In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of History

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 5: The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond

This is the final episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc. It begins with Elizabeth Choy sliding under the bars of her cell for the last time — certain she is being taken to Johor to be beheaded. Instead, a guard hands her her handbag and tells her she can go. After 193 days of imprisonment, beatings, starvation, and electrocution, the Kempeitai concluded that Elizabeth Choy was just trying to help. In this episode we also learn the truth about the missing $10,000 that triggered her arrest, a mystery whose answer, when it finally came, was almost unbearably simple. Sumida Haruzo was tried at the Double Tenth Trial in Singapore's Supreme Court. He smiled throughout even when giving testimony about the deaths of internees. Robert Heatlie Scott survived. Barely. When Singapore was liberated, he broadcast a message across Malaya and named Elizabeth Choy by name. After the war, Elizabeth met Mountbatten, attended the Instrument of Surrender, travelled to England, met the Queen, and became a national hero of Singapore. Research for this podcast episode was based entirely on my book, Survival in Singapore [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2]. The recording of Elizabeth Choy was made in 1985, and is available at the National Archive of Singapore's webpage [https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/94edbbb2-115f-11e3-83d5-0050568939ad]. Next on In Extremis — Operation Able Archer. 1983. The NATO exercise that nearly ended the world.

The Heroine of Singapore — Part 4: The battery, the blade and those who chose death over betrayal

A warning before we start — this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and extreme physical and psychological violence. Probably not one to have on in the car with the kids. Research for this episode comes from my book Survival in Singapore. [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2] Summary By the time this episode begins, Sumida Haruzo's investigation has been running for months. Dozens of British internees have been arrested and interrogated. Scores — possibly hundreds — of Chinese civilians have passed through the cells of the YMCA on Stamford Road. And Sumida has almost nothing to show for it. The radios in Changi were receivers, not transmitters. The money was funding a black market, not a sabotage operation. Elizabeth Choy had been helping the internees. Robert Heatlie Scott had been running a news committee. There was no fifth column. There was no conspiracy. And yet Sumida pressed on. In this episode we examine why and the answer says something uncomfortable about the nature of confirmation bias, institutional pressure, and what happens when a man of intelligence and ambition becomes too invested in a theory to abandon it. But the heart of this episode belongs to the people in the cells. Elizabeth Choy is subjected to electrocution while bound to a wooden frame, unable to move. She does not break. Then she and her husband Choy Khun Heng are brought into the same room, and the sadist Sgt Monai Tadamori deploys the cruelest instrument available to him: he tortures Elizabeth in front of her husband, and her husband in front of her. Both are told that tomorrow they will be executed. Alone together in the room, they reach an agreement. If they are to die, they will die for the truth. It would be an honourable death. A confession, they know, would cost others their lives. Then there is Robert Heatlie Scott. Scott has spent three months preparing for what is coming. He has reframed torture not as a horror to be feared but as an enemy tactic to be countered. He knows he will probably not survive. What matters is that nothing he says broadens the investigation. Nothing he says costs anyone else their life. When Monai finally comes for him — six days of sustained physical violence, sleep deprivation, the rack, the instruments laid out across the floor — Scott doesn't break. His answers never waver. And on the sixth day, when Monai places a farewell letter on the ground before him and draws his sword, Scott remains unmoved. The fate of Elizabeth Choy and Robert Heatlie Scott — and the final reckoning of Sumida Haruzo's investigation — will be told in the concluding episode of the Heroine of Singapore arc, next week on In Extremis. If you're enjoying In Extremis, the single best thing you can do is share it — with a friend, a colleague, anyone you think might find these stories as compelling as you do. Follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and if you feel moved to leave a review, that makes an enormous difference to how easily new listeners can find the show. People and places mentioned in this episode: * Elizabeth Choy — Changi money pipeline courier; prisoner at the YMCA * Choy Khun Heng — Elizabeth's husband; fellow prisoner * Monai Tadamori — Kempeitai sergeant; Major Sumida's chief interrogator * Sumida Haruzo — Head of the Singaporean Kempeitai * Robert Heatlie Scott — British diplomat and propagandist; the man the Japanese called the master spy * John Long — Ambulance driver; Changi news committee member * Walter Yoxall — Changi camp treasurer * KT Alexander — Secretary to the Bishop of Singapore * The YMCA, Stamford Road, Singapore — Kempeitai interrogation centre * Changi Prison — Allied civilian internment camp

