Sarawak receives 3 Bailey bridges from Nadma to boost rural connectivity, disaster response
MIRI (Aug 13): Sarawak has received three Bailey bridges from the National Disaster Management Agency (Nadma) to boost rural connectivity and disaster response, according to the Sarawak Public Works Department (JKR).
One of the modular prefabricated steel bridges is currently being installed to replace a collapsed bridge in Long Banga.
The other two, which were officially handed over during a ceremony at the Senari Port on August 5, remain on standby for emergencies.
According to a statement on JKR Sarawak's official Facebook page, the initiative reflects the cooperation between Nadma and the Sarawak State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) to enhance preparedness and enable rapid disaster response.
'JKR Sarawak is responsible for the implementation of construction and installation of these bridges to restore access and amenities for affected communities,' the department said.
The portable, prefabricated truss bridge – first developed during World War II for military use – is renowned for its quick assembly, high load capacity, and adaptability to civilian purposes, including replacing damaged or washed-out bridges.
Its design allows assembly without specialised tools or heavy equipment, making it invaluable in restoring rural lifelines in Sarawak following floods or other disasters, which have become more frequent in recent years.
The move comes after recent tragedies and repeated infrastructure losses due to natural disasters in rural Sarawak.
The urgency for such infrastructure was underscored by a tragic incident earlier this year when a primary school teacher from SK Long Jekitan and his nine-year-old daughter drowned after their four-wheel-drive (4WD) vehicle was swept away by strong currents in Baram.
They were attempting to cross Sungai Sengayan in Ulu Baram after a bridge damaged in an earlier flood had yet to be replaced.
In another case, a flood in 2021 destroyed a bridge across Sungai Tutoh on the road to Long Seridan in Ulu Tutoh, Baram.
The replacement permanent bridge was completed and opened to the public before Christmas in 2023. Bailey bridges miri Nadma rural
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The Star
8 hours ago
- The Star
Last voices of the war
KUNSHIRO Kiyozumi is a small, stooped man with wisps of grey hair who lives alone and still pedals to the supermarket on his bicycle. At 97, he barely registers among younger shoppers glued to their smartphones. Few would guess that his life was shaped by one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. At age 15, Kiyozumi became the youngest sailor aboard the I-58, a submarine in the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the final days of World War II, it prowled the Pacific, sinking six Allied ships – including the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis. He fought in a military responsible for atrocities across Asia, during a brutal war that ended with nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More than 60 million people died worldwide. Yet men like Kiyozumi were not architects of empire. They were teenagers, conscripted into a war not of their choosing. An undated photograph provided via the New York Times shows the crew of the submarine I-58, which was known to have sunk the 'USS Indianapolis' during WWII. As the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII approaches, only a few veterans remain. Sent to battlefields from India to the South Pacific, many were left to starve in jungles, or returned with dark secrets as Japan crumbled. When Japan surrendered on Aug 15, 1945, they came back to a nation desperate to forget. Their sacrifices were quietly buried alongside the shame of wartime aggression. Kiyozumi lived out his post-war life as a utility worker, installing electrical lines to power Japan's reconstruction. His fellow crewmates died off, and he rarely spoke about the war. 'I am the last one left,' he said, seated at home beside fading photographs of the submarine and himself as a young sailor. Eighty years after the war's end, these men are almost gone. 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After the war, Ozaki built a career at an electrical parts company, eventually rising to executive. For 50 years, he never spoke of what he'd seen. Now 97, he says the ghosts of his comrades still haunt him. 'In their last breaths, no one shouted for the emperor,' he said. 'They cried out for their mothers.' Ozaki, 97, at his home in Kyoto, Japan, and (right) a photo of 15-year-old Ozaki when he enlisted in the Japanese Imperial Army. — Ko Sasaki/The New York Times school, was deployed to the Philippines, where he stayed until the end of World War II, at his home in Kyoto, Japan, April 27, 2025. As the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, only a few veterans of Japan's brutal war remain. 'Never die for Emperor or country,' one advised. (Ko Sasaki/The New York Times) Unit 731's buried truth Hideo Shimizu kept quiet for more than 70 years. Born in mountainous central Japan, he was forced into a youth brigade at age 14 in 1945. 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'I tell them: a long time ago, we did something really stupid,' he said. 'Stay home. Be with your families.' Back in Japan, Kiyozumi still remembers the day in July 1945 when the I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis. Only later did he learn the ship had just delivered parts for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Of the 1,200 Americans aboard, only 300 survived. 'It was war,' Kiyozumi said. 'We killed hundreds of theirs, but they had just transported the atomic bomb.' He once corresponded with a US survivor. But now, his wife long gone and his wartime friend dead, he feels forgotten. 'Young people don't know what we went through,' he said. 'They're more interested in their smartphones.' — ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Malay Mail
9 hours ago
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Searching for lost fathers: Filipino man reunites with Japanese family after 82 years, while another finds her own identity
