1=Conditions of great fear fostered the creation and re-telling of stories of horror, such as these...
2=The Hinomaru is hoisted above the Municipal Building as Singapore is occupied by the Japanese.
3=Muslims are forced to perform the sacrilegious act of slaughtering pigs, and mosques are used as pig abattoirs.
4=Chinese who refuse to bow to the Japanese are made to stand in the scorching sun as punishment, and, to add salt to the wound, are forced to give a "donation" as well.
5=The Japanese seize and impound radios in an attempt to prevent the local population from receiving news which are adverse to them.
6=Young girls are made to serve naked Japanese soldiers by having to bring boiled water for their baths.
7=Japanese soldiers seize ordinary citizens as coolie labour.
8=The Japanese conduct arbitrary screenings of Towkays.
9=Japanese soldiers rob citizens on the street of their Parker pens and waterproof watches.
10=Many resources are accumulated as military supplies. These bicycles are seized with impunity.
11=Syndicates operating on the Black Market monopolise the sale of food, causing prices to soar. A crowd, desperate for food, is packed tightly as they wait to rush in and buy already stale fish and cockles.
12=Japanese soldiers conducting checks on embargoed goods would enter houses and ransack possessions.
13=An unknown young Chinese man detonates a bomb in the midst of the enemy.
14=After being forced to dig one's own grave, unfortunate condemned prisoners are massacred and buried en masse.
15=A pregnant woman is crushed in the tightly-packed crowd that is surging to buy already-stale fish. She later died.
16=Household checks by Japanese soldiers become a guise for the horrific rape of women.
17=A grieving child mourns his raped and murdered mother.
18=The city is ransacked and people's possessions fall into enemy hands.
19=Widespread arrests are carried out against those who are brave enough to distribute "Free Press" newspapers.
20="Standing at the Gates of Hell" - Chinese men carry 3 days' rations with them as they proceed to a Sook Ching or mass-screening centre to register themselves. Many would be accused of being anti-Japanese and massacred.
21=Scorched by the sun and drenched in sweat, Chinese men at a mass-screening centre during Sook Ching are herded towards almost certain death .
22=A bespectacled detainee is stripped, shamed and paraded in front of a crowd.
23=Traitors accuse persons with tattooed arms of being anti-Japanese.
24=The condemnation and massacre of those with more than 10 thousand dollars or new settlers who had been living in Singapore for less than 10 years.
25=A detainee is given the "Rodent Penalty" and left to drown in a filled wooden barrel of water, called a "Monkeyshrine," as his captor watches on in scorn.
26=A detainee is strung upside-down and made to suffer water torture as his captors resort to malicious means to force a confession from him.
27=Inhumane tortures, unknown to history, were inflicted on those that were arrested by the Japanese. "Offenders" were tied by their legs and left suspended upside down for hours. They were flogged and whipped at intervals. A friend of mine was so tortured on X'mas Day, 1944. He now calls himself the "Human Turkey."
28=All the material wealth in Malaya, especially Singapore, was centred on the Japanese Kumiai. The object, it was alleged, was co-prosperity by an even distribution of goods among the whole population irrespective of race or colour. The result was certainly prosperity for the Japanese!
29=Soon after the fall of Singapore, rumours spread among the population that the British would stage a come-back before X'mas, 1942. Hope was running high and a great number of people secretly tuned in to English and American radio broadcasts, despite a ban by the Japanese. Breach of this law meant arrest, torture and most likely death. The punishment was usually in the form of two sharp pencils driven through the ears of the offender.
30=During the Malayan War, a Japanese officer was known to have boasted that he had decapitated 79 of the surrendered British, Australian, and Indian troops.
31=""Comfort Parties" were a necessary adjunct to the Japanese Army. One of the first acts of the Japanese was to round up all the known prostitutes and then to sort them into different grades for servicing the different ranks of officers and men! In one place even a church was turned into a "House of Pleasure.""
32=Apart from massacres and other brutal atrocities, the Japanese made a practice during the first days of the occupation of insulting the Chinese on every possible occasion. In Singapore, the area around Havelock Road became notorious in this respect. Should a husband and wife dare to attempt to pass a sentry without getting down from their rickshaw, the sentry would force the husband to get down and force the rickshaw coolie to go up and sit beside the wife, and then make the husband run off between the shafts pulling the rickshaw with his wife and the coolie on it.
33=In their attempts to make prisoners confess, the military police or KEMPITAI used every means of torture. Tearing out the finger nails was one of these means. The pain is excruciating.
34=Black Marketing became the most popular game during the Japanese occupation. It was a game played by young and old, male and female, high and low. Even preachers, school teachers, and chiefs of the Japanese Administration took part in the game. If they were cunning and not careless they made fortunes. If they were caught, they lost everything and got well beaten into the bargain. Here is an instance. A lorry tyre was stolen from a Japanese military store and sold for $200. After changing hands 17 times in the Black Market, it was finally sold for $20,000 to the Japanese Military Authorities. When the Military Police Department made investigations into the origin of the tyre, all seventeen persons involved were rounded up and dealt with. Each was fined $20,000 and one poor broker who had made $20 on the deal had to pay up equally with the rest.
35=Officials of the Society For Preventing Cruelty to Animals should have been here to see a soldier venting his spleen against a poor hawker of fowls. Exactly what had annoyed the soldier is not stated by the spectators of the incident, but the way the soldier tore the heads from all the fowls and flung the carcasses on the ground showed insensate rage. For the poor hawker there was no redress or compensation.
36=In some instances the Japanese out-Heroded Herod. Here is an instance of the Japanese slaying of the Innocents.
37=Generally speaking, those whom the Japanese decided to massacre were first made to dig their own graves before being slaughtered.
38=The Japanese were very ready with their hands. So often did we see them slapping one another that we began to think that slapping was their customary method of salutation. It was quite common to see Japanese talking to each other, and then suddenly break off converse and go for one another with hearty smacks. Later we found out that Officers smacked non-commissioned officers, and these latter in turn smacked soldiers. The soldiers then took it out on the civilians. But the poor civilian, having nobody below him to smack, just had to take it - in the face!
39=When the Japanese got hold of Malaya, they took to "sun-bathing" those whom they did not take a fancy to. Anyone who knows the terrible scorching effect of the sun over Malaya, shedding its rays from a cloudless blue sky, can imagine the agony of this "browning-off" treatment. The victims just flaked off their skin under this torture.
40=In Outram Road Jail, the "crumbs" that fell from the tables of the Japanese jailors, and the offal that was washed down the drain from the Japanese kitchen, were the delicacies the unfortunate prisoners had to supplement their own fat and marrow with.
41=One stroke for every cent of money collected, or alleged to have been collected, was the torture meted out to those who were caught assisting or trying to alleviate the sorry plight of internees during the Japanese occupation.
42=Internees "re-searched" every nook and corner of the camp for overlooked frogs, snails and hybiscus buds, which might have escaped the notice of the original search parties sent out at dawn daily to augment the day's ration as supplied to the internees by the Japanese. Observe the delight of these who are just about to capture an overlooked frog!
43=In their haste to build the Siam-Burma Railway, the Japanese tried the impossible and failed. Lacking any hospital or medical facilities, the loss of some 200,000 and the maiming of the small remnant who escaped death in the Siam-Burma Railway was inevitable.
44="Sleep on, sleep on, thou mighty dead! A glorious tomb they've found thee; The broad blue sky above thee spread, The boundless ocean round thee." Whether or not the Japanese knew these noble lines, matters little. The fact that they sent Australians on their last journey as depicted here remains open to more than one interpretation. The incident is recorded as having happened off Garoet, Java.
