Don't Forget to Fight!
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DON’T FORGET TO FIGHT! SINGAPORE’S HISTORY EDUCATION AND WAR COMMEMORATION, 1945-2005 YOSUKE WATANABE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 DON’T FORGET TO FIGHT! SINGAPORE’S HISTORY EDUCATION AND WAR COMMEMORATION, 1945-2005 YOSUKE WATANABE (Doctor of Philosophy), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF JAPANESE STUDIES NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 Acknowledgements This dissertation is my analysis on how and why a particular portrait of a national past was reconstructed and disseminated in close connection with the political elite’s interests of the times especially focusing on the portrait of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. I started such a project due to my concern with the perpetuating war memory controversy between the Japanese and the peoples from other Asian countries. In Japan, the Second World War is generally remembered as suffering inflicted on Japanese civilians that include American indiscriminate air-raids on Tokyo and Osaka, atomic-bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and children’s evacuation to Japan’s countryside. Atrocities committed by the Japanese Army such as the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the Sook Ching Massacre are not major components of war memory transmitted to younger Japanese. On the other hand, the Nanjing Massacre and the Sook Ching Massacre occupy major parts of the transmitted war memories for younger generations in China and Singapore, respectively. The problem here is that each people remembers and passes down their own suffering but is relatively ignorant of another people’s pain. What I tried to reveal in this dissertation was that how such a i ‘self-centred’ or patriotic understanding of the war was reconstructed and disseminated for what purpose in the context of the nation-state system. My concern with war memory issues was triggered by my personal experiences. In 1994, I travelled to Beijing to attend a one-year Chinese language course during which I had many opportunities to discuss ‘history issues’ with my Chinese and Korean friends. Luckily, our debates were always not so heated because at that time I was a university student of international relations, therefore, had basic knowledge of various atrocities committed by the Japanese. Once they found that I knew those atrocities and did not justify the Japanese invasion, they no longer continued the discussion. However, a big surprise to me was that almost all Chinese university students I met at that time had only knowledge and image of the Japanese during the Second World War but were totally ignorant of the present Japan. For example, nobody knew that a post-war Japan had maintained a peace constitution with relatively small armed forces only for its self-defence. I felt that the transmitted war memory to the younger Chinese was selective and one-sided. Another incident that made me look into war memory issues happened in Japan. In 2001, as a staff member of an NGO in charge of ii conducting international friendship programmes, I was writing a report based on feedback forms from participants of a Japan-Korea friendship programme. In many forms, I found Japanese participants’ comments like: “In discussion sessions, I could not discuss history matters with Korean counterparts due to a lack of historical knowledge. I felt awkward with them.” Having read many comments of this kind, I thought that ignorance of another country’s history and memory could constitute an obstacle even to the success of a youth friendship programme. Then, I deepened my conviction that if we would leave such war memory or historiographical gaps between peoples in Asia, it would invite unnecessary conflicts among them in the era of globalisiation. In 2002, I returned to my academic life by moving to Singapore. A reason for choosing Singapore was that despite the fact that Singapore suffered a harsh Japanese invasion and occupation, unlike China and Korea, younger Singaporeans hardly had anti-Japanese sentiment; I was interested in how and why this was possible. Although I do not yet have a clear answer to this question, what I can say now is that the transmitted war memory to younger Singaporeans is very different from the one passed down to younger Chinese and Koreans. iii In the case of Singapore, according to Diana Wong, war memory was once ‘suppressed’ soon after its independence in 1965 and later ‘produced’ on the occasion of the 50 th anniversary of the Second World War. Having encountered this article, I became aware of the fact that war memory was in part reproduced in close connection with the political elite’s interests of the times. Thereafter, I decided to do a closer analysis on how and why the Singapore government reconstructed and disseminated the official war memory through history education and war commemoration. As implied above, my intention to write this dissertation is to contribute to finding a solution to war memory controversy