The forgotten Private John Itumo: 1950s gallant soldier of dreaded Malaysian war

Most likely, you have never heard of John Jack Itumo — and most likely his children, if he had any, or relatives do not know what happened to him after he left to fight for the British in their bid to continue colonising modern-day Malaysia and Singapore.

Private Itumo, then 26, had been charged with killing Lieutenant-Colonel John Mather, on the midnight of June 26, 1953 at a KAR camp in Kuantan, Malaysia and his case is of historical significance since he was the last soldier executed under British military law. It was also the first time a soldier serving in Malaya was sentenced to death by a military court since the end of the war.

CARPET BOMBED

For several years, I have been trying to piece together the story of this 3rd King’s African Rifles’ soldier — a Kenyan who died fighting in a war they hardly understood.

Before his death Lt.Col Mather was the commander in charge of the British army in Kuantan, Malaysia — and was one of the top ranking soldiers killed during the Malaysian emergency period in 1950s.

Why Private Itumo disliked his job in Malaysia is not clear — but it appears he had decided not to go on killing sprees of the locals.

During this campaign, the British dropped 545,000 tons of bombs in 4,500 air strikes in the first five years and left more than 10,000 locals dead in one of the most shameful colonial war of our time.

The dead exclude 519 British personnel, including the High Commissioner, Henry Gurney and more than 1,300 Malayan police.

So horrific was the Malayan Emergence, declared on June 17, 1948, that the British carpet bombed villages and sprayed villages with a chemical known as troxine in a bid to starve the locals to submission.

Like many other Kenyans, Private Jack Itumo had been enlisted to join KAR in 1949 and sent to south east Asia to defend the British interests after an insurgent Malayan National Liberation Army, the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, demanded the end of Britain occupation and started waging an armed war on tin mines and rubber estates — the mainstay of the colonial economy in British Malaya.

PROFITABLE TERRITORY

British Malaya — a term used to refer to the areas then under indirect British rule in South East Asia’s Malay Peninsula including Burma, Singapore and Malaysia — was the world’s largest producer of tin and rubber and every year, the value of exported rubber alone exceeded the value of all domestic exports from Britain to the US.

In essence, this was the most profitable territory of the British empire and it wanted to keep it, by force if possible.

Previously, Private Itumo had been trained as a signaller in Nanyuki and had quickly learnt how to use the newly acquired Wireless Set No 68 and to translate the Morse Code, a system of text messaging consisting of dots and dashes.

“There was no problem about his intelligence,” one of his boss in Nanyuki, Maj Bob Smith would later write in an unpublished memoir.

The story of Private Itumo is weaved with British desperation that followed the end of World War II in 1945, after the atomic bombing of Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The British had taken over the Japanese-held Malaya and established a military administration in the Straits Settlements.

JUNGLE PATROLS

But to keep the communist guerrillas at bay, they had brought in KAR troops to help patrol the jungles. Private Itumo hated these patrols— and, most likely, the British and he refused to obey orders.

Back at home, former KAR soldiers who had served in the Burma campaign — among them a KAR clerk Bildad Kaggia — had joined Kenya African Union and founded its militant wing; Mau Mau.

Private Itumo was unhappy and perhaps disliked his boss, Lt-Col John Mather of the Somerset Light Infantry.

He would often, according to Maj Bob Smith, feign sickness to evade jungle patrol duties. But his sickness would mysteriously disappear after being driven to the military headquarters in Kuantan, a seaside beach town some 160 km on the east coast.

“He was warned that, if it happened again he would be charged with malingering. Amazingly, a few months later, he succeeded in pulling the wool over someone’s eyes again and was sent to Kuantan. He was given a thorough examination but this time the medical officer, who found nothing wrong with him, charged him with malingering,” wrote Maj Bob Smith in his notes.

Maj Smith, who died in November 2012, was the one who trained Private Itumo in Nanyuki and when he was sent to Malaya to replace Captain John Mather — who was ailing — he was surprised to find Itumo’s name in the list of wayward soldiers.

MORE TROUBLE

In the military, when a soldier was charged with malingering, or any other offence, they would do a tail-between-the-legs walk to the Commanding Officer (CO) led by the Regimental Sergeant Major.

“But not Jack John Itumo. He sauntered into the CO’s tent and promptly lay on the floor. Hauled to his feet to hear the charge and evidence against him, he was found guilty and given 14-days detention in a tent surrounded by a web of barbed wire,” recalled Maj Smith.

