Lim Kim San was a man of great determination. He lived a full life and also made great contributions to Singapore. Singaporeans now own their HDB homes. They owe this to him for setting a system that made this result possible.

Of all my old guard colleagues, he was the most active after he retired as minister in 1980. He became Senior Adviser to Singapore Press Holdings where he helped until illness overcame him in the last nine months of his life just before his death at the age of nearly ninety.

He suffered during the Japanese Occupation. The dreaded Kempeitai (Japanese Military Police) tortured him, accusing him of being pro-communist and pro-British. He was flogged, beaten, kicked and physically abused. He was confined in a filthy over-crowded room of thirty persons, sitting on his haunches all day and slept on a hard surface without a blanket at night which caused aches and pains. Released after a week, he was re-arrested a second time. Again more blows, kicks and lashes. In the cell with thirty other persons, there was only one squatting toilet, the water from which was used for defecating, washing and drinking.

In 1959 when I first assumed office, I made him a member of the Public Service Commission and later Deputy Chairman. In 1960, I made him Chairman of the HDB (Housing and Development Board).

The HDB was under the Minister for National Development, one Ong Eng Guan who was wildly popular for his theatrical populist gestures, posturing as an anti-colonialist by sacking and humiliating expatriates in his Ministry. To show the other expatriates still in our service that we wanted them to stay, that they were not at the mercy of the capricious Ministers, I had the expatriate Permanent Secretary, one Val Meadows, transferred to my office as the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties.

As Minister for National Development, Ong Eng Guan told Lim Kim San to hire workers direct and not use contractors in building the flats. Kim San sought me out to ask whether I wanted him to build flats or to become a labour contractor.