[1] Henry Sleigh was a well-known horse trainer in Malaya, before and after the Second World War.
[1] After her parents divorced, Sleigh's mother married an Indonesian actor and band leader, Mohammad Yatim, also known as "Maroeti'.
Fall of Singapore Sleigh's older sisters, Stella, Iris and Grace were killed in 1942 as they fled the imminent Japanese invasion.
Kuala' with her older sisters but "clung to her father in tears and terror and refused to leave".
[1] A jockey's girlfriend who was with them, Jessie Lee, took Sleigh's place after she offered to care for the girls.
Henry Sleigh thought his three daughters were safe in Australia and did not learn of the sinking of the 'S.S.
Sleigh recalled during a 2016 radio interview that her parents walked to the Raffles Hotel to see the list of the survivors.
The Sleigh family were considered by the Japanese to be enemy civilians because of their Australian nationality.
This is the listing for the Sleigh family as recorded in the Civilian Internees Database[6] maintained by the Changi Museum.
Sleigh said of her time at Changi:[2] It was terrible because I had a step-mother and she was very cruel to me... Then she was pregnant with my little brother (Harry).
So they were cruel to the older people.The Japanese surrender was officially announced on 15 August 1945, but it was another two weeks before the internees saw Allied planes.
[9] Sleigh witnessed[2] the drop of six British soldiers by parachute into the camp on 30 August 2015.
After the Liberation of Singapore After the war, Sleigh's father moved to Kuala Lumpur.
She and her sister, Joyce, would entertain the troops by doing the hula dance while their step-father played music.
Sleigh attended the Holy Infant Jesus Convent School in Singapore until she was fourteen years old, when she chose to move to Kuala Lumpur to live with her father.
[5] A scout for the beauty pageant approached Sleigh at Robinson's Department Store in Singapore where she worked as a dressmaker and occasional model.
The winner, Marjorie Wee of Malaya had the rights to represent Singapore in Miss Universe 1954.
[12] Arriving in December, Sleigh had the opportunity to meet many of the major Hollywood stars who were out of the city.
It was also reported that a film director, Michael Curtiz, approached her to take a screen for The Egyptian but she refused.
[12] On 17 August 1957, Sleigh married an Australian advertising executive, Cecil Fay Bombell and then she had to move to Australia, where she had four daughters.