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 3: Diplomat, Propagandist, Spy

When the 1,600 tonne coastal steamer Giang Bee was intercepted by Japanese destroyers 50 nautical miles off the coast of Sumatra, Robert Heatlie Scott did something extraordinary. He climbed into a 13-foot harbour dinghy and rowed toward a warship to negotiate surrender. It didn't work. It was never going to work. In this episode, we follow Scott's improbable journey from that dinghy back to Singapore, through a series of POW and internment camps, and finally into Changi Prison and then the YMCA. The repurposed headquarters and interrogation centre of Japan's military police unit, the Kempeitai And all the while, Major Sumida Haruzo was watching. Sumida was making progress in his investigation: to find and destroy a fifth column he was convinced was operating within the city. His prime suspect? Robert Heatlie Scott — the Far Eastern Representative for the Ministry of Information, a man fluent in Japanese and multiple Chinese dialects, a propagandist, a member of the Governor's War Council, and now an internee at Changi Prison. There was just one problem with Sumida's theory. A translation error. The Japanese word for intelligence — joho — also means information. And so the Ministry of Information became, in Sumida's mind, the Ministry of Intelligence. And Robert Heatlie Scott became a master spy. The consequences of that mistake would be catastrophic. We also hear about the inner workings of Changi's clandestine news network (radios smuggled in through pipes and false-bottomed equipment, news bulletins hand-delivered each morning, distributors who memorised the day's report and destroyed their copy before dawn). A meticulously compartmentalised operation, run under the nose of the Japanese, and watched closely by Sumida's undercover operatives. On the Double Tenth, October 10, 1943, the Kempeitai move on Changi. Names are called. Men are taken. Scott is driven through the city in the dead of night and deposited outside a three-storey Edwardian building on Stamford Road. The YMCA. Where, in a corridor of cells illuminated around the clock, he will come face to face with Elizabeth Choy. Subscribe to hear Part 4 next week. Check out Tom's companion Substack - tomtrumblewrites@substack.com Read Survival in Singapore [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2], my book which forms the research backbone for this series arc. People and places mentioned in this episode: * Robert Heatlie Scott — British diplomat and propagandist, Far Eastern Representative for the Ministry of Information * Sumida Haruzo — Head of the Singaporean Kempeitai * Elizabeth Choy — Changi money pipeline courier; now also a prisoner at the YMCA * John Long — Ambulance driver and Changi news committee member * Julius Planzer — Swiss diamond drilling engineer aboard the dinghy * Major Ivan Lyon — British officer whose operatives destroyed the ships in Singapore Harbour (see the Britain's Greatest Soldier arc) * The Giang Bee — Coastal steamer carrying 300 civilians intercepted by Japanese destroyers * Outram Road Gaol — Singapore POW facility notorious for severe mistreatment of prisoners * The YMCA, Stamford Road — Kempeitai interrogation centre * Changi Prison — Allied civilian internment camp; nerve centre of the clandestine news operation

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 2: The Bishop's Smuggling Ring

