Lim Bo Seng was a Chinese resistance fighter based in Singapore and Malaya during World War II. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, he was a prominent businessman among the overseas Chinese community in Singapore and Malaya. Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, he participated in fund-raising activities to assist the war effort in China and boycott Japanese goods. After Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942, Lim fled to India, where he joined Force 136, a Sino-British guerrilla task force backed by the Special Operations Executive, to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance operations in Japanese-occupied Malaya. In 1944, he was captured by Japanese forces in Malaya and ultimately died in prison due to torture and ill-treatment. After the war, his remains were transported back to Singapore and buried near MacRitchie Reservoir. He is remembered as a war hero in contemporary Singapore and the Lim Bo Seng Memorial at Esplanade Park was constructed in 1954 to commemorate him.

Force 136 was a far eastern branch of the British World War II intelligence organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Originally set up in 1941 as the India Mission with the cover name of GSI(k), it absorbed what was left of SOE's Oriental Mission in April 1942. The man in overall charge for the duration of its existence was Colin Mackenzie.