Word: mati
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...them-a sense a feeling of their constant presence and nearness: black men and women and children breathing and waiting inside their barred and shuttered homes, not crouching cringing shrinking, not in anger and not quite in fear: just waiting, biding since theirs was an armament which the white mati could not match nor-if he but knew it-even cope with: patience . . . this land was a desert and a witness . . . of the deliberate turning as with one back of the whole dark people on which the very economy of the land itself was founded, not in heat or anger...
Singapore has been an Asiatic paradise for Occidentals and it was built to withstand attack from the sea. Singapore Harbor on the seaward side is protected by the strongly fortified islands of Brani, Blakang Mati, East St. John. Heavy and light guns perch atop the island's 1,000 hills. Location of the biggest guns of all, the 18-inchers, is a secret, but they are probably at the Changi entrance to Johore Strait. Around the entire island on all the beaches there are barbed-wire entanglements with concrete pillboxes at intervals...
...three logical attack points on the island, Manila Bay is the most obvious. Therefore it is the most heavily fortified. Centre of its fortification is the island of Corregidor. Americans in Manila boast that Corregidor is the most strongly fortified point in the world, stouter than Gibraltar or Blakan Mati, Britain's strong point at Singapore. But, unlike Blakan Mati, which is part of a defense organized in depth, Corregidor, like Gibraltar, stands alone. If an enemy captured it, he would have the works...