Lecture Series commences on February 1st with "The Lighter Side of the Law" by Timothy Morgan, and on the 7th there will be a talk on Television. Most welcome news of all, they have permitted us sea bathing excursions, once a month. Now to address the complaints about women spending too long in the showers. Shower time will remain the same,two and one half hours in the morningn and the same in the afternoon. If anyone feels that some are abusing their
privileges the official channel for making a complaint is through their floor representative.

Woman 2: If you ask me some women seem to enjoy exposing themselves
in public.

Dorothy: Well, the long queue lines for meals and showers and the like are only going to get worse, I'm afraid. The Nipponese have warned us to expect a rush of new internees.

Group: No. How many. Impossible

Woman Two: How many?

Dorothy: As many as 900. Including 72 children. That will mean three
to a cell.

Woman one: Intolerable.

Dorothy Procedure as follows: New internees are to be registered in the school room by the office secretaries aided by some volunteers. They will be asked basic information only. Where are you from? Husband? Children? Any utensils. Bedding? Women with children will go to E Upper and Women with girls over 13 to the Carpenter’s shop to be claimed as cellmates. New arrivals who remain unclaimed will be assigned cellmates by the housing committee.

Women: I’m going to sleep in the Rose Garden. I have dibs on the Chapel.

Scene 32 1/2 Schoolroom. Murmur of voices

Dorothy: Name?

Woman: Mrs. J.P. Smithy

Dorothy: Born?

Woman: Kuala Lumpur

Dorothy: Education?

Woman:. St. Margaret’s Harrow and Pension at Lucerne Switzerland

Dorothy: Children?

Woman: Yes

Dorothy: Ages?

Woman: One Year Nine Months

Dorothy:Husband?

Woman:In POW camp. Gordon’s Corporal

Dorothy: Are you happy here?

Woman: No!

Dorothy:Why?

WOman: Husband not here and I do not like prison

Dorothy: What about food?

Woman: I am not ill, but not good food and not enough.

Dorothy: What about child?

Woman: Better food than us. But not enough. Could do with more food. Are you a doctor?

Dorothy: No, I am merely the Women’s Deputy Representative.

But I do not wish to be interviewed. So good day.

Scene Thirty-Three: Westminster Office

SOUND: typing

Dorothy: I was elected Women’s Representative, in June 1943, responsible to the Nipponese for the conduct of all 300 or so women at Changi Internment Camp. I had the freedom to leave the women’s camp for daily visits to Tominaga, the new Nipponese Commandant, a round-faced toad of a man. Unlike the Men's Camp Representative, who chose to avoid confrontations with the Nipponese Command,I made a point of making a daily visit to Tominaga's office. It was the only way to face my fear. Every day I would demand insulin and other medicines for the sick women. And every day I would be denied, with a sharp slap to the face. One day he punished me for my persistence by having me to fill up a giant blackboard with tiny "N"'s and "O" s. On my walk back from Tominaga's office I would usually stop by the Men’s Camp, on official camp business, of course.

Scene Thirty-Four: Flashback. Men’s Camp Office. Changi

SOUND: Radio being tuned

Dorothy: Let’s see, I have GRH 9.81 mc/s 30.53 m or try GSL 6.11
mc/s 49.10 meters.

announcer: This is World Affairs on the BBC Overseas Service. A Talk with Wickham Steed. A few days ago our Prime Minister, in a speech to the American Congress, assured the American people that the British will be fighting the war with Japan until the conclusion. One wonders why he had to make such a speech. Could it be that the average American (fading) is unaware that we are fighting …

Scene Thirty-Five: Changi

SOUND: Background din of crowd, paper being torn from typewriter

Man: Grumph

Dorothy: Thank you, Norris, but I need only one copy

Man: GRump

Dorothy: I have decided that this News will be passed on in the Women’s Camp orally. I will have my distributors memorize the basic facts from this news sheet and then I will destroy it.

man: ??

DOROTHY: They can draw pictures as a memory aid. For instance, in this case, a picture of a boat.

