KINTA CHRONICLES: Ipoh Has A PEACE GALLERY - 'We Should Forgive but We Must Not Forget'.

(l/r) Professor Gary Lit, the Peace Gallery, appreciation plaques and Gary's book'If the Sky were to Fall'

Ipoh has a Peace Gallery and it was initiated by none other than Professor Gary Lit Ying Loong. According to him "'we should forgive but we must not forget. The price of war is peace. We don’t want to repeat it and that is reason I have set up this gallery is to uphold peace"

For information, Gary was born in Kampar, is a historian and a visiting professor in universities in Asia and Europe. In the last two years he has been giving talks to schools and NGO’s in the Kinta Valley about the Japanese occupation and interviewing WWII survivors and getting their stories told in the printed media. During his school talks he uses graphics to capture the students’ interest and has received requests by students to take them to the site of ‘The Battle of Kampar’.

And to cap it all he has a book to show for his passion, “If the Sky were to Fall” to tell us more of the Japanese atrocities and the emergency years.

The launch of the Peace Gallery. (l/r) Dato Gan Tack Kong, Mdm Moy Ooi Thye, Dr Ting Cheh Sing, Datin Yeoh Kian Teik, Professor Gary Lit, Dato Irene Lee, Chik Mun Ling, Pauline Chew and Marcus Ooi Kean Giap

The Peace Gallery’s soft launch was held on 24th August at 6pm. Located upstairs of 29 Jalan Leong Sin Nam, Ipoh it is devoted to fostering peace and understanding through culture, memory, and dialogue. Rooted in Ipoh and the Kinta Valley’s wartime past, the gallery preserves a largely forgotten heritage , silent tombstones, abandoned sites, and untold stories, to shape a more peaceful future.

To emphasise the tragedy of war Gary introduced his special guest 97 year old Datin Yeoh Kian Teik who was witness to 4 wars since she was 10 years old.

...'war must be avoided...' Datin Yeoh Kian Teik

Her first experience was when she was ten. The Japanese had invaded Shanghai and were bombing the city shaking the rice bowls during mealtimes. Her mother was persuaded to leave. The family bought the last few tickets for a ship to Singapore. Later she arrived in Ipoh, Malaya and enrolled for school but the Japanese followed and soon was WWII. After the war in 1947 she enrolled with the American St Johns University in Shanghai China. Then it was a civil war between Mao Tse Tung of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang. Hence it was back to Malaya which was her 4th war the Malayan Emergency.

"Those were terrible times during the Japanese occupation. They would slaughter people and would chop off their heads and display it outside the central market. I would not take the route after that. Now Gary has requested me to relive those day. I do it to establish the fact that war must be avoided and establish civilisation so we can prevent such thing to happen again".