Ancestry Run V8.0

Ode to my Great Great  Great Grand Father
My Great Great Great Grand Father's Tomb!
I stand before him, silent, in respect and awe.
His genes embedded in every cell of mine,
We are bonded though the course of time.

My Great Great Great Grand Father's Tomb!
I sit beside him, sunlight streaming through the trees.
I sense inner warmth and joy sublime:
Habitat Heritage History entwine.

My Great Great  Great Grand Father's Tomb!
The white stakes declare a restless future:
His eyeless sockets shedding copious tears-
That eight lane highway: unspoken fears!

My Great Great Great Grand Father's Tomb!
"Could you not beg them to let us rest in peace?"
His silenced tongue in eloquence loudly says :
His bony hands grasp me in one last fond embrace.


TAN- SEOW-LIM
Family Connection scattered over various blocks in Bukit Brown.
The tomb stops include :
Tan Kim Ching, GGGGF (Great Great Great Great Grand Father)
(neighbour to Cheang Hong Lim )
Yeo Buay Neo (Mrs Seow Watt Chye) GGM
Tan Boo Liat GGF
Mr & Mrs Lim Mah Peng GGGGF/M Mr & Mrs Lim Thean Geow GGGF/M      


Tan Kim Ching (陳金鐘) (1829 -1892. ) Tan Tock Seng’s eldest son. Recommended Anna Leonowens, as teacher for children of King Mongkut of Siam ( King Rama IV).

Buried in Changi, transferred to Bukit Brown (1940). One of Singapore’s earliest “diplomats” and much respected in the Siam court.
Tan Boo Liat, (1875-1934) built his home Golden Bell Mansion, 10 Pender Road on Mount Faber, naming it after his grandfather. He was a strong supporter of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and member of the Singapore T'ung Meng Hui along with Lim Boon Keng. In 1920 he was awarded the title Phra Anukul Sayamkich by the Siam court. Note “Kuo-Ming-Tang” rays on  his tomb.
Tan Boo Liat’s daughter Polly was the template for Emily of Emerald Hill, written by my sister Stella Kon ( nee Lim). To know that Polly was the niece of Lilian Tan Luck Neo and that Polly eventually married her aunt’s husband (Tan Boo Liat) 12 years her senior, when the aunt passed away is to understand some of the complex forces at play in “Emily”

Polly Tan (my Grandmother) is pictured here, aged 10 years. Lady with right arm on armrest is Mdm Yeo Buay Neo, my Great Grand Mother (Mrs Seow Chye Watt), mother of Seow Poh Leng: 

Polly at the piano while her husband Seow Poh Leng serenades. An alumnus of the Anglo Chinese School, he instituted a medal Seow Poh Leng Gold Medal in 1936 to be awarded to the top ACS boy at the Senior Cambridge/GCE “O” Level Examinations.

Lim Quins: Mr & Mrs Lim Mah Peng (Mdm Khoo),Mr & Mrs Lim Tean Gow (Mdm Su)
Md  Margaret Wong Tuan Keng (Mrs Lim Boon Keng V1.0) [Septuplet: plus two of
LBK’s sisters)


Lim Boon Keng (GGF) with Stella (my sister) and Mrs Lim Boon Keng V2.0, Grace Yin Pek Ha (GGM) with me on her lap.
Impetus for studying medicine was death of mother when he was 8 and father Lim Thean Gow when LBK was 17, from blood poisoning after razor cut: a dozen doctors resulting from this fatal cut!
Dr Lim Boon Keng
Dr Robert Kho Seng Lim, Dr Lim Peng Thiam
Dr Lim Kok Ann, Dr Lim Kok Kian, Dr Lim Kok Lian
Dr Michael Palmer, Dr Suzanne Low, Dr Lim Su Min, Dr Lim Su Chong
Dr Lim Min Yu, Dr Mark Kon

THE SAGE OF SINGAPORE [The Straits Times 22 October 1948 Page 4 ]
Straits Times interview by Roy Ferroa.
Of his 80 years of living, Dr.Lim says that his “happiest memories” are those of his school days, in particular  of his old headmaster Mr Hullet.
“The thing that makes me ever -mindful of dear Mr. Hullett is his word of advice given to me when I left school and was on my way to study in England.
Mr Hullett said: You are a Chinese going to the West.
Remember to respect yourself and do right. Never mind what other people, the rich and influential, may think of you. As long as you do right and remain right you will always be happy.

