 Sunday, 24 March 2013
 Our Hero , Elizabeth Choy at 06:16 Elizabeth Choy born on 29 November 1910 to a Hakka family in Kudat British North Borneo. Choy was looked after by a Kazadan nanny and acquired Kadazan as her first language. She became an Anglican at St Monica's boarding school in Sandakan and went on to complete her education at Raffles College in Singapore. As her family could not afford the fees, she started to teach.
In August 1941 she married Choy Khun Heng, a book-keeper employed by the Borneo Company.
World War II
During the Japanese Occupation, she worked as a canteen operator at a hospital with her husband where patients from General Hospital had been moved to. Choy became a volunteer nurse with the Medical Auxiliary Service .
Elizabeth Choy and her husband secretly brought food, medicine, money, messages and even radios to British internees. Unfortunately, they were caught by the Japanese. Her husband was arrested on 29 October while she was arrested on 15 November 1943. The Kempeitai thought that they had given information to the British which led to the sinking of several Japanese ships in Keppel Harbour in 1943.
Elizabeth Choy was imprisoned in a small cell for 193 days with 20 other prisoners in the old YMCA building. Elizabeth went to inquire about her husband but the Japanese denied knowledge of him . During her imprisonment , She was badly tortured by the Kempeitai. The Kempeitai made her kneel down on a frame of three-sided wood. They tied her hands behind her back and also her legs. She could not move at all. Then, they brought her husband and he was made to kneel beside the frame to watch her being tortured. They slapped and kicked her and gave her the ‘electric shock’ treatment. The pain was extremely unbearable.
Verbal Account
"When my interrogators could not get any information out of me,they dragged my husband from Outram Prison,tied him up and made him kneel beside me.Then,in his full view,they stripped me to the waist and applied electric currents to me.The electric currents sent my whole body into spasms;my tears and mucus flowed uncontrollably.The pain was indescribable,but it must have been thousands of times worse for my husband who had to see me being tortured."
 Despite being terribly tortured, Elizabeth Choy refused to confess. After 193 days, she was released from the prison. Her husband was released much later. After the war, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of her valour in 1946 during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. She was known as a war heroine. Post-WarAfter the war, Mrs and Mr Choy were invited to England to recuperate. During their stay, Elizabeth Choy got awarded the Bronze Cross and the Order of the Star of Sarawak . They were honoured for their work in assisting British POWs in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation. In addition, Mrs Choy received the honour of having a half-hour private audience with the Queen. During her four year stay in England, she took up Domestic Science at the Northern Polytechnic and taught at a London council school. Intent on studying art but without the finances for this venture, Choy began a stint as an artist's model . Later lifeOn returning to Singapore after her visit to Britain in 1949 Elizabeth Choy resumed teaching, and became involved in the political developments preceding independence. Elizabeth Choy also became Singapore's first woman in the Legislative Council in 1951 and she was also recognised as a dedicated educator. She started teaching first at St. Margaret's School and later St. Andrew's School; and was the first principal of the Singapore School for the Blind in 1956. At the age of 96, Elizabeth Choy passed away on 14 September 2006 because of Pancreatic Cancer . 
Credits : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Choy , http://singaporeheroes.weebly.com/elizabeth-choy.html , http://images.google.com/ , http://pastofelizabethchoy.blogspot.sg/2013/03/verbal-account.html
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