Our War Hero

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Our War Hero
Lim Bo Seng
By Christina , Jia Yun,Navya, Fazina Rachel
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Early Life
Born in 1909 to Lim Loh alias Lim Chee Geee, a
wealthy businessman who owned a biscuit and brick
manufacturing business in Singapore, Lim was the
11th child but the first son. At the age of 16,
Lim came to Singapore in 1917 to study in the
Raffles Institution of Singapore under the
British colonial government, and later went on to
further his studies in the University of Hong
Kong. In 1930, Lim married Gan Choo Neo, a Nonya
woman in the Lim Clan association hall of
Singapore. They had eight children, one of whom
died in infancy. Initially raised as a Taoist,
Lim converted to Christianity after receiving
strong European influence.
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Life as a Force
At the time of the Second Sino-Japanese war, Lim,
a loyal Chinese patriot, participated in
fund-raising on Japanese resistant forces and
boycott activities of Japanese goods organized by
the Nanyang Federation. On February 11, just
before the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, Lim
left his family for the last time to the care of
his wife and fled from Singapore to Sumatra with
other Chinese community leaders, before making
his way to India, where he recruited and trained
hundreds of secret agents through intensive
missions from the military and intelligence point
of view in India and China. Around this time,
together with Captain John Davis, they set up the
Sino-British guerrilla group Force 136 in
mid-1942. One of his best friends and students,
Tan Chong Tee, participated actively in
anti-Japanese activities until his capture on 26
March 1944
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The War
Soon after everything had been organized in China
and India, Lim Bo Seng sent the first batch of
Force 136 agents to Malaya in May 1943. The
operation was codenamed Gustavus. Their objective
was to set up an espionage network to gather
military intelligence about the Japanese. This
would allow the British Army to carefully plan
the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, codenamed
Operation Zipper. One of the Chinese provision
shops in Ipoh, Jian Yik Jan, was an Allied
espionage base. According to historical sources,
messages were smuggled in empty tubes of
toothpaste, salted fish and even in their own
diaries. Bo Seng arrived in Malaya in November
1943. To avoid identification by the Japanese,
Lim passed himself through checkpoints as a
businessman, using the alias Tan Choon Lim. The
operation went wrong before the agents could
gather any military intelligence. An unknown
communist guerrilla was captured by the Japanese
in January 1944, who revealed the existence of an
Allied spy network operating on Pangkor Island.
They soon began a full-scale counter-espionage
operation on the island. By late March 1944, more
than 200 Japanese soldiers were swarming all over
Pangkor.
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The Secret
Tan Chong Tee advised Lim Bo Seng to leave Ipoh
in view of the circumstances, but he refused to
flee until he had heard from , another agent who
had travelled to Singapore in search of funds. On
March 24 , the Kempeitai arrested a fisherman, ,
at Teluk Murrek on the Perak coast. Chua was
merely a fisherman working on Pangkor when a
member of Force 136, , approached him, requesting
to use his boat to benefit their spy network. He
told the secret police everything, from the spy
network to members of Force 136 without even
being interrogated. The Japanese then used Chua
as a bait to lure Li. Under torture, Li confirmed
Chua's story.
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The Escape
Then the Japanese were hoping to make Li work for
them, treating him relatively well. Held at the
Kempeitai headquarters in Ipoh, Li was still
determined to escape. On the pretext of taking a
bath, he jumped from the second floor bathroom.
He then got into a taxi, telling the driver that
he was an anti-Japanese guerrilla making his
escape. The driver responded positively, and
immediately proceeded to Bidor. But the escape
failed to delay the Japanese. Within a few hours
of Li's escape, the Japanese had raided the
network's headquarters, capturing Tan Chong Tee,
and later Lim Bo Seng. The entire network was
destroyed by March 31, 1944.
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The hideout
Officers and were blissfully unaware that their
spies had fallen like dominoes until the escapee
Li Han Kwang staggered into their camp on March
29. The destruction of the network was a huge
blow to the British. It wrecked their plans to
develop spy networks in Malaya and hopes of an
early invasion by military force. It was not
re-established until early 1945. Broome concluded
that Chua Koon Eng was the man to blame. He noted
that Chua was released quickly by the Japanese
and that his business in Pangkor thrived under
Japanese rule. He was privy to the entire network
of agents and he knew where the hideouts were
located. He also noted that Chua had not been
screened when he was roped in to help with the
rendezvous arrangements. He mysteriously
disappeared when Allied forces returned to
Malaya.
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Death By Torture
On March 26, 1944, Tan Chong Tee was captured by
the Japanese. Upon hearing this news, Lim
initially wanted to escape immediately, but was
convinced to wait till the next morning. This
proved to be a fatal mistake, as the Japanese had
blocked all the roads out of Gopeng immediately
after Tan's capture. Marshall citation needed,
the man who captured Lim, suspected that Tan was
trying to tell Lim to escape. Lim was caught and
taken to the Kempeitai headquarters for
interrogation. Strong as he was, Lim battled
through all sorts of physical and mental torture
and duress daily but he never uttered a single
word about pain and refused to give up
information about Force 136. Instead, he
protested against the ill-treatment of his
comrades in the prison. However, Lim soon became
ill with dysentery and was bedridden by the end
of May 1944. As his condition worsened, Lim was
taken to a small terraced prison-house a little
away from the main prison building. In the last
days of his life, Lim was not given food, water
or medicine, although he received some porridge,
but his condition was so bad that he could not
even swallow the porridge. Many of his fellow
prisoners cried to the Japanese soldiers to give
him some medicine. The Japanese, however, ignored
their pleas. Lim eventually died in the early
hours of June 29, 1944. He was later buried
behind the Batu Gajah prison compound in an
unmarked spot. However, after the death of Lim Bo
Seng, many of the Japanese authorities softened
their stance a little. The prisoners, for a
period of time, were given better food. Simple
medical treatment and daily exercises in the
prison compound were provided for the
prisoners. After the surrender of Japan, Lim's
wife, Choo Neo, was informed of her husband's
death by the priest of St Andrew's School. Choo
Neo later traveled with her eldest son to bring
her husband's remains home. A funeral ceremony
was held on January 13, 1946 in front of City
Hall to mourn the death of Lim. The coffin
containing his remains was transported to a hill
in MacRitchie Reservoir for burial with full
military honours. He was posthumously awarded the
rank of Major-General by the Chinese Nationalist
Government.
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Thank You
Members Contribution

• Christina PowerPoint
• Rachel Background
• Jia Yun PowerPoint
• Fazina Pictures
  www.wikipedia.org
• Navya Research

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