Mr. Hullet also told me “I advise you to keep a Bible by your side and read it whenever you have the time. The Bible is the basis of the English language.
This, Dr. Lim explained was the advice given him when he was still making headway with English literature and grammar.
Today 65 years after those words were uttered by his teacher, the pupil follows their precept. His Bible, slightly tattered and well worn, is in his hands when he walks about in his garden.
  The Bible has 66 books and one of them is written by a doctor. It is from the book written by Dr. Luke that I have chosen a passage to be read at my funeral. All of you are invited to my funereal. I don't have the date yet and I hope it doesn't happen soon.

But just as a preview, let me give you glimpse. In Chapter 16 verse 19-31 of Luke's book, we read of a parable told by Jesus of an unnamed rich man who was enjoying a life of luxury and a poor man named Lazarus who was longing to eat the scraps of food that fell from the rich man's table.
Lazarus dies and is bought by angels up to heaven.
Lazarus has a relationship with God that began while on earth, and this continues  on in heaven.
The rich man, however, failed to share of his abundance while on earth thus demonstrating his lack of relationship with God The Rich man dies and is brought to a place of eternal torment:
For the rest of the story you will have to attend my funeral, but one take home message is this: We need to be accountable for the gifts that we are given from above, and we need an ongoing relationship with the Giver.


“He died that we might live” was a clear message I heard as I was cleaning tomb of Great Great Grand Father Lim Thean Gow.  At first I thought the message was talking about Lim Thean Gow, but it did not quite make sense.

Only later, when we discovered the adjacent tomb of Great Grand Mother Margaret Huang, did I understand that voice I had heard must have came from her father (my Great Great Grand Father Pastor Huang Nai Shiong refering to no less than Jesus Christ.

Great Grand Ma Margaret

 

Page 236-237 of Sir Song Ong Sian's book One Hundred Years History of The Chinese in Singapore carries a photo and article about my great grandmother Margaret Huang.

"His (Lim Boon Keng's) first wife, whom he married in Decmber 1896 at the Presbytarian Church in Orchard Road, was the elder daughter of Mr. Wong Nai Siong, of Foo-chow.

She was a refined, enlightened and well educated gentlewoman. The experiences she had gained through her visits to England and America, prior to her marriage, enabled her to take a sympathetic and active interest in all the reform movements of this period, in which her husband played the chief role. When the Singapore Chinese Girls' School was founded in 1899, she undertook the task of giving the pupils lessons in Chinese twice a week. Belonging to the Wesleyan Methodist communion she occasionally worshiped at both the Methodist Episcopal Church in Coleman Street and the Princep Street Church and was greatly  liked and admired by her Chinese Christian friends. She died in 1905 leaving four sons, of whom the eldest is Roberst, who has just taken his degrees of M.B., B.Ch. at Edinburgh University. During the War, Robert served as a surgical dresser to the Indian Hospital at Netley, Hants. "

Foot note: 

Her 4 sons were 

Robert Kho Seng,

Walter Kho Leng

Francis Kho Beng and

John Kho Liau

Her excavated tomb is one of the "Lim Septuplet" at Bukit Brown

and marked by the unusual fallen cylinder

Cylinder Tombstone: GGM Margaret Huang

Bangkok- Tan Kim Ching Run

Counting the beads...

there should be 108 sandal wood beads: 

I counted 100....

