Frank Donovan Bisseker

Before direct election was introduced in the Straits Settlements and British Malaya, the Government appointed members of the business community and social elites to reflect the views and opinions of civil society at meetings of the Legislative Council. Known as unofficial members, they were part of the legislative body who did not hold government office. This appointment was prevalent not only in the Straits Settlements but throughout the British Empire and later, the Commonwealth. The Senior Unofficial Member was the highest-ranking unofficial member of the Council and he would be tasked with representing the opinions of all unofficial members to the Governor. 

Frank Donovan Bisseker was a respected member of the business community in the Far East, being resident for several years and a frequent visitor to Singapore and other business centres. For 25 years, he was associated with commercial enterprises and had sat on the boards of various companies. Bisseker came to Penang in September 1939 as General Manager of the Eastern Smelting Company and soon, he was elected as a Senior Unofficial Member to represent the Penang Chamber of Commerce on the Legislative Council in Singapore. The appointment was for three years from January 1940. 

Then came the merciless pounding of Penang from the Japanese air raids in December 1941. Bisseker was evacuated together with the rest of the European community on the island. On his arrival in Singapore, he made representations to the Government with a view to ensure that there would be lessons learnt from the failed defence of Penang; that there should not be a repetition in other Malayan towns of what took place in the Northern Settlement. It is all water under the bridge now but in a radio broadcast from Singapore on 20 December 1941, he gave a rather clear account of what had happened in Penang: all the poundings received at the hands of the Japanese bombers and the civilian population's subsequent reaction by running away to Singapore or the hills in the interior.

It is one of the earnest requests that I have made to the authorities already that menfolk and womenfolk of Penang who have seen and who know shall be posted to Singapore and to the other towns of Malaya in order to let the populations in those towns profit from our Penang experience. I have told them how the civil administration functioned in an emergency and have endeavoured to suggest improvements.

I have told them of the inadequacy of food distribution to a secondary point only. I have told them that it is essential to control labour and transport if the towns of Malaya are to function in extreme circumstances. I have told them of the futility of dual control and of the necessity, consequently, to eliminate those bodies which will not take orders from the Government. I have told them of the importance of the medical side where it concerns sewage and disease prevention. I have told them what I know to be essential in the strengthening of those units responsible for civil order. I have told them of the necessity of maintaining permanent touch with the leaders of all communities. I have told them of the need of reserve fighting equipment.

I have not only told them those things - I have urged with all the emphasis at my command that what I have said shall not be just listened to, but that immediate action shall be taken in an attempt to profit from our knowledge.

You may say and you will say that there is much more I should tell them. That is true and there is much more that I have said, but this talk is upon the issues which I have mentioned - issues with which we are all individually directly concerned and I am not here to go off into a dissertation upon the larger issues.

For obvious reasons there is much that I have had to say which it will be clear to the intelligent I cannot possibly repeat to you in a broadcast, but I give the most positive assurance now to my fellow townsmen and townswomen that your experiences and the immediate cause of them and of that which led up to them have been frankly and forcefully laid before the authorities.

I have not minced my words; and there can be a great lessening in the chances of a repetition of what you all have gone through and what I have gone through if the authorities will take immediately the essential steps necessary to prevent a repetition of what has been an entirely unnecessary episode.

And so I say to all my listeners, fight in the manner for which you are best suited. Your civil defence units are staunch and brave. Join them and help where and when you can. Have nothing to do with rumour and those whose pleasure it is to go about remarking 'they say'. Fight we must and fight we shall; that is the world that shall be in every man's mind day in, day out, until victory is won. There are no craven spirits in Singapore and the other towns of Malaya, even though the traitors and the rumour mongers will have made people believe that there are. 

The men and women of these towns are staunch member of the British Empire all under the Union Jack and to the Union Jack it is that we look up until with pride in Victory we see it waving at the masthead over free men. 

Bisseker began the broadcast by saying that he was speaking at his own request for the purpose of telling the truth because he hated rumour and loathed the words "they say", and he would try and give his listeners some idea of what bombing and machinegunning of an eastern city with its intermingled communities meant.

