Japanese Occupation survivors tell their stories

IN 1942, the Japanese invaded Malaya, and thus began three-and-a half years under the rule of a nationalistic and iron-fi sted army. This year is the 70th anniversary of the fall of Malaya to the Japanese. Stories abound of how Malayans at that time were treated and how many escaped the suffering and torture under the Japanese. MICHELLE CHUN speaks to four people who lived to tell their stories. 

Chye ... I will never forgive the Japanese>>

Seow ... my mother’ssacrifi ce saved my life 

HE was only six years old when the Japanese came. Now, 70 years later, Seow Boon Hor remembers clearly what happened the day the Japanese came to his village in Parit Tinggi, Negri Sembilan in search of informers.

His entire family was massacred that day but he managed to survive, all because his quickthinking mother – who was heavily pregnant at that time – shielded him with her body.

It was her act of sacrifice that saved his life. “My mother threw herself on top of me, and as the soldier stabbed her, the knife went through her and into me too. After the third stab, which was to my side, I fainted.

Zainul ... did not suffer much from the occupation

 “When I woke up, an old man from the village who had found me told me to follow him, so I turned to my mother and pulled her arm, telling her it was time to go.

 “But the old man said, ‘Your mother is dead, we must leave her’,” he said with glistening eyes.

Clad in a patterned shirt and black trousers, Seow sat on a plastic stool next to his mixed rice stall in Section 19 as he recalled the events as if they had happened just yesterday. Of the 600 villagers bayoneted that day, only five survived.

 “We wanted to make a run for the hills, but suddenly heard the footsteps of Japanese soldiers, and quickly played dead until they left.”

 Tay ... hid in a jungle for three months.

Another survivor who lived to tell his tale is Chye Kooi Loong, who was 12 years old when the war broke out.

“It seemed like a dream when we heard the Japanese had reached Malaya, we always thought the war would stay in China. My father was an accountant, a rare profession in those days, so we were evacuated to the hills of Kampar,” the 83-year-old said in a phone interview.

He attended a Japanese school because all students who attended were given weekly rations of rice, sugar, and coconut oil.



“In school, we were taught that people from the Land of the Rising Sun were very courteous, but it was the exact opposite – there was a lot of violence and killing. One thing I cannot forget is when a village ‘aunty’ objected to Japanese soldiers taking her chickens, and was killed. Killed over chickens!” he said.

However, not all Malayans experienced the hardship Chye and Seow faced at the hands of the Japanese. One of them is Datuk Zainul Aziz, who worked as an assistant at the Japanese Naval Hospital in Penang.

“At that time, all of us had to attend Japanese school, and everybody had to work otherwise there would be no food on the table.

“I went for an interview at the hospital, and even though I was 13 the doctors employed me to help treat the wounds of Japanese soldiers and learn about medicine,” the 84-year-old said in a phone interview.

Zainul said that he has no ill-feelings towards the Japanese because he did not suffer much at their hands, having been given food and rations while working in the hospital.

“My family members also did not suffer much as they went to work for the Japanese,repairing ships and such.”

Another survivor, Elijah Tay, 79, also did not bear the brunt of the Japanese army’s violence throughout the occupation period.

“The Japanese invaded Malaya when I was about eight; we hid in a rubber estate for three months before coming out,” he told the Sun in his Malacca home on Feb 4.

“My mother would play the piano in my father’s Chinese school, which had closed down, and a Japanese soldier heard her playing one day and came in to listen.

 “He became a friend of my father’s, helping him to open a private school in Labis, where my mother taught the students Japanese songs for the annual concert,” he said.

When the Japanese army heard the students sing, Tay recalled, they were so impressed the captain ordered that no one was to enter the school without his permission.

 “Elsewhere, the Japanese were killing, looting and raping.

“What happened to us was nothing less than a miracle,” Tay said.

 It is because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese that forgiveness is difficult for many survivors, even today.

 “I will never forgive the Japanese; I cannot be friendly with them because I cannot forget what they did,” Chye said.

Seow, on the other hand, said today’s eneration cannot be blamed for the acts of those in the past.

 “I have forgiven them, I suppose. We cannot blame the Japanese today for what was done before, and many have shown remorse. When I visited Japan, four ex-soldiers who were part of the Japanese army to Malaya knelt in front of me and begged for forgiveness,” he said.

But for Chye and many others, an official apology from the Japanese government is a necessary first step towards closure.

 “The Japanese need to formally acknowledge and admit they committed atrocious crimes during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, and not that we were treated well as is currently written in their history books,” he said.

 For the first time ever, eyewitness accounts of the events that occurred in Malaya during Japanese rule have been preserved in a video documentary, produced by History Asia in conjunction with FINAS, Novista and Primeworks Studio. The documentary, Rising Sun over Malaya, will premiere on History Channel (Astro Channel 555) on Feb 15 at 10pm.

