# data[].attributes.body
Back then during that period, Singapore was known as Syonan To which means " The Light Of The South ". Not only did the name of our beloved country changed, we were also forced to sing Japan's national anthem. It was called Kimigayo. We had to face towards the direction of Japan while singing the national anthem. It was a new thing for us and it took us some time to adapt to the new national anthem as it was hard to pronounce the words.
We were also forced to take up Japanese subjects in our school. All subjects in our school was taught in Japanese. It was hard for we students to adapt to these changes as we could not understand Japanese. Some parents resorted to finding a tuition teacher who teaches English or even Mother Tongue to their child to avoid their child from losing out.

Source description: What the students had to do during Japanese Occupation

Source date: 17 February 2013

Source origin: Hafiz Sapuwan

Source type: written

# data[].attributes.body
The students that they send up to us, you know, they were bright, but they really have been educated in a sort of English syllabus. Nobody troubled to adapt the syllabus to anything local at all. I remember one of them writing about this country when she meant England. And I wrote: Is this Singapore or Malaya? And you know, when I handed it back to her she said, “I never thought of writing about Malaya.” So I said, “Well, from now on, you’re going to think about it all the time. This is where you are living and this is what the education is going to be all about as far as we can make it so.”

Source description: Education during Colonial period

Source date: 29 Apr 1982

Source origin: The National Archives Online

Source type: Oral interview

# data[].attributes.body
Source:General nursing. You look after the patients. ...We treat patients,feed patients,wash patients,give them a blanket bath and giving injections,give medicines.And generally,do everything that is necessary to be done in the ward,you see.

Description of source:work as trainee in Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) before he left in 1941.
Type of source:Oral interview
Source date:28 Mar 1983
Source origin:National Archives of Singapore

# data[].attributes.body
Source: And I think the Japanese were very good for the B Vitamins to prevent beri-beri. Oh,by the way,we had quite a number of cases of cardiac beri-beri. Now,a person would come in really dying. ... And then we inject him with Vitamin B which the Japanese gave us.And they were very effective.

Description of source:Japanese supplying vitamins for the local hospital.
Type of source:Oral interview
Source date:27 Oct 1983
Source Origin:National Archives of Singapore

# data[].attributes.body
Description：
This picture shows a mixture of different races teenagers. They gather around the wooden table place in the room. All of them wearing the simplest type of clothes, a white T-shirt and a shorts or long pants.

Type of source: Photograph

THE FAR EAST: SINGAPORE, MALAYA AND HONG KONG 1939-1945
Production date
1941-12
Creator
Palmer Fred (Hon Lt)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
My reader Hazel Bateman left a moving comment in my story of a British veteran who served in Singapore in 1955. Hazel's eloquent comment made a compelling story of the World War Two:

"(...In Southampton), my mother went down to greet a ship bearing soldiers who had been Japanese prisoners of war. These men were in a dreadful state when they disembarked and were greeted with stunned silence. My mother never bought anything which had been manufactured in Japan for the rest of her life."

From the comment by Hazel Bateman on 5 November 2013.

Through these words, the dreadful image of the allied prisoners of war prompted me to write about the infamous Changi Prison today.

The Fall of Singapore to the Japanese Army on the 15th of February in 1942 coincided with the Traditional Chinese New Year Day. To the British, Singapore was supposed to be an impregnable fortress. The Fall of Singapore was therefore probably Britain's most humiliating defeat in the World War II. Singapore was soon renamed Syonan-to (昭南島 Shōnan-tō) by the Japanese, which means "Light of the South."

Older people in Singapore still remember the hardship they endured over three and and half years under the Japanese occupation. My 80-year-old mother is one of them. Everybody remembers the black Chinese New Year day when the Japanese invaded. Many families did not even finish their New Year meal that day.

My mother left south China as a sickly 4-year-old and arrived in Singapore in 1937. She recalled she often 'carried stones at the Changi area' during the Japanese occupation.

I asked my mother to explain further, but she found it hard to remember many events in the chronological sequences. However, she often mentioned 'the stones' with exact details. She would walk from the 29th Lane in Geylang to the Changi area to work. My mother told me she worked for the Japanese and her task was carrying small buckets of stones to different places, and the stones were used to build roads near the Changi Airport.

Carrying stones at Changi for rice and cassava

My mother then was a malnourished 10-year-old. She said small children normally did not have to work for the Japanese, but she and her mother were often short of food, so her kind neighbours got her a small job as a stone carrier. My mother would work with adults, including some old people, and they all kept an eye on this little girl. "My job was very small; nothing important. I filled some stones in the bucket, then I carried the bucket from one place to another, and the adults would pave the roads near the airport with the stones." My mother said.

Her reward was some rice and cassava to take home each week. I never realised cassava was so precious. I used to love eating cassava cake as a child - the cake is soft, chewy and fragrant, a typical Malaysian delicacy. However, during the Japanese occupation, due to food shortage and a lack of rice, cassava was a boring staple food for my mother's generation. How was it cooked? Cassava was normally boiled, or sliced thinly and fried.