It was this sentence in Kuantan that annoyed him. “During the first week of his punishment, he committed another offence and was awarded an extra punishment by the CO which involved being handcuffed to the tent pole for most of the day and night and deprived of all but the necessary items of food to keep him alive. These draconian measures only caused Itumo to become angrier and I began to wonder what trouble he would cause when he was finally released.

If we had been in Kenya he would have been discharged from the Army after serving his sentence but while we were in Malaya there was no alternative but to keep him with the battalion until we got home,” wrote Smith.

But with the return of Lieut-Col Mather from hospital, Maj Smith handed over the responsibility to him with warning that Itumo “was likely to cause more trouble when he was released in a few days’ time.

TROUBLE STARTED

“I then left battalion headquarters in Kuantan with the CO to take part in a large operation in central Pahang (known for its mountains and tropical forests),” he recalled.

It is now known that after he was released from his detention at Kuantan military headquarters, Private Itumo and two other soldiers Hassan Ndolo and Mwaola Muasa went to the local bars and started drinking, perhaps with local girls, until trouble started. Nobody seems to know. But what is known is that Lieut-Col Mather led a group of soldiers to arrest the Kenyans and they found Private Itumo “standing menacingly at the bar with a bottle in his hand.”

What he didn’t know was that on the way to the bar, Private Itumo, according to court records, had bought a sword and vowed to kill a British soldier and was encouraged by Hassan Ndolo to do it.

When Lieut-Col Mather ordered the group back to the barracks, he thought he would punish Private Itumo once again, but when he tried to force him towards the guard tent — Itumo stabbed him and took off but not before he was cornered.

“He had warned everyone not to approach him if they valued their lives,” according to Major Smith.

FATUOUS CHILD

To the locals in Malaya, Private Itumo was a hero and overnight his murder case attracted hundreds of people who disliked the British soldiers.

Private Itumo had a lawyer, picked by the British — Mr R.P.S Rajasooria who had tried to save his life.

He had argued that Private Itumo’s action when he refused to obey orders was that of a man “really drunk…He always did the opposite of what he was told like a fatuous child,” Rajasooria argued.

But Judge Advocate Mr W. St. J.C. Tayleur found him guilty of “insubordination, striking a civilian, going absent without leave and theft.” He had been told that Private Itumo stabbed Lt Col John Mather “in the heat of passion”.

Asked by the court what he had to say, Mr Itumo replied: “Although I killed, I did not kill knowingly.” His lawyer argued that Private Itumo was not “normal” and asked the court to make a recommendation for mercy. It didn’t.

All along, as the sentence was being read, Mr Itumo would grin at the judge: “Stop that grinning!” The judge was quoted to have ordered much to the amusement of the crowd. “This is a serious matter and not a circus.”

On September 26, 1953, Private Itumo’s sentence was confirmed by General Sir Charles F. Keightley, Commander-in Chief of Far East Land Forces and he asked to appeal to the British Court composed of the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard and two other High Court judges.

LOST CAUSE

It was a lost case. Lord Goddard was once described by columnist Bernard Levin of The Times as "a calamity" and accused him of “vindictiveness” and of being a malign influence on penal reform.

“He walked hand in hand with ignorance on one side of him and barbarism on the other,” he had said of Lord Goddard in an article in the Spectator magazine.

With Itumo’s case being heard when the State of Emergency in Kenya had reached tipping point, and when British establishment was wary of the Mau Mau, the appeal looked like a lost case.

“He seemed pleased to have taken the life of a ‘mzungu’ and, with the Mau Mau campaign at its height in Kenya, he obviously felt he was contributing to the ‘freedom’ movement that was sweeping through his tribal reserve,” wrote his former boss in Nanyuki.

On October 12, 1953 Courts Martial Appeal Court in London dismissed the appeal after rejecting the defence argument that Itumo was drunk and did not know what he was doing when he stabbed his boss. Tuesday, November 11, 1953 Private JJ Itumo – as he was known — was hanged in Pudu Gaol in Kuala Lumpur. He was buried at the Kamunting Road Christian Cemetery in Taiping, Malaysia. To the British, he was criminal, to the locals — a hero.

Mr Kamau is the Editor, Investigations and Special Projects [email protected] @johnkamau1ohn