Life on Lazarus
By: Lisa L
Tags: Nature, History, Archives, Island, Singapore

Stories from Pulau Sekijang Pelepah, also known as Lazarus Island

The beach at Lazarus Island, Dec 2016

Recently, some friends and I took a ferry to St John’s Island, which is also connected by footbridge to Lazarus Island and Pulau Seringat.

Frankly it’s not the most comfortable place to visit (there are few toilets, and nowhere to buy food or drink) but it’s just beautiful, and worth visiting again soon — and I really mean soon, because the remaining 4 residents of St John’s have to move to mainland Singapore by end 2016, and management of the island will be handed over to the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) from March 2017. Guess what that means.

St John’s Island has a complicated, colourful history. Today, it is still dotted with old buildings, barbed wire and derelict structures clustered near the jetty — evidence of its past as a quarantine centre, prison and rehabilitation centre from the 1800s to 1975.

Source: Google Maps, Dec 2016

But history is less visible on Lazarus Island and Pulau Seringat, with their quiet beaches and little trace of the past. You might even miss them: there aren’t any signposts with their names.

I was curious to learn more about the mysterious unmarked islands, and I found some excellent articles about Lazarus Island (e.g. “My islands in the sun”, by Jerome Lim, 2010; “Seringat-Kias in the mizzle”, by Ria Tan, 2010; “A Southern Islands’ Tour — Kusu, St John’s and Lazarus”, Remember Singapore, 2014; and the wonderful documentary project Island Nation, which tells the stories of more than 100 former southern island inhabitants.)

The islanders themselves are definitely the richest source of stories, but I don’t know them personally, so I looked through the archives instead, in search of more hidden gems. And there they were.

Life on Lazarus

Formerly known as Pulau Sakijang Pelepah (the Malay word “si kijang” means “barking deer” or “doe”, and “pelepah” refers to the fronds of a palm), it is now known as Lazarus Island — though “the reason for this is lost to history”, according to the otherwise comprehensive Singapore Street Names.

As a friend reminded me recently, back then ordinary life rarely got documented; people tended to only record the big events, when something happened. So many early anecdotes about Lazarus Island come mainly from news reports of fires or crime.

The 1902 fire report tells us that Lazarus Island was formerly a prison — the fire destroyed “some sheds which were used some years ago as convict prison confinement sheds”. (It seems to have been a short-lived stint though, because a life prisoner escaped from one of those sheds, and they were abandoned soon after.)

There was a much larger outbreak of fire in 1914, which destroyed almost all the vegetation, and also burnt the island’s cemetery for those who had died from infectious diseases, probably while in quarantine at St John’s.

In 1925, there was a case of three unnamed Chinese being charged for “removing sand from the beach at Lazarus Island”, an odd foreshadowing of Singapore’s later predilection for removing sand from other countries.

“FIRE ON PULO LAZARUS”, The Straits Times, 31 March 1930

By 1930, we are told, there were only 2 inhabitants left on Lazarus, as well as an ammunition dump — though we are not told exactly what was dumped here, and why.

However, it’s likely that the 1930 headcount was wrong, because in 1933, an alleged tobacco racket reveals that there was 1 Chinese shopkeeper (one of the accused), a Penghulu (village chief) and other Malay inhabitants on Lazarus.

The next mention, and first archived photograph I could find of the islanders, is from February 1960, which shows a visit from then-Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Yusof Ishak. The houses look sturdy, zinc-roofed, on stilts; the school-children placed at regular intervals along the path, standing politely at attention to welcome the guests.

We can see from the photo that the houses followed the curve of coastline, and this is confirmed by a 1970 topographic map by the Singapore Survey Department, which shows houses curved around one end of Lazarus, along with a school and a clinic.

Although there is no detailed description of the houses on the island, it was likely similar to a description of Pulau Seking and Pulau Sudong in 1976:

“Unlike the kampongs in Singapore, where the houses are huddled together in a mass, the islanders have built their wooden houses on stilts surrounding the island in a circle. The entrances to the homes are on the island proper, with the houses stretching out over the beach and the sea. The toilets are situated at the back of the house, over the water. The rest of the island rises from the centre like the bald patch on an old man’s head, with occasional patches of shrubbery, coconut trees, a mosque, school, and community centre.” (From “800 to make way for change”, New Nation, 3 December 1976)

The school children we see in the first photograph were probably from the Pulau Sekijang Pelepah Malay School—featured in the 1970 topographic map and also mentioned in a 1970 report on the outstanding swimming achievements of their students in the Radin Mas District Primary Schools swimming meet at River Valley Road. Besides breaking 2 records, they won the boys ‘A’ and ‘B’ division and overall championship, as well as the girls ‘A’ division and overall titles.

“Mohammed Nasir bin Awang, their swimming master, said: ‘I have been training the children for only two months in the rough seas around Lazarus Island. It is difficult to teach them the right technique in the sea. Besides I can only train them during high tide. They have done well because of their natural talent, being children of the sea.’” (From “Champs — sea children”, The Straits Times, 11 September 1970)

Notice by Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Limited, featuring the high-frequency omnidirectional radio range beacon at Lazarus Island, The Straits Times, 25 October 1979

But it was not just the islanders who occupied Lazarus.

