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Tag: World War 2

  • We Didn’t Have Willing Fighters: A WWII Survivor Remembers How Singapore Fell

    We Didn’t Have Willing Fighters: A WWII Survivor Remembers How Singapore Fell

    In Mr Ishwar Lall Singh’s Yishun home, the fragments of his military past have lost their shine. A faded peak cap sits on a worn coffee table, sharing the space with long service medals, epaulettes and an old sword caked in rust. But while parts of his uniform have faded, the 87-year-old’s memories of Singapore’s fall to the Japanese remain fresh.

    (Photo: Kenneth Lim) 

    “I was a young 12-, 13-year-old boy,” Mr Ishwar said. “There was a lot of shelling and bombing, a lot of destruction of property, a lot of people being killed – I saw some dead people, with worms crawling in them. I saw that myself.”

    Mr Ishwar is a survivor of World War II and part of a group of 61 former veterans and national servicemen who share their experiences regularly with students and active servicemen, as part of a Ministry of Defence programme. Since the programme began in early 2015, the group has reached more than 12,000 individuals, including students from more than 80 schools as well as more than 8,000 people in the Singapore Armed Forces.

    “We had to queue up for a few rations of corn bread (which was) difficult to eat, rice and some vegetables,” said Mr Ishwar. “This was given on a whim and fancy – it was not a regular thing. Sometimes we queued up and waited for the ration truck to come, and it never came.”

    But for him, the Japanese Occupation was about more than going without food.

    “We lost our independence; we were not able to do what we wanted when we wanted. We lost that,” Mr Ishwar said. “The Japanese restricted us from doing quite a lot of things. For example, if you wanted to go to a cinema, there was a fear that if you went to a cinema, you may not come back.”

    According to Mr Ishwar, Japanese soldiers would pack cinema audiences into trucks at the end of the shows, driving them to Bahar in Johor.

    Mr Ishwar showing old photos from his collection. (Photo: Kenneth Lim)

    “We were under British rule, who were not actually looking after us at that time,” he said. “The Japanese were able to force themselves into Singapore because we were not willing fighters. We did not have Singaporeans who were fighting to defend their own country.”

    But Mr Ishwar was not one of them. He joined the Indian National Army in 1943. Years later, after working as a trishaw rider, storeman and laundry clerk, he joined the Singapore Volunteer Corps, known today as the People’s Defence Force.

    “We kept growing,” he said of the Singapore Armed Forces’ predecessor. “We kept getting better, we started to build camps, we had our National Day Parades, which were very obvious to show that the people were united. We realised the importance of being a free people.”

    This year marks the 75th anniversary of Singapore’s fall. And today, the father of three and grandfather of seven said his fight is against complacency, or making sure Singaporeans do not forget “the price of freedom”.

    “I am afraid that people in Singapore are not yet aware of this – partly I blame the Government,” he said wryly. “Because we have been at peace for 50 years – that’s the Government’s efficiency, the Government’s effectiveness, but this has made people (assume) that nothing is going to happen.”

    “WE WILL HAVE TO UNITE”

    While Mr Ishwar regularly shares his story as part of the engagement programme, this is only the beginning for the retired major.

    “My hope for Singapore is that it will grow, (that) it will grow peacefully, it will be allowed to grow,” he said. “We will not be bullied, we will not accept bullying – we will have to unite.”

    He said one way to do so is to ensure racial harmony truly exists in Singapore.

    “The word ‘Singaporean’ must be understood by everybody,” he said, citing weddings or festivals as one way people of different races could get to know each other better.

    “We should look at each other as that – not as Chinese, Malay or Indian. This is something we need to understand, to raise our children to think along those lines. If we can begin to understand these things, we will begin to respect each other’s religion. We will begin to respect each other’s race; we will begin to respect each other’s doings.”

    “We must always remember that a little spark in the wrong time at the wrong place can cause a lot of problems for Singaporeans,” he added. “And we don’t want that peaceful time that we’ve had for 50 years to be shattered.”

     

    Source: CNA

  • Zulfikar Shariff: Lee Kuan Yew Is Self-Serving Opportunist

    Zulfikar Shariff: Lee Kuan Yew Is Self-Serving Opportunist

    The last few days, the PAP Internet Brigade had been trying to promote their party and the “late great LKY”. The way they speak of him is almost Messianic.

    Let us understand who Lee Kuan Yew was. Let us understand his values..

    He is someone who will do anything for his own benefit.

    During the Japanese occupation, Lee Kuan Yew was a collaborator.

    He worked with the Japanese Propaganda service (the Hodobu). At the Hodobu, Lee Kuan Yew translated English language news for the Japanese propaganda department.

