Few of the accused could speak English. Simultaneous translations had to be organised in Chinese dialects and Tamil. The Judge asked the Court authorities to arrange for extra microphones. Counsel on the second morning of the trial also took the opportunity to raise another important matter. Could a short adjournment be made at 11:30 AM, ‘as some of us’, said Koh, ‘may not have as strong a kidney as the others’. Judge Buttrose: If you feel any discomfort during the sitting, Mr Koh, do please stand up and let me know. I am not going to make a 10-minute break a feature of the day. If the jurors feel discomfort they can also let me know.
Another defence counsel sought the Court’s permission for the accused to have paper and pencil with which to make notes. The Judge at once agreed. Then came the question of whether the accused would take pencil and paper back to prison. Crown Counsel said no; but did not object to the accused taking in an exercise book with the pages numbered. But pencils could not be taken into prison. The Judge agreed. At last, during the afternoon of 19 November, the trial of the 59 men began in earnest when Major Peter Lionel James was called to the witness box. He was asked about the note he wrote in April to Dutton about work hours. Mr Braga: The conditions on the island were such that they were being slave-driven, driven like beasts of burden rather than human beings? It was the injustice and unfair treatment they were receiving that brought about this incident? Major James: I cannot agree with you. In my opinion there was no slave-driving. The place was run in what I consider the most enlightened manner. In fact I would not mind saying too enlightened. Mr Braga: It was the corruption, the injustice, the forced labour that brought this about? Major James: No. Mr Francis Seow: Major James, you visited Pulau Senang regularly. Did they look like slaves? Major James: No, they were always cheerful. Pleased to see me. Crown Counseclass="underline" Did anyone appear undernourished? Major James: Quite the reverse. They were all tanned by the sun and they looked to me almost like a collection of weight-lifters, big hefty fellows.
Major James was asked if he knew Dutton well.
“I knew him intimately.”
“How would you describe his ability as superintendent of the island?”
“He was a natural leader of men. He was a born leader. He was a most accomplished engineer. He was a man with the most effervescent personality, a man who was afraid of no task, a man who was prepared to give his most and best to what he believed in. He was never happy unless he was outside doing things himself. He designed everything. There was nothing on Pulau Senang which was not designed or built by him.”
Dutton joined the British army as a boy, came to Southeast Asia with Mountbatten’s forces, took his discharge in Singapore and joined the Singapore Harbour Board police. In 1947, he joined the Prisons Department. James said that Dutton was a natural leader. If there was any good in a man he would bring it out.
James described Dutton as an extremely humane person. He would call upon James often and ask him to try to help find work for men released from Pulau Senang. “He would ask me to intercede with the Central Investigation Department (CID) over certain individuals released to the Work Brigade and had got into trouble with that organisation and were in immediate danger of being detained all over again. If a man had genuine trouble at home, Dutton was quick to apprise me of the facts.”
James said at Pulau Senang detainees led more or less a free existence: they moved about freely. They could play games. They could swim in the sea. It was better than Changi Prison. If a man went back to Changi as a criminal detainee, the maximum time out of his cell would be about four hours a day. They lived in dormitories on Pulau Senang: in Changi, in cells.
James said he did not see the urgency for the jetty being finished. Dutton on the other hand was most anxious to complete it and to get it into operation. Dutton said he was expecting bad weather. He feared that the tide would move, pass over the jetty unless he hurried up.
James explained to one defence counsel that the long-service prisoners from Changi were used at Pulau Senang as storemen, clerks and checkers. They did not take part in the riot. About 200 detainees were not involved. There were some 300 there altogether.
Major James emphatically denied that any detainee, or detainee’s relative, ever complained to him about being overworked. He didn’t agree they were overworked. Following talks with his staff, he felt there was no reason for the tempo of work to continue at such a pace. He was aware that they had been working extremely hard, and he wanted to tone it down. He emphatically denied that Dutton was a slave driver. He was one of the kindest men he had ever met.
James was asked if he did not agree that the violence on the island was an outburst of human intolerance.
He replied that the outburst was not personal hatred of Dutton, or revenge against Dutton. “Dutton had to be, had the misfortune to be, the living embodiment of a system affecting their lives on Pulau Senang. He represented the authority of the Singapore Government and in my opinion that holocaust was directly directed against the Singapore government and the system that detained them.” James repeated that Dutton represented a system, a better way of life to which these men-‘the scum of Singapore’- were antagonistic. They couldn’t stand a system which took them out of their unpleasant habits in Singapore.
James’ explanation of the savage riot was that the detainees knew that prison accommodation in the State of Singapore was at an absolute premium: they knew that a prison designed for 2,000 (Outram Road Prison) was being pulled down. They knew that one man, and one man alone, in the State Prison Service could build Pulau Senang. They thought that if this man, Dutton, was done away with and the place destroyed, the Singapore Government would be in an extreme difficulty to contain them.
James described the island before it became a settlement as being ‘completely virgin, with the exception of a retired lighthouse keeper who lived on the beach’.
Dutton first landed on Pulau Senang with a group of detainees on 18 May 1960. They were ferried to and fro until 1st June when the working party, selected from Changi Jail by Dutton himself, slept there for the first time. They camped just off the beach for three months, and slowly cut their way back through the virgin jungle. Button lived in a hut with his second-in-command, Jenardaran, 100 yards from the detainees.
Within four or five months, Dutton had brought over some hens and pigs.
Major James explained that after the first working batch selected by Dutton, the rest sent over to Pulau Senang were selected by the Superintendent of Prisons at Changi Prison. They were selected entirely on the length of time they had been in Changi. They would have been in Changi at least 12 months. They were sent over in batches of 30.
Nothing had been fixed as to how long they had to stay on the island. On an average, a man would be there for between 12–18 months before his name went to a Review Board to see whether his ‘conduct and industry’ were of a nature which would enable the Board to consider release. Major James was the chairman of the Board. The Board sat every month and Button had instructions to submit 30 names for consideration every month. Dutton would be present at the meeting and discuss the man’s record. The police had the final say on who would be released. Many names were put on the list eight or nine times before the Board would agree to let them go. This recommendation would then go to the Minister for Home Affairs. If he agreed, then the man would be sent to the Work Brigade Camp at Jalan Bamai (on Singapore Island) where he would work for six months, and then set free. But if he managed to get a job with an employer after three months, he could go without delay.