By TAN SAI SIONG
LAST weekend, Information and the Arts Minister and Second Minister for Trade and Industry, Brig-Gen (NS) George Yeo, expressed the hope that more books would be written every year on the Japanese Occupation, and more war sites marked.
He said this when launching a book called Price Of Peace, an English translation of a collection of stories told in Chinese by Singaporeans about their experiences during the Occupation.
I share and support BG Yeo's sentiments. Keeping alive memories - now fast overlaid by the passage of time - of what the Japanese did to our parents and grandparents would stiffen each citizen's resolve never to suffer again the indignity of being a colony.
Yet I hope that recollections of the atrocities committed by the Japanese will also rekindle kinder memories of those times.
One, they would remind us that among the whimsically cruel Japanese, drunk from their victory over the battle-superior British, were some who sought to bring solace to the sufferers.
Two, when we hold wrong-doers accountable for their wicked acts, we must be equally scrupulous when recording the kindness encountered, because gratitude, as much as compassion, is humanity's bond.
Feb 15, 1942, beginning of the nightmare ... the British surrender of Singapore to the victorious Japanese forces.In the context of the Japanese Occupation, no one should forget Mamoru Shinozaki, who, if he were alive today, would be a grand old man of 87. He came to Singapore before the war as the press attache to Japan's consul-general and in 1940 he was sentenced to 3 1/2 years jail for spying for Japan.
In 1942, when the Japanese Army overran Singapore, he was freed and, as the Special Foreign Affairs Officer, Defence Headquarters, had the authority to issue special protective identification cards for residents.
If not for Shinozaki, regarded by his own people as being too pro-Chinese, many more thousands of Chinese might have perished in the sook ching, a pogrom in which those considered to be anti-Japanese were massacred.
His role in the Occupation has been told, in first-person unadorned prose, in a booklet called Syonan, My Story. Highlights include the chilling round-ups that began one week after the Japanese arrived and the controversial Overseas Chinese Association formed to "co-operate" with the Japanese occupiers.
He also gave his account of the even more controversial $50-million "donation" squeezed from the Chinese community and the Pandora's box which opened in the war's aftermath, of whether, and who, among Singapore's residents had collaborated with the Japanese.
In theory, "operation clean-up" was to rid the island of Chinese volunteers who had fought against the Japanese, members of the China Relief Fund, who had raised money tirelessly to support China's war efforts against Japan and anyone else connected with anti-Japanese organisations.
In practice, the sook ching was almost wholly arbitrary. Hapless male civilians, aged between 18 and 50, were rounded up and left to cower by the roadside, without shade from the pitiless elements and without water or food.
Those who wrote in English, wore glasses, had tattoo marks or were not savvy enough to grovel immediately at the feet of the young Kempei, were bundled off for execution.
Through Shinozaki's personal intervention and his liberal issue of personal safety passes, countless escaped the dragnet. Prominent Chinese saved by him include Dr Lim Boon Keng, Tan Hoon Siang, Chen Kee Sun, Dr Hu Tsai Kuen, Wee Keng Chiang and S.Q. Wong.
It is not a matter of Shinozaki blowing his own trumpet. His role has also been recorded by Yap Pheng Geck in his memoirs called Scholar, Banker, Gentleman Soldier, the last portion in the title referring to Yap's role as a captain in the Chinese Volunteer Corps.
His contact with Shinozaki, who was eventually made head of Syonanto's welfare department - came in connection with the Endau Scheme, one of two schemes initiated by Shinozaki.
The schemes aimed to resettle some of Singapore's population in Malaya, so that they could live off the land and ease the terrible food shortage on the island. But Yap surmised that they were probably also to disperse the Chinese and prevent a core of subversives from forming, should the British try to re-take Singapore.
Where Shinozaki was concerned, Yap found him to be sincere in wanting to promote the local people's welfare. Yap said that Shinozaki even risked his neck sometimes with the Japanese military police, interceding for the Chinese people and also rendering the same services to Eurasians.
Cynics might say, heck, what else could Yap have said about the Japanese officer, considering that he had contributed a glowing introduction to Shinozaki's book.
If there are such cynics, I would like to refer them to an equally glowing tribute to Shinozaki in a book in 1961 by Eurasian doctor John Bertram van Cuylenburg.
The bulk of Singapore Through Sunshine And Shadow covers the terrifying arrival of war and life under the conquerors, from a first-person perspective.
Describing Shinozaki as the "arch spy of pre-Pacific war days," van Cuylenburg wrote, almost in marvel, that a man, who had spied for his country and was sentenced and jailed by the British, could want to do his level best to lessen the sufferings of the Singapore people.
But he did, according to van Cuylenburg, to the extent of contacting the dreaded Kempeitai and securing the release of countless innocent victims, among many other humanitarian acts.
Today's cynics might still demur. Shinozaki was jailed as a spy, remember, even though he protested his innocence. Perhaps there was an agenda behind his kindness: To win the hearts and minds of the people, for instance.
But victims brutalised by the Japanese military, and their families, were not going to demand what motivated Shinozaki's kindly hand, when he extended it to them. That luxury belongs to those looking back at history from the safe distance created by time.
First published in The Straits Times, June 27, 1997
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