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Chapter 5: Chinese Victimhood
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Chinese Victimhood 135 Chapter 5 Chinese Victimhood Chinese memories of the war crystallised around three main types of experience: those of the hero; the everyday victim; and the “inspections” and massacres of 1942. The previous chapter has already dealt with those who were elevated to the status of anti-Japanese heroes: community leaders such as Tan Kah Kee; Dalforce; MPAJA fighters; and Lim Bo Seng. At a more mundane level, stories of “everyday victims” soon featured in newspapers and books. Some memories appeared over and again until they became stock images, namely: the Japanese demand for a $50 million “donation” to expiate anti-Japanese actions; being slapped by sentries; growing food substitutes such as tapioca; securing jobs with the Japanese; learning to speak a little Japanese language; increasing shortages in 1944–1945; and the contrasting “good Japanese” employer or officer. For a few, there was also memory of a scheme to alleviate the hunger experienced in Singapore: the establishment of a successful agricultural settlement — New Syonan — at Endau in Johor.1 These memories blended fear, hunger, initiative and occasionally some admiration as well. Such everyday experiences were touched on in Chapter 2. We can also see some more of their range and ambivalence by looking, in a little more detail, at an individual such as Goh Sin Tub. His experiences took in a wide range: from initial fear of bombing, through determination to survive, to admiration of some Japanese values. Later in his life, Goh Sin Tub could remember sheltering under the stairs of the family home in Emerald Hill in December 1941, as the first bombs fell on Singapore. Yet he also recalled that the Occupation “fast forwarded me into instant manhood”. The young Goh sold bread from house to house to help his family survive, before landing a job with a Japanese company as a trainee typewriter mechanic. Along with 135 136 War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore Raffles College students Lee Kuan Yew and Choi Siew Hong, Goh was one of the generation of “42 who were toughened and prematurely matured by the war. Goh was, however, not satisfied with mere survival. He studied Japanese at evening school, advancing to a Japanese teacher training institution. Another Malayan Chinese, Chin Kee Onn, would write in 1946 that just a few more years of this might have seen “Nipponisation” — of ceremonies, language and manners — take firm root in Malaya.2 The young Goh embraced Japanese civilisation: Through the genuine and contagious idealism of our newfound mentors … our hearts began to beat in sympathy and we too felt a touch of that heroic spirit: Yamato-Damashii or Nippon Seishin (the Japanese Spirit), even Bushido, the way of the warrior. Young minds must find causes … [and] things more precious were being inculcated … phrases such as … ‘isshokenmei’ (with all one’s life might) Yet even for someone like Goh, partly spellbound by slogans such as “Asia for the Asians”, respect for teachers could never erase the searing images of February 1942. This was the memory of the “savages that descended upon us”, and of the “inspections” and massacres. Hence, the torn intimacy of his postwar poem “My Friend, My Enemy”, in which he confides to his Japanese teacher that “you see as I see, you understand the things done … A shame you cannot speak”.3 Inspections and Massacres The shame that could not be spoken would overshadow the memory of anti-Japanese heroes, and of “everyday victims”. It consisted of the “screening” or “inspection” of Chinese in the days following the fall of Singapore, and the massacre of tens of thousands that these inspections facilitated. These Japanese actions were based on the assumption that the conquest of Malaya and Singapore was, at one level, a continuation of the war against China. For the Japanese, the surrender of the British only removed one enemy. The other — the anti-Japanese Chinese — had to be dealt with swiftly. On 18 February 1942, therefore, the commander of the 25th Army in Malaya, Lieutenant General Tomoyuki Yamashita, gave the order for genju shobun (severe punishment) of the Chinese population. Yamashita’s subordinates knew genju shobun to require shukusei (purging or cleansing). In Chinese, this is rendered sook ching [3.17.28.48] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 08:16 GMT) Chinese Victimhood 137 (su qing): the name the events would come to be known by in Malaya.4 Society must be “cleansed” or “purged” of anti-Japanese, and those...