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She went to live with her maternal grandmother when her mother remarried and began working as a sales clerk in her teens. 'I'm happy now that I've found my identity,' said the bespectacled, soft-spoken Nagai, who still tends a cramped stall selling shampoo, noodles and condiments in Manila's downtown Zamora market. Nagai said she hid her parentage as she reached adulthood to avoid the bullying she endured as a child. She was 'relieved to learn my father was not a soldier' when she obtained her birth records at the civil registry in the 1990s. 'The past is the past' Before the invasion, small groups of Japanese migrated to the Philippines from the late 19th century to escape 'overpopulation', with some marrying locals, said Inomata, the legal centre director. Their offspring went into a 'spiral of poverty' when the state confiscated their assets after the war, and many were unable to obtain a formal education, he said. One male descendant hid in the mountains of the southern Philippines for 10 years after the war fearing he would be harmed, Inomata said. Views towards Japan began changing in the 1970s as Tokyo completed war reparations that helped rebuild the Philippines, and Japanese investors built factories and created jobs. The two countries are now security allies. Nagai has been unable to find any Japanese relatives and couldn't locate her father's grave during her 2023 trip to Tokyo, but she will fly to Japan for a second time later this year for a holiday. Though she does not speak the language, Nagai said she now considers herself Japanese. For Villafuerte, the situation is more ambiguous. 'Of course, it is difficult being a Filipino for 82 years and suddenly that changes,' he said. 'The past is past, and I have accepted that this is how I lived my life.' — AFP
The Star
a day ago
- The Star
Japan's wartime children in Philippines search for kin, identity
SAN PABLO CITY, Philippines: After a lifetime of searching, Jose Villafuerte this month finally found the Japanese father he lost during the dark years of World War II in the occupied Philippines. The 82-year-old, a former gravedigger, was still in the womb of his Filipina mother, Benita Abril, when her partner, imperial army officer Ginjiro Takei, returned to Japan during its brutal occupation of the archipelago from 1942-45. His quest ended this month, days before the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender on Aug 15, 1945, after an advocacy group found Takei's tomb in Japan, where he had raised a family following the war. A living half-brother and half-sister were also found, with DNA swabs sealing the family ties. "I'm excited. My mother had spent years trying to make this happen," Villafuerte, a slightly built father of eight, told AFP at his home in San Pablo city, south of Manila, ahead of his first visit to Japan. Escorted by his son, he lit a candle and prayed before his father's tombstone in the city of Takatsuki, between Kyoto and Osaka, on Aug 7. Jose Villafuerte (centre) praying with his son Avelino Villafuerte (left) and his Japanese half-brother Hiroyuki Takei (right) at the gravesite of their father Ginjiro Takei together for the first time, in the city of Takatsuki in Osaka prefecture. - AFP He met his half-brother Hiroyuki Takei for the first time a day earlier and now expects to get a Japanese passport, as well as visas for his children and grandchildren. Villafuerte is one of more than 3,000 "Nikkei-jin", offspring of Japanese who were in the Philippines before or during World War II. Japan has in recent years begun helping in "recovering their identity", said Norihiro Inomata, country director for the Philippine Nikkei-jin Legal Support Center (PNLSC). Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met Villafuerte and two other Nikkei-jin during a visit to Manila in April. However, only 100 or so are still alive more than two decades after the effort was launched in 2003, Inomata told AFP. The oldest is 97. "Time is running out," he said. "It was fate's design that I would be able to visit my father's grave. I am very much blessed, because I saw my brother and he guided me here to see the tomb of my father and their relatives," Villafuerte told reporters during the Takatsuki visit. His father Takei, a Japanese army engineer, worked on the Philippine railway system as part of the occupation forces but was sent home during the war, Inomata said. Growing up in post-war Philippines, Villafuerte was the target of merciless bullying, blowback from a conflict in which half a million of the South-East Asian country's 17 million people were killed, most of them civilians. An obelisk stands in the Chinese cemetery in San Pablo as a memorial to more than 600 male residents rounded up by Japanese troops and bayoneted to death in February 1945. "People kept reminding me my father was an evil person who killed many Filipinos," Villafuerte said, adding that it nearly caused him to drop out of school. "It hurt, because it was never my choice to have a Japanese parent." Manila grocer Maria Corazon Nagai, an 82-year-old widow and mother of three, gave up her Philippine passport for a Japanese one last April with PNLSC's help. She told AFP that her Japanese father, Tokuhiro Nagai, a civil engineer, had lived with her mother in Manila during the war. "In my family, I was the only one who looked different," said Nagai, who quit school after sixth grade when family finances bottomed out following her father's post-war death. She went to live with her maternal grandmother when her mother remarried and began working as a sales clerk in her teens. Maria Corazon Nagai showing her Japanese passport at her home in Manila. - AFP "I'm happy now that I've found my identity," said the bespectacled, soft-spoken Nagai, who still tends a cramped stall selling shampoo, noodles and condiments in Manila's downtown Zamora market. Nagai said she hid her parentage as she reached adulthood to avoid the bullying she endured as a child. She was "relieved to learn my father was not a soldier" when she obtained her birth records at the civil registry in the 1990s. Before the invasion, small groups of Japanese migrated to the Philippines from the late 19th century to escape "overpopulation", with some marrying locals, said Inomata, the legal centre director. Their offspring went into a "spiral of poverty" when the state confiscated their assets after the war, and many were unable to obtain a formal education, he said. One male descendant hid in the mountains of the southern Philippines for 10 years after the war fearing he would be harmed, Inomata said. Views towards Japan began changing in the 1970s as Tokyo completed war reparations that helped rebuild the Philippines, and Japanese investors built factories and created jobs. The two countries are now security allies. Nagai has been unable to find any Japanese relatives and couldn't locate her father's grave during her 2023 trip to Tokyo, but she will fly to Japan for a second time later this year for a holiday. Though she does not speak the language, Nagai said she now considers herself Japanese. For Villafuerte, the situation is more ambiguous. "Of course, it is difficult being a Filipino for 82 years and suddenly that changes," he said. "The past is past, and I have accepted that this is how I lived my life." - AFP