Mooted over kopi at Ya Kun Central, this dream run became reality as Yeo Say Ann and I managed to get gracious Grand Aunt Siri to anchor this run.

This chart should put key players in their place...

TRIMMED GENEAOLOGY

1 Tan Tock Seng

2 Mdm Chua- Tan Kim Ching- Mdm Ying

3 Soon Toh  s/o Chua         Hay Leng s/o Ying   Choon Neo (Grandma Chun) d/o Ying

4 Boo Liat s/o SoonToh            Alice d/o HL                 Molee d/o Chun

5 Kenny & Polly c/o BL  Jackson s/o A - Rene w/o J     Woody s/o Molee - Siri w/o W

6 Sopha d/o K- Pong h/o Sopha   Rosie d/o Polly  Isabella  (4 months) d/o Jackson      

           

   7                                      Su Min s/o Rosie- Sing Yu w/o SM                                   .                         

   

Eight hard core Brownies were let into this secret and converged onto LubD Siam

P Siri presented Power Point with aplomb and grace.

(Aunty Sopha and Aruphong joined us for the Powerpoint.

In the evening they hosted dinner at Asiatic)

Siri  spent the whole day showing us around. We were safely driven in a 15 seater.

We visited Siam House, 591 Prasamen Road, originally of Tan Kim Ching: now still in the family: run as a wedding venue.

 We went to Ayutthaya, 100 miles north of Bangkok. Grandma Chun's house was donated to the Bhuddist college there and transported  whole....

Grandma Chun's transported house

We visited one ancient temple Watchai Watanaram  at Ayutthaya

I thought that the spires were reminiscent of some science fiction alien spaceship story....

Desperately hungry, we could not find a riverside restaurant: 

But this lady besides the Wat Chai Watanaram provided a meal for us.

Metal Temple

The Metal Temple (Lohat Prasad) was a quick photo op/ sketching opportunity.

The two mango trees

These two mango trees, now more than 100 years old, were there, shoulder high, when Grandma was a young girl. The location is 123 Petchburi Road. Grandma Chun's house was here, now translocated X100 miles North to Ayatthaya. A new set of houses were erected here: We examined the special beads:

Chaozhu were worn with court dress by nobles and higher officials, or by lesser officials for certain ceremonial occasions only. These court beads were status symbols but not actual indications of rank in the same manner as mandarin squares and hat finials. The choice of beads was left up to the individual except for the emperor, empress and dowager empress, who wore fresh water Manchurian pearls mandated by law for them alone.

The prototype of court beads is thought to be the rosaries used by Lama Buddhist monks of Tibet and Mongolia for counting repetitions of a prayer or mantra. (Cammann, 4:1979) In 1643, a year before the invasion of China, an envoy of the Dalai Lama presented the Manchu leader with a rosary.

The traditional rosary and the court beads which resemble them consist of 108 small counting beads, divided into four groups of twenty-seven by three large spacer beads called fotou (fo-t'ou), or "Buddha heads." The ends of the cord then pass through a vase or pagoda-shaped bead from which extends a silken ribbon, a flat, rectangular stone, sometimes in a metal frame, beiyun (pei-yun) and several more inches of ribbon culminating in a drop pendant, dazhui (ta-chui). This extension hangs down the wearer's back and acts as a counter-weight so the beads will be more evenly balanced between front and back and more comfortable to wear. Suspended from the back of the necklace are an additional three strands of ten beads each, jinian (chi-nien), ending with a drop pendant

And we were brought to the family bones room, to greet the ancestors. It was a special moment for me.

Dinner was at a fancy place: Asiatique, the "in" place: Half of Bangkok was there! Fusion food, live band etc. And crazy traffic jam.

Next day we had long farewell at Jim Thomson Cafe.

IN SUMMARY
Overwhelmed with graciousness of my Thai relatives
Touched by keen interest of Brownies on my family
Facinated to be part of the living heritage that is the legacy of Bukit Brown

Mr Seow Chye Watt and descendants

My Great Grand Father!