Man: HMMM

Dorothy: Yes, I am convinced this is for the best. Some internees have been too cavalier when it comes to distributing news. They think it’s a sort of schoolyard game. I am taking no chances. Man: HHHMMM??

Dorothy: I’ve chosen four of the most sensible woman in the camp to be my distributors. All reliable married women. No power hungry spinsters among them.

Man: ??

Dorothy: Sorry,I will not give you their names. They don’t even know who the others are.

Man: Growl

Dorothy: I can’t be bullied into revealing who they are. And, yes, I am well aware that Mary will object to the secrecy. But I once caught her reading a newssheet to Lady Drew, out in the open. Mary is a dear but she can be quite scatterbrained at times.

Scene Thirty-Six: Changi Women’s Camp

SOUND: Loud din of prisoners

Dr Jones: Mrs. Nixon. I’ve heard from Dr. Geeson that BBC broadcasts are coming into the Men’s Camp. Such good news for us. With the tensions here at such a fever pitch. I hear you were involved with the scuffle between the ladies in the Carpenter’s Shop.

Dorothy: Yes, Mary I never thought I’d need a Sikh guard to protect me from one of our own.

Dr. Jones: Were you hurt?

Dorothy: No. Kicked and bitten on the arm. That’s all. Rather droll in retrospect. Mrs.Maloney had a vicious disagreement with another of the Eurasians, Mrs. Dock, over a morsel of chicken she'd scrounged, and Mrs. Dock ran of to complain directly to Tominaga. I chased her down but arrived too late. She had already flung open the door of his quarters and caught him taking a shower. I wrestled her to the floor in the doorway. Tominaga's guard arrived and joined us on the ground for a group grapple. All this with our esteemed Commandant howling bloody murder in the background. I was blamed for the incident of course. Spent two days in the lavatory with the two women. Lucky I was there, otherwise they would have killed each other.

Jones: Well, hopefully this BBC business will raise morale. I volunteer of course to be one of our distributors.

Dorothy: Mary, I’ve already chosen my distributors.

Jones: Who are they?

Dorothy: Only I will have that information. No doctors among them

Jones: No doctors? But we are the natural leaders here.. The Nipponese respect us. Where would you be without our expertise in nutrition and tropical disease. We are ideally placed to pass on information to the camp population.

dorothy: I’m sorry Mary.

Jones: You were my deputy. We worked together. You know you can trust me.

Dorothy: Mary. You are busy enough with your statistic-taking and caregiving to the newborns. Don’t be offended. I wouldn’t divulge this information to Timothy,either.

Jones: You wouldn’t tell the Men’s Camp Rep? He must have been livid. He believes the women’s camp is under the jurisdiction of the Men’s Camp.

Dorothy: Well,men never think women can do anything. They don't understand how we women are better practiced at making do under
confinement.What did Maugham write? The soul of man wanders through infinite reaches of the universe and she, woman, seeks to imprison it?

Jones: You are obsessed about secrecy! Still upset about the incident
with Lady Drew and the News.

Dorothy: These are BBC Broadcasts.

Jones: I am able to be discreet. You know that! Tominaga told Mrs. Rose he loved her poems, by the by. Finds them amusing.

Dorothy: He's only impressed with her Ivy League credentials. The Japanese are such snobs.

Jones: Well,that's one step better than the average colonial, wouldn't you say? Who judges a woman's worth by her husband's social standing. As the wife of a mere rubber planter you surely can appreciate...

Dorothy: Well,And Mrs. Rose has no business going over my head either to talk to Tominaga. Typical American. Wanting all the perks of power without the responsibility.

Looking for Mrs. Peel 7 - Impenetrable Fortress

2010-02-25T04:46:00.000-08:00

Dorothy Nixon at Changi. 1942

Looking for Mrs. Peel 6 Tragedy of Colonial Life

2010-02-25T04:43:00.000-08:00

Looking for Mrs. Peel 5 Mischievous Monkey Child

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May 1967 TV Guide Magazine