Bedok Hill memories

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A few years before our grandparents, father and aunts moved to our Bedok kampong house in 1954, our father’s eldest sister and her friends visited the area we believe to be Bedok Hill (along Upper East Coast Road) as seen in these photos. Having fun at the beach (not yet reclaimed then) and taking photos to remember the day by. This area was also infamously known to be the place where 90 World War II local prisoners of war were massacred by the Japanese soldiers in 1942. The area is now Temasek Primary School, thanks to conversations with Yeo Hong Eng and from his book ‘The Little Red Cliff’. Based on his book, these photos probably reveal the reddish laterite soil of the ‘little red cliff’, exposed from the constant bombardments of the waves; and characterised by a a long flight of concrete steps (100 steps Mr Yeo says as he remembers using them as a child). Imagine then that a few years later our family would take up residence, just less than 2km away, at our kampong house at Bedok corner (photos rights reserved and credit to the estate of Tan Kim Suan)







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