FOUR SETTING UP SAFTI I. LOCATING SAFTI It can be said that the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute (SAFTI) had its origins in Jurong Town Primary School in early February 1966, in a district then called Taman Jurong. The school was the base camp for the First Instructors’ Preparatory Course, which commenced on 15th February and ended on 7th May. It was also the site from which then Lieutenant Kirpa Ram Vij oversaw the build-up of the administration of the establishment that was still without a name, but referred to as Jurong School. He was assisted by staff picked from the Singapore Military Forces and the school had among other departments, an Orderly Room run by a Chief Clerk, then Staff Sergeant (later Direct Commission Lieutenant, promoted to Captain) Steven Ng Chwee Seang.1 Jurong Town Primary School was also the venue of the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test which the applicants for the first intake took and from where they departed for Pasir Laba for the physical fitness test. Only a handful, if any, of approximately 300 enlistees, who reported to Beach Road on 1st June, 1966, if any, could have known where they would be spending that night. The rest blithely imagined that the people who were managing their affairs knew precisely what they were about, within well-defined parameters. On hindsight, it is clear that on enlistment day the whole business of creating a training establishment for officer cadets was still a work in progress, undertaken one step at a time. There must have been some sort of planning guidance at the MID level that covered the next few steps, a sort of rudimentary critical path framework drawn up among the senior planners at MID, the Advisors and Lieutenant- Colonel (LTC) Vij, (recently triple-promoted) Director, Jurong School. The immediate issues would have been the formalities of enlisting the applicants, the logistics of housing, equipping and feeding the enlistees and their minders, and the schedule of activities for the couple of weeks just ahead. Being in the context of a military institution (and thereby having a penchant for ironing out ambiguities), a lot of effort may have been expended, with varying degrees of success, to pin down these issues over the two months or so before the first intake for SAFTI reported to Beach Road. The overstretched quartermaster cell inherited from the SMF, immediate precursors of the Singapore Armed Forces, must have had its work cut out to source and stock up uniforms, field equipment, weapons and ammunition, transportation, signal sets, the minutiae of a military establishment, accounting for each nut and bolt. One Lieutenant Hamid Khan, who had earned a Queen’s Quartermaster Commission, would have been very busy under the piratical guidance of Mr. Ong Kah Kok, Director, Logistics. Director of Manpower, Mr. Herman Hochstadt, having already netted trainees for several successive intakes and, SETTING UP SAFTI 39 Content.indd 39 18/6/15 4:31 PM FOUR as it turned out, it would have gone on to formulate or at least pencil in the establishment, notional career paths, pay grades and the training of the administrators and supervisors. It would have also filled up the instructor staff positions at SAFTI, while filling the slots that were daily created by the evolving MID. Both the logisticians and the personnel managers freely raided existing establishments: the one the putative but short-lived Army HQ and any cooperative ‘resource bank’ of the British Far East Land Forces; the other, the civil service and statutory boards. Invoking the authority of the Minister for Interior and Defence, Dr. Goh Keng Swee, de facto Second-in-Command to the Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew would silence any objection. Not many would have wanted to test Dr. Goh’s patience. In most cases, however, the name of George Bogaars, the Permanent Secretary of MID, handpicked by Dr. Goh and a legend in his own time, would have sufficed. That Dr. Goh should also be a brilliant economist was perhaps, sheer luck of the draw, for Singapore in those grim days after separation. Where others might have dithered with the idea of a balanced rural and industrial economy, Dr. Goh had already, since self-government in 1959, launched a decisive initiative to turn Singapore into a world-class manufacturing base in consultation with Dr. Albert Wensiemius, a renowned Dutch economic guru at the United Nations. To Dr. Goh, Singapore’s acute lack of real estate did not warrant a second thought, for agro-industry as an economic mainstay despite the natural ability of the Chinese community for farming. From 1959, the Government had already been mapping out an economic strategy that went beyond being the entrepôt to Malaya and Indonesia. Joining Malaysia in September 1963, added further incentive for industrialisation as it offered a bigger home market for