A letter from the night before separation by the British High Commissioner, described how he raced to find the Tunku, pleading for a postponement of the announcement.
There were reports about threats to arrest Lee, and later, a communist plot to assassinate him.
We found a letter in which an Indonesian diplomat expressed “glee” at the separation, mocking Malaysia with an “I told you so”. And perhaps even more shocking to us, the revelation that the British had secretly stored nuclear weapons at Tengah Air Base as part of its Cold War strategy.
The challenge wasn’t finding material but narrowing it down. We focused on the 100 days surrounding independence. Our litmus test for a “must-include” point? If it made us text each other with a “OMG, read this”.
But at the heart of the series is the people behind the letters and behind the history-making decisions – their anxieties, their doubts, their feelings of humiliation and betrayal. And decades on, the poignancy of their children and grandchildren reading the words they had written.
We hope Separation: Declassified lets you see a familiar story anew – not as a chapter in a textbook, but as lived, human history.
Yuxin Peh and Clarisse Goh
Producers, Separation: Declassified
A Palestinian mother sits next to her malnourished son, at a school where they shelter amid a hunger crisis, in Gaza City, July 24, 2025. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
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