A warning to listeners: this episode contains detailed descriptions of torture and imprisonment. It is not suitable for children. When Elizabeth Choy arrived at the YMCA building in Japanese-occupied Singapore, she believed she was being taken to see her husband. She was not. She was being arrested. Part Two of The Heroine of Singapore begins inside the Kempeitai's detention centre. The converted billiard rooms and corridors of the YMCA is now a place of cells, interrogation rooms and screams that echoed through the building at all hours. Elizabeth is placed in a cell with twenty other prisoners, forbidden from speaking, sleeping under blazing electric lights on a dirt floor, sharing an open commode in the corner of the room. What she does next, and what she discovers about herself in the process, is one of the most remarkable passages in the entire story. This episode also tells the full story of the smuggling operation that brought her here. How Bishop John Leonard Wilson of Singapore secured freedom from internment through a miraculous connection with a Japanese Anglican officer named Lieutenant Andrew Ogawa. How the Bishop approached Swiss businessman Hans Schweitzer-Iten, head of the trading company Diethelm and Co., with an audacious proposal: loan the Anglican Church the equivalent of $15 million in today's money, and be repaid at the pre-war value of the Singaporean dollar with interest at the war's end. How that money was passed through a second-hand bookshop on Bras Basah Road, concealed in plastic piping, moved through a cut-out, handed to an ambulance driver, and delivered into Changi Prison — where it funded a black market that kept thousands of Allied civilian internees alive. And how it all unravelled. This episode covers the arrest of Elizabeth and her husband Choy Khun Heng, the conditions inside the YMCA detention centre, the secret sign language developed by prisoners to communicate under the guards' noses, the remarkable John Dunlop, the full mechanics of the Bishop's financial network, the role of Hans Schweitzer-Iten and his blue lorry, known to every internee as the Blue Angel, and the false confessions of John Long that widened the Kempeitai's net and brought Elizabeth Choy to the attention of Sergeant Monai Tadamori. The episode ends on a name that will be at the centre of everything in Part Three: Robert Heatley Scott. Further reading The full story of the Japanese occupation of Singapore, including Elizabeth Choy's extraordinary life, is told in Survival in Singapore [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2] by Tom Trumble, published by Penguin Random House in 2025. Available now wherever books are sold. Get in touch If this episode resonated or if you have a story you think belongs on In Extremis , reach out at podcastinextremis@gmail.com [podcastinextremis@gmail.com] Every message is read.

The Heroine of Singapore - Part 1: The schoolteacher who refused to break

The Heroine of Singapore — Part One On the morning of September 27, 1943, Major Sumida Haruzo of the Japanese Kempei Tai was woken by explosions in Singapore Harbour. As the day lengthened and reconnaissance aircraft found nothing — no Allied submarines, no enemy vessels — Sumida arrived at a conclusion that would have catastrophic consequences for the civilian population of occupied Singapore. The attack, he was certain, had come from within. This is the story of Elizabeth Choy — schoolteacher, smuggler, and one of the most remarkable women of the Second World War. Born in Kudat in British North Borneo to a Hakka family, Elizabeth arrived in Singapore as a young woman and built a reputation as one of the finest teachers of her generation. When the Japanese occupied Singapore in February 1942 and renamed it Syonan (the Light of the South) Elizabeth and her husband began working at a hospital canteen near Changi Prison. What started as small acts of mercy (sending in food, medicine, messages) would grow into one of the most sophisticated smuggling operations of the Pacific War. Part One covers Elizabeth's early life in Kudat, her arrival in Singapore, the fall of the city in February 1942, the Sook Ching massacre and the death of her youngest brother Chau Vui, the establishment of the smuggling network through Changi Prison, and the investigation that Sumida Haruzo was building in the months before the Jaywick explosions changed everything. Parts Two and Three are coming. The story is only just beginning. Links Survival in Singapore — the book that tells the full story of the Japanese occupation, including Elizabeth Choy's extraordinary life — is available for purchase here [https://www.amazon.com.au/Survival-Singapore-Australias-greatest-operation-ebook/dp/B0F4537QB2?ref_=ast_author_mpb] For the companion newsletter — weekly essays on the people and moments where character is tested and the stakes are real — find Tom Trumble at tomtrumblewrites.substack.com To get in touch, reach me at podcastinextremis@gmail.com [podcastinextremis@gmail.com] — I read everything.