Kuala Lumpur Airport, October 26, 1953, 11:00 A.M. Vice President Nixon's plane on arrival. Mr. Nixon arrived on MATS Military Air Transport Service, a Lockheed C-121A Constellation, the forerunner to what would become Air Force One.
Click to enlarge image.
Mr. Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994) the Vice President of the United States of America and his wife stepping down from the aircraft when they arrived at K.L. Airport on October 26, 1953.
The newly elected Republican Party President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, assigned his Vice President, Richard Nixon, the duty of a Southeast Asian fact finding mission. The purpose of which was to assess the Communist political/military threats in South and Southeast Asia following the recent takeover of China by Mao Tse-tung.
President Eisenhower wanted Nixon to personally visit the danger areas; then analyze and evaluate the threats; report to him on them, recommend U.S. policies and actions, while also affirming U.S. interest and concern, thereby helping to improve U.S. relations with the affected countries. For this he appointed the next highest ranking American national leader, his Vice President, who embarked on the investigation trip in 1953, arriving in Kulala Lumpur on October 26, 1953.
The newly elected Republican Party President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, assigned his Vice President, Richard Nixon, the duty of a Southeast Asian fact finding mission. The purpose of which was to assess the Communist political/military threats in South and Southeast Asia following the recent takeover of China by Mao Tse-tung.
President Eisenhower wanted Nixon to personally visit the danger areas; then analyze and evaluate the threats; report to him on them, recommend U.S. policies and actions, while also affirming U.S. interest and concern, thereby helping to improve U.S. relations with the affected countries. For this he appointed the next highest ranking American national leader, his Vice President, who embarked on the investigation trip in 1953, arriving in Kulala Lumpur on October 26, 1953.
Click image to enlarge.
Robert B. Sheeks (1922-2022), San Francisco, 1952, CFA (Committee for a Free Asia) Official Photograph.
Photo taken in San Francisco just prior to his trip to Malaya where he was instructed to open the new CFA office in Kuala Lumpur. As the CFA Country Representative for Malaya and Singapore, he reported directly to the CFA head office in San Francisco. The CFA was an anti-communist, American organization established to lessen communist influence in Asian countries. The aim of the Communist terrorist campaign in Malaya was to destabilize and topple the British colonial regime and its partner the Royal Malay Sultanate government.
In mid-1951, soon after Robert resigned from the USIS, having served in Taiwan since early 1949, he was recruited by the CFA to open a branch office in Kuala Lumpur and establish an anti-communist program of activities in Malaya and Singapore. He was interviewed by CFA President, Alan Chester Valentine. Robert was selected for this assignment based on several important factors. Such factors included his military service as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer and Japanese language interpreter with first-hand combat experience at Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian Islands. He could maintain his nerve and remain focused under the most difficult of battlefield conditions. He graduated Magna cum Laude from Harvard College with a Masters Degree in China Regional Studies. He was born in Shanghai, China and grew up with the knowledge of Asian culture and customs. He was staunchly patriotic and held in high regard the values of human rights. Furthermore, he could speak Chinese and Japanese languages. He spent two years in Washington, D.C. as China Affairs Analyst for the Army Department. He served three years in Taipei (1949-51), first as Information Officer of the U.S. Consulate General, then as American Embassy Public Affairs Officer, and the Taiwan Director of the U.S. Information Service (USIS) when our Embassy relocated from Nanking to Taipei. Together these experiences and qualifications made up a portfolio showing Robert was uniquely suited for the CFA position.
In San Francisco the next step seemed straightforward enough to Robert, go to Kuala Lumpur, get to work. It was not to be that simple, even merely to arrive there. Malaya was not an independent country, but a British Protectorate of a Federation of Malay Sultanate states. First required was a visa for the neighboring British Colony of Singapore. At the beginning of April 1952 CFA made application for Robert to the British Consulate General in San Francisco. After marking time in San Francisco for a month, CFA was advised, without explanation, that Robert must proceed to London and apply there in person for the Singapore visa. Robert went to London happily unaware that hurdles awaited him.
The British initially did not welcome Robert and the CFA to Malaya, and were quite suspicious of American motives. Robert was obligated to go to London to be questioned there for issuance of a visa. It was so slow in coming that he requested and was granted approval to proceed "toward" Singapore, not K.L. where the insurgency was raging. While British Intelligence in London, MI5, had begun their own clearance process before issuing Robert a travel visa to enter Malaya, Robert's travel route to Malaya would take him via Paris, Rome and then to Singapore. At his stopover in Italy, Robert was again interviewed about his Malaya intentions at the British Embassy in Rome, from which a visa might be issued if and when approved by London and Kuala Lumpur, meaning the U.K. Foreign Office and the Malayan High Commissioner, namely General Sir Gerald Templer. He received his Singapore visa in Rome; flew to Singapore (via Iraq and Ceylon) finally arriving in Singapore a month and a half after leaving San Francisco. On arrival he was required to wait in Singapore until High Commissioner Templer returned to K.L. from a trip. On his arrival in Singapore and while waiting at the famous Raffles Hotel, Robert meet with and was questioned yet again (several times) by two British officers of MI5, who wished to know what operating instructions had been issued to him, and what would be the focus of his work in Malaya. Robert was told that General Templer wished him to wait in Singapore until he returned to Kuala Lumpur; that upon arrival in K.L., Robert was to speak with no one about his work in Malaya until after meeting with General Templer.
MI5 is the abbreviation for Military Intelligence, Section 5. It is the UK's internal counter intelligence and security agency. One of the officers had the surname, Raynor. Robert was was instructed to keep Raynor posted from time to time about his activities, and did so, meeting with him several times during the next year or two regarding security situations in K.L. and elsewhere in Malaya.
The American counterpart of Raynor at that time was the CIA Station Chief in Singapore, Bob Jantzen, nicknamed "Red" because of his flaming red hair. Robert was in touch with "Red" (Robert J. Jantzen) because CFA was at that time a surreptitious undertaking by that agency.
Photo taken in San Francisco just prior to his trip to Malaya where he was instructed to open the new CFA office in Kuala Lumpur. As the CFA Country Representative for Malaya and Singapore, he reported directly to the CFA head office in San Francisco. The CFA was an anti-communist, American organization established to lessen communist influence in Asian countries. The aim of the Communist terrorist campaign in Malaya was to destabilize and topple the British colonial regime and its partner the Royal Malay Sultanate government.
