The Story of Sybil Kathigasu Tortured by the Japanese Army in Papan, Perak
Sybil Kathigasu was born Sybil Medan Daly on September 3, 1899, in Medan, Indonesia. She was the daughter of Joseph Daly, an Irish-Eurasian planter, while her mother, Beatrice Matilda Daly (née Martin), was a French-Eurasian midwife.
Her middle name, Medan, was given in memory of her birthplace in Medan, Indonesia. Although born in Indonesia, Sybil Kathigasu grew up and raised her family in Malaya, which is now known as Malaysia. She spent the longest period of her life in the state of Perak. For the information of our loyal readers at orangperak.com, Sybil Kathigasu trained as a nurse and midwife in Singapore at the age of 21. On January 7, 1919, she married Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu, an Indian doctor born in Taiping, Perak, of Ceylon Tamil descent (now Sri Lankan Tamil), at St. John's Cathedral in Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur. Since then, the couple operated a clinic on Brewster Road (now known as Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh, Perak, for 15 years. She was highly proficient in Cantonese and was a devout Catholic and vegetarian.
As fate would have it, when Malaya was occupied by the Japanese in 1942, Sybil Kathigasu and her family went into hiding by moving to the town of Papan, Perak. Papan is located about 20 km west of Ipoh, a town with a large Chinese community working as miners and traders. The Japanese army enjoyed hunting down the Chinese community and killing them due to long-standing historical grievances between China and Japan. Consequently, captured Chinese individuals were forced to build bridges and railways on the border of Thailand and Myanmar.
At that time, as we know, the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) put up fierce resistance against the Japanese advance in Sungai Siput, Tanjung Malim, Slim River, Papan, Pusing, Gopeng, and many other locations throughout Perak. Therefore, many soldiers required medical assistance due to battles with the Japanese army. Sybil Kathigasu and her husband, Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu, were no exception in providing medical treatment to the MPAJA. It reached a point where Sybil Kathigasu and her husband opened a secret underground clinic beneath their shophouse in Papan, Perak (GPS location: 4.51491, 101.01213). Many wounded MPAJA soldiers were brought to their clinic for treatment.
When the war with the Japanese army broke out, it was estimated that there were about 6,000 MPAJA guerrilla fighters resisting the Japanese. At the same time, the St. Michael's Institution building was used as a police and military headquarters by the Japanese. During that era, many Chinese leaders were beheaded without trial. Unfortunately, one day, Sybil Kathigasu and her husband were captured by the Japanese army. Both were tortured to leak information about the MPAJA after their activities in providing medical aid to anti-Japanese guerrillas were exposed. The Japanese, who did not know that Sybil Kathigasu could speak Cantonese, treated her as an outsider. Nevertheless, Sybil Kathigasu was tortured by having her fingernails pulled out, and needles were inserted under her fingers, piercing through where the nails had been removed.
Not stopping there, the cruelty of the Japanese army continued because Sybil Kathigasu remained silent and did not leak any information. Her legs were burned with hot iron rods, her body was beaten with bamboo sticks, and she was subjected to waterboarding until she was half-dead.
waterboarding torture until half-dead
As a result of the torture by the Japanese army, Sybil Kathigasu suffered spinal damage, broken bones, and a fractured jaw. After being tortured and failing to extract any information, she was imprisoned at Batu Gajah Prison in 1943. Fate favored her as she survived the war, which ended in August 1945. Three weeks after the war ended, Captain David of the British Army arrived in Malaya to search for Sybil Kathigasu at Batu Gajah Prison. Sybil Kathigasu was finally released and taken back to Papan, then immediately flown to England for further treatment. She eventually passed away at the age of 49 on June 4, 1948, at Lanark Hospital, Scotland, due to illnesses caused by old wounds to her jaw and other complications from the torture she endured. The Glasgow City Medical Center performed an autopsy on Sybil Kathigasu's body and found that her internal organs were severely damaged. Her remains were finally buried in the Lanark cemetery in Scotland.
Sybil Kathigasu's house in Papan, Perak (GPS: 4.51491, 101.01213)
In 1949, Sybil Kathigasu's remains were brought back to Ipoh and she was finally laid to rest in the Roman Catholic cemetery located next to St. Michael's Church and opposite the Main Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (now known as SMK Convent) on Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah), Ipoh. Her courage and resilience in refusing to leak information and secrets of the MPAJA were unmatched. She was willing to endure torture and did not leak any information even when tortured to the brink of death.
