Germany invaded Poland and that was the beginning of WWII. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941 and started the gradual occupation of Malaya the following day. By 31 January 1942 the whole of the Malayan peninsula had been was captured by Japan. Second World War In June 1942, SS Gill, the eldest brother of Lall Singh was arrested by the Japanese as he was helping British Army officers to escape from Malaya to Singapore. The following day his brothers BS Gill and Lall Singh were also arrested, all their assets including three houses, rubber plantation and a gold mine were confiscated by the Japanese. Within 3 months SS Gill and BS Gill were hanged by the Japanese occupation forces for helping the British and Lall Singh was sent to a slave labour camp in Borneo. SS Gill's elder daughter Ajmer Kaur (later Neelum Shamsi), then only 15 years old, was allowed to live in a portion of one house with her younger sister and paternal grandmother. However, the Mother Superior, of the sprawling Bukit Nanas Convent in Kula Lumpur, where Ajmer Kaur and her sister Amar Kaur studied, took both the sisters and their paternal grandmother into the Convent and kept them there and looked after them for the duration of the War. Lall Singh, managed to escape from the slave labour camp in Borneo and make his way back to Kuala Lumpur in August 1945. When he was reunited with his mother and two nieces he was mere skeleton of the person he used to be. He had been tortured so badly that his own mother initially refused to recognise him as her son. After the War After the War Japan surrendered to the Allied forces on 5 September 1945. The immediate problem facing Lall Singh was how to look after and care for his ailing mother and two nieces as the family had been left penniless due to Japan's occupation of Malaya. Lall Singh had never worked in his life and was too proud to knock on anyone's door for help. Immediately, he started to look for a job and the only one in post war ravaged Malaya was that of groundsman at the acclaimed Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur. While in captivity, the Japanese had shaved his head and beard. Thereafter, he never again grew his hair or beard or wore a turban. A.B. Shamsi,