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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 23:21:09 JST Adrianna Tan

   83 years ago around this time, my grandparents were 9 and 7 years old when British forces lost Singapore to the Japanese, after the British confidently declared that those Orientals could never defeat them.

   The Japanese crossed into a Singapore on a fleet of bicycles, bypassing British naval power.

   What followed was 3 years of occupation as Singapore was renamed Syonan-to. My grandparents remember singing the Japanese anthem.

   3 days after the Japanese won, they began a purge of mostly ethnic Chinese people in Singapore as retaliation for perceived overseas Chinese assistance to China, a few years earlier. 50 000 people died.

   My grandparents never wanted to eat a single sweet potato or yam or tapioca ever again later in their lives, because that’s all they had to eat.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Singapore

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Singapore

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sook_Ching

   #Singapore #History #TootSea #Japan

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 16-Feb-2025 23:30:09 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     “ The Fall of Singapore has been framed as Britain’s worst military disaster – but what did occupation really mean for people in Singapore?”

     From the important wealth of oral history interviews conducted about the occupation

     https://biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg/vol-13/issue-1/apr-jun-2017/voices-that-remain/

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     draNgNon (drangnon@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 17-Feb-2025 02:40:37 JST draNgNon

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte TIL, thanks for posting this!

     my pop was in the WW2 Pacific Theater, but not any of this!

   • Embed this notice
     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 17-Feb-2025 06:04:33 JST Adrianna Tan

     in reply to

     • Mazz@1984

     @CaringKinderSociety oh wow. Thank you for sharing that

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     Mazz@1984 (caringkindersociety@aus.social)'s status on Monday, 17-Feb-2025 06:04:34 JST Mazz@1984

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte @skinnylatte My late father in law spoke with respect for the bravery of the Chinese soldiers during the fall of Singapore. He was based there as a young doctor in the British Army & was taken captive for nearly 3 years. *When he was an adolescent, his Russian born family (Sakhalin), had fled to Harbin (China) and then spent a year in Shanghai before going to Hong Kong to study medicine.
     In his recorded interview with the Singapore national archives he says " we told the Chinese soldiers to get out of their uniforms and save themselves" ie. by looking like civilians. They refused to do this which was a very brave but final act of courage. He liked and respected them.