Mary Kong Wah Kiew

Here are two of the pix of Mum giving awards during a girl guides' ceremony. 

In my post yesterday, I wrote that Mum was forced to marry at sixteen. I would like to elaborate this. Mum was twelve year old when the atrocious Japanese came to Borneo, and started their terrible rule. In my brother Henry's word and many older people, the Japanese were so sex hungry that they grabbed many girls and raped them.

Many of the people disguised the girls by cutting their hair short and binding their chest tightly so that the Japanese soldiers might mistake them to be boys. They smeared their faces with black soot so they looked ugly. They hid the girls in the wood shed when there was warning that the Japanese were coming their way. Mum suffered such extremities of indignities and fear..

When she was approaching sixteen, my great grand mother, Ah Tai came back from her force detour to India. She reckoned that it wasn't safe for Mum to be hidden in such a manner. Her plan was to get her married, hoping that the Japanese soldiers won't be so ruthless as to rape a married woman.

That was why Mum was forced to get married a complete stranger of another clan.

And why did Dad marry her? Well, this, I will leave for readers of my book to find out.