HORRORS OF WAR
We heard how the Japanese soldiers coming in took a baby, threw it in the air and bayoneted it ... I saw severed heads on stakes.
- Mr Vernon Palmer, whose mum and aunt were killed instantly on Feb 8, 1942, when their house was directly hit by a bomb. He was 16 when war broke out.
Lessons in torture The New Paper, Dec 16, 1997
By Jill Lim
Real taste of war : Jurongville students being made to squat under the watchful eyes of "Japanese soldiers".What's it like to be treated as a prisoner of war? Thirty Jurongville Secondary students had a taste of it recently at a Singapore Discovery Centre camp. JILL LIM reports
AT first, the students tended to be giggly and sceptical. But they were less amused after a half-hour forced march through some mosquito-filled jungle areas.
This was at the Singapore Discovery Centre grounds last month, where they got a taste of their grandparents' experience during the Japanese Occupation.
The soldiers were certainly quite intimidating. They shouted often and used their wooden guns to push the students or jab them - carefully, of course - to make them hurry, and made them stand, squat, walk, and stop every few minutes.
During the mass screening and when queueing for lunch, students had to bow to the soldiers. A few students still looked amused, or sulky, but all obeyed in silence.
Some even did things they hadn't been told to do, such as sitting in the sun. Some bowed so low their heads almost touched the screening table. Others bowed, unprompted, to any Japanese soldier.
Said Mr Nick Perry, a literature teacher from Hwa Chong Junior College (HCJC): "You could see the students getting into a please-don't-notice-me mode."
Said a Jurongville pupil, Teo Xian Qin, 14: "I was scared to be scolded by them even though I know they weren't real. They were just so fierce."
Actually, it took the Japanese soldiers some time to get into their roles.
"I was worried I would hurt them, but when I got used to it, it became quite fun shouting at them," admitted Desmond Chua, 17, a HCJC student who played a Japanese soldier.
But the act was hard to maintain, as there were indoor activities and talks when prisoners and students sat on the floor together.
"I wouldn't have got carried away. But I think it's easy to get cruel, easy to feel anger. Especially in wartime. It's easy for a soldier to kick and kill."
BEHIND THE SCENES
Unravelling the past : Students playing soldiers found the Japanese had a tough time with their leggings.THE "Japanese soldiers" may have been the ones with the power, but they had their problems, too.
Like their rapidly unravelling leggings.
The leggings wrapped around their legs tended to slip or come off, and trail behind them.
Some of the soldiers had to walk around with one trouser leg flapping free.
Recalled Daniel Pok, who played a soldier: "I was getting into the mood of being a soldier, but I lost confidence when my legging came off during the walk!"
The soldier costumes and wooden rifles were borrowed from TCS. They had been used in its serial, The Price of Peace.
Anyway, not all Japanese soldiers during World War II had been so neatly dressed.
Japanese Occupation survivor Vernon Palmer, 72, told the camp during his talk: "Many had come in sleeveless singlets and khaki shorts, some with caps and some with 'good morning' towels (cheap hand towels) on their heads."
The Hwa Chong Junior College students were trained for about nine hours by drama group DramaPlus.
They learned 10 phrases in Japanese, including "hurry up" and "shut up" and spoke English with Japanese-sounding accents.
The Singapore Discovery Centre staff did research to make sure the "banana" currency notes and screening cards issued to the students were faithful replicas.
Remembering those who fought
AT night, we went to Kranji with the Singapore History Consultants.
At the Kranji Reservoir Park, we heard about Dalforce, the group of Chinese prisoners who volunteered to fight the Japanese.
Equipped with 10 days' training, parangs and shotguns, they went to face the Japanese.
In the dark, with Malaysia just across the Johor Straits, one could imagine how they felt that day, staring out at sea, just waiting.
At Kranji War Cemetery, we learnt that the youngest dead soldier there, an Indian boy, was 16.
Our guide quietly related how Lieutenant Adnan Saidi, of the Malay regiment defending Pasir Panjang, had been hung upside down by the Japanese soldiers, bayoneted and burned while still alive.
Then, in the starlight, we laid a wreath of paper poppies at a memorial stone, and observed a minute's silence for those who had fought for us.
THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION: Singapore surrendered to the Japanese on Feb 15, 1945.
The Japanese renamed Singapore Syonan-To (pronounced Sho-nan-to) or Syonan Island. Syonan means "The Light of the South".
During the Occupation, many people were killed by Japanese soldiers and police. Others starved to death or died from diseases such as tuberculosis.
The Japanese surrendered only after the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The British returned to Singapore on Sept 5 that year.
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