More on Masa Jepun: a response to Batty-Smith. (Brief Communications).

The letters quoted by Mr. William Batty-Smith are of interest, but I reckon that the rest of his brief communication ("Masa Jepun", Borneo Research Bulletin, Volume 30 (1999): 142-46) is of little value, except for what it tells us about the author. He remarks on the research done by Bob Reece, but does not appear to have done any himself. He quotes selectively from Reece's Chapter 5, but does not appear to have read anything else, or to be aware of the general situation in Southeast Asia at that time. Apart from the "Sibu Party" and some from Dutch Borneo who vainly journeyed to Long Nawang, Europeans in Borneo all stayed put.

He does not mention Malays or any other "locals", nor the Chinese, whose country had been invaded by the Japanese some years before. Perhaps, for him, as for some junior members of our embassies overseas that I've heard of, these folk are not "people" at all.

As it was, and I believe, still is in Southeast Asia, European officers were not tyrants (as the Japanese first pretended to suppose) but leaders and friends. Some of these friendships still exist, and not only for me. (Morison is among those who have the means, and visits Sarawak often). Batty-Smith should read Tales from the South China Seas: (images of) the British in South East Asia in the Twentieth Century, edited by Charles Allen, a paperback edition of which was published in 1984.

The Sarawak Association (London) has a large and growing membership, both old and young, including a good many Sarawak people of every race. As a member, Batty-Smith is listed as having been in Sarawak in 1974-75 only, as a member of H.M. Forces.

Officers who left before the Japanese invasion to join the Forces, did so in an orderly manner, with leave, and in 1940, for the war in Europe. As for the "reprimand"--it is, after all, only hearsay. Morison agrees that it was most likely informal (and not recorded). To say that Buck could not have been reprimanded because the Rajah wrote kindly to Sybil Buck, implies that the Rajah was so uncivilized that, if an officer were at fault, he would "take it out" on the officer's innocent wife and family. Again; to say that Buck could not have been reprimanded because Le Gros Clark was dead is nonsense. Did Le Gros not have successors? I can think of more than one senior officer who had a sharp tongue and would have used it in 1946.