by revealing the process of how and why a government reconstructed a national past and disseminated a particular portrait of the war among people. It is not my intension to hang the responsibility of war memory controversy only on the Singapore government or any other governments of Asia. What I want to argue here is that, as will be discussed in this dissertation in more detail, the perpetuation of war memory gaps between different nations is caused not only by contextual factors but by structural factors (anarchical nature of the nation-state system and the mechanism that each nation-state unites people). iv I wrote this dissertation chiefly because such structural factors tend to be overlooked in current discussion on war memory controversy in East Asia. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to all those in the Department of Japanese Studies and, particularly, my research committee members who supervised my project without which this dissertation could not be materialised. I would like to thank Dr. Simon Avenell, my main supervisor, for reading a few versions of the manuscripts and giving me pithy advice despite the fact that the topic of my research was not his specialty. I would like to thank Dr. Teow See Heng for his constant support and help to improve the manuscripts. He gave me detailed and constructive comments and introduced me many books and articles relevant to this dissertation regardless of the fact that he was not a main supervisor. Also, I am grateful to Dr. Timothy Amos and Dr. Timothy Tsu for giving me good advices since I started this project. I cannot fail to express my gratitude to Dr. Kevin Blackburn (National Institute of Education, Singapore) who shared with me information of primary sources regarding this project and introduced me key persons who were involved in Singapore’s war commemoration programmes. Many thanks are due to Mr. George Yeo, Mr. Kwa Chong Guan, Mr. Pitt Kuan Wah, Ms. Tan Teng Teng, Dr. John Miksic, v Dr. Yong Mun Cheong and Dr. Doreen Tan who shared with me their precious experience during the period when they were involved in the commemoration projects or history syllabus revisions. Finally, millions of thanks are due to my family members for their unchanging support to me. This dissertation could not be materialised without any of the above people’s support and help. Again, I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me a help to make this dissertation possible. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements i Table of Contents vii Summary ix List of Tables xii List of Photographs xiii List of Abbreviations xv Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Chapter 2: Concepts and Theory 36 Chapter 3: Marginalisation and Resurgence of History Education, 1945-1991 70 Chapter 4: Inculcating Singapore’s Identity: History Education and Museum Development 138 Chapter 5: Commemorating the Second World War, 1991-1994 199 Chapter 6: Commemorating the End of the War - 1995 269 Chapter 7: National Education and History Textbooks, 1996-2005 342 vii Chapter 8: Conclusion 364 Bibliography 376 viii Summary In the current political structure of the nation-state system, a nation-state cannot survive without inculcating national identity and patriotism in the minds of people, and among its major means of inculcation are history education and war commemoration. Within such a structure, present interests and aspirations of the state, or the political elite, define the official interpretation and representation of a national past and decide whether they actively disseminates it to the people. In Singapore, the government, since its independence until the 1970s, was indifferent to teach young people its national past because the political elite considered that history teaching was detrimental to Singapore’s unity. However, due to socio-political changes in the 1970s and 1980s, they started to emphasise the importance of history teaching, which laid the groundwork for state-led war commemoration programmes in the 1990s that aimed at young Singaporeans’ remembering of the Second World War. Between 1991 and 1995, the government, in cooperation with related organisations, organised commemoration activities to mark the 50 th anniversary of the war, such as war exhibitions, war plaques, history camps, and ix commemorative ceremonies. In these activities, the political elite intended to spread the message of ‘don’t forget to fight for Singapore; be prepared for war even in peacetime’ and highlighted a historical analysis that the British were easily defeated because of their unpreparedness for the Japanese invasion that started in 1941. In addition, they portrayed the Japanese Occupation as the starting point of a local nationalism, painted the period as that of ‘bravery, patriotism, and sacrifice’, and accentuated the role of local war heroes, albeit such political intentions were not always exactly reflected in the war exhibitions. The driving force of such state-led programmes was created from the interplay between contextual and structural factors.