Thursday, June 3, 2010

The Sook Ching Massacre

I just finished watching a very educational documentary on the History Channel. It covers the Sook Ching Massacre, a 1942 systematic execution of Chinese men in Singapore by the Japanese that were occupying the island at the time. Japanese officials claimed that the motive for the executions was to take out perceived threats, but in reality, many harmless civilians were murdered simply because they fit into a certain demographic.  A large part of the massacre took place at Changi Beach, and is a very dark part in Singaporean history. I just finished reading about it in the first volume of The Singapore Story, so it was interesting timing for me to watch the documentary.  If you live in Singapore and you have the History Channel, you might want to watch the documentary.  It will be airing a few more times over the next week and a half.  You can see the times that it will air here.

2 comments:

  1. Hi
    I have just been to Kuching and bought a book called Rainforest Tears - A Borneo story by Paul Leslir Smith ISBN 978-983-3845-51-4 in the Sarawak Museum, which is close to the Merdeka Palace Hotel The book was 556 pages and was Ringgit 180, a little expensive but I read it cover to cover in the next 24 hours on the plane back to England. It describes the Sook Ching which took place in Miri on Sunday 22nd February 1942 when 450 out of 600 Chinese men between 18 and 50 were executed. As I had worked for 25 years in such places as Hong Kong, Brunei, and Indonesia, and had visited Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan, it made me think that the Sook Ching described in the book must have taken place in other countries occupied by the Japanese. One Chinese customer in Hong Kong told me that he never bought Japanese or German products but never said why. I assumed it was because of the war, but now I know why.

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