Ma-Rai-Ee

This book by Mr. Chin Kee Onn was called THE SILENT ARMY when it was published in USA. Mr. Chin Kee Onn was a school teacher at Batu Gajah, a small town in the State of Perak, Malaya. Later, he "emigrated" to Singapore and became an intelligence journalist when the Communists infiltrated the Island State. This is a keen and observant novel based on historical facts when the Imperial Japanese troops invaded the then British Malaya in 1942, first landed at Kota Bharu in the north. Ma-Rai-Ee was the name given to British Malaya by the imperial japs in brutal occupation of the country. That was from December 1941 to August 1945, for three and a half years. Hence, this book, THE SILENT ARMY, written after the war is a story of Malaya under Imperial Japanese occupation, and the author, who is obviously a Chinese-Malayan, lived in the country throughout those difficult and dreaded times. The background is based on fact. It is the story of a heroic band of Chinese who organized themselves as guerillas and fighting a running battle with the occupying Japs and how they were outwitted with the help of some Australian officers living in their midst in a cave which is hidden in the impenetrable jungles of British Malaya.