punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime. That was not my experience in Singapore before the war, during the Japanese occupation or subsequently.
I learnt after the initial shock and drama that life had to go on almost as usual. People must eat; they need medicines and other thingslike toothbrushes, toothpaste, clothes, shoes, pens, ink, paper. Even razor blades became precious and difficult to get, so that used blades were sharpened and re-sharpened by being pressed and rubbed back and forth against the inside walls of a glass. Tobacco was worth more than Japanese currency. Some professions were reduced in value and earning power. There was little demand for lawyers trained in English law, because there was little commerce, and military law dealt summarily with crimes. Accountancy stagnated because there was little business. On the other hand, doctors and dentists were as essential as ever since people still got sick and had toothache, so they prospered despite shortages of medicines and anaesthetics.
In the first ten months of the occupation, it was not unusual to see British and Australian prisoner-of-war working parties coming to town, with a light escort of Japanese soldiers. Usually they performed tasks like moving goods from a godown to a lorry. They would sneak into the coffee shops looking for food, and the owners and ordinary housewives would pass them bread, canned food and other foodstuffs and money. The Chinese had great sympathy for them. They had grown thin and looked the worse for their confinement. Their uniforms, usually shorts and shirts, were tattered. Towards the end of 1942, they gradually became less visible, and a year later they were seldom seen. People believed they had been sent to work elsewhere, in Thailand, Indonesia and Japan. When they reappeared in Singapore in late 1944 and early 1945, they were just skin and bones, skeletons with ribs sticking out to be counted. They had been working on the Burma railway. Some wore only G-strings, their hip bones exposed. They were pitiful, with sores, ulcers, scars and scabies all over their bodies, especially their arms and legs. Food was scarce, but not so scarce that they could not have been adequately fed. Their sufferings exceeded those of prisoners of war anywhere else in the world.
The switch from English to Japanese as the language of administration and of the bosses put the old at a grave disadvantage. They could notlearn Japanese so easily. Those who spoke it, like the Chinese from Taiwan, were at a premium; some were already in Singapore before the occupation, but others followed the Japanese army. Young locals learnt enough Japanese to be employable, but beyond that most people were decent. They did not want to cooperate or collaborate with the enemy. They just wanted to coast along, to give the minimum to the new masters. Only a few dared to oppose them, even secretly.
There were others, the smart and the opportunistic, who went out of their way to ingratiate themselves and to make themselves useful to the Japanese. They provided them with labour, materials, information, women, liquor, good food, and they made fortunes. The lucky ones were contractors whom the Japanese needed to obtain basic supplies, or who were in building construction.
The luckiest and most prosperous of all were those like the Shaw brothers who were given the licence or franchise to run gambling farms in the amusement parks, the Great World and the New World. For a deprived, depressed population facing the prospect of mass destruction and death in one, two or three years when the British returned to oust the Japanese, gambling was a wonderful opiate. The locals patronised these farms to try their luck and punted their fortunes away, while others came to watch and pass the time. It was amazing how much time people spent in these gambling farms and how much money they inevitably lost to the bankers in this simple way. As existence was uncertain, all
I learnt after the initial shock and drama that life had to go on almost as usual. People must eat; they need medicines and other thingslike toothbrushes, toothpaste, clothes, shoes, pens, ink, paper. Even razor blades became precious and difficult to get, so that used blades were sharpened and re-sharpened by being pressed and rubbed back and forth against the inside walls of a glass. Tobacco was worth more than Japanese currency. Some professions were reduced in value and earning power. There was little demand for lawyers trained in English law, because there was little commerce, and military law dealt summarily with crimes. Accountancy stagnated because there was little business. On the other hand, doctors and dentists were as essential as ever since people still got sick and had toothache, so they prospered despite shortages of medicines and anaesthetics.
In the first ten months of the occupation, it was not unusual to see British and Australian prisoner-of-war working parties coming to town, with a light escort of Japanese soldiers. Usually they performed tasks like moving goods from a godown to a lorry. They would sneak into the coffee shops looking for food, and the owners and ordinary housewives would pass them bread, canned food and other foodstuffs and money. The Chinese had great sympathy for them. They had grown thin and looked the worse for their confinement. Their uniforms, usually shorts and shirts, were tattered. Towards the end of 1942, they gradually became less visible, and a year later they were seldom seen. People believed they had been sent to work elsewhere, in Thailand, Indonesia and Japan. When they reappeared in Singapore in late 1944 and early 1945, they were just skin and bones, skeletons with ribs sticking out to be counted. They had been working on the Burma railway. Some wore only G-strings, their hip bones exposed. They were pitiful, with sores, ulcers, scars and scabies all over their bodies, especially their arms and legs. Food was scarce, but not so scarce that they could not have been adequately fed. Their sufferings exceeded those of prisoners of war anywhere else in the world.
The switch from English to Japanese as the language of administration and of the bosses put the old at a grave disadvantage. They could notlearn Japanese so easily. Those who spoke it, like the Chinese from Taiwan, were at a premium; some were already in Singapore before the occupation, but others followed the Japanese army. Young locals learnt enough Japanese to be employable, but beyond that most people were decent. They did not want to cooperate or collaborate with the enemy. They just wanted to coast along, to give the minimum to the new masters. Only a few dared to oppose them, even secretly.
There were others, the smart and the opportunistic, who went out of their way to ingratiate themselves and to make themselves useful to the Japanese. They provided them with labour, materials, information, women, liquor, good food, and they made fortunes. The lucky ones were contractors whom the Japanese needed to obtain basic supplies, or who were in building construction.
The luckiest and most prosperous of all were those like the Shaw brothers who were given the licence or franchise to run gambling farms in the amusement parks, the Great World and the New World. For a deprived, depressed population facing the prospect of mass destruction and death in one, two or three years when the British returned to oust the Japanese, gambling was a wonderful opiate. The locals patronised these farms to try their luck and punted their fortunes away, while others came to watch and pass the time. It was amazing how much time people spent in these gambling farms and how much money they inevitably lost to the bankers in this simple way. As existence was uncertain, all
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