IN THE postwar period she was variously a politician, teacher and founder of a school for the blind, but in Singapore Elizabeth Choy is honoured above all for her resistance to almost 200 days of imprisonment and torture by the Japanese in 1943-44.

After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, she and her husband, Choy Khun Heng, ran a hospital canteen, obtaining food, medicine and money for European internees. It was an activity for which they were to pay dearly after both were arrested by the Japanese in the autumn of 1943.

Both were incarcerated in the most appalling conditions where they were subjected to interrogation under torture. But they refused to admit to any pro-British sympathies, and never revealed the names of any of those whom they had assisted.

Quite apart from her celebrity as a war heroine in postwar Singapore, Elizabeth Choy became the first woman member of its Legislative Council in 1951. She had a career as a teacher subsequently and in 1956 became the first principal of the Singapore School for the Blind.

Elizabeth Choy was born Yong Su Mei in 1910 in Kudat, British North Borneo (now Sabah), where her great-grandparents had moved from Hong Kong. After education in Chinese at the village school run by her paternal grandfather, she went to St Monica’s School, an Anglican missionary establishment in Sandakan, 100 miles down the coast. There, since the staff found difficulty in pronouncing her Chinese name, she called herself Elizabeth. In 1925 she and her aunt set up North Borneo’ s first Girl Guide company.

From 1929 she lived with relations in Singapore and continued her education at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. The onset of the Depression denied her a college education. Her mother died in 1931 and she had to go out to work to help to bring up her younger brothers and sisters. But although she was not able to complete her qualifications she was able to teach, first at a mission school and from 1935 at St Andrew’s Boys’ School.

She married in August 1941, with war clouds gathering in the Far East, and soon to overwhelm Singapore. Under Japanese occupation of the island the couple ran the canteen at the Japanese civilian and military hospital (based in the old mental hospital) which had received 800 civilians patients at the surrender of Singapore. Besides food and medicine they were able to bring messages to grateful British internees.

But they came under surveillance by the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police, not only for these activities, but also on suspicion that they might have been connected with the sinking of seven Japanese ships in Keppel harbour on October 10, 1943. This exploit had been carried out by a group of Australian and British commandos, and the Japanese were convinced that British prisoners in Changi Jail, somehow helped by the Choys and others, had supplied information useful to the attackers. On October 29 her husband was arrested and confined to the Outram Road Prison. She was arrested on November 15 and taken to a cell in the old YMCA building in Orchard Road.

She was subsequently to describe 193 days spent in a stinking cell 10ft by 12, occupied by more than 20 people, of whom she was the only woman. (Courtesy of a single hole in the floor, the cell doubled as a latrine.) From this she was periodically allowed — dragged — out, only to be interrogated and beaten. To add to the psychological pressure on her husband, she was frequently taken out and tortured in front of him, stripped naked while electrodes were inserted into her body.

None of this succeeded in eliciting the confessions her captors desired. Eventually, she was released blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight and barely able to stand from her injuries. Her husband was released some time later. A number of Changi inmates were killed by the Japanese in revenge for the sinkings.

In 1946 Choy was appointed OBE for her bravery in captivity. She was invited to London subsequently, where she spent some years. She intended to study art, but could not raise the finance for it, so worked instead as an artists’ and photographers’ model. Among those for whom she posed was the sculptor Dora Gordine who made two images of her: Serene Jade and Flawless Crystal. Her copy of the first was donated by her daughters, to whom she gave it, to the Singapore Art Museum.

In 1949 she returned to Singapore and in 1951 was appointed to the Legislative Council, serving a five-year term. In 1956 she became the first principal of the Singapore School for the Blind, after which in 1960 she returned to St Andrews Boys’ School where she had taught before the war. In 1964 she was appointed deputy principal. In retirement she remained energetic on behalf of the disadvantaged.

Her husband died in 1985. She is survived by three adopted daughters.

Elizabeth Choy, OBE, wartime prisoner of the Japanese and postwar teacher, was born on November 29, 1910. She died on September 14, 2006, aged 95.