The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of the Issue in Postwar Japan

While China was at the center of Japan's war, by 1942 Japan had occupied much of Southeast Asia, home of many ethnic Chinese. Often Chinese nationalists in those places were potential leaders of resistance to Japan. On the other hand, Japanese authorities knew that educated Chinese could be useful in subordinating other Southeast Asians to the Japanese empire, since they had played this role for European imperialists. Hayashi Hirofumi's “The Battle of Singapore, the Massacre of Chinese and Understanding of the Issue in Postwar Japan” and Vivian Blaxell's “New Syonan and Asianism in Japanese-era Singapore” both discuss the complexities of Japanese occupation in Southeast Asia. Hayashi shows that killing ethnic Chinese was explicit Japanese military policy because Chinese were assumed to be innately opposed to Japanese empire, showing the military's skepticism about Pan-Asianism. Nonetheless, as Blaxell shows, other Japanese simultaneously worked to win the support of two groups, Chinese and Eurasian Christians (usually part Chinese) through construction of two model villages, New Syonan and Fuji Village. In both cases, the actual ways that Japanese Singapore functioned was far more chaotic and contingent than high-level policy would suggest. The ironic contrast between Japanese war crimes happening side-by-side with Japanese attempts to find Chinese allies to build a new Asia was common everywhere.