    He admitted to being well informed about the progress of the war “because for a year and a half….(he) was working in the propaganda department…” (Han, Fernandez, Tan 28)

    And yet, this hypocritical self-interested collaborator criticised the locals who collaborated with the Japanese during occupation. He said:

    “Young locals learnt enough Japanese to be employable, but beyond that most people were decent. They did not want to cooperate or collaborate with the enemy…”

    Further, he referred to those who worked closely with the Japanese as
    opportunistic.

    The luckiest of the opportunists according to Lee Kuan Yew were “contractors whom the Japanese needed to obtain basic supplies, or who were in building construction.”

    However, he admitted to being one of this “lucky” opportunists. He was in construction and did work and supplies for the Japanese military.

    With his partner, “a Shanghainese called Low You Ling… a small contractor in the construction business…we got odd jobs from Japanese companies and from the butai, the regiments that garrisoned Singapore.”

    He also teamed up with a Japanese civilian Mr Kageyama to supply the Japanese military and companies.

    When the Japanese started to lose the war, Lee Kuan Yew became worried.

    “I decided it would be better to get out of Singapore while things were still calm, I could resign from Hodobu without arousing suspicion over my motives. I applied for leave and went up to Malaya to reconnoitre Penang and the Cameron Highlands, to find out which was the safer place.”

    When he came back from Cameron Highlands, he found out that the Japanese Secret Police had become suspicious of him. He decided to stay put.

    According to Lee Kuan Yew, after the Japanese surrender, “anti-Japanese groups took the law into their own hands. They lynched, murdered, tortured or beat up informers, torturers, tormentors and accomplices- or suspected accomplices- of the Japanese… But in the last days, many collaborators managed to melt away, going into hiding or fleeing upcountry to Malaya or to the Riau islands in the south.

    The liberation did not bring what everybody wanted: punishment for the wicked and reward for the virtuous. There could be no complete squaring of accounts…”

    If all the collaborators were arrested and punished, we probably would not have the PAP today.

    References:

    Han, Fook Kwang, Sumiko Tan, and Warren Fernandez. Lee Kuan Yew: The man and his ideas. Singapore Press Holdings, 1997.

    Yew, Lee Kuan. The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew. Vol. 1. Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd, 2012.

     

    Source: Zulfikar Shariff

  • Japan’s Crown Prince Warns On ‘Correct’ History

    Japan’s Crown Prince Warns On ‘Correct’ History

    Japan’s crown prince has warned of the need to remember World War II “correctly”, in a rare foray into an ideological debate as nationalist politicians seek to downplay the country’s historic crimes.

    In an unusual intervention in the discussion, Naruhito’s mild-mannered broadside was being interpreted in some circles as a rebuke to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a key figure in the right-wing drive to minimise the institutionalised system of wartime sex slavery.

    “Today when memories of war are set to fade, I reckon it is important to look back our past with modesty and pass down correctly the miserable experience and the historic path Japan took from the generation who know the war to the generation who don’t,” Naruhito said.

    The comments, released Monday on the prince’s 55th birthday come as Abe’s controversial views on history roil relations with China and South Korea, and cause unease in Washington.

    Abe has openly said he wants a more sympathetic telling of the history of the first half of the 20th century, a period marked by brutal expansionism in Asia and warring with China and the West.

    The prime minister last week appointed a 16-member panel to advise him on a statement he is set to make later this year to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender.

    Abe has said he will largely stand by Tokyo’s previous apologies, but amid growing anger in China and South Korea over the “comfort women” system, speculation is mounting that he will seek to downplay the issue.

    Mainstream historians agree that up to 200,000 women, predominantly from Korea, were forced into sexual slavery during WWII.

    Right wing Japanese insist there is no documentary proof that the Japanese state or its military were involved in the system on the Korean peninsula and reject official guilt. That position, which is hardening, angers South Korea and China.

    Both countries will be carefully watching any official pronouncement on the war.

    While Japan’s newspapers remained staid in their coverage of Naruhito’s comments, social media users leapt on them.

    “This definitely contains a warning against Shinzo Abe, doesn’t it?” tweeted @Kirokuro.

    “It is a regular recognition (of history), but these comments by the crown prince stand out because Prime Minister Abe’s views on the constitution and history are outrageous,” said @kazu_w50

    Asked about his views on war and peace, Naruhito told reporters: “It was very painful that many precious lives were lost, many people suffered and felt deep sorrow in the world including in Japan.”

    “It is important that we never forget people who died in the war… (and we must) deepen our appreciation for our past so as not to repeat the horrors of war and to foster a love of peace,” he said.

     

    Source: http://news.yahoo.com