LIM BO SENG

Life in the Early Years..                         

                                                              

Background and Early life

Lim Bo Seng was born in Nan’an, Fujian, China, on 27 April 1909. Lim Bo Seng had 11 siblings in his family and he was the first son in the family. In 1925, Lim Bo Seng came to Singapore at the age of 16 and studies in Raffles Institution under the British colonial government. He went on to read business at the University of Hong Kong. In 1930, Lim Bo Seng married Gan Choo Neo, a nyonya woman from the Lim clan association hall of Singapore. They had eight children, one of whom died in infancy. He was initially a Taoist but became Christian after his marriage to Gan.

Roles and Contributions

When the WW2 broke out, Lim Bo Seng participated in the anti-Japanese activities such as boycotting of Japanese goods and fund-raising to support the war effort of china. he is an active contributor of the China Relief Fund and also became Director of the Labour Service Department in the newly-formed Singapore Chinese Mobilization Council. He knew he will certain be a target of the Japanese hence, he escaped to India and joined a British network in Malaya known as Force 136 where he was trained for intelligence work and operate them. He went to China to recruit men for that task and sent them to Japanese-occupied Malaya by batches through submarines.

 After escaping to India, he hid in the jungle with the other members of Force 136 to train agents who would intrude the Malayan jungles. Lim Bo Seng was also the head of the British Network and the operation in the Malayan jungles. They established a spy network in Perak to gather the information on the Japanese and then passes the information through radio to the Allied forces, allowing them to launch the attack to reclaim back the mainland of Malaya.

Capture and Fearless Death

Due to the leaked information from one of Lim Bo Seng's men, the entire spy network was destroyed and many members of Force 136 was captured. Lim Bo Seng was also caught and was brought to the Japanese Secret Police Headquarters for interrogation. The Japanese tortured him to make him reveal the names of the other leaders and the hideouts of Force 136 but he did not provide them with information despite knowing death was coming in his way. Instead he protested the ill treatments towards his comrades. Due to Lim Bo Seng's poor health conditions including all those tortures by the Japanese and letting his comrades have his food, he suffered and was bedridden.About a month later, On June 29 1944, Lim Bo Seng died of dysentery. He was buried at an unmarked spot behind the prison.

Qualities 

Lim Bo Seng has great qualities like reliability, caring and courageous. He showed reliability form being trusted not to tell names of his comrades and also other important information of Force 136. He cared for his comrades and even protested for their ill treatments before he even worried for his poor health conditions. He was brave and not afraid of what he decided to do even knowing the harsh consequences .Hence, Lim Bo Seng is worth remembering.