Popular & Friendly Japanese Dentist Secret Agents
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Stories from the times of Operation Denial, a mysterious disappearing oil tank cover, and dentists part-timing as secret agent spies, at a time when Miri was facing the brink of war...
As told by Facebook commentator Luke Chong on this page, tales from his grandfather :
" A great story retold again.... My late grandpa John Chen KM was the fire chief when the firemen were involved in destroying the oil tanks and facilities. An unsolved mystery was the disappearance of an oil tank cover flung high into the air after the tank had been destroyed which was never found despite an intensive search. Another point, the popular friendly, humble local Japanese dentists were actually spies in disguise and obviously their intelligence gathering was so effective that it was easy to bring back the whole lot of skilled oil workers in Singapore. Overnight, when the Japs landed, local Jap professionals were seen in the uniforms of the Land of the Rising Sun!"
In the 1920s, these were the years when the Miri field began to decline. Exploration was carried out further and further afield. In 1926 an exploratory team had gone as far as Padang Barawa between the Sungai Seria and Sungai Barawa. Not much attention was paid to their findings then, but now with the Miri field declining the old maps and charts were taken out and studied again.