Barnes in Common

the magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
May/June 2006

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"Miss Griff" – an inspiration who stood firm in war and peace

by John Owen-Davies

After Britain surrendered Singapore to Japanese forces in 1942 a group of several hundred dejected women and children were herded under armed guard to the island's notorious Changi prison. Approaching the austere building, they marched in good order under a blazing sun and started singing: "There'll Always be an England".

One of the group's leaders was a Welsh-born school teacher, Anne Griffith-Jones, who knew that this simple action at the end of a 20-mile walk would lift the spirits of their menfolk already in the prison. History records that it did.

Anne Griffith-Jones, fondly called "Miss Griff", became a leader of the womens section in Changi and set up a school for children also interned there.

For a former suffragette official, welfare officer in a World War One munitions factory, Welsh womens football player and teacher in Malayas remote Cameron Highlands, this was another chapter in an extraordinary and devoutly Christian life that even allowed forgiveness in great adversity.

Miss Griff, who died in 1973 aged 83, found it in her heart after Japan surrendered in 1945 to forgive some of the excesses of her captors. "I can forgive many things, not everything though. But I can never forget," she told me.

"What I can never forgive is that after the surrender we found all the insulin we ever needed in the Japanese medical quarters. During the war our constant requests for more insulin were never met. This meant that all of our diabetics died," she said.

I met Miss Griff in the remote Cameron Highlands in 1967 when, as a newspaper reporter, I visited the area soon after the disappearance there of Jim Thompson, an American credited with reviving the Thai silk industry after 1945. His disappearance has become the stuff of legend. No trace of him has been found.

But back to Miss Griff. She arrived in Malaya in 1923 to see her brother and stayed. She saw a gap in the market for British-style education in Singapore to allow parents to postpone boarding school until an older age. The school opened initially within the premises of the Tanglin Club, with just five students.

It thrived and, in 1935, she opened a second school – the Tanglin Boarding School – in the Cameron Highlands, then a British hill station. She had her share of anxiety, with the nearest doctor 40 miles away and regular reports of tiger sightings.

In late 1941, after Japan attacked the Malay peninsula, all women and children were ordered to leave the Cameron Highlands for Singapore. Undeterred, Miss Griff opened a school on the island to allow parents to continue war work in hospitals.

"Classes were held almost entirely in slit-trenches while the Japanese air force occupied the sky," she said. But on January 31, 1942, two weeks before the British surrender, the school closed. Most of Miss Griff's pupils were evacuated by ship but she stayed on as a nurse.

With typical humour, she remembered the day before Britain capitulated: "I was driving my car down Orchard Road when an enemy plane came from nowhere and strafed me. It really was an exhilarating experience – just like a game of hockey when one is about to score. I turned down a side-street to throw him off!"

After the war, Miss Griff's two schools reopened. But, in 1948, the school in the Cameron Highlands was threatened by Communist terrorists led by Chin Peng and eventually forced to close. However, the Singapore school flourished.

Today, Miss Griff is well remembered by those who came into contact with her. She embodied a spirit of faith, love and hope in adversity.

Chin Peng himself had a colourful history. In World War Two he fought beside British officers and men against the Japanese in occupied Malaya and later was awarded on OBE. After the war he led the now defunct Communist Party of Malaya in a 12-year bid to end British colonial rule in Malaya. He is still alive.

One of modern Malaysia's mysteries is: "What happened to Jim Thompson?" He was last seen on Easter Sunday 1967, walking just behind a hotel, Foster's Smoke House, near the 18th green of a golf course, largely surrounded by dense jungle.

Did he fall into a tiger trap? Was he murdered or kidnapped? Was he ordered to go to North Vietnam to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh? Who knows? The mystery lingers on.

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