Singapore, Round 2 – Changi Prison Museum

By Rough Guy’d

2^nd of June and I went to see something that I had heard a lot about. During the Second World War, the atrocities that were performed by the Nazis were well documented afterwards and many of us know how truly horrific those acts were but right up until now, I had heard nothing much about anything that happened in the Pacific area of the war. I had had a general idea how the war was fought but as to the atrocities committed, the only inkling I ever had was a simmering bitterness towards Japanese that I had experienced from my mum. Changi Prison Museum would soon change that.

Arriving at the museum, you could feel the solemnity of the place. While there were no signs that said to be quiet or to not take photos like at other museums, the mood of the place stopped you from doing either of those and for once, every fell in line and obeyed. 

The museum was very good at doing what it was trying to do and I could feel my heart being pulled out of my chest as I looked at more and more of the exhibits. The number of atrocities that they committed here shocked me as they explicitly said many things but also left much unsaid and hinted that Singapore might not have been the worst hit of the captured countries. It took me some time to fully understand why the Japanese behaved as they did and while I can’t look at Japan of the modern times as being the culprits as my mother is prone to do at times (she was from Malaysia so she experienced firsthand the occupation by Japan though she’s never told me anything), I can’t fully forgive them either as they try vehemently to forget about the past and what they did to other people, even going so far as to say that they didn’t do anything wrong.

From what I could tell, and this is only this humble author’s opinion, is that the main reason why the Japanese behaved as they did is the same thing that many people look up to them for, Bushido. The ideals of Bushido is not something I will go into depth in here but one of the main things about it is the ideal of honour and this is something that they take very seriously including in many instances the act of Seppuku. Seppuku is an act of voluntary suicide in which soldiers did this rather than be taken captive by their enemies. 

While not all soldiers did this, the idea of being taken captive alive and well was still seen by many as a grave loss of faith and they considered themselves to be no more than walking dead, which is exactly how they treated prisoners and countries that they captured. If you fell to the enemy, you were no better than a shamed honourless person, worse in fact because you didn’t commit Seppuku, never mind that you don’t follow the Japanese way of thinking. This invariably led to much unnecessarily rough treatment by the Japanese and is still a sore point between them and the rest of Asia due to their continued stance of saying they did nothing wrong.

At the museum, it highlighted many of the things that the Japanese did here in Singapore and how they converted the prison to a POW camp and while not one of my happy memories, was still a very important part of my trip. Sadly as I was to learn later, this barely scratched the surface of the ice...