Foreword




YEAR OF THE TIGER

This book is a work of fiction built on a foundation of historical facts.

While most of the main players exist only in the mind of the author, the background information outlined in the following pages, including the Golden Lily operation and the diabolical research executed by Unit 731 of the Japanese Army during World War II, are based on accurate historical accounts.
Mystery still surrounds the origins of the century-old manuscript the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion which is also featured in this book. Its authors remain unknown, obscured by the fog of time and murky politics.

When the Allied noose began to tighten around Japan, a sizeable amount of the valuables seized by the ruthless looters working for the Japanese Imperial Government in the early 1940s, had to be stashed in secret underground sites throughout Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines.

After the war, only small caches said to be worth several billion dollars today, were rumoured to have been discovered in the Philippines by treasure hunters, local government officials and covert teams sent by the United States. However, none of these reports has been independently verified.
Unknown to many Singaporeans, several underground tunnels dating back to World War II can still be found at the Fort Canning close to the Battle Box war museum[1].
Similar tunnels and underground rooms have also been discovered under Alexandra Hospital[2]. The bloody massacre of Allied troops and civilians by a group of Japanese soldiers at the hospital in 1942, has been retold here based on accounts by survivors.
Rumours abound of still more secret tunnels built by the British before the war. These include one linking the Singapore mainland to the resort island of Sentosa in the south and another in the north which is said to connect the southern Malayan state of Johore to Singapore. The latter is believed by some to be located in or around the Sembawang Naval Base which was built and operated by the British in the 1930s. No traces of these tunnels were ever found but the rumours of their existence persist to this day[3].
The Johore Battery mentioned in this book is also real. This underground labyrinth of tunnels, ammunition storage rooms and command bunkers is situated within what is now a drug rehabilitation centre on Cosford Road near Changi Airport. Construction workers there stumbled across this well-preserved relic from the past in late 1991.

A public announcement of this historic find was made in February of the following year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s surrender to the Japanese Empire in 1942.[4] The complex has been preserved and was gazetted as a national historic site in 2002[5].
The scattered remains of the Syonan Jinja, a World War II Japanese Shinto shrine located deep in the jungle surrounding MacRitchie Reservoir, can still be found today. No one knows why this remote location was chosen for such an important shrine but there are still whispered rumours of Japanese secrets buried in the surrounding jungle. The shrine was destroyed by the British after the war but the few weathered foundation stones that remain, have been deemed to be of ‘significant historic value’ by the Singapore Government[6] which has decreed that this area be preserved thus preventing any unauthorised searches of the immediate vicinity.
The Padang, a small field located in the heart of this bustling city is of great national pride to Singapore and it has never been fully excavated by archaeologists. However, in late 2009 a small archaeological test pit was dug. There historians found amongst other World War II artefacts, the remains of several military helmets and gas masks[7]….

David Miller
Author
Year of the Tiger

[1] The Straits Times, 12 February 1992, Page 22 – By David Miller
        The Straits Times, 29 July 1989, Page 20 
[2] The Straits Times, 16 September 1998, Page 24
[3] The Straits Times, 12 February 1992, Page 22 – By David Miller
[4] The Straits Times, 12 February 1992, Page 1 – By David Miller
[5] The Straits Times, 16 Feb 2002
[6] The Straits Times, 17 Sep 2002
[7] The Straits Times, 18 January 2010


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