February 12, 2024

Singapore celebrates Total Defence Day on 15 February each year, as a reminder of the day Singapore surrendered to the Japanese forces. This marked the start of the Japanese occupation of Singapore, then renamed Syonan-to. Shortly afterwards, the Japanese implemented significant social and economic policy changes, including racial policies towards certain ethnic groups (minzoku). Dr Clay Eaton (NUS Japanese Studies) delves into these racial policies in “Strategic races: understanding racial categories in Japanese-occupied Singapore” (Asian Ethnicity, 2023).

These racial policies, enforced during World War II, were skewed towards ethnic groups like the Malay and Indian communities, at the expense of the Chinese community. This led to brutal events such as the Sook Ching Massacre, a mass killing that targeted Chinese in Singapore. This inequality in treatment led to lasting inter-racial tensions even after the end of the ccupation. Eaton argues that this imbalance was not solely due to racial prejudice, but instead due to the perceived importance of the Chinese to the war efforts.

With reference to documentation from the Japanese occupation, the official directives and testimonies suggest that much more Japanese attention was directed to the Chinese community. This was because the Chinese were considered crucial to controlling the Southeast Asian economy. On the other hand, the Malay and Indian communities were rarely mentioned in these documents. As a result, the Japaneses’ dismissiveness towards these groups allowed them to carve out their own space in colonial Singapore and live comparatively more autonomous lives than the Chinese.

Read the article here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14631369.2023.2216881