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Kampong, fire, nation: Towards a social history of postwar Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Loh Kah Seng
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Abstract

An important but little-studied act in the history of postwar Singapore was played out at the margins of the city. Here, the state was involved in a major campaign to socialise the ‘squatters’ of urban kampong into citizens of a high modernist state. The fire hazard in these settlements also contributed significantly to the process, as the residents were mobilised into fire-fighting squads and politicians acted on behalf of the victims of infernos by rehousing them in emergency public housing. This article proposes a new approach to postwar Singapore historiography at the interface between politics and social developments. It underlines the social agents, spatial dimension and historical continuity uncovered in the venture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 40 , Special Issue 3: The origins of the Southeast Asian Cold War , October 2009 , pp. 613 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2009

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87 The Mooncake Festival was named as such for the mooncakes customarily eaten on the occasion. For more information on the Qing Ming Festival, see ST, 7 Apr. 1958. Also known as All Souls Day, the Qing Ming is an occasion for the Chinese to remember and honour one's ancestors.

88 Author's interview with Lim Yock Eng, 21 Feb. 2006. Lim was born in 1943 and grew up in a shophouse. She frequently visited her friends living in wooden houses in the vicinity of Kampong Bukit Ho Swee.

89 Author's interview with Wang Ah Tee, 22 Jan. 2007. Wang was born in 1943 to a family of 11 at 37 Beo Lane in Kampong Bukit Ho Swee.

90 Singapore Standard [hereafter SS], 14 Feb. 1959.

91 Author's interview with Joyce Horsley, 3 Nov. 2007.

92 Author's interview with Joyce Soh, 5 Apr. 2007. Soh, born in 1947, grew up in a large extended family of twakow-builders in Covent Garden, a kampong just north of Bukit Ho Swee. Twakow were small boats used by the Chinese to transport goods along the Singapore River.

93 Author's interview with Chua Beng Huat, 9 Oct. 2006. Chua was born in 1946 in Bukit Ho Swee. His family had lived in the kampong before the 1934 fire. His mother ran a large provisions shop at 60 Bukit Ho Swee, while his extended relatives lived nearby. On 8 August 1934, a massive fire destroyed Bukit Ho Swee, rendering nearly 2,000 people homeless. The fire victims subsequently returned to the site and rebuilt the kampong. See Nanyang Siang Pau, 11 Aug. 1934.

94 Author's interview with Yap Kuai Yong, 16 June 2007.

95 Author's interview with Tay Bok Chiu, 24 Jan. 2007. The family of Tay, born in 1944, owned a small provisions shop in a two-storey zinc-roofed building in Kampong Tiong Bahru, south of Bukit Ho Swee.

96 Author's interview with Lily Wee, 3 June 2007.

97 FD, Annual report 1954, pp. 1–2.

98 FD, Annual report 1956, p. 1.

99 SS, 18 July 1953.

100 FD, Annual report 1957, p. 2.

101 Oral History Centre [hereafter OHC], interview with Arthur Lim Beng Lock, 7 Jan. 1994.

102 Ibid.

103 FD, Annual report 1961, p. 6.

104 FD, Annual report 1950, p. 15.

105 ST, 2 Aug. 1951.

106 SS, 2 Aug. 1951.

107 SS, 1 Oct. 1955.

108 ST, 25 Feb. 1959.

109 ST, 14 Feb. 1959.

110 ST, 27 Oct. 1953.

111 ST, 29 Oct. 1953.

112 City Council [hereafter CC], Minutes of Meetings 1953, 28 Oct. 1953, p. 11.

113 See, for instance, the Aik Hoe Rubber Factory fire of July 1950, FD, Annual report 1961, pp. 4–8; Hon, Joan, 100 Years of the Singapore Fire Service (Singapore: Published for Singapore Fire Service by Times Books International, 1988), pp. 64–5, 67Google Scholar.

114 Author's interview with Maggie Chong (pseudonym), 13 Feb. 2007. In this section, I have used pseudonyms where appropriate to protect my informants' confidentiality.

115 Author's interview with Goh Ah Mong (pseudonym), 24 May 2007.

116 Author's interview with Johnny Ang (pseudonym), 30 June 2007.

117 Author's interview with Lim Yew Kuan, 21 Nov. 2006. Lim, born 1929, is an artist and a founder-member of the Equator Art Society. He made a woodcut depicting a kampong fire in the mid-1960s.