NEWS WITHOUT BORDERS

theSun ON MONDAY | FEBRUARY 13, 2012

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China and the US: the princeling and the professor

Barack Obama should strive to create conditions in which Xi Jinping, the presumed next leader of China, can play reformer 

Editorial guardian.co.uk, 

If Russia is a country with an unpredictable past, spare a thought for Jia Juchuan, the historian entrusted with the official biography of the father of the next presumed leader of China, Xi Jinping. The story of Xi's father – a member of the first generation of Chinese revolutionary leaders – is a bear trap for the fifth. The elder Xi was both a pioneer of the People's Republic who rose to the rank of vice-premier and a victim of Mao's cultural revolution.

This was not without consequence for the son who may shortly inherit the leadership. Xi junior exchanged his gilded cage in Beijing for a cave home in the impoverished northwestern province of Shaanxi. The first volume of Xi the elder's life was published without problems, but the second volume, covering the purge, has been shelved for three years, ever since the son's destiny became clear. 
Everybody wants a hand in writing it, the historian complained to the Washington Post. If only China's collective leadership could have followed Churchill's advice to Stalin and Roosevelt.



Xi's own biography is a major political asset as the Chinese leader-in-waiting tours America this week on what everyone is taking to be a pre-coronation visit. It gives him the ability to be all things to all men. He is both the princeling confident and authoritative enough to speak his mind, and a man with first-hand experience of rural China. Xi is the modern entrepreneur, not only at ease with China's coastal wealth but the creator of much of it, especially in Shenzhen. And he can also present himself as the man of the people – frugal, down to earth, pragmatic, eating dressed-down in government canteens, a modern politician at home with big business but uncorrupted by it. Supporters of Tibet have scoured Xi Jinping's past for any signs of a shift away from Beijing's growing clampdown. Xi's father was an interlocutor for the Dalai Lama's special envoy Lodi Gyari. But these are straws in the wind. Read what Xi said in a speech celebrating the 60th anniversary of Tibet's "peaceful liberation" last year – that China should fight against separatist activities of the Dalai group and "completely destroy any attempt to undermine stability in Tibet and the national unity of the motherland". As the US ambassador candidly observed, Xi seems personable, but US officials "don't really know much about him".

Perhaps that is why Xi was given the red carpet treatment on Tuesday in Washington. His day included a stop at the Oval Office, lunch with the vice-president and the secretary of state, and a highly unusual visit to the Pentagon – all after a dinner with Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft. Xi remains number two, and his succession – although heavily scripted, with all members of the standing committee of the politburo except Xi and Li Keqiang set to leave – is not yet complete. The choreography of Tuesday's events left little room for doubt. These were the two most important world leaders getting a sense of each other for the first time.

For an America that has consciously turned its diplomatic firepower away from Europe and the Middle East – the former in economic decline, the latter convulsed by revolution to which Washington is a bystander – the Asia Pacific region represents a more fruitful arena. Not only as the economic powerhouse of the world, but an area where US power projection is positively sought – by its traditional allies Japan, Australia and the Philippines, but also by lesser nations emerging from China's shadow. If China and America can deliver mutually assured economic destruction – as the holder of $2tn of US treasury and mortgage-backed debt, China would suffer disastrous capital losses if it spooked the markets – in military terms China and America are regional powers. What more important task than they understand each other's red lines?

Obama should not read too much into Xi's arrival. He should strive to create the conditions in which Xi could play the reformer. If not, the US might find that Xi is equally at home with a more traditional role.

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Cut Your Valentine Some Slack !

Partner's Efforts at Improving Your Relationship Should Not Be Ignored 

ScienceDaily (Feb. 13, 2012) — If the one you love usually forgets Valentine's Day, but this year makes a romantic effort, you should give him credit for trying.

If the one you love usually forgets Valentine's Day, but this year makes a romantic effort, you should give your partner credit for trying. (Credit: © detailblick / Fotolia)

A new Northwestern University study shows that the more you believe your partner is capable of change and perceive that he or she is trying to improve, the more secure and happy you will feel in your relationship. That is true even if you think your partner could still do more to be a better partner.

"Many of us tend to under appreciate our partner's efforts to improve the relationship, simply because we do not have enough faith in those attempts," said Chin Ming Hui, the lead author of the study and a fourth-year graduate student in the department of psychology at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. "When we see those efforts in a positive light, we can enjoy our relationship much more."



In this study, romantic couples were separated and asked to rate how much their partner was trying to improve his or her relationship-oriented characteristics, such as patience, understanding and being a good listener.

Three months later, the same couples were asked to rate their partner's current standing on these relationship-oriented characteristics and their overall feelings about the relationship. The results of the study showed that the more you think your partner is incapable of changing, the more your partner's sincere efforts fail to improve the relationship.

"If you don't believe that your partner is capable of changing his or her fundamental characteristics, even when he or she is working hard to try to improve your relationship, you can actually end up discounting these efforts," said Daniel C. Molden, senior author of the study and an associate professor of psychology at Northwestern.

The good news for those who are skeptical of a partner's ability to change: with self-awareness and effort, you can convince yourself that your partner's effort does matter and that your relationship can improve.

"A secret to building a happy relationship is to embrace the idea that your partner can change, to give him or her credit for making these types of efforts and to resist blaming him or her for not trying hard enough all of the time," Molden said.

This study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, January 2012 and was also conducted by Michael Harris Bond, professor of psychology at Polytechnic University of Hong Kong.

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