In mid-1951, soon after Robert resigned from the USIS, having served in Taiwan since early 1949, he was recruited by the CFA to open a branch office in Kuala Lumpur and establish an anti-communist program of activities in Malaya and Singapore. He was interviewed by CFA President, Alan Chester Valentine. Robert was selected for this assignment based on several important factors. Such factors included his military service as a US Marine Corps intelligence officer and Japanese language interpreter with first-hand combat experience at Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian Islands. He could maintain his nerve and remain focused under the most difficult of battlefield conditions. He graduated Magna cum Laude from Harvard College with a Masters Degree in China Regional Studies. He was born in Shanghai, China and grew up with the knowledge of Asian culture and customs. He was staunchly patriotic and held in high regard the values of human rights. Furthermore, he could speak Chinese and Japanese languages. He spent two years in Washington, D.C. as China Affairs Analyst for the Army Department. He served three years in Taipei (1949-51), first as Information Officer of the U.S. Consulate General, then as American Embassy Public Affairs Officer, and the Taiwan Director of the U.S. Information Service (USIS) when our Embassy relocated from Nanking to Taipei. Together these experiences and qualifications made up a portfolio showing Robert was uniquely suited for the CFA position.
In San Francisco the next step seemed straightforward enough to Robert, go to Kuala Lumpur, get to work. It was not to be that simple, even merely to arrive there. Malaya was not an independent country, but a British Protectorate of a Federation of Malay Sultanate states. First required was a visa for the neighboring British Colony of Singapore. At the beginning of April 1952 CFA made application for Robert to the British Consulate General in San Francisco. After marking time in San Francisco for a month, CFA was advised, without explanation, that Robert must proceed to London and apply there in person for the Singapore visa. Robert went to London happily unaware that hurdles awaited him.
The British initially did not welcome Robert and the CFA to Malaya, and were quite suspicious of American motives. Robert was obligated to go to London to be questioned there for issuance of a visa. It was so slow in coming that he requested and was granted approval to proceed "toward" Singapore, not K.L. where the insurgency was raging. While British Intelligence in London, MI5, had begun their own clearance process before issuing Robert a travel visa to enter Malaya, Robert's travel route to Malaya would take him via Paris, Rome and then to Singapore. At his stopover in Italy, Robert was again interviewed about his Malaya intentions at the British Embassy in Rome, from which a visa might be issued if and when approved by London and Kuala Lumpur, meaning the U.K. Foreign Office and the Malayan High Commissioner, namely General Sir Gerald Templer. He received his Singapore visa in Rome; flew to Singapore (via Iraq and Ceylon) finally arriving in Singapore a month and a half after leaving San Francisco. On arrival he was required to wait in Singapore until High Commissioner Templer returned to K.L. from a trip. On his arrival in Singapore and while waiting at the famous Raffles Hotel, Robert meet with and was questioned yet again (several times) by two British officers of MI5, who wished to know what operating instructions had been issued to him, and what would be the focus of his work in Malaya. Robert was told that General Templer wished him to wait in Singapore until he returned to Kuala Lumpur; that upon arrival in K.L., Robert was to speak with no one about his work in Malaya until after meeting with General Templer.
MI5 is the abbreviation for Military Intelligence, Section 5. It is the UK's internal counter intelligence and security agency. One of the officers had the surname, Raynor. Robert was was instructed to keep Raynor posted from time to time about his activities, and did so, meeting with him several times during the next year or two regarding security situations in K.L. and elsewhere in Malaya.
The American counterpart of Raynor at that time was the CIA Station Chief in Singapore, Bob Jantzen, nicknamed "Red" because of his flaming red hair. Robert was in touch with "Red" (Robert J. Jantzen) because CFA was at that time a surreptitious undertaking by that agency.
Click to enlarge image.
Vice President Nixon and General Sir Gerald Templer, at King's House, Kuala Lumpur, October 27, 1953.
Robert B. Sheeks, the CFA Country Representative for Malaya and Singapore, would cross paths with both of these gentlemen while on assignment in Kuala Lumpur.
Richard Nixon:
President Eisenhower's, for the first time, brought new changes to the office of the vice presidency. The office was elevated out of what had been rather mundane duties to one of being in the forefront of foreign policy. No previous vice president had been given such responsibility and held as much at stake as Nixon had when he embarked upon his 1953, muti-country Asia tour. In an official press release Nixon wrote: President Eisenhower had asked Vice President Nixon to undertake a major trip to Asia and the Far East and suggested Mrs. Nixon accompany him. On October 5, 1953, they left Washington's National Airport. After visiting New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Burma, India, Pakistan and Iran, they returned on December 14th. The trip is covered extensively in Richard Nixon's Memoirs, pages 119-134. "The 1953 trip had a tremendously important effect on my thinking and on my career," he wrote. "It established my foreign policy experience and expertise in what was to become the most critical and controversial part of the world."
In the meantime "Red" Jantzen had alerted Robert Sheeks to the forthcoming visit to K.L. by Vice President Nixon, and discussed with him security measures desired for the protection of the American vice president and his wife, Pat, while they were in Malaya.
"Red" and Robert also discussed and decided it would be desirable to arrange scenes of welcome upon Nixon's arrival in Malaya. For both security and public relations purposes, it became part of Robert's assignment to arrange a good turnout of reliable local people who were beyond question as to security. Robert was able to achieve this, as illustrated in a number of photographs set forth in the slide presentation shown below. The photographs were taken by a personal friend of Robert's, Fred Lim. The photographs, numbering 110 prints, were compiled into a sixty page album, sequentially arranged with captions. They are a unique collection of an event that occurred sixty years ago.
General Templer:
Templer’s background illuminates his character. An Army Lieutenant General when Robert Sheeks met him, he later become Field Marshall Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer. Born in 1898 he was 24 years Robert's senior. Commissioned an officer in his father’s regiment, the.Royal Irish Fusiliers, he fought in the First World War. When the Second World War began, he was a Colonel in Military Intelligence. Promoted to a succession of higher posts, he held field commands in the North African and Italian campaigns. While commanding an Armored Division as Major General, he was severely wounded, he worked under the command of General Montgomery when he was acting Chief of the Imperial General Staff. After the war, he served in the Allied occupation of Germany, gaining international attention when he fired the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, “for laziness and inefficiency”. In 1952 Winston Churchill appointed him to handle the Malayan Emergency in close coordination with Malayan Defence Secretary, Robert Thompson. General Templer left Malaya in 1954, and in 1955 he was appointed Britain’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1955-1958).
