Edith Cowan University Research Online Theses: Doctorates and Masters Theses 2021 Navigating the Wreck: Writing women’s experience of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Salvaged from the Wreck: A novel -and- Diving into the Wreck: A critical essay Dawn Nora Crabb Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons This Thesis is posted at Research Online. Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorize you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. 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Navigating the Wreck: Writing women’s experience of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore Salvaged from the Wreck A novel - and - Diving into the Wreck: A critical essay This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Writing) Dawn Nora Crabb School of Arts and Humanities Edith Cowan University 2021 ABSTRACT This thesis is in two parts. The first and major part consists of a historical novel followed, in part two, by an essay. The title of this thesis, “Navigating the Wreck”, refers metaphorically to the Fall of Singapore in 1942, the ensuing human tragedy unleashed on the people of Singapore and Malaya, and the literary and historical processes of exploring, interpreting and depicting the past. The Japanese occupation of Singapore has, to date, been described mostly by Western historians and former prisoners of war who have forged a predominant patriarchal narrative. In that narrative—despite the all-encompassing nature of the occupation and the cataclysmic effect it had on civilians—women are virtually invisible. The objective of this thesis is to privilege women’s experiences by ethically gathering, analysing and re-imagining the accounts of a group of women of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds—Chinese, Indian, Malay, Eurasian—who lived through the occupation, using historical fiction to engage as broad a readership as possible. As well as literary praxis, research centres on analysis of relevant literature, including eight ethnically diverse published female memoirs and eleven women’s oral histories held by the National Archive of Singapore. The essay discusses the artefact-centred, pragmatic and self-reflexive bricolage approach of this thesis, its feminist and phenomenological framework and my ethical responsibility and outsider authorial position as a white Australian woman reliant on local witness accounts. Feminist concerns addressed in the thesis are invisibility, plurality and intersectionality and I adopt a critical feminist phenomenology based on five aspects of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex to discuss the aims and the research and writing processes of the thesis. Working within that framework, I summarised and categorised female oral interview data from audio and written transcripts enabling comparison of each woman’s individual experience of the war and the effects that the occupation had on each woman’s life situation, revealing a diverse set of experiences, some of which influenced my literary choices. By immersing myself in the particular remembered experiences of each of the female interviewees and considering their stories against the tapestry of my own extensive lived experience of the physical, cultural and social world of Singapore, as well as an in-depth investigation of other historical data and male and female written memoirs, I identified gaps ii and silences that needed to be addressed. These include the strategic household, wage- earning, food-supplying and charitable role that women played in the dangerous and difficult situation of the occupation as well as the ignored or marginalised active participation of women in Singapore’s pre-war anti-colonial communist movements, support for and armed participation in anti-Japanese activities in China as well as the jungle-based guerrilla militias in Malaya, and the urban anti-Japanese underground in Singapore. The essay weaves the creative thinking and practical processes of researching and writing the novel through discussion of practice, literature, theory, methodology and craft, retrieving and exposing what is usually submerged in the creative process to indicate a matrix of production. iii Declaration I certify that this thesis does not, to the best of my knowledge and belief: i. incorporate without acknowledgement any material previously submitted for a degree or a diploma; ii. contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text of this thesis or; iii. contain any defamatory material. Signature of Candidate iv Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude to Dr Ffion Murphy for her unflagging support and enthusiasm, her clear and critical eye and her patience and kindness throughout the years of this endeavour. Many thanks also to Dr Marcella Polain for her sustained guidance and encouragement. Thank you to the librarians and staff at the inter-library loans of the ECU library. Without that service and their patience much of the material I have consulted in this thesis would not have been available to me. Thanks to ECU for financing indispensable research trips to Singapore and also to the librarians and staff at the National Library of Singapore and the National Archive of Singapore for their helpful cooperation in locating and obtaining unique material in their care. A special thanks to my journalist husband who patiently and valiantly proof-read various drafts of the thesis and whose gracious support in this endeavour, as in life, has always been a boon and a joy. v Table of Contents NOVEL: SALVAGED FROM THE WRECK .............................................................................. 1 ESSAY: DIVING INTO THE WRECK................................................................................... 206 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTON ...................................................................................... 206 The Japanese occupation of Singapore ................................................................................. 206 Key research data: oral histories and memoirs ...................................................................... 207 Significance of the research .................................................................................................. 208 A matrix of production ......................................................................................................... 210 Objectives of the research .................................................................................................... 210 Research questions .............................................................................................................. 211 Background to the project .................................................................................................... 211 Historical context ................................................................................................................. 213 Principal characters and brief synopsis of “Salvaged” ............................................................ 215 Chapters .............................................................................................................................. 217 CHAPTER TWO: APPROACHES TO PRACTICE .................................................................. 220 Artefact-centred practice ..................................................................................................... 220 Bricolage ............................................................................................................................. 221 The self-reflexivity of bricolage............................................................................................. 223 Articulating the process ....................................................................................................... 224 CHAPTER THREE: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE—FEMINISM ............................................. 226 Invisibility, plurality, intersectionality ................................................................................... 227 Women and history ............................................................................................................. 230 Women and oral history ....................................................................................................... 234 Women and fiction .............................................................................................................. 235 CHAPTER