500 words from...is a series of guest posts from authors writing about
Asia, and published by Asia-based, or Asia-focussed, publishing houses, in which
they talk about their latest books. Here Ann Bennett writes about Bamboo Island, the second book in her World
War II South East Asian trilogy. Last
year, in the Year of the Horse, the first book, Bamboo Heart, won the inaugural Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar New
Year. The trilogy is published by Monsoon, a company specialising in books that
open windows onto South East Asian history.
So: over to Ann…
Bamboo
Island is the story of a British ex-pat, Juliet Crosby, a rubber planter’s
wife. It opens in 1962. Juliet has been living a
reclusive life on her plantation since the Second World War robbed her of
everyone she loved. The sudden appearance of a young woman from Indonesia
disrupts her lonely existence and stirs up unsettling memories. Together they
embark on a journey to Singapore and to Bamboo
Island, in Indonesia, to uncover secrets buried for more than twenty
years.
The idea for the trilogy came from
researching my father’s wartime experiences. He fought in the Malaya campaign
and was taken prisoner at the Fall of Singapore. He worked on the Thai-Burma
railway and survived the sinking of a hell-ship off the Philippines. In the
course of my research, I read a great deal about the Malaya Campaign and the
Fall of Singapore. I was struck by how the lives of everyone in the region were
affected by the war and the Japanese occupation. I read horrific stories of
massacres, of starvation, of unbelievable cruelty, but also amazing tales of
sacrifice, hope and survival.
After I’d written Bamboo Heart, the story of a prisoner on the Death Railway, I
wanted to go back to that time and place to write about the effect of the war
and occupation from a different perspective. I chose to write from the
viewpoint of an ordinary woman who had made a life in Malaya, but whose life
was transformed by the war.
I wanted to show how the war engulfed the
region, how it destroyed families and lives. It was important for my central
character, Juliet, to be involved in her own personal struggle before the
invasion changed everything. Juliet travels from London to Penang with her
sister Rose, initially for a visit, but both soon decide to settle in Malaya.
Juliet marries a rubber planter and travels with him to his estate, but she
quickly discovers that all is not quite as might first have appeared. Her life
is already in turmoil when war breaks out.
Through Juliet’s eyes the reader witnesses
the horrors of the Japanese occupation of Singapore: an infamous massacre at a
local hospital, the Alexandra Hospital; the horrific Sook Ching (elimination by purification) which saw the murder of
many Chinese men; the brutal treatment of internees in the notorious prison
camp, Changi.
The sinking of the civilian transport ship,
the Vyner Brooke, and the massacre of
survivors on a beach on Bangka Island, off Sumatra, were the inspiration for the
sinking of a fictitious ship, the Rajah
of Sarawak, which is central to the plot of Bamboo Island.
My aim, in Bamboo Island, as in Bamboo
Heart, was to bring the dreadful events of the Second World War to life
through the story of one character.
I’ve travelled a fair amount in far flung outposts
of the former British Empire since my very first trip from Bangkok to Bali in
1985. I then stayed in crumbling guesthouses in India, Burma, Sri Lanka and
Malaysia which would once have been the sumptuous homes of British expats.
This kindled my interest in the people who, in the days of Empire, travelled
half way across the world to make a new life in the East. That’s how Juliet
first came into my mind - sitting on the veranda of her decaying house, looking
back over the years, thinking about the people she loved and lost, and how the
war and the Japanese occupation transformed her life.
