Sook Ching Massacre

From SgWiki

The Sook Ching massacre (肅清大屠殺) was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among ethnic Chinese Singaporeans by the Japanese military administration during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, after the British colony surrendered in the Battle of Singapore on 15 February 1942 during World War II. Sook Ching was later extended to include Chinese Malayans. At that time, there were no political borderies between two areas. Singapore was just part of Malayan Peninsula.

The term sook ching (肃清) is a Chinese word meaning "a purge through cleansing". Ironically, the Japanese also described the incident as such, although term daikenshō (大検証), lit. "great inspection" is also used. Although the term "Sook Ching" appeared as early as 1946, it was not commonly used in the Chinese press or other publications until the 1980s.

The three and half years of the history of Singapore were to be known as the darkest night in the short period of the history of Singapore. Among the civilian the untold sufferings and deprivations including the massacre*** of innocent inhabitants was something which had taken a long time for the people to forget.

*** Generally, records are few and many do not want to reveal the sufferings of the past, but in a rare book by a Christian writer she wrote of one of the episodes to show the mercy of God in allowing her household to escape a similar death at the hands of the soldiers of Japanese:

"When the Japanese troops tramped southward from Thailand through the jungles of the Malay Peninsula to Singapore, they encountered strong opposition and resistance from the Chinese underground troops, and in the process the Japanese lost about three thousand of their men. The Japanese vowed that their revenge they would take thirty thousand of the Chinese men (that is ten men Chinese men for every Japanese killed) Thus when Singapore fell to the Japanese, many Chinese men between 18 and 50 years of age, were picked out from the concentration camps and massacred along the beaches of Changi and East Coast. Then groups of Japanese went up the Malay Peninsula again and again and visited the villagers, who were all Chinese. The villagers were taken by surprise but decided to make a show of it and organized a great feast to welcome the ‘victors”. After the banquet, they accommodated them in the best of their lodgings they had and made them as comfortable as they could.

The next day, the leader of the Japanese troop summoned the villagers to the common playground at the shopping centre, saying that he had an important message from the Emperor of Japan for everybody. With the soldiers going from house to house, he made sure, that everyone was out in the open field to listen to him…there were a few Christian families praying who did not join the villagers…and they were unnoticed by the soldiers…

Not long afterwards, the Christians in the house heard, with horror, a loud barrage of gun shots and sounds of machine guns; there were a lot of screaming and shouting from the common greens. ..The fields were littered with dead bodies of men, women and children!""

***Adapted from ~ pages 103-104 of “The wonders of God’s Grace” by Elizabeth Tong, copyrighted by Elizabeth Tong Printed by Markono Print Media Pte., Ltd. (2004)