Free The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew by Lee Kuan Yew Page B

occur, it was mostly in the rural areas, and there was nothing like what had happened in Nanking in 1937. I thought these comfort houses were the explanation. I did not then know that the Japanese government had kidnapped and coerced Korean, Chinese and Filipino women to cater to the needs of the Japanese troops at the war front in China and Southeast Asia. They also made some Dutch women serve Japanese officers.
    Those of my generation who saw the Japanese soldiers in the flesh cannot forget their almost inhuman attitude to death in battle. They were not afraid to die. They made fearsome enemies and needed so little to keep going – the tin containers on their belts carried only rice, some soya beans and salt fish. Throughout the occupation, a common sight was of Japanese soldiers at bayonet practice on open fields. Their war cries as they stabbed their gunny-sack dummies were bloodcurdling. Had the British re-invaded and fought their way down Malaya into Singapore, there would have been immense devastation.
    After seeing them at close quarters, I was sure that for sheer fighting spirit, they were among the world’s finest. But they also showed a meanness and viciousness towards their enemies equal to the Huns’. Genghis Khan and his hordes could not have been more merciless. I have no doubts about whether the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshimaand Nagasaki were necessary. Without them, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Malaya and Singapore, and millions in Japan itself, would have perished.
    What made them such warriors? The Japanese call it
bushido
, the code of the samurai, or
Nippon seishin
, the spirit of Nippon. I believe it was systematic indoctrination in the cult of emperor worship, and in their racial superiority as a chosen people who could conquer all. They were convinced that to die in battle for the emperor meant they would ascend to heaven and become gods, while their ashes were preserved at the Yasukuni Shrine in the suburbs of Tokyo.

    Day-to-day life had to go on under the Japanese occupation. At first everybody felt lost. My father had no work, I had no college, my three brothers and sister had no school. There was little social activity. We felt danger all around us. Knowing somebody in authority, whether a Japanese or a Taiwanese interpreter with links to the Japanese, was very important and could be a life-saver. His note with his signature and seal on it certified that you were a decent citizen and that he vouched for your good character. This was supposed to be valuable when you were stopped and checked by sentries. But it was safest to stay at home and avoid contact and conflict with authority.
    One of my first outings was into town. I walked two miles to the second-hand bookshops in Bras Basah Road that specialised in school textbooks. On the way, I saw a crowd near the main entrance to Cathay cinema, where I had earlier watched the comedy ridiculing the Japanese-made bomb. Joining the crowd, I saw the head of a Chinese man placed on a small board stuck on a pole, on the side of which was a notice in Chinese characters. I could not read Chinese, but someone who could said it explained what one should not do in order not to come to that same end. The man had been beheaded because he had been caughtlooting, and anybody who disobeyed the law would be dealt with in the same way. I left with a feeling of dread of the Japanese, but at the same time I thought what a marvellous photograph this would make for
Life
magazine. The American weekly would pay handsomely for such a vivid picture of the contrast: Singapore’s most modern building with this spectacle of medieval punishment in front of it. But then the photographer might well end up in the same situation as the beheaded looter.
    I chanced upon this gory exhibition on my way to Bras Basah Road because I had decided to learn Chinese in order to be literate enough to understand such notices. My English was of no value under the new rulers.