Mr Seow Chye Watt

Merchant

Rice Trader

Based in Singapore

Frequently travelled to Thailand

 I recently had kopi with my newly discovered cousin Hedy

Her grandma is my Koh Tengah aka Seow Guat Eng

We plan to meet again: She hoped to meet Gordon and John:

and I thought I would do a family tree search

 to see how many relatives I have who are descended from Seow Chye Watt:  

Turns out to be many more than I thought!!!

Obviously I have not kept the data up to date... WORK IN PROGRESS!

Labour Day Bush Bashing becomes Impromptu Tour

Fortified with a hearty Labour Day breakfast at Boomerang Cafe and

a serious cappuccino from Toby's Estate I was all ready for some serious bush bashing.

I got to the oval at Bukit Brown and got ready my barang barang. As I looked around for familiar faces and peeled my eyes, scanning the horizon for fallen trees I saw a family of 4 looking a bit lost.

As they wandered around looking even more "loster", I went up to them and asked "Are you here for a tour?"

"No" they replied.

"Do you have relatives here?" I asked.

"No" they replied.

So they were just vaguely interested in the place.

 I volunteered to bring them or a mini guided tour.

As they had a car we did an expanded route...

Tan Chor Nam, Tong MingHui connection

Mrs Seow Chye Watt aka Yeo Buay Neo (+ Seow Poh Quee, reference his wife Mdm Huang Shan Chiung and her father Rev Huang Nai Shong), Seow Poh Leng connection

Tan Kim Ching , ref his Changi tomb, 

       ref Anna and the King of Siam, 

       (+ Cheang Hong Lim, ref LBK trio)

Bangali Singh: Sikh guards at Chew Geok Leong's living tomb - Block 3 Division D

We chatted with voluble Tombkeeper Queenie, who says Magistrate Chew Geok Lan escaped from China to Singapore to avoid beheading. (Mrs Blackburn is Malaysian Chinese from Trengganu, Heng Hwa if I remember correctly, and understood more of the Queenie chat than I did)

Tan Boo Liat, ( Sun Yet San, KouMingTang connection)

and the Lim Quins, and the connection of Lim Boon Keng's wife Margaret Huang Tuan Keng, sister  to Mdm Huang Shan Chiung (wife of Seow Poh Quee.)

We ended at Tan Bin Ching.

They promised me copies of the photographs taken today and said they would be back.

Ms Blackburn, Mas Blackburn,                      Mrs Blackburn Mr Blackburn

Mr Blackburn is Ass Prof NIE, Humanities & Social Studies Education.

After that I did a wee bit of bush bashing between Tay Koh Yan & Fang Shan.

Tan Teck Guan Building

Video Clip Tan Teck Guan Building

Tan Teck Guan Building, located at 16A College Road, was built in 1911 to add to the existing facilities of the Straits and Federated Malay States Government Medical School (later known as King Edward VII College of Medicine). It underwent renovations in 1985 and was gazetted as a national monument on 2 December 2002.

History
The construction of Tan Teck Guan Building was funded by a $15,000 donation from Tan Chay Yan, a Chinese philanthropist in Malacca and one of the earliest rubber planters in British Malaya. The building was named after his father, who was the third son of Tan Tock Seng. It was officially opened on 23 June 1911 by then Acting Governor of the Straits Settlements, E. L. Brockman. It served as the medical school's administrative block and housed various offices, a library, a reading room, a lecture room and a pathology museum.

In 1926, when the building adjacent to it - today the College of Medicine Building - was built for the medical school, the Department of Anatomy took over Tan Teck Guan Building. In subsequent years, it also housed the electron microscope unit and the histology laboratory.

During World War II, the laboratory in the building was used by the Japanese to develop biological weapons.

