"The light that shines far and wide"

Lee was educated at Telok Kurau Primary School, Raffles Institution, and Raffles College. His university education was delayed by World War II and the 1942-1945 Japanese occupation of Singapore. During the occupation, he operated a successful black market business selling tapioca-based glue called Stikfas. Having taken Chinese and Japanese lessons since 1942, he was able to collaborate as a transcriber of Allied wire reports for the Japanese, as well as being the English-language editor on the Japanese Hodobu from 1943 to 1944.

After the war, he briefly attended the London School of Economics before moving to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, where he studied law, graduating with Double Starred First Class Honours. (He he was subsequently made an honorary fellow of Fitzwilliam College.) He returned to Singapore in 1949 to practise as a lawyer in Laycock and Ong, the legal practice of John Laycock, a pioneer of multiracialism who, together with A.P. Rajah and C.C. Tan, had founded Singapore's first multiracial club open to Asians.

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