WHILE Lee Kuan Yew collaborated with the Japanese during occupation, most other Chinese in Singapura suffered.
They were tortured and killed. And Lee Kuan Yew benefited himself by working for the Japanese propaganda department and supplied and built for the Japanese military.
The same military that killed thousands of Chinese in Singapura. In this, we need to empathise with the Chinese community for the brutality heaped upon them in Singapura.
The brutality is known as Sook Ching.
Sook Ching refers to the wartime massacres conducted by the Japanese military during World War 2. In Singapura, it is estimated that 10-20% of the Chinese adult male population were killed during this genocide.
Japan had been at war against China for several years. And the Chinese community in SIngapura had raised funds for the Chinese war effort.
Soon after taking control of Singapura, the Japanese military launched the Sook Ching operation.
As written by Geoffrey Gunn:
“Summary executions and other punishments, such as the placement of decapitated heads of looters in Fullerton Square (ex-Singapore GPO site), were just an early foretaste of what would transpire…”
Four professionals, Wan, Lai, Tham and Wang, who had escaped Singapura soon after the British collapse related what happened:
“When the enemy entered Singapore, the first day they killed over 5,000 of our people. On the second day they divided Singapore into several sections or districts and got all the people out of houses into the streets for the purpose of checking.
They were left in the open road for [three] days and three nights without food or shelter. Five men were chosen by the Japanese to scrutinise the people and to find out if they were anti-Japanese or not.
These five men stood with faces covered on the table and by simply nodding the head send the people to their fate. Once the people were passed they were stamped with a mark on the face, on the body, on the clothes and so on.
Then over 50,000 young men and women were taken away to an unknown destination. What has become of them nobody knows. Out of these people not a single one has come back.
The Japanese soon arrested all the Chinese leaders and beat them heavily and Mr. Boey Ki Hong was killed outright by this murderous beating.
They then asked the leaders to form a Peace Society and forced the Chinese community to contribute $10 million to support the Japanese. Raping and looting were common scenes.”
“Various accounts have identified the major killing fields as the then remote Changi beach, Punggol… Bedok and other sites. As widely understood, the Changi killings were execution by machine gun with bodies dumped into the sea.”
The Japanese military…the brutal oppressors that Lee Kuan Yew collaborated with.
Zulfikar Shariff
Reference: Gunn, Geoffrey C. “Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941-45.” Journal of Contemporary Asia 37.3 (2007): 273-291.
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