manufactured goods: Singapore planned to be the industrial heartland of the confederation. But, being given the short shrift by Malaysia in August 1965 concentrated the minds of the Singapore Government like nothing had ever done on the road to independence. Now, national security concerns vied for priority with economic survival. By January 1966, clearing and filling the swampland south of Upper Jurong Road was already well under way to create an industrial park. As the ‘wild west’ of Singapore, with its relatively sparse population, the Jurong area was the part of Singapore least disruptive to reconstitute in support of economic development. That being said, the area had been the rural fiefdoms of famous towkays, successful Singaporean and expatriate Caucasian entrepreneurs whose fruit orchards and rubber plantations were household names among the initiated: Joo Lim Estate, Bajau Estate, Kian Teck San Estate, Lam Kiong Estate, Soon Hin Estate, Ritz Farm, and farther out, Neo Tiew Estate. One can only wonder at what the Singapore Government must have had to do to get the current owners and proprietors, some of whom were based abroad, to relinquish their land. The resettlement programme for the economic redevelopment of Western Singapore fitted conveniently with the hilly topography of the terrain north of Upper Jurong Road and west of Jalan Bahar and its remoteness from the main habitation centres of Singapore, to make the farmlands of Pasir Laba a good choice military training big enough for the planned expansion 40 SETTING UP SAFTI Content.indd 40 18/6/15 4:31 PM FOUR of Singapore’s military assets. It was a sad blow to the farmers: ‘Pasir Laba’ translates directly from Malay to ‘soil rich’ i.e. rich soil and the re-entrants of Pasir Laba contributed significantly to Singapore’s local production of fruits—soursop, mangosteen, chiku, rambutan, durian, jackfruit, starfruit, pommello, lemon and the occasional vine of passion fruit (all of which were deeply appreciated by the first few intakes of SAFTI trainees)—vegetables, and (less salubriously) pork and chicken from the pigsties and chicken runs. The Ministry of National Development bundled off about 95 farmer families from a broad swathe of land on either side of Pasir Laba Road all the way to the bunkers and boatsheds at the Straits of Johor. Dozers and construction equipment followed in indecent haste. The farmers were almost all squatters, but it was the only livelihood they could aspire to. The late Chelliah Tiruchelvarayan, London- trained Chartered Surveyor and a member of a special cell set up for MID in 1966 under Chief Architect, Claude Eber in the Public Works Department, said that there was deep resentment among the farmers, who would vandalise the vehicles of the officials when they were busy at work. In due course, the uprooted farmers were given alternate farming plots around Lim Chu Kang and other areas in compensation.2 However, Pasir Laba was not entirely without prior claims as a military training area, nor even as one for live-firing training. Areas close to the coast at the end of Pasir Laba Road had been used for training of regular troops and Volunteers under the British at least as far back as 1947, and probably even before WWII. There was, for example, the Pasir Laba Firing Ground Rules (1947) issued as General Notice No. S109 dated 31st March, 1947. And there is a record of 33 acres of land at Pasir Laba and the contiguous military training area of 298 acres reverting to the Commissioner of Lands with effect from 15th August, 1963 in old MID files.3 There was also military history at Jurong and Pasir Laba, though there is no evidence that it played a part in the selection of the site for the camp, unless the Chief Israel Defence Force (IDF) Advisor had surpassed himself and read up on the Japanese campaign before arriving in Singapore. The Japanese thrust into Singapore from Johor in the first week of February 1942 had been through here and not Changi in the east as expected. There had been bitter fighting along the shores, swamps and farmlands as they cut their way through the hapless Australian/ British defences down Jurong Road to Bukit Timah and further south through Pasir Panjang to claim victory on 15th February. The pre-war bunkers built by the British at the end of Pasir Laba Road and occupied by the 44th Indian Brigade, but bypassed by the Japanese, were to be ignominiously reduced to rubble from the time they were used to demonstrate techniques of fighting in built-up areas for the first intake and for other live-firing exercises with rocket launchers, mortars and grenades.4 If there had been any ghosts of WWII skulking around Pasir Laba, they were quiescent: unlike many other military camps in Singapore, no enduring ghost stories have taken root in SAFTI to date, even with major cemeteries dotted all around the area providing a tempting backdrop.