Kampar hero dies

KUALA LUMPUR: Chye Kooi Loong (pix), world-renowned authority on the Battle of Kampar which saw the Japanese suffer their biggest defeat in their Malayan campaign during World War 11, died in Ipoh on April 23.
Chye, 85, who spoke internationally on the battle between the British and Japanese forces from Dec 30, 1941 to Jan 2, 1942, is survived by his wife, Yoon Lai Fun, and two sons.
He was an indefatigable champion for the preservation of the historical battlefield site "Green Ridge", working over the past 32 years to get it gazetted as a heritage site and war monument.
However, he was unsuccessful in doing so to protect the site from future development.
He did , however, manage to erect a plaque in memory of the British Battalion at St Michael's Institution in 2012 after years of objection from the school board.
Chye was 12 when the retreating British-led forces arrived at Kampar in order to make a stand against the advancing Japanese forces.
Nearly 1,300 British Empire soldiers are said to have successfully battled 4,000 Japanese soldiers in what is believed to be the only serious defeat of the Japanese army in its Malayan campaign.
The young boy quickly befriended soldiers of the British Battalion which had been formed at St Michael's Institution, Ipoh, on Dec 20, 1941 by amalgamating the remnants of the 1st Battalion, Leicester Regiment and the 2nd Battalion, East Surrey Regiment.
The soldiers called him "Joe" and before they left for the Battle of Kampar, they gave him four brass buttons and two regimental badges with the parting words: "Remember us Joe".
Those words forever haunted Chye.
As he approached retirement, he spent seven years researching on the Battle of Kampar and the men who had fought in it.
His research on the valour of the British Battalion, the 1st (Perak) Battalion of the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force, the Indian Army Brigades and the commando unit known as Roseforce, all went into his magnum opus, "The British Battalion in the Malayan Campaign 1941-1942" which was first published in the United Kingdom in 1984.
The book coincided with the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Leicester Regiment.
He received a letter of appreciation from the late Baroness Margaret Thatcher, who was then the Prime Minister, after his book was published.
On the basis of his book, Chye became recognised as an authority on the Battle of Kampar and was even invited to lecture at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and various military clubs and regimental associations in the United Kingdom.
He was not known to the Malaysian military establishment until he was "discovered" by a senior officer from the Malaysian Armed Forces who happened to be attending a course at Sandhurst.
After that Chye was regularly invited to give lectures at the Malaysian Royal Military College (RMC).
It was at the RMC that Chye encountered a visiting Japanese army major to whom he deliberately related the horrors faced by Malayans during the war.
The officer immediately stood up, bowed deeply to Chye and unreservedly apologised for the conduct of the Imperial Japanese Army in Malaya during the war!
Besides delivering lectures, Chye also regularly acted as a guide to visitors interested in the history of the Kampar battlefield, until he was physically unable to do so.
For his life's work and contribution to British military history, Chye and his wife were among seven Malaysian couples specially invited to meet Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip during their visit to Malaysia in 1998.
Chye was made an honorary member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2007. When he was in RELA, he caught the attention of Sultan Azlan Shah of Perak who was intrigued by all the foreign medals on his uniform and he was subsequently awarded the Paduka Mahkota Perak (PMP) in 2004.
Chye, who represented Perak in athletics, qualified as a teacher in 1952.