Oswald James Foley

"Saturday 20 Dec. 1941: A Japanise Civil Administrator, Hiroyasu, came to take charge of Penang. This was the start of the Japanese Occupation of Penang, which was to go on until 1st Sept. 1945 when the British liberated Penang.

Shortly after the Japanese occupied Penang, some British Officers and men who had been left behind the lines in the rapid Japanese advance from Kedah and had made their way to Penang by boat, planned an escape to Sngapore. Manicasothy Saravanamuttu, who himself had planned to escape from Penang, had a "tongkang" waiting for him at the mouth of the Sungai Pinang river, but as he was Chairman of the Penang Service Committee, he had a responsibility which he could not relinguish. Instead, he, Harold Speldewinde and another Eurasian, Oswald Foley, picked up the British Officers, drove them in a truck to Sungai Pinang and put them on the "tongkang" with food and water during a daring midnight operation. If they had been caught and betrayed, they would have been killed by the Japanese. The "tongkang" got to Port Swettenham and the officers managed to eventually reach Singapore."