For Robert Sheeks, meeting General Templer was unforgettable. A uniformed military guard escorted him into a large office of the High Commissioner’s official residence, called “King’s House”, a grand structure built in British colonial tropical style. Robert was announced to the Honorable British High Commissioner for Malaya. Hollywood’s Central Casting could not have provided a more perfect portrayal of an impressive British Army officer. Tall, lean, of soldierly bearing , clad in stiffly pressed khaki uniform, golden brown hair close-trimmed, dark eyebrows and narrow mustache, aquiline expression, jaw muscles that seemed perpetually clenched. Immediately after a brief greeting and handshake, the General told Robert to be seated. He, however, remained standing, and began pacing energetically around his office, chain smoking cigarettes, and agitatedly lecturing to Robert.
It was clear that he knew as much or more than Robert about CFA’s ancestry. His remarks showed that he considered CFA to be entirely a clandestine operation of the U.S. government. He emphasized the words , “ Free Asia”, with irony Robert found disappointing.. “Asia is in turmoil”, he said, “India’s gone. Indonesia and others. You Americans will have them all !”
Robert protested respectfully as he could, saying that the only mission of CFA was to help counter communist political influence in Asia; not to boost U.S. prestige and influence; nor to support anti-Western Asian nationalist movements; nor to denounce European colonialism. He was willing to concede that CFA, like the U.S. and Americans “are altruistic and well-intentioned”, he said, “but naïve about freedom in Asia”.
Robert believed that Templer was prepared to tolerate the presence of CFA in Malaya because “The Emergency” facing him was a fierce Chinese communist inspired and commanded armed insurgency. He suspect Templer also had instructions from London to accept CFA. Doubtless he also wanted to see the sort of an American Robert was. Robert did not know if Templer decided he might be useful, or merely that he was harmless. After discussing the origin and outlook of the Emergency, Robert was instructed to maintain liaison with the government’s security office, under Robert Thompson, Malaya’s Permanent Secretary of Defense.
Robert B. Sheeks, the CFA Country Representative for Malaya and Singapore, would cross paths with both of these gentlemen while on assignment in Kuala Lumpur.
Richard Nixon:
President Eisenhower's, for the first time, brought new changes to the office of the vice presidency. The office was elevated out of what had been rather mundane duties to one of being in the forefront of foreign policy. No previous vice president had been given such responsibility and held as much at stake as Nixon had when he embarked upon his 1953, muti-country Asia tour. In an official press release Nixon wrote: President Eisenhower had asked Vice President Nixon to undertake a major trip to Asia and the Far East and suggested Mrs. Nixon accompany him. On October 5, 1953, they left Washington's National Airport. After visiting New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Malaya, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Burma, India, Pakistan and Iran, they returned on December 14th. The trip is covered extensively in Richard Nixon's Memoirs, pages 119-134. "The 1953 trip had a tremendously important effect on my thinking and on my career," he wrote. "It established my foreign policy experience and expertise in what was to become the most critical and controversial part of the world."
In the meantime "Red" Jantzen had alerted Robert Sheeks to the forthcoming visit to K.L. by Vice President Nixon, and discussed with him security measures desired for the protection of the American vice president and his wife, Pat, while they were in Malaya.
"Red" and Robert also discussed and decided it would be desirable to arrange scenes of welcome upon Nixon's arrival in Malaya. For both security and public relations purposes, it became part of Robert's assignment to arrange a good turnout of reliable local people who were beyond question as to security. Robert was able to achieve this, as illustrated in a number of photographs set forth in the slide presentation shown below. The photographs were taken by a personal friend of Robert's, Fred Lim. The photographs, numbering 110 prints, were compiled into a sixty page album, sequentially arranged with captions. They are a unique collection of an event that occurred sixty years ago.
General Templer:
Templer’s background illuminates his character. An Army Lieutenant General when Robert Sheeks met him, he later become Field Marshall Sir Gerald Walter Robert Templer. Born in 1898 he was 24 years Robert's senior. Commissioned an officer in his father’s regiment, the.Royal Irish Fusiliers, he fought in the First World War. When the Second World War began, he was a Colonel in Military Intelligence. Promoted to a succession of higher posts, he held field commands in the North African and Italian campaigns. While commanding an Armored Division as Major General, he was severely wounded, he worked under the command of General Montgomery when he was acting Chief of the Imperial General Staff. After the war, he served in the Allied occupation of Germany, gaining international attention when he fired the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, “for laziness and inefficiency”. In 1952 Winston Churchill appointed him to handle the Malayan Emergency in close coordination with Malayan Defence Secretary, Robert Thompson. General Templer left Malaya in 1954, and in 1955 he was appointed Britain’s Chief of the Imperial General Staff (1955-1958).
For Robert Sheeks, meeting General Templer was unforgettable. A uniformed military guard escorted him into a large office of the High Commissioner’s official residence, called “King’s House”, a grand structure built in British colonial tropical style. Robert was announced to the Honorable British High Commissioner for Malaya. Hollywood’s Central Casting could not have provided a more perfect portrayal of an impressive British Army officer. Tall, lean, of soldierly bearing , clad in stiffly pressed khaki uniform, golden brown hair close-trimmed, dark eyebrows and narrow mustache, aquiline expression, jaw muscles that seemed perpetually clenched. Immediately after a brief greeting and handshake, the General told Robert to be seated. He, however, remained standing, and began pacing energetically around his office, chain smoking cigarettes, and agitatedly lecturing to Robert.
It was clear that he knew as much or more than Robert about CFA’s ancestry. His remarks showed that he considered CFA to be entirely a clandestine operation of the U.S. government. He emphasized the words , “ Free Asia”, with irony Robert found disappointing.. “Asia is in turmoil”, he said, “India’s gone. Indonesia and others. You Americans will have them all !”
Robert protested respectfully as he could, saying that the only mission of CFA was to help counter communist political influence in Asia; not to boost U.S. prestige and influence; nor to support anti-Western Asian nationalist movements; nor to denounce European colonialism. He was willing to concede that CFA, like the U.S. and Americans “are altruistic and well-intentioned”, he said, “but naïve about freedom in Asia”.
Robert believed that Templer was prepared to tolerate the presence of CFA in Malaya because “The Emergency” facing him was a fierce Chinese communist inspired and commanded armed insurgency. He suspect Templer also had instructions from London to accept CFA. Doubtless he also wanted to see the sort of an American Robert was. Robert did not know if Templer decided he might be useful, or merely that he was harmless. After discussing the origin and outlook of the Emergency, Robert was instructed to maintain liaison with the government’s security office, under Robert Thompson, Malaya’s Permanent Secretary of Defense.
Click image to enlarge.
