Thursday, July 29, 2010

Adnan's gruesome death
Adnan's fierce resistance and refusal to surrender even after being mortally wounded proved damaging to his ending at Japanese hands. Not satisfied with capturing him, the Japanese, angered over the casualties they suffered, dragged Adnan and hung him by his legs to a tree and repeatedly bayoneted him. The brutal torture, which also included repeatedly slitting his throat and leaving his mutilated body to hang and some said eventually burning it, was witnessed by one survivor of the Opium Hill battle, Corporal Yaakob. He escaped death by laying motionless amongst the layer of dead bodies.
World War II (Part 2)
In late 1941, Adnan was posted to Singapore. He brought his family with him and they lived in a big house off Pasir Panjang, an area reserved for officers in the Malay Regiment. When war became imminent, Adnan sent his family back to their hometown in Kajang, Selangor, in December 1941. It was a trying time for him as his wife was pregnant with their third child. When they bade him goodbye, it was the last time that his family set eyes on him.
World War II
When he was 23 years old, Adnan married Sophia Pakih Muda, a school teacher from his village. The couple had three children, two sons and a daughter. Adnan did not live to see his daughter being born and she died at infancy shortly after the fall of Singapore in 1942. Combining the hectic life of a career soldier and that of a father, Adnan was remembered by one of his son, Mokhtar, as "serious and fierce...yet had a good heart". Time with his sons was spent on walks or rugged games as he wanted them to grow up tough.

Introduction
Adnan Saidi (b. 1915, Selangor, Malaysia - d. 1942, Singapore), a lieutenant of the Malay Regiment's 1st Battalion, died fighting the Japanese in one of the fiercest battles in Singapore during WW II. A war hero, he led his men in the Battle of Opium Hill (Bukit Chandu), off Pasir Panjang, giving the Japanese a bitter taste of real combat so much so that when they captured him, they tortured him as revenge before killing him and burning his body. Adnan received medals posthumously for his courage while a memorial plaque was erected at Kent Ridge to commemorate the bravery of Adnan and his men. The memory of this brave soldier also lives on at Kranji War Memorial where his name is etched on the main memorial column wall of the Kranji War Cemetery.

By:Zhuang Yuan, Anthony, Manfred, Winson, Meng Yue

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