War Memory and the Making of Modern Malaysia and Singapore
Kevin Blackburn & Karl Hack
Singapore: NUS Press, 2012
ISBN: 9789971695996

Singapore fell on 15 February 1942. Within days, the Japanese had massacred thousands of Chinese civilians, and taken prisoner more than 100,00 British, Australian, and Indian soldiers. A resistance movement formed in Malaya's jungle-covered mountains, while the vast majority resigned themselves to Japanese rule. The Occupation of Malaya would last three and a half long years, until the return of the British in September 1945.

How has this period been remembered? How has its memory been shaped in the postwar era by individuals, communities, and states? These are the questions answered by this book, using the words of Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, British and Australians.

The reader is taken through many forms of memory: from the soaring pillars of Singapore's Civilian War Memorial, to traditional Chinese cemeteries in Malaysia; and from families left bereft by Japanese massacres, to the young women who flocked to the Japanese-sponsored Indian National Army, hoping to march on Delhi.

In this volume, Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack reinsert previously marginalized and self-censored voices back into the story, and use this to reflect on the nature of conflict and memory. They also used these voices to shed new light on the searing transit from war and massacre, through resistance and decolonization, to the moulding of postcolonial states and identities.