Only three short years after the end of the Japanese occupation, war
came again to Malaya. The Chinese-backed guerrillas called it the War of
the Running Dogs their contemptuous term for those in Malaya who
remained loyal to the British. The British Government referred to this
bloody and costly struggle as the "Malayan Emergency." Yet it was a war
that lasted 12 years and cost thousands of lives. By the time it was
over Malaya had obtained its independence but on British, not on Chinese
or Communist, terms. Here is the war as it was. Here are the planters
and their wives on their remote rubber estates, the policemen, the
generals and the soldiers, the Malays, Chinese and Indians of a polyglot
country, all fighting an astute, ruthless, and well organized enemy."