The Malayan Emergency 1948-60
Malaya’s crisis was a legacy of WW II, an aftermath of Japan’s invasion, which had left a damaged country in economic and political turmoil. The ethnic Chinese population of the dual entity, Malaya/Singapore, was about forty percent of the total, roughly equal to the proportion of indigenous Malays, with ethnic Indians being about ten percent. Because of Japan’s war with China, Malayan and Singaporean Chinese were regarded as “Overseas Chinese” with close ties to China and were targeted victims of Japanese aggression. Many became resisters and some became armed anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters. By the time the war ended considerable numbers of ethnic Chinese refugees had dispersed into rural and jungle locations as landless squatters surviving by subsistence farming.
It was an especially turbulent era in that part of the world. The Huks (Hukbalahap) were on the attack against the Philippine government. The Chinese dominated Communist terrorists were on the attack in Malaya against the British dominated Malay/British establishment in Kuala Lumpur. Vietnam was a seething battleground between the Hanoi North and Saigon South. Other such struggles were going on or brewing in the region. In May of 1954, the battle of Dien Bien Phu would take place in French Indo-China.
“The Emergency” was declared in June 1948, just three years after WWII had ended. It was precipitated by the killing in Malaya of three British rubber plantation managers, (called “Planters”). The murders were carried out by the mainly Chinese communist-led “Malayan Races Liberation Army” (MRLA), a guerilla force that had originated from the wartime “Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army” (MPAJA) headed by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). When Robert B. Sheeks arrived in Malaya mid-1952, the country was engulfed in political, economic, and guerrilla warfare. The 500-mile long battleground stretched between Thailand on the north to Singapore on the south. Of the 51,000 square miles of land area, 40,000 square miles were tropical jungle, with a mountainous interior as high as 7,000 feet.
On June 16, 1948, when armed conflict broke out in Malaya, the military component of the MRLA was violently reactivated as a guerilla force equipped with a substantial cache of wartime weapons. By 1952, when Robert arrived in Malaya, the armed guerillas were an estimated ten thousand strong, but with many more thousands of clandestine supporters. Most of the guerillas were ethnic Chinese, but among them were a few Malays, Indians and Indonesians. The most prominent rebelling force was the militant faction of the Malayan Communist Party, under the leadership of Chin Peng, a Chinese communist guerilla commander. The squatter-farmer population, willingly or otherwise, became a prime resource for the guerillas to obtain new recruits, laborers, food, information, and WW II remnant weapons. To deny vital support to the Chin Peng guerillas, the British launched a set of actions, notable among these was the "New Villages" Program. This was a strategy formulated by the Director of Operations, General Sir Harold Briggs, and was called the Briggs Plan. It called for the enforced relocation of half a million rural Malayans into guarded camps, euphemistically named “New Villages”. Of those relocated, more than 400,000 were ethnic Chinese. The “Villages” were barbed wire enclosed sites into which squatter/farmer families and other civilians living near guerilla controlled areas were evacuated.. To isolate the terrorists, all food supplies were rigidly controlled. Some villagers were released during the day for farming and labor but all had to be back in camp at night. Curfews were strictly enforced. Although the Villagers had government police and military protection from predation by the guerillas, the living conditions were grim. Each Village was in effect a concentration camp with minimal amenities. Many of the “Villagers” felt imprisoned, generally more resentful than grateful. In these conditions they were susceptible to communist terrorist persuasions and threats. For this reason the New Villages became one focus of CFA attention and projects.
Eventually ranged against the CT’s (Communist Terrorists) and their adherents was a large security force that included Malayan Army troops, police, special constables, and Commonwealth army and navy units and air squadrons the British brought in. Commonwealth participants came from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the U.K., Nepal, Borneo and elsewhere. Especially lethal jungle warfare was waged against the CT’s by patrol units composed of Dyak trackers (Nepalese Gurkhas, Fijians, British military personnel., and some local Malays). The Dyaks, former headhunters from Sarawak, often were the patrol spearhead, tracking enemy trails through the jungle like bloodhounds.
The years of Robert's CFA service in Malaya, 1952-1954, coincided with the three years that Templer served in Malaya as High Commissioner. They were peak years of the armed communist guerilla uprising that lasted for a dozen years even though declared over in 1960. The communist terrorists (“C.T.’s”) aimed to oust the British by combined economic, political and armed guerilla warfare. They hoped to strangle the economy, still based largely on rubber and tin production. They murdered British planters and tin mine owners and local personnel who worked for them. They had ambushed and killed Templer’s predecessor, Sir Henry Gurney. The violence took extreme forms, for example the CT guerillas would capture, and nail alive onto rubber trees, laborers working on plantations of British or pro-British ownership.
Chin Peng and his rebel guerilla bands operated in northern Malaya not far from the long southern border of Thailand. They could, and did, cross readily into Thailand for sanctuary. The border was not only porous, but totally unguarded in jungle areas. In these and other areas of Thailand there existed sizable ethnic Chinese communities prone to favor the rebels. It appeared that the struggle in Malaya might spread into Thailand. CFA/San Francisco was considering establishment of a country program for Thailand with an office and Resident Representative in Bangkok. Pros, cons, and costs were being weighed.. Jim Stewart assigned Robert Sheeks to go to Thailand, carry out a survey, and submit a report with recommendations.
The survey took an intensive three weeks, which entailed meetings and interviews with people in various sectors of Thai society, including politicians, economists, military and police officials, Buddhist leaders, and ordinary citizens. Robert sought opinions of foreign personnel of Consulates (U.S., British, Japanese, French) and of well-established foreign industrial and business firms. The gist of Robert's report was that the elementary state of Thai awareness about Chinese communist intentions, plus a passivity induced partly by the Buddhist ethic and by the traditionally relaxed spirit of Thai society generally made the Thais sitting ducks for communist propaganda and political exploitation. Robert recommended that CFA should establish a Thailand program with minimum delay. To summarize the outcome, San Francisco agreed; and while Robert was still in Malaya, appointed Noel Busch as CFA Representative, whom he briefed in Singapore on his way to Bangkok, where he opened the CFA office.
The high tide of armed insurrection in Malaya was during 1948-52. The tide began to turn after Sir Gerald Templer arrived in 1952 to replace the assassinated High Commissioner, Sir Gerald Gurney. The programs instituted by Templer, of harsh security measures and effective political and psychological warfare, began to bring the insurgency under control. Templer emphasized independence for non-colonial, democratic Malaya as soon as possible. CPM guerilla units in their jungle sanctuaries began to disintegrate. In August of 1957, Malaya held nationwide, English-style secret ballot elections gaining her independence, as a federal constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected representative Parliamentary government.
