Lim Bo Seng February 10, 2008
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Lim Bo Seng was born in China on 27 April 1909. He was the 11th child but the first son of Lim Chee Gee. At the age of 16, he came to Singapore and studied at Raffles Institution. He discontinued his education at the University of Hong Kong in 1929 when, upon his father’s death, he inherited senior Lim’s businesses which included the Hock Ann Biscuits and factories for brick manufacturing. In 1930, he married Gan Choo Neo, a Straits-born Nonya with whom he had seven children. Their’s was a love marriage, unusal in those days.In the 1930s, Lim under the alias Tan Choon Lim participated in anti-Japanese activities in Singapore, particularly in supporting the China Relief Fund. Upon the request of Sir Shenton Thomas, the Governor, he also formed the Chinese Liason Committee to assist in civil defence. With the fall of Kota Bahru in Malaya in 1942, Lim, as head of the Labour Services of the Overseas Chinese Mobilization Council, and Tan Kah Kee organised more than 10,000 men for the British Government to man essential services and to construct defences around the island. As the Japanese troops decended upon Singapore, his men helped dynamite the Causeway. He escaped to India before Singapore’s fall where he was joined by the British resistance group, Force 136, and was trained by the British for intelligence work. In 1943, he went to China to recruit Kuomintang colleagues for Force 136 – a special operations force formed by the British and the Chinese governments in June 1942 to support resistance groups behind enemy lines and to coordinate guerilla operations in support of the eventual British invasion of Malaya. With a group of fellow Force 136 members, he landed in Japanese-occupied Malaya by submarine in 1943 and set up an intelligence network in the urban areas in Pangkor, Lumut, Tapah and Ipoh. The intelligence network – Operation Zipper – was targetted at recapturing Malaya with British support by 1945. While on a mission in Ipoh on 27 March 1944, Lim was betrayed by Lai Teck, the Malayan Communist Party leader, and was caught by the Japanese at a road checkpoint. He died in Batu Gajah Jail on 29 June 1944 under torture. Lim was posthumously awarded the rank of Major-General by the Chinese Nationalist Government and his remains reburied in Singapore at the MacRitchie Reservoir.
