Just found this, fascinating! Is the writer a forum/club member by any chance?

HERE

Dark history of Malaya... after reading this..I decided to stop buying Japenese kit for a year..

Yeah, its very sobering isnt it. I felt very sad reading it.

Thank god they lost the war, and the Germans too.

I remember my father used to tell me stories about the invading Japanses army... they were brutul killers specially targeting Chinese in Malaya... He said this maybe due to the hatred they brought along with their failure to conquer China at pre-WW2... The Chinese army were poorly equiped but put up stubborn fight against the Japs. Furthermore the local Malayan Chinese business men (mainly the Chinese Chamber - Chinese businessmen club) did donated money to the Chinese government to fight the Japs.

In one story, I've no way of providing proof... as my father said, one of his friend's father who refused to fled their shop was taken by the Japanese Kempeitai ordered him as a guide and pointed out the whereabout of the list of Chinese business men of the Chinese chamber... Some of these business men were taken and tortured to death (one of them was the drinking soup water thiny....).

Seems to to me that the bayonet never run away from stories about Japanese brutul killing civilian... but I've never heard or read articles of German army conducted such actions... and yes they are the bad guys too ;)


CPTan

CP,
the Germans had the holocaust. Not very different from the Japanese, but its genocide. As for the Japs, the just wanted to weed out all love for mother China at that time as most of the resistance were from the Chinese. From a war point of view, they see the Chinese as insurgent candidates while the Germans actually targetted Jews because they felt hard done by them.

I think in all cases, its difficult to to generalise the war and how the Japs and Germans behaved, but you have to give a lot of respect to the Germans and Japanese soldiers when it comes to warfare.

Soldiers were just slaves of the politicians and dictators....they all fought their best for their country.

But the fanatic brainwashed forces like the SS and Gestapo, the Kempeitai and Gunsaikan I dont think are worth any admiration. Totally evil and responsible for millions of deaths. The Germans against the Jews, Slavs and "lesser" races, and the Japs against the Chinese and all POW's. Having said that, Stalin was not far off, but in WW2 Russia was on the Allied side.

While we can say as modellers we are interested in purely the historical and technological part of this, there will always be those to whom the very mention of Kempeitai and SS causes fear and hatred. You cannot blame European nations for banning the Swastika, its the same as we banning the CPM. Funnily, no one banned the Japanese flag.

Sometimes, for me as a modeller, its hard to detach from the history...

I didn't read the blog, it sounds so sad from your comments.

Anyway I too sometimes influenced by this dark history from the war that I have this hatred towards the Japan, like I won't buy Mitsubishi car as they took the Chineses during the WW2 and forced them to work in their factories as a work slaves.

I also know some Japanese companies actually went against their government during the WW2. But again, history is not designed for us to have such hatred in our heart, sometimes it is hard especially when we have relatives suffered during that time, still we need to understand what's more important is learning the history is to learn what's wrong and do it correctly from now on.

Regards.

look at it this way, history is full of blood baths.
war is mostly brought about by greed, specifically the need for economic dominance in guise of political or nationalistic aims; and at a given point in time wars becomes seemingly necessary and often unavoidable because of pride.
for is it not so that the second world war has literally shaped the world that we live in today.
consider this then, if it wasn't for the nips going to war, who knows when the european overlords would have left S.E. Asia.
this perhaps is the only positive lasting effect from Japan's failed military adventurism.
the harsh behaviour from some elements of the Imperial Japanese Army and of it's native collaborators is perhaps the main reson why they were never thought of as "new masters" but invaders, let alone to be accepted as Asian liberators.
they simply never saw other Asians as equals.
perhaps a reason why the Korean prison guards were exceptionally hard on the allied prisoners.
or why the Taiwanese Kempetai interrogators resorted to brutal methods for results just to please their colonial masters in order to be considered worthy subjects of Imperial Japan
the Japanese nation had never admit to defeat of the last war and continue to revere it's notorious fallen in Yakasune shrine.
the German nation has admitted responsibility arising from it's past Nationalistic actions and especially on matters relating to the final solution regarding a particular religious and cultural following in Europe.
Japan still carries the burden of a collective war guilt, but national pride does not allow it to admit any wrong.
if anyting one has to admire that they are a progressive nation whose people are largely perfectionist by cultural upbringing.
it is this reason that admission to failure brings great shame.
ever wondered why Japan is so forward looking and quick to implement such a superior and highly technologically advance, modern way of life?
it is as if, they were trying to get away from the immediate past....

Good point Holy P,

As we all know that history is written by the victor, so I doubt there always cases of "fabricating" the truth... As my interest in ancient Chinese dynasty, I know that the so call "brutul" acts of Qin was largely portray as the bad guys since that part of history was re-wrote by the Han dynasty, who their first King Liu Pang did allied with Chu to destroy Qin dynasty... Base on these, I can understand why the Japanese government is trying so hard to change their past by changing the fact in their primary history books.

I always thought the action of fabricating history are false actions of big boys country toying with their history to boost their image.... but not Malaysia. Sadly upon my finding.... it seems to me that our country may also doing the same thing... try read your kid's history book or ask them some question about Melaka... surprisingly they don't know nuts about who is Hang Tuah, and about the sang kanchil which kicked the hunting dog, the Melaka tree,.... etc. They only know Melaka history started at the time the great religion came to Melaka :( ;) :blink: ....Poor kids.

So don't believe everything you read in ONE article, try look and research for more info especially from the net lar.... U'll find more truth out there actually.

talking about reading,
there's Chye Kooi Loong's book on
"THE BRITISH BATTALION IN THE MALAYAN CAMPAIGN 1941 -1942"
Picture of Cover
www.jmm.gov.my/ms/content/british-battalionjpg
Book Details here...
www.jmm.gov.my/ms/content/sejarah-batalion-british-dalam-kempen-malaya-1941-1942-0

BTW, it appears that the National Museum will be having an "Emergency/Darurat" exhibition.