My grandmother, Dorothy Forster Nixon 1895-1972 Changi Civilian Internee

Secretary of the Kuala Lumpur Book club from 1937-66; internee at Changi; Head of Women's Corp there; official cricket scorer for Selangor. She is actually listed in the Malaysia Who's Who for 1963. Read about her here: Looking for Mrs.Peel. I talked to Shelagh Rogers of CBC  radio in January 2008 about Dorothy and my research into her life for a radio play. I've been reading everything I can (can afford to buy on Abebooks) about Colonial Malaya. And just as I feel ready to hit the keyboard and write my play, I receive a book called The Trial of Sumida Haruzo, a chronicle of the Double Tenth Incident and I realize there's ANOTHER story here: My grandmother's key part in Changi and the Double Tenth (where civilian POWS and others were subjected to torture, including waterboarding) has been written out of history. This book, published in 1950, mentions her a lot, but it has to. She supplied an affidavit to the War Crimes Tribunal. I suspect the affidavit was abridged. Why? My grandmother spent 6 of her 7 months in solitary and that might have been considered irrelevant, since she wasn't, then, a witness, to the others being tortured. Since 1946, Elizabeth Choy, Dr. Cecily Williams and Freddy Bloom (who all endured Double Tenth but weren't put in solitary) have all written books and/or had books written about them which (for some reason or other) never mention my grandmother even when discussing events she was directly involved with. Choy, who was physically beaten and given electric shock, received the OBE. The British government wouldn't pay to get my grandmother's teeth fixed. They were bashed out during the Double Tenth. Many modern scholars refer to the memoirs of Choy,Bloom and Williams. My grandmother's story is almost ignored. In fact, in Out in the Midday Sun by Margaret Shennan about the British in Malaya, published in 2000, Choy, Williams and Bloom are praised and Dorothy is mentioned but once and her name is misspelled, Dorothy Dixon! Yet, my grandmother was Women's Representative at Changi when the Double Tenth came down and, of all the women at Changi,she was most involved in the alleged spy incident.Indeed, many more women would have been arrested and tortured had my grandmother not taken so much care 'covering her tracks'. My play explains. Here are excerpts from her Changi diary and her unpublished memoirs so this is going to change.

CLICK HERE FOR DRAWING SHE MADE OF HERSELF AT CHANGI.

Click here for the story of Thomas Kitching "Life and Death at Changi - and about the strong connection between our two families