One Crowded Moment Of Glory

Malaysia 2019 National Book Award
Malaysia 2021 National Academic Publishing Association Award

Who were they fighting for? And why?

On October 9, 1943, a Saturday evening, the Kinabalu Guerillas sallied forth. The plan was a surprise attack on Tuaran police station to liberate that town from the hands of the Japanese. There followed a night attack on Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu).

October 12, 1943. With countless dead and injured from the guerrilla raid, the humiliated and furious Japanese swore to take full revenge. It is reported that on the way to Inanam the Japanese shot at anything that moved.

In World War II, a group of young ethnic Chinese in Malaysia (primarily Hakka) organized themselves into the “Kinabalu Guerrillas,” banding together with local islanders to resist the tyrannical Japanese military occupation. On an early Autumn evening their successful surprise attack temporarily liberated Jesselton. But they also drew a swift and brutal reprisal from the Japanese army that included the imprisonment and indiscriminate killing of locals and the massacre at Petagas.

After peace returned to Sabah, the colonial government in Petagas erected a war memorial and Sabah locals have long remembered the brave deeds of the Kinabalu Guerrillas, who embodied the spirit of their pursuit of freedom and of heroic struggle against a far more powerful enemy.

Publishers: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University Press, Hakka Affairs Council Taiwan Hakka Culture Development Center
Author: Danny Wong Tze Ken (Director, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya)
Chinese Translation: Chung Yi-ni
ISBN: 978-9865434465
Published: November 2021