Syonan (Singapore) HQ

Formed in 1942, by Ryoichi Naito, Unit 9420 had approximately 1,000 personnel based at the Raffles Medical University. The unit was commanded by Major General Kitagawa Masataka and supported by the Japanese Southern Army Headquarters.

There were two main sub units: the "Kono Unit", which specialized in malaria, and "Umeoka Unit", which dealt with the plague. In addition to disease experiments, this facility served as one of the main rat catching and processing centers.

The Oka 9420 Unit in Singapore

By Admin

by Chew Yong Jack

As a subordinate unit of the infamous Japanese biological warfare Unit 731, the Oka (岡inkanji or Steel) 9420 unit based in Singapore had been not much more than a mere footnote in history. In fact, in Daniel Barenblatt’s “Plague Upon Humanity” (Harper Collins, 2004), which got me acquainted to this little known factoid, it was merely mentioned that:

The [731] network ultimately included secret bases along the Russian border …. Singapore, the Philippines and New Guinea (p. 36).

and

[Ryoichi] Naito was himself a top university professor who had been director of the Unit 731 branch unit in Singapore, a civilian cohort of [Shiro] Ishii, with special expertise in the analysis of human blood (p. 47)

With the rather limited primary materials I had come by so far, I can make no claims of being able to shed much more light on the subject. However, a picture (incomplete and hazy as it doubtlessly is) can be pieced together of the inner-workings and operations of Oka 9420.

Origins

Ostensibly, Oka 9420 acted as a medical unit attached to the 25^th Japanese Army occupation force in Singapore. Its first traceable contribution to the Japanese military administration in Singapore was in the inaugural Gunsei Geppou (軍政月報) issued in March 1942 which contained a section warning of the dangers of an outbreak of para-typhus in Singapore. It is quite likely that the public health warnings posted by the military administration in the Syonan Times under the – with hindsight of course – whimsically titled “M.A.D Notices” (M.A.D being the unfortunate acronym for “Military Administration Department”) also involved inputs from Oka 9420.

Oka 9420’s facilities were located in the Singapore General Hospital as well as the College of Medicine Building area along College Road. According to former Minister for Social Affairs Mr Othman Wok - who was a lab assistant tasked to remove fleas from rats, the bubonic plague laboratory was situated in the Tan Teck Guan building (Straits Times, 19/09/1991).

Command Structure

Oral accounts by those who worked for Oka 9420 offer at most a hazy conception of its structure. Mr Othman Wok, who had trapped rats for the unit’s laboratories, mentioned that he was under two colonels and four senior privates (ibid). Mr Chelliah Thurairajah Retnam, a local volunteer of the British Royal Army Medical Corp before working for Oka 9420’s “Analyst Department”, mentioned reporting to a “Major Nato” (National Archives, Accession No 579).

Assuming that Mr Retnam had not mistakenly referred to Oka 9420’s director Ryoichi Naito, a civilian researcher, as “Major Nato”, it was quite likely that military personnel had resided in the middle tiers of the command structure. Sandwiching this group would be director Naito at the top and local staff members like Mr Retnam and Mr Othman Wok at the base.

It is not clear how many locals were in Oka 9420’s employ. Mr Retnam recalled that in the “Analyst Department” that he had worked for, there were about fifty to sixty local staff members – including future luminaries such as Eddie Barker (former Minister of Law) and Phay Seng Whatt (former Chairman, Public Service Commission). There were also an unknown number of those who worked on a part-time basis for specific assignments like rat catching. Mr Othman Wok estimated that about forty were involved in trapping rats for the unit (Straits Times, 19/09/1991).

Known Activities

Mr Othman Wok’s experience in working with Oka 9420 was possibly the most revealing of the sinister nature of the unit’s work here in Singapore. Responsible for picking fleas from rats, he also witnessed how the fleas were fed blood of rats infected by plague, as he described below:

Each flea was then put in a test-tube, which was inverted over a rat’s stomach which had been shaved [sic] of its fur. The flea then fed on the rat, which had been injected with plague serum (ibid).

