The artifacts I am choosing to do for this post are the leaflets that the Allied Command spread in Singapore regarding the Japanese surrender. They were spread in many different languages, such as Chinese, Arabic, and Tamil. They can be found in the Documents & Paper category.
The British returned to Singapore, proud and strong after the Japanese had surrendered, due to the damage caused by the atomic bomb dropped onto Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people of Singapore were overjoyed; they had faced much sufferings at the hands of the Japanese. The Occupation was a tough time for them, but they had made it through. They were saved. The British had returned.
However, problems did not stop there. The British were unable or slow to solve problems. Soon, people like David Marshall and Lee Kuan Yew lost faith in them, and wanted freedom and democracy for Singapore
Fast forward to 2007. The PAP have succeeded in attaining independence for Singapore, and it has become a fine country. Right in our national education values, it is stated:
We must ourselves defend Singapore.
We are proud to defend Singapore ourselves, no one else is responsible for our security and well-being.
But the British were poor colonial masters. They were more concerned with the war in Britain than defending Singapore, thus the best troops were sent to fight in Britain, while the troops they could spare were sent to Singapore. They had planned the defense of Singapore, which they called ‘Operation Matador’ Should Singapore be attacked, the British home base would immediately send forces and ships to its aid.
We should all learn from this lesson. We trusted and believed in the superiority of the British. The Asiatics back then were too complacent, and not patriotic to Singapore. Should the British defend Singapore, what more would they have to lose but a small colony? If we lost, what would we lose? We would lose out home, our love ones, our country. We would lose everything we had.
“Singapore is our homeland, this is where we belong”
Tags: World War II, Allied Leaflet of Japanese Surrender, National Museum of Singapore, SGCool Contest
1 Response
We British shouldn’t be “bashed” too much, had it not been for the foresight of Raffles, Singapore would not exist. In general our past record where governing other countries was good, after all why do so many people from our former colonies wish to settle in the UK today. True the war years were a mess but everyone is entitled to one bad defeat and in any case things were going very badly in Europe for us Brits at the time but at least the end result was good. As for the pull out in the seventies, well unfortunate as it was at least it was done in an orderly manner.
Posted on August 10th, 2011 at 4:05 am
Add A Comment