Lisbon

By Henry Longwood

Preface
This is a story about sex, spies and murder.

In 1939, a promising 30-year old English architect, and Captain in His Majestys Royal Engineers, is posted to Singapore where he meets an attractive newspaper reporter for the Straits Times. After a rocky beginning, they fall in love. Four months later, the Japanese attack Singapore and Malaya is invaded. The Pacific war begins, and their world collapses. As Singapore is bombed, they are married in the basement of St. Andrews Cathedral. When Singapore surrenders, he and an American friend join the Chinese Communist guerrillas in Malaya; ambushing Japanese convoys and blowing up trains. Soon, they recognize the vast differences in their cultural and political philosophies. His wife boards the SS Vyner Brooke, one of the last passenger ships to leave Singapore, carrying 265 women and children, including sixty-five Australian Army nurses. Within forty-eight hours, Japanese aircraft sink the ship in the Banka Strait. Most survivors seek refuge on tiny Banka Island where they are captured and interned by the Japanese. Twenty-two nurses land on nearby Radji Beach where Japanese soldiers order them back into the water. When the twenty-two nurses are standing waist deep in the surf they are sprayed with machinegun fire. His wife survives and is taken to the Kempeitai, Japans dreaded secret police, where she is accused of being An Enemy of the Japanese Empire. After being tortured, she is incarcerated at Changi Prison Camp for the next three and one half years. The Hokkiens, the largest dialect group of Chinese in Singapore, suffered the most during the sadistic Japanese occupation. They called Singapore the Birdcage Island.