In 1961, a year after then-President Yusof Ishak’s visit, Lazarus Island became crucial to Singapore — as “the heartbeat of Singapore’s civil aviation navigational system”, sending signals to guide aircraft coming in and out of Singapore. Building this required engineering feats such as using an army landing craft to carry equipment to Lazarus at high tide; setting up electrical generators; levelling the hill by removing about 15,000 cubic yards of soil; and building a jetty for ships to moor and pump oil into fuel storage tanks.

Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of how this massive intrusion by the aviation industry affected the lives and space of the islanders.

The next set of archived photographs is from April 1963, when then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and other officials visited Lazarus during a tour of the southern islands. The photographs (here and here) show a large crowd with many flag-waving children, as well as houses, buildings and what appears to be a tall beacon in the background.

Another photograph from this 1963 tour shows then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his son Lee Hsien Loong viewing wooden fishing rowboats, metal fishing traps and some fishing line, accompanied by the island’s Penghulu, Tok Khairen. We also see several bunga manggar in the background, which, along with a military band performance, must have added to the festive, rousing welcome for the visitors.

It was a year of political drama, and this visit came four months before a contentious national elections in September 1963, held five days after Singapore’s merger with the Federation of Malaya, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. (Lazarus Island was part of the South Islands constituency, which had 5,048 voters—a tiny 0.8% of the total electorate.)

In 1964, Lazarus Island continued to have a Penghulu in charge of a sizeable population. It was reported that when Minister for Social Affairs Inche Othman Wok distributed puasa supplies to islanders, there was a management committee (run by the Penghulu) on Lazarus “to look after the cooking of rice and to supervise distribution of other commodities”.

Life seemed to be getting busier for the islanders, and in 1974, a cruise organised by the History Association of Singapore took ambassadors, history teachers and students on a tour of the southern islands, stopping at Lazarus Island for half an hour.

“Sea-urchins [sic] and precocious boys and girls attempted to sell attractive beads, coloured corals and mounted pictures to tourists who stopped over at the island. One islander said that more tourists had been coming for the past two to three years to their little island of 400 people and one television set. Only well water is available and many of the inhabitants commute between the island and the mainland for goods, education and employment.” (From “Fairwind takes 78 on harbour cruise”, New Nation, 5 March 1974)

But I couldn’t find any news of the islanders after that.

We now know that they, along with inhabitants of various other islands, were evicted at some point, and rehoused on mainland Singapore.

“When the state offered compensation to acquire their land, some were OK with it because their children would no longer have to wake up at 5am to take a one-hour boat ride to school. Others felt they had lost their paradise. People broke down and cried, talking about their old wooden boat, their corals, their fish; they felt their parents’ and their grandparents’ way of life, for which no money was needed, had been lost.” —Zakaria Zainal, photographer for Island Nation

By 1986, Lazarus is described as “deserted”.

Tourism and tropical playgrounds

Since then, the fate of Lazarus has been uncertain.

Advertisement by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board, Business Times, 15 February 1988

With Sentosa transformed into a beach resort and recreational space in the 1970s, Singapore was keen for more.

This intention kickstarted the reclamation around Lazarus for more land area; in 1978, it was reported that “in the past two years, more than $11 million has been spent reclaiming Lazarus Island and two others — Buran Darat and Pulau Renggit”.

In the years after, the authorities have swung between enthusiastically promoting Lazarus Island as a potential beach resort (even calling for business tenders from resort developers in 1988) — and radio silence.

Even after the development project seemed to stall in 1989 (after receiving about 30 concept proposals), in 1996 the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s (URA) Southern Island Planning Report again envisioned Lazarus Island as a “canal laced marine village resort”.

But then the idea lay dormant for another decade, until the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) announced in 2006 that it would “invite investors to submit ideas early next year to develop the cluster of six islands — which also include Lazarus, Tekukor, Sisters’, Kias and Renget — into a resort for wealthy tourists”. The STB predicted that “the Southern Islands resort and residential development should be completed by 2015”.

It’s 2016, and nothing has happened yet. We know today that the 4 islanders from St John’s have been evicted, and management of the island will be handed over to the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) from March 2017. The Straits Times reported in December 2016 that “SLA said it would reveal plans for the Southern Islands, when ready.”

If the past few decades is any indication, we still don’t know what will happen. But if and when the islands do get developed, I really hope they won’t become exclusive waterfront condominiums or hotels, or gaudy casinos, or over-manicured ‘eco-parks’.

I’m all for having more wild spaces, with jungles and beaches for ordinary folk to explore and enjoy. That might be a fitting homage to the ordinary folk who once called it home.

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More stories from the islanders can be found at the documentary project Island Nation, by photographers Juliana Tan, Edwin Koo and Zakaria Zainal. Their project tells the stories of more than 100 former southern island inhabitants.)