In 1960, six years after Templer's departure in 1954, "The Emergency" was declared officially ended, although security measures remained in effect and occasional sporadic raiding and fighting continued. Eventually, in December 1989 a peace treaty was formally signed at Phuket, Thailand by representatives of the new nation of Malaysia, Thailand and Chin Peng's MCP. This officially brought to an end the long bloody war that had begun four decades earlier
Malaya’s crisis was a legacy of WW II, an aftermath of Japan’s invasion, which had left a damaged country in economic and political turmoil. The ethnic Chinese population of the dual entity, Malaya/Singapore, was about forty percent of the total, roughly equal to the proportion of indigenous Malays, with ethnic Indians being about ten percent. Because of Japan’s war with China, Malayan and Singaporean Chinese were regarded as “Overseas Chinese” with close ties to China and were targeted victims of Japanese aggression. Many became resisters and some became armed anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters. By the time the war ended considerable numbers of ethnic Chinese refugees had dispersed into rural and jungle locations as landless squatters surviving by subsistence farming.
It was an especially turbulent era in that part of the world. The Huks (Hukbalahap) were on the attack against the Philippine government. The Chinese dominated Communist terrorists were on the attack in Malaya against the British dominated Malay/British establishment in Kuala Lumpur. Vietnam was a seething battleground between the Hanoi North and Saigon South. Other such struggles were going on or brewing in the region. In May of 1954, the battle of Dien Bien Phu would take place in French Indo-China.
“The Emergency” was declared in June 1948, just three years after WWII had ended. It was precipitated by the killing in Malaya of three British rubber plantation managers, (called “Planters”). The murders were carried out by the mainly Chinese communist-led “Malayan Races Liberation Army” (MRLA), a guerilla force that had originated from the wartime “Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army” (MPAJA) headed by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). When Robert B. Sheeks arrived in Malaya mid-1952, the country was engulfed in political, economic, and guerrilla warfare. The 500-mile long battleground stretched between Thailand on the north to Singapore on the south. Of the 51,000 square miles of land area, 40,000 square miles were tropical jungle, with a mountainous interior as high as 7,000 feet.
On June 16, 1948, when armed conflict broke out in Malaya, the military component of the MRLA was violently reactivated as a guerilla force equipped with a substantial cache of wartime weapons. By 1952, when Robert arrived in Malaya, the armed guerillas were an estimated ten thousand strong, but with many more thousands of clandestine supporters. Most of the guerillas were ethnic Chinese, but among them were a few Malays, Indians and Indonesians. The most prominent rebelling force was the militant faction of the Malayan Communist Party, under the leadership of Chin Peng, a Chinese communist guerilla commander. The squatter-farmer population, willingly or otherwise, became a prime resource for the guerillas to obtain new recruits, laborers, food, information, and WW II remnant weapons. To deny vital support to the Chin Peng guerillas, the British launched a set of actions, notable among these was the "New Villages" Program. This was a strategy formulated by the Director of Operations, General Sir Harold Briggs, and was called the Briggs Plan. It called for the enforced relocation of half a million rural Malayans into guarded camps, euphemistically named “New Villages”. Of those relocated, more than 400,000 were ethnic Chinese. The “Villages” were barbed wire enclosed sites into which squatter/farmer families and other civilians living near guerilla controlled areas were evacuated.. To isolate the terrorists, all food supplies were rigidly controlled. Some villagers were released during the day for farming and labor but all had to be back in camp at night. Curfews were strictly enforced. Although the Villagers had government police and military protection from predation by the guerillas, the living conditions were grim. Each Village was in effect a concentration camp with minimal amenities. Many of the “Villagers” felt imprisoned, generally more resentful than grateful. In these conditions they were susceptible to communist terrorist persuasions and threats. For this reason the New Villages became one focus of CFA attention and projects.
Eventually ranged against the CT’s (Communist Terrorists) and their adherents was a large security force that included Malayan Army troops, police, special constables, and Commonwealth army and navy units and air squadrons the British brought in. Commonwealth participants came from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, the U.K., Nepal, Borneo and elsewhere. Especially lethal jungle warfare was waged against the CT’s by patrol units composed of Dyak trackers (Nepalese Gurkhas, Fijians, British military personnel., and some local Malays). The Dyaks, former headhunters from Sarawak, often were the patrol spearhead, tracking enemy trails through the jungle like bloodhounds.
The years of Robert's CFA service in Malaya, 1952-1954, coincided with the three years that Templer served in Malaya as High Commissioner. They were peak years of the armed communist guerilla uprising that lasted for a dozen years even though declared over in 1960. The communist terrorists (“C.T.’s”) aimed to oust the British by combined economic, political and armed guerilla warfare. They hoped to strangle the economy, still based largely on rubber and tin production. They murdered British planters and tin mine owners and local personnel who worked for them. They had ambushed and killed Templer’s predecessor, Sir Henry Gurney. The violence took extreme forms, for example the CT guerillas would capture, and nail alive onto rubber trees, laborers working on plantations of British or pro-British ownership.
Chin Peng and his rebel guerilla bands operated in northern Malaya not far from the long southern border of Thailand. They could, and did, cross readily into Thailand for sanctuary. The border was not only porous, but totally unguarded in jungle areas. In these and other areas of Thailand there existed sizable ethnic Chinese communities prone to favor the rebels. It appeared that the struggle in Malaya might spread into Thailand. CFA/San Francisco was considering establishment of a country program for Thailand with an office and Resident Representative in Bangkok. Pros, cons, and costs were being weighed.. Jim Stewart assigned Robert Sheeks to go to Thailand, carry out a survey, and submit a report with recommendations.
The survey took an intensive three weeks, which entailed meetings and interviews with people in various sectors of Thai society, including politicians, economists, military and police officials, Buddhist leaders, and ordinary citizens. Robert sought opinions of foreign personnel of Consulates (U.S., British, Japanese, French) and of well-established foreign industrial and business firms. The gist of Robert's report was that the elementary state of Thai awareness about Chinese communist intentions, plus a passivity induced partly by the Buddhist ethic and by the traditionally relaxed spirit of Thai society generally made the Thais sitting ducks for communist propaganda and political exploitation. Robert recommended that CFA should establish a Thailand program with minimum delay. To summarize the outcome, San Francisco agreed; and while Robert was still in Malaya, appointed Noel Busch as CFA Representative, whom he briefed in Singapore on his way to Bangkok, where he opened the CFA office.
The high tide of armed insurrection in Malaya was during 1948-52. The tide began to turn after Sir Gerald Templer arrived in 1952 to replace the assassinated High Commissioner, Sir Gerald Gurney. The programs instituted by Templer, of harsh security measures and effective political and psychological warfare, began to bring the insurgency under control. Templer emphasized independence for non-colonial, democratic Malaya as soon as possible. CPM guerilla units in their jungle sanctuaries began to disintegrate. In August of 1957, Malaya held nationwide, English-style secret ballot elections gaining her independence, as a federal constitutional monarchy with a democratically elected representative Parliamentary government.