118 Author's interview with C.C. Chin, 21 Nov. 2006. Chin was born in 1940 in Singapore and was a member of the Singapore Rural Residents' Association and Singapore Country People's Association. He was, by his own admission, a Malayan Communist Party cadre and presently researches the history of the party.

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120 Author's interviews with C.C. Chin, 24 Nov. 2006; and with Poh Soon Seng, 19 Sept. 2006. Poh, born 1934, was a leading organiser in the Singapore Farmers' Association and later the General-Secretary of the Singapore Country People's Association.

121 FD, Annual report 1958, p. 1.

122 CC, Minutes of Proceedings 1958, 19–20 May 1958, pp. 420–2.

123 Speech by Ong Eng Guan, 30 June 1958, in CC, Minutes of Proceedings 1958.

124 FD, Annual report 1960, p. 10.

125 FD, Annual report 1959, p. 4; CC, Minutes of Proceedings 1959, 3 Mar. 1959, pp. 10–1.

126 Author's interview with Tay Ah Chuan, 21 Feb. 2006. Tay was born in 1939 to a family in Bukit Ho Swee. His parents and four or five families of close relatives were long-time residents in the kampong.

127 Author's interview with Chio Cheng Thun, 7 Mar. 2007.

128 Author's interview with Loh Tian Ho, 13 Jan. 2006. Loh was born in 1936 and grew up in Pasir Panjang before moving to a number of wooden houses in and in the vicinity of Bukit Ho Swee. He is the author's father.

129 Author's interview with Tay Yan Woon, 28 Sept. 2006.

130 Nanyang Siang Pau [hereafter NYSP], 26 May 1961.

131 FD, Annual report 1958, p. 10.

132 Pelling, The vulnerability of cities, pp. 52–65.

133 Huat, Chua Beng, ‘The business of living in Singapore’, in Management of success: The moulding of modern Singapore, ed. Sandhu, Kernial S. and Wheatley, Paul (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989), p. 1008Google Scholar; author's interview with Chua Beng Huat, 26 Oct. 2006.

134 Sin Chew Jit Poh, 14 Feb. 1959.

135 NYSP, 15 June 1961.

136 ST, 8 Apr. 1958.

137 CC, Minutes of Proceedings 1959, 3 Mar. 1959, p. 18.

138 SS, 14 Feb. 1959.

139 Speech by Tang Peng Yeu, 30 Apr. 1959, in CC, Minutes of Proceedings 1959. The Singapore People's Alliance was newly formed out of the Labour Front.

140 SLAD, 3 Mar. 1959, pp. 2056–7.

141 ST, 14 Feb. 1959.

142 SLAD, 3 Mar. 1959, p. 2059.

143 Ibid., 4 Mar. 1959, pp. 2139–41.

144 Ibid., p. 2145.

145 Ibid., p. 2146.

146 Ibid., 12 Apr. 1961, pp. 1282–3.

147 HB 871/57, Memo from Chief Executive Officer, HDB, to Members of the Board, 10 Oct. 1960.

148 ST, 30 May 1961.

149 SLAD, 31 May 1961, pp. 1565–6.

150 HB 147/51 Vol. V, Statement of Rehousing Scheme by Estates Department, Dec. 1963.

151 HB 178/59 Vol. II, Minutes of Allocations Committee Meeting on 27 Sept. 1962. See also, HB 178/59 Vol. II, Minutes of Allocations Committee Meeting on 2 July 1963.

152 HB 178/59 Vol. III, Minutes of Allocations Committee Meeting on 7 Oct. 1964.

153 HDB Annual report 1967, p. 51.

154 HB 1013/50 Vol. I, Memo from Chief Architect, HDB, to Chief Executive Officer, HDB, 4 Dec. 1963.

155 RG 59, 746F.00/9-1561, Despatch from US Consul General to Department of State titled ‘Left-wingers in rural areas desert the PAP’, 15 Sept. 1961.

156 Ibid.; HB 1166/57, Memo from Resettlement Officer, HDB, to Chief Executive Officer, HDB, 16 Aug. 1963.

157 HB 722/3/55, Minutes of Board Meeting, 12 Apr. 1962.

158 Ball, ‘Selkirk in Singapore’; and Jones, ‘Creating Malaysia’.

159 ST, 3 Feb. 1963.

160 Ibid., 4 Oct. 1963.

161 CO 1030/1597, Memo titled, ‘Public housing in Singapore’ by the UK Commission, 16 Apr. 1963.

162 HDB, 50,000 up: Homes for the people (Singapore: Housing and Development Board, 1966), p. 1.

163 Scott, Seeing like a state, p. 88.