The Long and Winding Road

Singapore of a hundred years ago was home to a community of Japanese, which numbered as many as three and a half thousand at its height. The community began forming in the 1870s with the arrival of the karayuki-san — unfortunate women from impoverished parts of Japan, primarily Shimabara and Amakusa, who came in large numbers to work in the vice trade. With their arrival, businesses catering to the needs of the karayuki-san followed. Sundry shopkeepers, photographers, drapers, doctors, and dentists, soon populated the area close to where the brothels employing the karayuki-san were located at Malay, Hylam, Malabar and Bugis Streets — where Bugis Junction stands today. Such was the concentration of Japanese businesses in the area that Middle Road became the community’s ‘Central Street’, or ‘Chuo Dori‘. A Japanese Club also featured at Selegie Road, along with an elementary school, a permanent building for which was erected at Waterloo Street in 1920 . A cemetery was established for the community at Chuan Hoe Avenue, which is the Japanese Cemetery Park today.

The rising tensions between Britain and Imperial Japan in the 1920s and 1930s cast a shadow over the community, with its members viewed with increasingly suspicion. Japan’s actions in Manchuria in 1931 and in China from 1937 would sow further distrust and lead to boycotts of Japanese businesses. As Japan’s ambitions grew, a number in the community were recruited to carry out intelligence gathering activities, although a number in the community continued in very much the same way as they had. Some had in fact become well integrated within the intercultural social fabric of cosmopolitan Singapore, especially those whose links to the island spanned several generations. Many in the group benefited from being educated in the colony’s excellent mission schools and became conversant both in English and the colony’s commonly spoken languages such as Malay.

Among the beneficiaries of a Singapore mission school education were members of the Tsutada family, who were based at Bras Basah Road. The family’s patriarch, Kenri (also spelled Kenry or Henry), was a dentist who advertised the ability to speak English and Malay. A staunch Christian, Kenri was a second-generation Methodist who had been educated at Singapore’s Anglo-Chinese School or ACS before moving back to Japan where he received his training as a dentist. Having qualified as a dentist, Kenri moved back to Singapore, setting up his practice at 74 Bras Basah Road at the end of a row of shophouses right across the road from the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Good Shepherd. Kenri’s motivation in coming back to Singapore was to provide what was to become a large family of at least nine children with a Christian upbringing and a multi-cultural outlook.

Like Kenri, his children were sent to the colony’s mission schools. Sons went to Kenri’s alma mater, ACS, while his daughters attended Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, before most headed back to Japan to complete their tertiary education. A son Peter, however, stayed on in Singapore to qualify as a dentist at Singapore’s King Edward VII College of Medicine.

The Tsutada’s provided their children with an upbringing that was typical of a privileged upper middle-class family in Singapore. They had music lessons and participated in sports. Kenri Tsutada was after all, a man with sufficient means. Besides running a dental practice, he maintained several business interests, including one importing health equipment. Kenri also owned the 180-acre Chitose rubber plantation in Lim Chu Kang, and a pineapple canning plant in North Bridge Road.

While he may have seemed to have had his hands full, Kenri Tsutada also found time for ministry. Prayer meetings for Japanese members of the Methodist congregation were held at his Bras Basah Road home and clinic. He also held the ambition of growing the Japanese congregation in Singapore and eventually building a Japanese Methodist Church, and persevered with his mission even after the sudden death of his wife in 1926, aged 43. He was also known to hold family prayer sessions that lasted hours.

Kenri Tsutada’s efforts would have a significant impact on his children. His second son, David Tsugio, answered the call of God while reading law in Cambridge. David, who was imprisoned for his beliefs by Japanese authorities from 1942 to 1943, went on to establish the Immanuel General Mission in Tokyo and was known as the “John Wesley of Japan”.

War and a Stern Test of Faith

With tensions rising between Japan and Britain, the Tsutadas made a painful decision to move back to Japan not long before the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and Britain during the Second World War. One of Kenri Tsutada’s sons, Joseph Nanao[1], would however find himself back in the area as an interpreter with the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War during their Malaya and Singapore campaign. While in Singapore, Jospeh sought out several of his former teachers, schoolmates, and neighbours.

One of Joseph’s classmates at ACS was Heng Chiang Ki, who thought of Joseph as a “nice boy” and an “ardent Christian”. He recalled that Joseph made an unsuccessful attempt to look for him at his Emerald Hill home in the early days of the Japanese Occupation but had left the address of his Lloyd Road quarters with Heng’s mother. With the address Heng was able to meet with Joseph. While Joseph’s intentions for initiating the meeting were not clear, the attempt was made during the two-week period of the Sook Ching purge early in the Occupation. Heng’s absence during Joseph’s visit had in fact been due to Heng having to report to a Sook Ching screening centre. While it does not seem like Joseph had a hand in Heng’s release, he was known to have given protection to at least two other during the purge. In one known instance, Joseph issued a protection certificate to Thio Chan Bee, his teacher at ACS, who recalled this in his memoirs, “Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man” [2]. 