He said that he spoke without recrimination except where it could be of value in making preparations for helping to repel any attempt the Japanese might make to enter the cities, and he was addressing "those with stout hearts, with the determination to leave no stone unturned in organising in such a way as to make it certain that nothing is left to chance, as such is the true spirit of the menfolk and the womenfolk of the towns of Malaya." He then continued:

What I am about to say is not what has been said to me by others - it is what I know from my own personal experiences, nothing I shall say tonight is hearsay. I hope I have many listeners as there is much to learn. I shall speak plainly. Before the first intensive raid, Japanese aeroplanes in considerable force flew over and round Penang. They were watched by crowds. When a large force of enemy aircraft was seen approaching on a subsequent occasion, the occasion of the first actual raid, again the crowds thought that the same thing as had happened before was about to take place.

They were rudely disillusioned as, on this first occasion when Penang was bombed, it was no demonstration flight to trick the people into the streets as had been the earlier flights; that act had been performed already so that down upon the crowded population gazing into the sky came a rain of bombs causing innumerable and unnecessary casualties because the population had failed to take the first elementary precaution taught them so arduously by the A.R.P. leaders right from the beginning of the war. They stood up and watched instead of lying on the ground; and here I have to say something which I have not actually seen myself but something which I have been told by four different doctors attending the wounded.

You must take my word for it that it is accurate; I know the four doctors and I know what they say is right. They told me that an enormous percentage of the casualties were suffering from wounds above the level of the tops of their legs and there is no doubt about it that a great number of the wounded would have been well and safe today if they had lain down on the ground immediately the bombs started dropping. This raid set alight a great part of Penang. It was followed the next two days by promiscuous high-explosive-gunning but it is good to remark that casualties were infinitesimal.

The population sadly but truly had learned its lesson and you here in Singapore and in the other cities of Malaya must learn your lesson from the sufferings and the torture of the casualties in Penang. When and if the time should come and you are caught away from your prepared protection, if you cannot get into anything lie down where you are. Take a grip on yourself and stick it out flat on your stomachs till the raiders have passed. You may get up a bit shaken but you won't be lifted up, unless you are amazingly unfortunate, a scarred and shattered human being.

These three raids, to all intents and purposes, bombed Penang into impotency - and why? For the sad and true reason that the civilian population evaporated in a most amazing manner. The town became deserted: the countryside packed. No town can function without the essential services and if those in the various strata of the essential services are not there to do their bit, it does not take a great deal of intelligence to realise what chaos and what complete disruption can ensue - looting, pollution, dirt stink, debris, rats, blood - innumerable horrors which cannot be mentioned. This took place in Penang.

There was no labour for days; there was no transport for days; the light was there, the water was there, the food was there; I can think of nothing of outstanding importance which was not there except manpower essential for the functioning of any city. Normal human fear caused this evacuation to the countryside. Fear is natural to everybody but it goes in degrees. There are some who have had great experience of warfare and, although afraid, they know the need for stifling their natural desires.

Many in such cities as these have had no such experience. They rely quite naturally on the more experienced so it is essential to arrange for the experienced to be sprinkled among them less experienced brethren of every race and community as it is by such means that a repetition of the horrors of our experiences in Penang can best be prevented. This has to be accomplished and by us. It is up to us. We people from Penang have seen and learned but it is not enough that you my listeners should be satisfied by just hearing what I have to tell you. You have to act.

Nobody is suggesting Singapore is doomed or anything so demoralisingly untrue but we have got to fight to save it and fighting must be our motto from now on - and it is not just those few at the head who can accomplish all that is necessary: it is you who must act.

By this I do not mean that the authorities can be idle; on the contrary they must act too and, in so doing, they must no longer maintain official prejudice and the time service roster. They must act with the capable man at their command, the man who will obey the order without hesitation.

The Prime Minister told Great Britain after Dunkerque how serious was the situation then but he did not say that he was going to save Great Britain; he said that he was going to do all within his power. But he told the people of Great Britain that it was up to them and it was through them that Britain would be saved.

I am not pretending that Penang is a Dunkerque but I am most emphatically asserting that it is through you that Singapore and the other cities of Malaya are going to be saved. One other point on this count. The importance of Malaya in the Far East is so obvious and so well known as to need no comment but have you realised that if we in any way fail in our duties in the civil defence of Malaya we are failing our mothers and fathers, our brothers and sisters, our comrades of every race in other countries of the Empire.

