Examination of Malayan war atrocities

Examination of Malayan war atrocities

By Barani Krishnaan

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): Eighteen-year-old Masashi Watanabe clicked away excitedly with his pocket camera. Before him, standing bare-bodied, was a Malaysian with scars of five stabs from a rifle bayonet on his back.

"I was just nine when it happened," related 61-year-old Yoong Chin Fah in his native Cantonese to Watanabe and 22 other Japanese students and high school teachers.

"The Japanese soldier pushed me down and lunged his bayonet five times in my back. Thrice, the blade pierced the front. Then he left, thinking I was dead. I bled for two days but didn't die," said Yoong with a smile.

Then, he turned grim. "But the other 25 people in my family weren't so lucky."

The faces of the visitors paled as an interpreter translated Yoong's words into Japanese.

They were touring a burial site in Kuala Pilah, southern Malaysia, where 600 people from a mostly-Chinese populated village were massacred by Japan's Imperial troops when they invaded the country, known then as Malaya, during World War II.

The victims were part of an estimated 50,000 Chinese killed in Malaya and Singapore in the "Sook Ching" operation, an ethnic- cleansing exercise born out of Japan's hatred for the Chinese during its war with China and Manchuria.

Japan invaded Malaya on the day it attacked Pearl Harbor -- Dec 7, 1941 -- and occupied the territory for 44 months, driving away British forces who had originally colonized the Peninsula and Singapore.

Although Japan surrendered to the allies on Aug. 15, 1945, its troops remained in Malaya and Singapore until British forces returned to take over on Sep. 12. The 50th anniversary of that day will be commemorated in both countries.

Japan's conquest of Malaya, in which cycle-borne troops poured through rubber plantations and villages in what was later described as a "bicycle blitzkrieg", was among its biggest wartime victories.

Its rule of the territory, under the notorious Lieutenant- General Yamashita Tomoyuk, the "Tiger of Malaya", was also one of the cruelest.

Watanabe and his group of students and teachers were brought to Malaysia recently by Tokyo-based historian Nobuyoshi Takashima to examine personally evidence of Japan's war atrocities.

Takashima, researching his country's war history for the last 20 years, said Japanese schoolbooks "do not reflect the actual situation in the war".

"They describe Japanese invasions as just the coming in and leaving of Japanese Imperial troops, without detailing the plundering, murder, rape and torture carried out by them.

"I wanted to know (to) what extent were Japanese atrocities in the war," Watanabe, a history student at Tokoku University, told Reuters after hearing Yoong's tale.

"I feel it is more beneficial to have seen this with my own naked eyes," said the 18-year-old, apparently shocked by what he had witnessed.

Fifty years after the war, Japan still finds it difficult to tell its people, especially the young, of its one-time brutality.

But Japanese historians such as Takashima are demanding the country set the record straight, to prevent future generations from considering such misdeeds.

Malaysian officials and war survivors also say that as much Japan is respected for its reformed state, it should not try to hide its military past.

"There are attempts to distort the truth of the suffering Malaysians experienced during the war. We can't allow that. What happened cannot be erased," Malaysia's Deputy Home Minister Ong Kah Ting said.

Lionel Cutter, secretary of the Malaysian League of World War 2 Veterans, said: "For some of us who have survived the war, it's forgive and forget. But the future generation should be made to know the truth... that no good can come out of a war."

Takashima says he has written much on the war waged by Japan but adds that his contributions have been prevented from being included in school curriculums by the Japanese Education Ministry.

"I have taken a legal case against the ministry. If you cannot tell the truth, then it's no longer history," he said.