Every morning, the kepala (a Malaya word for foreman) would do a head count. My mother was very small and some adults would place some bricks under her feet so that she appeared taller to the kepala when her name was called.

I joked with my mother that she might have contributed to the construction of the first Changi Airport.

"Mum, you built Changi Airport! How amazing!" I exaggerated her stone-carrying task.

"Don't be silly! I only carried some stones in Changi." My mum is matter-of-fact. Well, for me, carrying buckets of stones was an achievement for a child.

To the Allied Prisoners of War and thousands of civilians, the name Changi would evoke an image of torture and harsh treatment. Kept in the notorious Changi Japanese Prisoner of War camp, many prisoners suffered in the overcrowded jails. Food was meagre. Death from dysentery and vitamin deficiencies were common.

British War Artist Leslie Cole from Swindon was sent to Singapore to record the state of the prisoners of war. Leslie Cole was also known for his war paintings from the Nazi concentration camp at Belsen.

Below are two of Leslie Cole's paintings about the state of the prisoners of war in Singapore. This painting is titled Orderly On His Rounds in X Ward, Changi Gaol, Singapore, With POW's Suffering from Starvation and Beri-Beri. The emaciated men gather in a sparsely furnished hut, and one man on the bed has an incongruously swollen torso and legs.

The painting below is titled Singapore: The cookhouse, Changi Gaol. British POW's prepare their main meal of rice. It shows the interior of a Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW) cookhouse. Emaciated men are stirring rice soaking in enamel baths, and some men are carrying heavy iron pans filled with rice.

There are plenty gruesome images with beheading and blood depicting the atrocities of war in the Far East, however, I cannot bring myself to publish those images on my blog. I feel the artist's portrayal of the prisoners' life is sad but powerful. Mr Cole sufficiently stretch our imagination through these poignant paintings. They also help us reflect on wars, and the sacrifices of many Service men and women, during the Remembrance Sunday.
My Related Posts:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Changi stones and Prisoners of War in Singapore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
My reader Hazel Bateman left a moving comment in my story of a British veteran who served in Singapore in 1955. Hazel's eloquent comment made a compelling story of the World War Two: "(...In Southampton), my mother went down to greet a ship bearing soldiers who had been Japanese prisoners of war.

# data[].attributes.body
Description:
This picture shows three teenagers, one male and two females. The male wearing suit，which is a western-style clothes. The male look like an Asian from his figure.For the two females beside him, they wearing chinese culture clothes.The cloth's style look like Qing-dynasty style.

Type of source: Photograph

Covering Date:
c.1920
Credit Line:
Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
STUDIO PHOTOGRAPH OF CHINESE TEENAGERS null LEE BROTHERS STUDIO

# data[].attributes.body
Source:
And my father got me a job. It was very well paid. In those days, I got something like $400 a month. And I worked there for about two, maybe three months. We started very early in the morning. And as I told you the bus system, the public transport had recommenced. Because I used to come down by public transport about 5.30 in the morning from my place in Chancery Lane down to town and then catch another bus to Tanjong Pagar and I had a short walk, something like that I can't remember.

Source description: Transcript of a person living in the 1940s
Source Date: 25 January 1984
Source Origin: National Archives Of Singapore
Source Type: Written Source.

# data[].attributes.body
Source:
Description:Grow more food campaign
Date: During Japanese Occupation
Origin: Singapore Infopedia, Joshua Chia Yeong Jia
Type: Written
Source:
The Grow More Food Campaign was started during the Japanese Occupation to place a check on inflation and to prepare for an eventual blockade from enemy forces. People were encouraged to strive for self-sufficiency by growing their own food. Vegetables, tapioca and sweet potatoes were some of the common crops grown. The campaign targeted people from all walks of life including city-dwellers, government workers, schoolchildren and prisoners-of-war. When the campaign failed to produce results, the Japanese resorted to coercive tactics like the cutting of rations and the migration of people to farming communities to increase agricultural output.

# data[].attributes.body
Source:
Description: At the school gates food. Rice in leaf packets with cucumbers, eggs, bean cakes, pineapple and sweet potato
Date: C.1990-1906
Origin: The National Archives of Singapore, Royal Commonwealth Society
Type: Picture

# data[].attributes.body
Source:
After leaving school in 1939, in December, I went to work a few months afterwards in a British company in 1940. I was in the technical department dealing with some printing equipment and typewriters at that time. Because I was unable to enter the university at the time, so I thought, I would go to work. The average wage for a newly employed person was about $35, and if you were earning a sum of $45, it was considered to be very good. I was considered to be very good. I was 16 when I first started working. I left school at 15.

Source description: Transcript of a person who was alive during the 1930s
Source Date: 1 September 1994
Source Origin: National Archives Of Singapore
Source Type: Written source.

# data[].attributes.body
Class:203
Group members:
Abigail Goh (01) Source 1&2
Sheryl Tan (18)  Source 3&4
Staci Lee (13) Source 5&6
Cheng Zhifan (07) Source 7&8
Tan Wei Ying (20) Source 9&10