Two years ago, the bishop of Penang opened Sybil’s case for canonisation, and since then, increasing attention has been paid to the war heroine’s bravery and incomparable contribution to the nation. “What I’ve written about her mother comes straight from the source. It’s something that needs to be recorded and not forgotten.”
No account of the Japanese occupation of Malaya was as harrowing or left as deep a mark on author Dr Ho Tak Ming as that of Sybil Kathigasu’s. In a 2009 interview, her daughter Olga Kathigasu shared her nightmarish recollections of the gruesome beatings and living conditions the nurse was subjected to for her resistance efforts.
“She was detained in [St Michael’s Institution in Ipoh], and her screams were so loud the clerks who worked there would go out to the padang just to escape the sound. You can imagine just how sadistic the torture was,” says Ho.
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