Copyright and links

LINKS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Choy

http://choyer-choyer.blogspot.sg/

http://singaporeheroes.weebly.com/elizabeth-choy.html

http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/war/headline/ec200.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Tenth_Incident

 http://war-heroine.blogspot.sg/
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Jaywick

http://www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/about_us/history/overview/world_war2/v07n10_history.html

http://historyof07.blogspot.sg/2007/08/elizabeth-choythe-war-heroine-elizabeth.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7maEllHIEpA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC1AmDiUgq4

No copyright intended.Search engine used:Google

Tributes

Tribute to Elizabeth Choy

Death

After the war,Elizabeth developed a fear of electricity and electrical appliances.She did not even dare to turn on a simple switch.Eventhough she had develop this lifelong fear as a result of all the torture that she had gone through during the war,she declined the opportunity to name the Japanese Officers that had tortured her to be sentenced at the War Crimes Tribunal as she condemned war and not the people who tortured her. Her funeral was held at the St. Andrew's Cathedral. It was the first time in St. Andrew's 150-year history that a funeral was allowed to be held on the Cathedral premises. Considering her contributions to the school, society and country, they made an exception for the war heroine.She is also fondly remembered by the Changi Museum as a war heroine.

 Her story of World war 2 Resistance was told through a TV series called "Life Stories", a  MediaCorp production. Other than that, she always ends the phrase : :Let us have peace, "  with :No more war. " She died at the age of 95 on 14 September 2006 as a result of pancreatic cancer. Notably, when she was informed of the diagnosis, she refused treatment, saying that she was ready to go to heaven. Elizabeth Choy was a symbol of courage and truly a living testimony of the Guide Promise and Law to the final moments of her life, particularly, Guide Law #7--"A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties".

Commendation

Japanese Surrender

At the Japanese surrender in Singapore in September 1945, Choy was invited by Lady Mountbatten to witness the official ceremony, where she was escorted by the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, and his wife, to whom she had sent medicine in Changi.

After the war,Elizabeth was invited to England as a celebrated war heroine as the only female local to have been incarcerated for such an extended period.She went there as part of the privileged few who were invited to Britain to recover from the war but her stay extended three more years,she spent a total of four years there.In her first year,she received an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth.In 1946,Choy was appointed Order of The British Empire(OBE) for her courage in captivity.Lady Baden-Powell presented her the Girl Guides' highest honour,the Bronze Cross,and the Rajah of Sarawak awarded her with the Order of Sarawak..The Bronze Cross,the highest award of the Girl Guide Movement,is an award for gallantry.

OBE presented to Elizabeth

Verbal Account

A verbal account from Elizabeth Choy

Torture
When my interrogators could not get any information out of me,they dragged my husband from Outram Prison,tied him up and made him kneel beside me.Then,in his full view,they stripped me to the waist and applied electric currents to me.The electric currents sent my whole body into spasms;my tears and mucus flowed uncontrollably.The pain was indescribable,but it must have been thousands of times worse for my husband who had to see me being tortured.

What really happened
In truth,the sabotage in the Japanese Oil Tankers was the work led by Maj Lyon of the Highlander Battalion.Capitalizing on the relatively lax naval defense of the Japanese,Maj Lyon and his party quietly sneaked into Singapore from Australia and blew up tankers at the Pier.The Japanese did not know the truth at that time.Even we learnt it after war.

The Japanese accused my husband and I of helping British underground workers sabotage the military.They wanted the names of our accomplices.But my husband and I were only small-time traders.How were we to find the guts and ability to carry out such extraordinary work?Our captors never got the information they wanted from us.Since further interrogation was pointless,they decided to free me after more than 200 days.
Through the trap door,I crawled out of my cell and walked unsteadily out of the detention center in Stamford Road.Having been deprived of sunlight during my incarceration,my eyes could hardly open as i stood directly under the sun.My mind was a complete blank.I only saw the Cathay building in front of me.The clothes I have been wearing for more than 200 days smelled really foul.For a long while,I felt I had just returned from death.My body ached from the injuries I had sustained.I almost could not find my way home.
When I finally stumbled my way back to Mackenzie Road,my relatives and neighbours were startled at the sight of me.They kept their distance for fear of getting implicated.I did not blame them at all.The Japanese would not let me off so easily.They were still keeping tabs on me.I was in a pathetic state.I lost so much weight that my waist measured only 13 inches.Fortunately,I was still quite healthy and strong.This could be attributed to my upbringing and the hard lifestyle I had.

Torture

Artist view of old YMCA Building

Elizabeth was put into a cell only 10 by 12 feet (4m by 5m) big. There were more than 20 people crammed inside. They knelt from morning till night. Elizabeth was the only female among them. Inside the cell was a tap and underneath it, a hole meant for toilet purposes. The stench coming from their perspiration, human waste and stagnant water fouled up the small cell and was suffocating. They had to crawl out through a small trap door at the side for interrogation. The captors beat them up, subjected them to electric shocks and pumped them up with water as part of the interrogation routine. The feeling of having one’s belly pumped full of water and then seeing the water gushing out of the body was hardly bearable. The prisoners were forbidden to speak to one another, although one of the internees, John Dunlop, secretly taught them to communicate in sign language.

At Elizabeth's first interrogation session, the Japanese told her that some ships had been sunk in the harbour and they wanted to know the location of a large amount of money. She claimed no knowledge of the matter but was repeatedly interrogated and beaten. At various times, the Kempeitai forced Elizabeth to kneel on some angled bars of wood on the floor. They stripped her topless and tied her to the wood so she could not go either forwards or backwards. Then they applied electric shocks to her. They even brought in her husband from Outram Prison to let him see her being tortured. After nine months in captivity, Elizabeth had lost half her body weight.

Kempeitai

“A suspect undergoing interrogation might be subjected to

all sorts of beating by various instruments, kicking and boxing, slapping and ju-jitsu throw, burning in the tender parts with cigarette ends or electric charges, pins being driven into nails, hanging by thumbs or ankles, and the infamous water-treatment

. Besides these, detained persons were subjected to inhuman prison conditions calculated to break the toughest resistance. Males and females were usually not separately confined, and cells were small, badly ventilated, infested with bugs and insects, and of foul sanitation. Food was merely sufficient to keep a person alive. The whole proceeding of Japanese torture can be summarised in two words: "unspeakable horror." Few ever survived these inhumanities.”

A description of the torture methods the Kempeitai used when interrogating suspects.Link http://www.angelfire.com/pro/ssf-136/Kempeitai.htm      

  

 Her psychological resilience and principle stand sustained her endurance

in the physical abuse and interrogation

at the hands of the Kempeitai and she never admitted to being a British sympthizer.Elizabeth spent 193 days in a stinking cell with inhuman conditions.She was only released after 193 days of starvation diet and repeated torture.