And here, too, Ah Mei proved herself. For in a matter of days she split on a scheme to blow up some of the police officers in Headquarters. Four disgruntled S.E.P.s, on one of their permitted journeys to see a film in a Singapore cinema, had contacted a comrade who was a lorry driver employed in the British Far East Land Forces, whose brother was the cook of one of the Colonels in charge of a British Army unit in Singapore. Through the lorry driver they obtained British Army grenades, smuggled them past the customs office at Johore Bahru (they were riding in a police car, and therefore not searched). Their intention was to pretend to have some valuable information, demand to see the Chief in his office, throw their grenades, and escape in the confusion. Unfortunately, they told Ah Mei.

In the Nissen huts there were about twenty to thirty S.E.P.s, all men except for Ah Mei, another girl, and for a brief while a fourteen-year-old called Mui Set.

Mui Set’s father was Inside. Her mother and her aunt had supplied him and his comrades with food when they were rubber tapping on one of the European estates in Johore. It was easy, for the special constables were rather slack on that estate, and Ah Kei, her father, went in and out almost daily, and sometimes stayed the night with them. One day a worker in the Movement, one of the food suppliers, was caught and on questioning informed on them. The Army then raided the tappers. Mui Set’s mother escaped, shouting to Mui Set to follow. But Mui Set had always been a slow child, and half-deaf, both her ear drums had perforated when she was a baby. The soldiers caught her easily, as well as Mui Set’s aunt, and four children. Old grandmother stumbled after them, screaming: ‘Take me also, take me or I shall starve if you leave me behind!’ They took her, for it was a cardinal principle that families should, if possible, not be separated, but detained or deported together.

Mui Set was held in prison for a week. Ah Mei was planted on her, and Ah Mei asked her questions, many questions. Mui Set, dull and slow, answered as best she could.

Mui Set was up for trial, for consorting with bandits, which meant death by hanging. But it was then discovered that she was fourteen years old. The judge ordered her sent to a probation school for three years. She was too young for prison; too young to be with adults.

There were no probation schools for girls in Malaya when the judge delivered himself of this judgement. Mui Set could have gone to the local detention camp (over one hundred children under twelve were in it), but she was ordered to probation school, and nothing could be done till the case was reconsidered.