In 1960, six years after Templer's departure in 1954, "The Emergency" was declared officially ended, although security measures remained in effect and occasional sporadic raiding and fighting continued. Eventually, in December 1989 a peace treaty was formally signed at Phuket, Thailand by representatives of the new nation of Malaysia, Thailand and Chin Peng's MCP. This officially brought to an end the long bloody war that had begun four decades earlier
Click to enlarge image.
CFA Projects:
Robert visited the "New Villages" to study problem situations CFA might be able to help resolve. An example that came to his attention, that was especially serious, was the lack of schools and books in the New Villages. The few schools that had been improvised were using Chinese communist-supplied, Chinese language reader books. Their content was pure Mao Tse-tung propaganda. These even had pages captioned “Our National Flag”, showing in full color the Chinese communist red flag and yellow stars. This somehow had escaped any serious attention by the security authorities. CFA proposed a substantial project to replace all such texts with new ones emphasizing Malayan identity and loyalty. This was endorsed by the Ministry of Education, which was prepared to substitute new texts in all Chinese language schools, whether within the New Villages or elsewhere in Malaya.
The CFA office in Hong Kong, directed by Jim Ivy, had a close working relationship with the Union Research Institute, a research and publishing organization staffed by refugees from Communist China. It had the personnel and resources to prepare and print the new text books. After authorities in Kuala Lumpur approved the drafts, many copies were printed and supplied by CFA for use in Malaya. A related CFA project was subsidizing installation of reading rooms with libraries in New Villages, and helping to stock them with non-communist books and magazines.
CFA initiated projects as diverse as urban zoning improvement; support for youth organizations and recreation centers; assistance to the Malayan Rubber Tappers Union, and other groups being pressured by the communist rebels. One zoning improvement was, for example, to eliminate communal tension caused by proximity to Malay Mosques of Chinese pork butcher shops, something highly offensive to Moslem Malays. At such shops always prominently displayed were entire roast pork carcasses or large parts.
CFA/Malaya programming remained a one-man operation into the second year. Eventually San Francisco sent an Assistant Representative, a fine young man from Oregon, named Bob Goffard. Also assigned to Robert's office was an American secretary, named Bess Parmer, whose husband, Norman, was in Malaya completing a political science research thesis. Bob Goffard was very helpful in Kuala Lumpur, but CFA needing to establish a presence in Indonesia as soon as possible. CFA then sent Bob Goffard to serve in Jakarta. Tragically, within weeks Bob had contracted cerebral malaria and suddenly died.
A Fateful Decision:
It was an era of great change in Malaya and a dangerous one, especially for Europeans. When my father arrived in Malaya in 1952 the communist-led insurgency (MRLA), declared by the British as the "Malayan Emergency", had escalated into brutal jungle warfare. It had begun with the murder of British rubber plantation managers. Opposing the MRLA was an array of British Commonwealth Military, Malayan Military, and police forces. Plus joined, to a limited extent, by private defenders of plantations, mines and homes. The insurgency included an attempt on my father's life. The details of the attempt were frightening. Quite often, on Sundays, my father would join a hunting party going out after wild pigs which were very numerous in the area. The hunting group was organized by a remarkable American, Mr. Norman Cleaveland, president of Pacific Tin Consolidated and owner/manager of a large tin mine (Ampang) on the outskirts of K.L. At the time Norman was also our landlord from whom we rented our home just on the outskirts of K.L. But unknown to many, Norman was also supplying weapons to friendly Malays and others as well, to protect his own mining interests. He was able to privately arrange air shipments of guns into Malaya from the United States. It was he who supplied all the shotguns and ammunition used on these wild boar hunts. The hunting party had, as usual, been hunting along the jungle fringes of the rubber plantation areas. The animals thrived on the farmlands that had been evacuated when most of the rural population had been relocated into so-called "New Villages" which were securely-fenced settlements. The wild pigs were mostly feral animals, mixtures of domesticated animals and the indigenous wild species. Besides feasting on all the abandoned crops, such as sugarcane, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, the pigs had unlimited supplies of oil-rich rubber seeds that dropped from the vast number of rubber trees everywhere in the surrounding rubber plantations. They thrived, had two litters a year, with up to 10 piglets per litter.
The hunting parties were normally made up of about a dozen locals, mostly ethnic Chinese Malayans, but several Malays and Indians as well. As usual, they had two hunting dogs that chased pigs to where the hunters could see and shoot them. The yelping dogs doubtless alerted the CT's (Communist Terrorists) and revealed the hunting party's location. Apparently the CT’s had previously seen my father with the same hunting party in the same area around Ampang on recent consecutive weekends. They also knew of his active anti-communist work in the "New Villages" locations. The terrorists had chosen that day to ambush the party in order to kill “Europeans” and acquire weapons. They assumed my father was in the party on that day, but not finding him with the others, they believed he must have evaded capture by hiding in the jungle. Frustrated, they thought the hunters were lying and threatened to shoot them. The CT's rounded up the hunters; interrogated them about where my father was "hiding"; confiscated all their shotguns and ammunition; led them into the surrounding jungle; sat them on the ground for several hours; delivered a nationalistic harangue about independence and virtues of Communism, and tried to recruit them into the anti-British, anti-colonial, anti-Malay royalty, guerilla forces. Then released the hunters unharmed.
Luckily my father had decided not to join the hunt that particular Sunday and so avoided what could have been a disaster for our family. As it turned out, my father was not all that fond of hunting wild pigs. There were some rather unpleasant things about going after pigs in jungle heat and humidity that he had encountered on previous hunts. These included leeches that managed to latch onto warm-blooded mammals, including humans. Also, once pigs were shot, the plentiful wood ticks that infested them sensed they must abandon a cooling carcass and find handy new hosts like the hunters. On that fateful day, my father had first checked to learn if Lady MacGillivray (wife of Deputy High Commissioner, Donald Charles MacGillivray) and her daughter would be joining the hunt that weekend. They would not, so my Dad was not obligated to help them as Norman Cleaveland ordinarily wanted him to do, and so decided not to join the hunt.
This incident by the CT's was part of their ongoing terrorist operations and jungle warfare. Norman Cleaveland had thought that armed hunters would help keep the terrorists away from his tin mines. But after that incident, Norman Cleaveland suspended arming the weekend pig hunts; kept tighter weapons security at and around his Ampang tin mine and urged his workers to report any contact attempts by the guerillas. After that, my Dad carried a pistol whenever he went out of K.L into rural areas, as did most British civilians, especially the “planters’ who became quite well-armed and their plantation headquarters and residences semi-militarized.