Another person who was a beneficiary of Joseph’s kindness was Dr Lee Choo Neo, Singapore’s first practising female doctor and the aunt of Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Dr Lee had her clinic and home at No 74-3 Bras Basah Road, just two doors down from Kenri Tsutada’s dental practice and residence at No 74 and 74-1. Her adopted children were playmates of the Tsutada children. Beside extending protection during Sook Ching to Dr Lee, her immediate family, and the extended Lee family who had taken shelter at Dr Lee’s clinic, Joseph was also had a hand in providing Dr Lee with a pass which allowed her to keep and continue using her car, which was essential to her medical practice.[3]

What was not apparent to those who Joseph protected was his state of mind at the time. Joseph Tsutada had in fact been in a state of torment in the wake an incident that had occurred just weeks earlier involving a downed New Zealand pilot that was weighing heavily on his conscience.

Joseph Tsutada acted as an interpreter in the interrogation of the pilot named Paul Michael’ who was captured shortly after Kuala Lumpur fell in mid-January 1942. The pilot’s refusal to divulge information desired by the interrogators would see him condemned to a senseless death. Much to Joseph’s horror, he and a fellow officer were given the unthinkable task of beheading the pilot, which went against Joseph’s Christian beliefs. The task was also made harder as Joseph had established a with the pilot. Joseph had learnt that the pilot shared his Methodist faith and had spent the entire night before he was given the order by the condemned airman’s side in an act of Christian fellowship.

As Joseph faced his biggest test of faith, struggling with the thought of having to carry out a act that went against every grain of his beliefs on a man who shared his faith, Paul came to accept that his death was inevitable. Through Paul’s persuasion — he told Joseph that he would rather die at his new-found friend’s hands than those of any other, reminding Joseph that disobedience was likely to result in Joseph suffering the same fate — Joseph committed an act that he was to burden him for the rest of his life.

The guilt and regret was a huge emotional burden for Joseph to carry and this could have been a factor that motivated Joseph’s actions during Sook Ching. He would find the strength to confront some of the demons haunting him on the anniversary of the incident in February 1943, while stationed in Port Dickson in Negri Sembilan. Making a confession to the Port Dickson Methodist Church, Joseph gave an extraordinary testimony that was filled with emotion and contrition, in which he described in detail the circumstances that led to the act for which he felt a deep sense of remorse and shame. Concluding his testimony, Joseph said: “Paul’s face is ever before me. My conscience tells me I should not have done this, and I ask your prayer on my behalf that God may forgive me if I have trespassed His law in the course of my duties.”[4]

Joseph Tsutada asked that his testimony be made public when peace returned. He continued to attend services at the Port Dickson church until he was posted out a few months before the Japanese August 1945 surrender. While his name appears on the South East Asia Command’s records of war crimes suspects – he was listed as a suspect in the execution of Paul Michael, there appears to be no record of him being prosecuted. He return to Japan and is thought to have passed away in the 1970s.

Kenri Tsutada’s Lasting Legacy

Among the tragedies of the Second World War in Singapore, the atrocities associated with the Imperial Japanese Army are among the most shocking. Sook Ching alone resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands. It had left a lasting impact that is still felt by many families.

These events have also overshadowed the many contributions that were made by the members of Singapore’s pre-war community of Japanese, whose stories have been consigned into the back pages of history. Many, like the Tsutadas lived as many of our grandparents and great grandparents did, as members of a wider Singaporean society, contributing in many ways to making Singapore what it is today. With the outbreak of war, many in the community faced a moral dilemma of serving more than one master, as Joseph Tsutada did.

There remains little doubt however of the contributions made by Kenri Tsutada and his family, and the legacy he has left from his time in Singapore. War may have disrupted or even put an end to some of what Kenri may have set out to do in Singapore, but the work that he started in his humble Bras Basah home and clinic more than a hundred years ago continues to this very day. Many of Kenri’s descendants are currently active in Christian ministry and the dissemination of the very values he imparted to his children in Singapore all those years ago.   

[1] The name “Nanao” indicates that Joseph was the seventh child.

[2] Joseph’s Japanese name is recorded as ‘Nanao’ in Thio Chan Bee’s memoirs, and ‘Nanoa’ in an oral history interview. 

[3] From an account contained in “Chinese Women’s Association One Hundred Fabulous Years” in which Joseph is identified as “Nacheng”.

[4] Rev. ‘J. W. A. Kadirgamar, A Wartime Tragedy Full of Christian Heroism. New Zealand Methodist Times, March 2, 1946, Page 333.