Elizabeth Choy

Elizabeth Choy was a war heroine. She had sacrificed a lot for Singapore and she is also very forgiving. When the Japanese soldiers attacked Singapore, Elizabeth Choy's husband was captured by the Japanese soldiers and as she wanted to see her husband, she followed the Japanese soldiers and got captured too. She was tortured with electrodes on her bare back in front of her husband . She stayed in a jail cell with 20 other prisoners, mostly men. The Japanese soldiers kept interrogating her and asking her for names of those who betrayed the Japanese but she refused to tell them. Finally, after 193 days, Elizabeth Choy was finally released from the Japanese.

After the war, Elizabeth Choy and a British soldier found her husband who was badly sick and injured. The Red Cross gave her an opportunity to go to Britain as her house was damaged during the war. There she was awarded the Order of the British Empire. Even when she was asked to tell the names of the Japanese soldiers who tortured her, she refused to say their names.

Elizabeth Choy is a courageous and extrodinary lady who has done so much for Singapore. She passed away on 14 September 2006 at the age of 95 as she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but she will always be remembered as more than a war heroine.