 During the Japanese Occupation, the reigning Sultan Abu Bakar opened a large potato plantation behind the Terentang Palace to help ease the food shortage and he personally approved proposals to form the "Askar Wataniah", an underground Malay resistance force.The Sultan spent the final days of the Occupation in a jungle hideout with members of Force 136, resistance fighters and refugees.In late 1945, to mark the decommissioning of the Askar Wataniah, the troops paraded through Pekan and submitted to a royal inspection, after which they were feted at the Sa'adah Palace with what has been called 'the first "ronggeng" of the liberation'.