My Side of History (review)

Book Reviews My Side of History. By Chin Peng. Singapore: Media Masters, 2003. Softcover: 527pp. For those growing up in Malaysia and Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s, the Chin Peng name was congruent with dogged frightful terror and for some, a heroic sense of awe for all things anti-establishment. Held incommunicado for much of the following decades, his first public appearance in 1999 was a history waiting to be told. The book is a narration of Chin Peng's experiences as a guerrilla with the CPM — Communist Party of Malaya (until the 1960s, it was called the MCP — Malayan Communist Party) as told to the two writers of the book: Ian Ward and Norma Miraflor. It is a gripping story of a man who devoted his life in pursuit of communist rule in Malaya and Singapore, with its attendant elements of high drama, intrigue, violence, and the tragic outcomes that are still being felt by families in many countries. He was first an anti-Japanese fighter in the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) in 1942 (p. 67). The CPM had an alliance with the British against Japanese occupation but parted company after the war. Chin Peng's guerrillas peaked at only 5,000 against the "several hundred thousand troops" of the Allied Forces (p. 26). The hardship the guerrillas had to endure, from deep in their Malayan jungle bases with meagre food often exacted from villagers, was a point Chin Peng did not miss to make to recount his resolve for a liberated Malaya. Chin Peng was born Ong Boon Hua on 21 October 1924 in Sitiawan, 524 Book Reviews525 a small town in the state of Perak in peninsular Malaysia to parents who were reasonably well-off, hardly your stereotypical deprived peasantry of revolutionary struggles. He joined the CPM in January 1940 when he was sixteen years old — by then the party had been in existence for ten years since its formation in Singapore (p. 57). He became the CPM's chief (secretary-general) in 1947. Though it was not officially banned, the party was subject to frequent harassment by the authorities during its early years. Chin Peng's baptism as a communist began with his readings of Mao Zedong's war against the Japanese and later the Kuomintang (KMT). At the time, overseas Chinese in Malaya were divided between the loyalists of the KMT and the more radical sympathizers of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Young Chinese like Chin Peng were drawn to Mao who they regarded as the epitome of a blossoming Chinese nationalism while the older overseas Chinese stayed faithful to the KMT. Chin Peng was enthralled by Marx and Lenin whose writings, then proscribed by British Malaya, were smuggled into the country by migrant Chinese fleeing from war-torn China. While Mao was fighting the KMT, Chiang Kai Shek, the KMT leader, doled loyal Chinese in Malaya and Singapore to resist the Malayan communists. Chin Peng had, not one, but two adversaries on his hands. But he did not seem to make much of his fight against the KMT and thought rather lowly of its forces (pp. 108-11). When the Japanese landed at Kota Bahru, the capital of northern Kelantan state, on 8 December 1941, the CPM offered assistance to the British to fight against the invaders. The British were enthusiastic but it was not until 1943 when they had the pro-British clandestine Force 136 work with the CPM (p. 11). The British valued the CPM's contribution in the war effort and many of the CPM's leaders were decorated by the colonial government after the war. Chin Peng himself was awarded the OBE. With the surrender of the Japanese in August 1945, and upon demobilization of the MPAJA, the CPM decided that since official recognition for its political role was not forthcoming, it would fight against British presence with the aim of self-determination according to the Atlantic Charter and the UN Charter (pp. 161, 375). The party went underground but was not officially banned until the BMA (British Military Administration) ended upon the proclamation of the Malayan Union on 1 April 1946. The CPM tried...