Dennis, Ruth and Lynette

Wei Chao's Project on 12 Heroes during WWII in Singapore.
Due date : 1st April

Dennis, Ruth and Lynette

The Robert family led a happy and peaceful life in Singapore before the war. During the war, they were separated by the Japanese after the invasion.

Citation : Source taken from Museum's trip worksheet.

Tsuchikane Tominosuke

Tsuchikane Tominosuke

Tsuchikane Tominosuke was a regular soldier invading Malaya who has lots of humanity in him but forced to kill innocent people. He was the Japanese army sergeant who served the Imperial Guards Division and Japanese military advance. He survived during the war.

Citation : Source taken from Museum trip's worksheet.

Chia Chor Seng

Chia Chor Seng

( Syonan-To 1942 - 1945 )

Force 136 was an Allied Resistance force that largely consisted of Chinese volunteers. Who infilltrated Japanese-occupied Malaya. Force 136 worked in tandem with the MPAJA in their common struggle against the Japanese army in Japanese-occupied Malaya.

Citation : Source taken from Museum trip's worksheet.

Rasamma

Rasamma

Rasamma is a young female volunteer soldier of the INA's. All-female Rani of Jhansi ( Queen of Jhansi ) Regiment.

The accessories were part of an INA uniform belonging to Rasamma Navarednam, a young volunteer female  soldier of the INA's all-female Rani of Jhansi ( Queen of Jhansi ) Regiment.

Citation : Source taken from Museum trip's worksheet.

Romusha

Romusha

Romusha were forced laborers during the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in World War II. The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between four to 10 million. Romusha were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. However, only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.

The Japanese military made very extensive use of such forced labor during the construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway during 1942-43. The death rate among Romusha, from atrocities, starvation-diet and disease far outstripped the death rate among Allied prisoners of war. About half the forced laborers engaged on the railroad construction died.

Citation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romusha

Arthur Percival

Arthur Percival

His Early Life

Arthur Ernest Percival was born on 26 December 1887 in Aspenden Lodge, Aspenden near Buntingford in Hertfordshire, England, the second son of Alfred Reginald and Edith Percival. His father was the Land Agent of the Hamel's Park estate and his mother came from a Lancashire cotton family.

World War II 

He was a British Army officer and World War I veteran. He built a successful military career during the interwar period but is most noted for his involvement in World War II, when he commanded the forces of the British Commonwealth during the Battle of Malaya and the subsequent Battle of Singapore.

Percival's surrender to the invading Imperial Japanese Army force is the largest capitulation in British military history, and it permanently undermined the United Kingdom's prestige as an imperial power in the Far East.[1][2] However, current knowledge about the years of under-funding of Malaya's defences and the inexperienced, under-equipped nature of the Commonwealth army has enabled certain commentators to hold a more sympathetic view of his command.

Citation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Percival

Mamoru Shinozaki

Mamoru Shinozaki

His Early Life

Shinozaki was born in Japan in February 1908. His father owned a Fukuoka coal-mine and was often away on business. He was raised largely by his grandmother, who had desired him to become a monk. She arranged for him to stay at a Buddhist temple for a year at the age of six, but his father opposed the idea. As a student, he was keen in socialism, reading in secret the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a serious offence in those days which got him expelled from his Kyoto high school. After spending a year as a ronin he entered Meiji University to study journalism. Upon graduating in 1931, he found employment as a reporter with the Dōmei News Agency. In 1934 he was posted to Shanghai, then to Nanking, and finally to Hankou, from where he was recalled. He went on to join the Japanese Foreign Ministry as a press attache in Berlin, and later reassigned to Singapore in October 1938.

During World War II

Shinozaki Mamoru (February 1908 – early 1990s), a former Japanese diplomat was convicted and jailed by the British for spying for Japan before the Second World War. He was later credited as the "Japanese Schindler" for saving thousands of Chinese and Eurasians by his liberal issue of personal safety passes and the creation of safe havens during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. He was also instrumental for being the key prosecution witness during the Singapore War Crimes Trial between 1946 and 1948. A book he wrote after the war called Syonan.