Robert visited the "New Villages" to study problem situations CFA might be able to help resolve. An example that came to his attention, that was especially serious, was the lack of schools and books in the New Villages. The few schools that had been improvised were using Chinese communist-supplied, Chinese language reader books. Their content was pure Mao Tse-tung propaganda. These even had pages captioned “Our National Flag”, showing in full color the Chinese communist red flag and yellow stars. This somehow had escaped any serious attention by the security authorities. CFA proposed a substantial project to replace all such texts with new ones emphasizing Malayan identity and loyalty. This was endorsed by the Ministry of Education, which was prepared to substitute new texts in all Chinese language schools, whether within the New Villages or elsewhere in Malaya.
The CFA office in Hong Kong, directed by Jim Ivy, had a close working relationship with the Union Research Institute, a research and publishing organization staffed by refugees from Communist China. It had the personnel and resources to prepare and print the new text books. After authorities in Kuala Lumpur approved the drafts, many copies were printed and supplied by CFA for use in Malaya. A related CFA project was subsidizing installation of reading rooms with libraries in New Villages, and helping to stock them with non-communist books and magazines.
CFA initiated projects as diverse as urban zoning improvement; support for youth organizations and recreation centers; assistance to the Malayan Rubber Tappers Union, and other groups being pressured by the communist rebels. One zoning improvement was, for example, to eliminate communal tension caused by proximity to Malay Mosques of Chinese pork butcher shops, something highly offensive to Moslem Malays. At such shops always prominently displayed were entire roast pork carcasses or large parts.
CFA/Malaya programming remained a one-man operation into the second year. Eventually San Francisco sent an Assistant Representative, a fine young man from Oregon, named Bob Goffard. Also assigned to Robert's office was an American secretary, named Bess Parmer, whose husband, Norman, was in Malaya completing a political science research thesis. Bob Goffard was very helpful in Kuala Lumpur, but CFA needing to establish a presence in Indonesia as soon as possible. CFA then sent Bob Goffard to serve in Jakarta. Tragically, within weeks Bob had contracted cerebral malaria and suddenly died.
A Fateful Decision:
It was an era of great change in Malaya and a dangerous one, especially for Europeans. When my father arrived in Malaya in 1952 the communist-led insurgency (MRLA), declared by the British as the "Malayan Emergency", had escalated into brutal jungle warfare. It had begun with the murder of British rubber plantation managers. Opposing the MRLA was an array of British Commonwealth Military, Malayan Military, and police forces. Plus joined, to a limited extent, by private defenders of plantations, mines and homes. The insurgency included an attempt on my father's life. The details of the attempt were frightening. Quite often, on Sundays, my father would join a hunting party going out after wild pigs which were very numerous in the area. The hunting group was organized by a remarkable American, Mr. Norman Cleaveland, president of Pacific Tin Consolidated and owner/manager of a large tin mine (Ampang) on the outskirts of K.L. At the time Norman was also our landlord from whom we rented our home just on the outskirts of K.L. But unknown to many, Norman was also supplying weapons to friendly Malays and others as well, to protect his own mining interests. He was able to privately arrange air shipments of guns into Malaya from the United States. It was he who supplied all the shotguns and ammunition used on these wild boar hunts. The hunting party had, as usual, been hunting along the jungle fringes of the rubber plantation areas. The animals thrived on the farmlands that had been evacuated when most of the rural population had been relocated into so-called "New Villages" which were securely-fenced settlements. The wild pigs were mostly feral animals, mixtures of domesticated animals and the indigenous wild species. Besides feasting on all the abandoned crops, such as sugarcane, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, the pigs had unlimited supplies of oil-rich rubber seeds that dropped from the vast number of rubber trees everywhere in the surrounding rubber plantations. They thrived, had two litters a year, with up to 10 piglets per litter.
The hunting parties were normally made up of about a dozen locals, mostly ethnic Chinese Malayans, but several Malays and Indians as well. As usual, they had two hunting dogs that chased pigs to where the hunters could see and shoot them. The yelping dogs doubtless alerted the CT's (Communist Terrorists) and revealed the hunting party's location. Apparently the CT’s had previously seen my father with the same hunting party in the same area around Ampang on recent consecutive weekends. They also knew of his active anti-communist work in the "New Villages" locations. The terrorists had chosen that day to ambush the party in order to kill “Europeans” and acquire weapons. They assumed my father was in the party on that day, but not finding him with the others, they believed he must have evaded capture by hiding in the jungle. Frustrated, they thought the hunters were lying and threatened to shoot them. The CT's rounded up the hunters; interrogated them about where my father was "hiding"; confiscated all their shotguns and ammunition; led them into the surrounding jungle; sat them on the ground for several hours; delivered a nationalistic harangue about independence and virtues of Communism, and tried to recruit them into the anti-British, anti-colonial, anti-Malay royalty, guerilla forces. Then released the hunters unharmed.
Luckily my father had decided not to join the hunt that particular Sunday and so avoided what could have been a disaster for our family. As it turned out, my father was not all that fond of hunting wild pigs. There were some rather unpleasant things about going after pigs in jungle heat and humidity that he had encountered on previous hunts. These included leeches that managed to latch onto warm-blooded mammals, including humans. Also, once pigs were shot, the plentiful wood ticks that infested them sensed they must abandon a cooling carcass and find handy new hosts like the hunters. On that fateful day, my father had first checked to learn if Lady MacGillivray (wife of Deputy High Commissioner, Donald Charles MacGillivray) and her daughter would be joining the hunt that weekend. They would not, so my Dad was not obligated to help them as Norman Cleaveland ordinarily wanted him to do, and so decided not to join the hunt.
This incident by the CT's was part of their ongoing terrorist operations and jungle warfare. Norman Cleaveland had thought that armed hunters would help keep the terrorists away from his tin mines. But after that incident, Norman Cleaveland suspended arming the weekend pig hunts; kept tighter weapons security at and around his Ampang tin mine and urged his workers to report any contact attempts by the guerillas. After that, my Dad carried a pistol whenever he went out of K.L into rural areas, as did most British civilians, especially the “planters’ who became quite well-armed and their plantation headquarters and residences semi-militarized.
Slide Presentation of Nixon's Malaya Visit, October 1953
Captions provided beneath each photograph.
Click to enlarge image.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, 1953. Photograph of me, Robert H. Sheeks.