That shall never be said. There is no question of East or West. Easterners and Westerners of the British Empire with out gallant Allies are brothers in this fight.

We must stick together and the leaders of our various communities must keep together now as well as in the most dire emergency as it is by such means that the masses know that is required of them and so are able to act. Where is an army without leadership? Where will be the peoples of this country if their leaders do not keep together?

I said at the commence of my remarks that I hate rumour. In the first day of my arrival in Singapore, I heard the most fantastic and cruel rumours. I know of a woman who has been sneered at because her menfolk "ran away" in Penang. Ridiculous, unmannerly, un-British. I wish I could meet that sneering man face to face. The civilians did not evacuate Penang. They had no desire to evacuate. The evacuation to the best of my belief was a military move about which neither you nor I knew anything. [My comment: Of course, he meant only the European civilians. He couldn't be referring to the Asiatic population that was left behind in Penang to fend for themselves when the Europeans - the military garrison included - suddenly vanished from the island within a matter of two or three days.]

We had to come: we were useless where we were. We wanted to stay and fight it out and if there had been defences behind which we could have fought side by side with the trained defence we should be there now in exactly the same way as the civilian population in Hong Kong is there, fighting in defence of the island side by side with the men of the Navy, the Army and of the Air Force behind prepared defences. There has been no cowardly "larrying" and there never will be and right up to the last moment there were the most heroic efforts on the part of the passive defence units of Penang.

In considering the remarks I am about to make on the passive defence units, first of all I want you to ask yourselves one question. Is it logical to expect that any organisation of any description can be 100 percent, perfect upon the occasion of its first experience of the purpose for which it is actually built up? Can any of us run our businesses 100 per cent successfully from the opening day?

Experience is essential before perfection can be attained but even so the passive defence units under their first dreadful attack stood up to an extent which amazed me personally and amazed the many who saw them.

By saying this I do not intend to convey that I did not think the passive defence units would live up to their peace-time reputations, but I am saying that the measure of effective efficiency was more than high - it was magnificent and as there is no reason to suppose anything but that the passive defence units in Singapore and the other towns of Malaya are equally staunch, you may have confidence in them to do what is expected of them and you may be sure that if the horrible time ever comes when Singapore and the other towns are forced to stand up to attack, it will not be long after the attack commences that these units will become completely efficient.

The A.R.P. worked till it dropped and until, to all intents and purposes, there was nobody in the city of Penang to serve. The A.F.S. was heroic, endeavouring to stem the full tide of fire ravaging the congested areas of the city. To describe what they were up against is not possible as nobody, without seeing it, can conceive what an Eastern city of such a nature is like when its houses, its rubber godowns and all the innumerable trading commodities in which a town as Penang deals are ablaze.

A soldier cannot fight without a weapon and a Fire Brigade cannot fight without equipment. That Penang burned is no fault of theirs. The A.F.S. was there but much of the equipment was badly despoiled by the first raid. Hoses riddled with shot are useless. The M.A.S. was no less magnificent. There were 606 casualties in the General Hospital at Penang. Every one of them had been dealt with and the hospital was even orderly less than 24 hours after the raid had taken place.

I maintain that this is clear evidence of foresight and organisation as no institution with 606 casualties rained upon it in a short period of time could have dealt with the situation in the manner the General Hospital did unless there had been foresight and organisation.

How were those 606 casualties carried to the hospital? They were taken there by the same means which you here in Singapore and in the other towns have organised and unless those means had stood up under the strain of actual war-fare, what was one could not have been accomplished.

The L.D.C. was staunch and loyal to a man. Their organisation proved itself also. They knew their job because they taught themselves to do it and when the time came they did it unflinchingly; and so I say that to all these units and to all these menfolk and womenfolk of the civilian population who have manned them, we in Penang shall be for ever grateful and you in Singapore and in the other towns of Malaya must be grateful for the opportunity of learning from them.

Obviously, the lessons were not learnt sufficiently well in Singapore because eventually the Japanese military overran the rest of the peninsula and had begun knocking at their backyard by the end of January 1942.