Citation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinozaki_Mamoru

Tomoyuki Yamashita

Tomoyuki Yamashita

On 6 November 1941, Yamashita was put in command of the Twenty-Fifth Army. On 8 December, he launched an invasion of Malaya, from bases in French Indochina. In the campaign, which concluded with the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, Yamashita's 30,000 front-line soldiers captured 130,000 British, Indian, and Australian troops, the largest surrender of British-led personnel in history. He became known as the "Tiger of Malaya".

The campaign and the subsequent Japanese occupation of Singapore included war crimes committed against captive Allied personnel and civilians, such as the Alexandra Hospital and Sook Ching massacres. Yamashita's culpability for these events remains a matter of controversy, as some argued that he had failed to prevent them. However, Yamashita had the officer who instigated the hospital massacre and some soldiers caught looting executed for these acts, and he personally apologized to the surviving Alexandra Hospital patients.

Following the Supreme Court decision, an appeal for clemency was made to U.S. President Harry S Truman; Truman, however, declined to intervene and left the matter entirely in the hands of the military authorities. In due course, General MacArthur confirmed the sentence of the Commission.

On 23 February 1946, at Los Baños, Laguna Prison Camp, 30 miles (48 km) south of Manila, Yamashita was hanged. After climbing the thirteen steps leading to the gallows, he was asked if he had a final statement. To this Yamashita replied through a translator:

Citation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomoyuki_Yamashita

Choy Khun Heng

Choy Khun Heng ( Elizabeth Choy's Husband)

Choy Khun Heng were jailed and had suffered much hardship from the Japanese Military Administration Department for helping to pass food, medicine and messages to British prisoners of war during the Japanese Occupation.

Her strong psychological resilience helped her to endure the toture and interrogations given to her by her Japanese captors.

Citation : http://www2.hci.edu.sg/y09hci0003/content.html

Elizabeth Choy

Elizabeth Choy

In her Early life

Elizabeth Choy-Yong Su-Moi was born on 29 November 1910 to a Hakka family in Kudat, British North Borneo. Choy was looked after by a Kadazan nanny and acquired Kadazan as her first language.She became an Anglican at St Monica's boarding school in Sandakan, where she took the name Elizabeth, and went on to complete her education at Raffles College in Singapore. As her family could not afford the fees, she started to teach, first at St Margaret’s School and then at St Andrew’s.

In August 1941 she married Choy Khun Heng, a book-keeper employed by the Borneo Company.

During World War 2

During the Japanese invasion of Malaya, Choy became a volunteer nurse with the Medical Auxiliary Service. After the fall of Singapore in 1942, the Choys set up a canteen at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital, after all the patients and doctors had been moved from the Miyako Hospital (former Woodbridge Hospital), where they soon started a regular ambulance run for British civilian internees. The couple helped the Changi prisoners-of-war (POW) by passing on cash and parcels containing such things as fresh clothing, medicine and letters during their deliveries, and incurred further risk by sending in radio parts for hidden receivers until the Japanese crackdown following Operation Jaywick.

During the subsequent Double Tenth Incident, an informant told the Kempeitai that the Choys were involved in smuggling money into Changi Prison, and Khun Heng was arrested. After several days, Elizabeth went to the Kempeitai East District Branch at the YMCA building on Stamford Road to inquire about her husband. The Japanese denied all knowledge of him, but lured her back to the YMCA three weeks later and confined her with other Chinese and Changi prisoners. She was imprisoned and subjected to torture. Mr R. H. Scott, a former Director of the British Ministry of Information (Far Eastern Branch) and principal witness at the War Crimes Court in Singapore, had witnessed Choy being stripped and severely beaten "on at least one occasion".

At the Japanese surrender in Singapore in September 1945, Choy was invited by Lady Mountbatten to witness the official ceremony, where she was escorted by the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, and his wife, to whom she had sent medicine in Changi.

Citation : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Choy