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Police Lieutenant Derek Chapin At Fort Jor
The picture shows police Lieutenant Chapin relaxing with his colleague in the fort. Derek Chapin, furthest from the camera, was killed by crossfire on 26 March 1953, while engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with a communist terrorist (CT).
In response to a question Roy Follows kindly provided the following explanation as to why Fort Jor does not appear on the list of 12 official jungle forts:
Although it had the prefix Fort, Jor was not one of the twelve official jungle forts. Camp Jor was positioned at the 19th milestone on the Cameron Highlands / Tapah road. The site was formerly where the Public Works Department (PWD) labourers lived, but was closed down in the early part of the Emergency. In about July 1952 the Department of Aborigines decided it would be a good place to resettle Orang Asli. To make it one, a platoon from a Police Jungle Company turned this old PWD site it into a defended Aborigine resettlement camp, and to prevent any CT attacks there was always a Police platoon based there. However, after only about twelve months, the Departmentt of Aborigines realized that Jor was not a suitable place for Aborigines and it was closed / abandoned.
When in Malaya I knew / heard of other places that were not official forts or anything like them, but for some reason had the ‘Fort’ prefix. There always was, and still is confusion caused by the ‘pseudo forts’. Sometimes, when doing a big operation, company-size army jungle base camps would be set up for a month or more, with central cooking etc. and the Officer Commanding would call it Fort ?????
Thank you Roy.
To read an article about 'The Malayan Emergency - Jungle Forts and Airstrips', click here