Parallel Lives


by Dorothy Nixon

In October of 2008, I wrote a piece about my grandmother, Dorothy Forster Nixon, Changi Internee and Double Tenth victim during WWII,for the Facts and Arguments section of the Toronto Globe and Mail.

In early February, 2009, I received an email with the word CHANGI written in the subject line.

The email was from Joan Kitching H, who said that her father Thomas Kitching, the Chief Surveyor of Singapore, had died at Changi in 1944 and left behind a diary which had been transcribed in the 1990’s and published in 1998 by her younger brother, Brian.

The book has since become, in the opinion of some scholars, the definitive account of life at Changi Internment Camp, Men's side.

Mrs. H also said that the diary mentioned my grandmother once, when she took over as Women’s Rep from Dr. Cecily Williams.

As it happens, Mrs. H. lives in Montreal, just around the corner from where my mother lives! Her daughter lives near me, in an adjacent suburb. The Montreal Anglo community is quite predictable, it seems. And so was the Malaya Expat Community, in the 1920’s.

You see, my late father, Peter(who died a few years ago of Alzheimer's) and Mrs. H. lived parallel lives.

My grandparents, Robert and Dorothy Nixon ( he was a planter and she eventually became librarian of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club)and Thomas Kitching and wife Nora, lived in (or near) Kuala Lumpur in the 20’s. My father was born in Kuala Lumpur in October 24, 1922. Mrs. H was born two weeks later on November 8.(1922, with the publication of Eliot's Wasteland and Joyce's Ulysses is considered by some to be the birth of the Modern Age.) The Kitching children and Nixon children likely played together at family gatherings at the Royal Selangor Club for the next few years.

My father was sent away to school in England at the age of five (his sister Denise was only 4). Mrs. H. was sent away one year later at 6 with her older brother Colin who was 8. (Well, actually, they were brought to England by their mothers.) The Kitching Diary, Life and Death at Changi, describes how hard this was on their mother Nora. Of course, my play “Looking for Mrs. Peel” examines this issue, indeed, it is pivotal to the story.(The story goes my father tried to tie his mother to a chair when she was leaving and that he had 'a nervous breakdown'.)

Lucky for the Kitching kids, they spent holidays with a loving grandmother. My father and aunt were shuttled from one relation to another as no one wanted them.

My father was at Oxford (or in between prep school and Oxford) when the war broke out in 1939. Mrs. H had finished her schooling at Harrogate Ladies College in 1940.

Thomas and Nora Kitching returned to England that year and decided it was best if Joan and their youngest son, Brian, returned to Singapore with them in September of 1940. That it would be safer. (Colin was in the Navy.)

So, the Kitchings were in Singapore (without Colin) when all Hell broke loose in January, February 1942. The Diary describes the time vividly and Margaret Shennan’s book Out in the Midday Sun (2000) borrows a great deal from Kitching's account.

(This is the same book that mentions by grandmother once, in relation to the Double Tenth, and misspells her name, Dorothy Dixon -which, through another happy coincidence, induced me, in 2003, to start researching my grandmother's life.

Entering my own name "Dorothy Nixon" into the Google search engine I retrieved a reference to my grandmother as "the endlessly helpful sectretary of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club". A man was reviewing Out in the Midday Sun on Amazon.co.uk and correcting Shennan's typo (and omission) for she referred to my grandmother as "Dorothy Dixon" and mentioned her only in relation to the Double Tenth. There is no mention in the book of the Kuala Lumpur Book Club in the chapter on Culture.)

Brian is sent away soon after. Joan escapes but two weeks before capitulation on a boat and returns to England. Nora takes a later boat and is, sadly, lost at sea.

In England, Joan Kitching meets some Canadian soldiers, who have come to Christmas dinner with loads of food including a turkey, and she marries one of them, Mr.H,of course, in 1945. She comes to Canada in 1946 after the war and settles in Montreal.

My father joins the RAF Ferry Command in 1942(I have his training log which says RCAF -they were interchangeable it seems) and trains in Western Canada. As the Ferry Command is based in Montreal, he spends time there. He meets my mother. After the war, he returns to England to attend Oxford for a year and then returns to our island city in the St. Lawrence in 1947. He marries my mother in 1948.

See what I mean about 'parallel lives'?

I visited Mrs. H., a spry 86, a few days ago and she spoke of her early life in Malaya. Yes, they had a Chinese amah. There’s a picture somewhere. Of course, she cannot remember those play dates at the Royal Selangor Club. (All my own aunt recalls is one Christmas at the Club with all the colourful stuffed animals given out as gifts.) The Kitching Diary has a picture of Thomas, Nora, Colin and Joan Christmas 1925.

Mrs. H tells me how they brought their Amah back to England with them at one point and how exotic she must have seemed to the local populace, in the North of England. She explains how people were upset for the Amah wore ‘pants’ and women at that time didn’t wear pants! She recalls how a certain Sultan had a troupe of dancing girls and how he had a dancing girl costume made up for her, which she wore at all the ‘fancy dress’ parties at her school.

Mrs. H recalls working as a VAD during the Fall of Singapore (as my grandmother did). She particularly remembers the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales. It was a terrible moment, as everyone had felt safe knowing the battleship and battlecruiser were in the harbor. When the boats were sunk, the nurses had to open unused cots to accommodate the wounded; they were all covered in a protective goo. The cots had been destined for the deep tropics, and the goo was to keep them from rusting.

Mrs. H. showed me a DVD made by Brian that contains striking 16 mm colour footage of Singapore before 1941. Mrs. H's father was an avid photographer, who always had all the latest equipment. In his diaries he writes of the efforts he makes to preserve his precious suitcase full of photographic memorabilia after capitualation.

Ironically, Kitching's final diary entry is on April 1, 1944. In the previous entry he makes mention of two women who have been returned by the Kempetai,(obviously Dr. Williams and Freddy Bloom!) The next day my grandmother would be taken to the YMCA for 7 months of torture. Kitching would succumb but a few days later to esophageal cancer and mistreatment.

Mrs. H. passed on to me a book called Sinister Twilight by Noel Barber, about the Fall of Singapore first published in 1968. Her father is oft mentioned in the book, which is, from what I can see, a definitive account. (The book has recently been re-issued in paperback.) The book puts the stories of Freddy Bloom and Cecily Williams front and center but doesn't once mention my grandmother -although a passage about the women's walk from Katong to Changi describes a 'tiny matron, under 5 feet, a human dynamo of immense courage" who starts the procession singing There'll always be an England. " This story about the song is oft told, but this particular description suggests the woman was my grandmother. It's odd that no name is mentioned after such a claim as "human dynamo" "immense courage. It's as if a explanatory paragraph that was to follow was edited out.

Then again, if this is a reference to my grandmother, why does the author, Barber,just a few pages later, fail to mention she was involved in the Double Tenth Incident. He claims 'two women' are taken from the camp, not three as was the case.