In my portfolio I will be arguing against a statement that I think is not true and I will explain why. The concept I will be exploring is Loyalty. The statement is: Ong Tiang Seng received his medals even though he was an ordinary soldier and he didn’t help during the war in Singapore. Ong Tiang Seng was loyal to his country. First of all, indeed he was just like everyone else, a normal soldier. But he received his medals because he was brave enough to help his country fight against the Japanese in war. Some other people who were like him didn’t dare to help defend the country. Why? Because they were not brave enough to help, they fled Singapore to safer places. Many wealthy families fled Singapore on boats. Ong Tiang Seng’s family being one of them. However, Ong Tiang Seng stayed behind in Singapore and enlisted to fight the Japanese as part of the Volunteer Corps. As the name suggests, this was an army of volunteers who willingly joined the fight knowing that they could lose their lives. The Singapore Volunteer Corps, also known as the Singapore Special Constabulary, was a militia unit established in 1854 as the Singapore Volunteer Rifle Corps. It is not clear how or when exactly Ong Tiang Seng was killed. Some people claimed that he was captured by the Japanese and was one of the many men executed by the Japanese on Changi Beach. We will never know. He earned the medals posthumously and the medals are now in the hands of his daughter, my maternal grandmother. As I wrote this, I was clutching on to the medal as I lose things very easily and if I lose this, I can’t get another one. These medals are priceless to my family and it is part of our family history. I will never forget the day that my grandmother gave me the medals to look at and to write about them. I was so proud and happy that I descended from a war hero who was a lance corporal who gave his life in defence of Singapore against the Japanese during World War