During my face-to-face interview with Mr Othman Wok on 7 March 2006, he revealed that the “research team” was careful to dispose of the carcasses of infected rats. He said that he had learned from a driver assigned to the unit that the fleas bred as vectors for plague were transported to Thailand. At the time, Mr Othman Wok was unaware of the purpose of his work and it was not until after the war when he read that the Japanese “had bombed Chongqing with bottles of fleas”* that he realised the implications of his work for Oka 9420 (ibid).

When I asked him what happened to Oka 9420’s facilities at Singapore General Hospital after the Japanese surrendered, Mr Othman Wok said he had heard that the unit destroyed all evidence of its existence even before the surrender.

In contrast to Mr Othman Wok’s experience, Mr Retnam’s work with the “Analyst Department” was apparently far removed from Oka 9420’s more sinister activities. His work with the unit only included malaria prevention while he was in Singapore and the supplying and ensuring the sanitation of water for his assignment in Kachanaburi, Thailand. Unit 9420 had the necessary water filtration equipment and expertise to supply water to the worksite at River Kwai.

From Mr Retnam’s description, Oka 9420’s work was thus nothing more than the prevention of water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid (National Archives, Accession No 579). The only experience common to both Mr Retnam and Mr Othman Wok was the physical abuse at the hands of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers who were typically high-handed and brusque in their treatment of locals.

However, it should be noted that the different experiences by both men actually illustrated themodus operandi of the Japanese biological warfare programme. After all, Ishii’s Unit 731 had as its official designation “Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit of the Kwantung Army”. Ishii himself had also made his mark in the Japanese army through his invention of a portable water filtration device for usage in the field (Barenblatt, 2004).

A Question to Ponder

One big question left unanswered could be whether Oka 9420 had restricted its activities in Singapore to sample collection, research and breeding of fleas as vectors.

Could Oka 9420 have used the initial chaos during the Japanese invasion of Malaya and Singapore as an opportunity to conduct field testing as it had done in China (where attacks were known to have been conducted in Ningbo, Zhejiang and Jiangsu)? Could the public health warning for infectious diseases issued under the “M.A.D. Notices” in fact be caused by such sinister activities?

Given these unanswered questions, this short write-up is but no more than a tiny scratch on the surface of a topic which deserves further study by historians and history enthusiasts more resourceful than myself. While I harbour no expectations that my write-up could lead to further research by others, I do hope that it can play a small part in generating greater awareness and interest in Oka 9420.

In 1982, it was decided that the medical school would move to the Kent Ridge campus, and the Ministry of Health (MOH) proposed to restore and renovate the College of Medicine Building. In August 1985, the Preservation of Monuments Board recommended that Tan Teck Guan Building be preserved too. Both buildings were then renovated at a cost of S$14.4 million. When it was officially re-opened on 14 August 1987, Tan Teck Guan Building was occupied by MOH, the Academy of Medicine and the College of General Practitioners.

Description
An architect by the name of Draper designed the two-storey building with a Georgian façade and neo-classical details. Its main entrance has an ornate archway supported by Doric columns. The upper level of the building has Ionic columns.

It was originally made mainly from timber trusses, floors and joists that sat on brick. However, much of the timber was badly infested with termites by the time of the building’s renovation in 1985 and had to be replaced with steel structures. Similarly, the timber window frames were replaced with new matching wooden frames. The roof tiles were also replaced with matching new ones from France. While the building’s internal granite staircase and balustrade were retained, two brick walls were removed to allow for flexible office installation.

(In 1912 the medical school received a large donation $120,000 from the King Edward VII Memorial end started by Dr Lim Boon Keng)

Tan Kim Ching Property Sale

Choose your language:  English |  中文(简体) |  Bahasa Melayu

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884-1942), 22 November 1913, Page 9

PROPERTY SALE.

The Straits Times, 11 December 1913, Page 9

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