I was born in June 1948. I was only 4 or 5 years old in this snap shot, taken in the backyard of our home in K.L. I still have fond memories of those childhood days. Of course, I had no idea of the conflict and the violence that was going on around us, nor would I have understood. We lived in a beautiful house on the outskirts of K.L., right along side a horse racing track. I was preoccupied with my horseback riding lessons (my horse's name was Rocket). Then there was kite flying with our household manservant, Ramat, fishing trips to the local river, swimming, exploring, and the typical youngster's job of getting into trouble, etc. I also remember that Dad drove a Studebaker sedan as the family car. But occasionally, he had access to a military jeep and I remember that vehicle very well. To this day I still remember riding around the Malay countryside with my Dad and even the smell of its thick canvas covered top.
I got along very well with all the housekeepers, who had their own living quarters on our property. Later in life, I was told by my parents that in those early days, I could speak Malay before I could speak English. I was curious and adventurous about almost everything. I remember one day when Ramat took me out onto the grounds of the house and showed me a huge ant nest that he had dug up. It fascinated me to see the ant colony. He even pointed out the large queen ant among the mass of worker ants. Ramat, and his wife Amat, were devoted employees of our family and I learned a lot from them. On the days that I took riding lessons, I would have to go out onto the race track next to our home and gather at an inner corral on the race grounds. To get there I had to brave a heavy wooden gate that was constantly guarded by large red ants always moving back and forth in lines across the planking. There wasn't a riding lesson day that went by that I didn't get stung by an ant or two. But I seemed to take it in stride, just so I could get out to my horse and ride. In the snap shot above I am wearing my English riding pants with the funny flared side panels. Our home was a large two story house. I was able to look out over the entire race track from a large window on the second story where our living room was located. I remember on race days I had the best seat to watch the race horses running by our home.
Based on the escalating terrorist violence, and after learning about the wild pig hunting incident, it became clear to my parents that continued residency in Malaya was too dangerous for our family to stay on any longer. It was decided that my mother (then pregnant with who would become my younger brother Graham), along with my older brother Douglas, younger sister Ellen and I, would return home to the U.S. After our leaving K.L., Dad remained behind a short time longer, attending to transitional matters at the CFA office. He soon rejoined us all in Boston, Mass., (the birthplace of all his children), just in time to see his newest son born just hours earlier.
The CFA would soon change its name to The Asia Foundation with headquarters in San Francisco, California. My father stayed on with The Asia Foundation and our family would relocate to Northern California in 1954/55. I spent the rest of my adolescent and most of my teenage years growing up in Belvedere, California in Marin County. Dad was based out of San Francisco but continued to make many overseas trips to the far east on various assignments.
I was born in June 1948. I was only 4 or 5 years old in this snap shot, taken in the backyard of our home in K.L. I still have fond memories of those childhood days. Of course, I had no idea of the conflict and the violence that was going on around us, nor would I have understood. We lived in a beautiful house on the outskirts of K.L., right along side a horse racing track. I was preoccupied with my horseback riding lessons (my horse's name was Rocket). Then there was kite flying with our household manservant, Ramat, fishing trips to the local river, swimming, exploring, and the typical youngster's job of getting into trouble, etc. I also remember that Dad drove a Studebaker sedan as the family car. But occasionally, he had access to a military jeep and I remember that vehicle very well. To this day I still remember riding around the Malay countryside with my Dad and even the smell of its thick canvas covered top.
I got along very well with all the housekeepers, who had their own living quarters on our property. Later in life, I was told by my parents that in those early days, I could speak Malay before I could speak English. I was curious and adventurous about almost everything. I remember one day when Ramat took me out onto the grounds of the house and showed me a huge ant nest that he had dug up. It fascinated me to see the ant colony. He even pointed out the large queen ant among the mass of worker ants. Ramat, and his wife Amat, were devoted employees of our family and I learned a lot from them. On the days that I took riding lessons, I would have to go out onto the race track next to our home and gather at an inner corral on the race grounds. To get there I had to brave a heavy wooden gate that was constantly guarded by large red ants always moving back and forth in lines across the planking. There wasn't a riding lesson day that went by that I didn't get stung by an ant or two. But I seemed to take it in stride, just so I could get out to my horse and ride. In the snap shot above I am wearing my English riding pants with the funny flared side panels. Our home was a large two story house. I was able to look out over the entire race track from a large window on the second story where our living room was located. I remember on race days I had the best seat to watch the race horses running by our home.
Based on the escalating terrorist violence, and after learning about the wild pig hunting incident, it became clear to my parents that continued residency in Malaya was too dangerous for our family to stay on any longer. It was decided that my mother (then pregnant with who would become my younger brother Graham), along with my older brother Douglas, younger sister Ellen and I, would return home to the U.S. After our leaving K.L., Dad remained behind a short time longer, attending to transitional matters at the CFA office. He soon rejoined us all in Boston, Mass., (the birthplace of all his children), just in time to see his newest son born just hours earlier.
The CFA would soon change its name to The Asia Foundation with headquarters in San Francisco, California. My father stayed on with The Asia Foundation and our family would relocate to Northern California in 1954/55. I spent the rest of my adolescent and most of my teenage years growing up in Belvedere, California in Marin County. Dad was based out of San Francisco but continued to make many overseas trips to the far east on various assignments.
Photographs of Our Home in Kuala Lumpur 1952-1954
Recommended Reading:
Bang! Bang! in AMPANG by Norman Cleaveland
Jungle Green by Arthur Campbell
The War of the Running Dogs by Noel Barber
Bang! Bang! in AMPANG by Norman Cleaveland
Jungle Green by Arthur Campbell
The War of the Running Dogs by Noel Barber
Copyright and Disclaimer Statement:
This website contains a collection of privately owned photographs from the Sheeks collection, as well as official archive photographs that are in the public domain. This domain name and webpage is the sole property of Robert H. Sheeks. Questions and Comments can be sent to the website producer and administrator: BobSheeks@aol.com
Nixon Visit Photographs Credit: Copyright, Yong Peng Seong Studios, Yap Ah Loy Street, Kuala Lumpur. Fred Lim Photographer. Some of these photographs would later be released to The Associated Press for news publication. The entire Nixon photo collection is now part of the National Archive and is in the public domain.
This website contains a collection of privately owned photographs from the Sheeks collection, as well as official archive photographs that are in the public domain. This domain name and webpage is the sole property of Robert H. Sheeks. Questions and Comments can be sent to the website producer and administrator: BobSheeks@aol.com
Nixon Visit Photographs Credit: Copyright, Yong Peng Seong Studios, Yap Ah Loy Street, Kuala Lumpur. Fred Lim Photographer. Some of these photographs would later be released to The Associated Press for news publication. The entire Nixon photo collection is now part of the National Archive and is in the public domain.
