ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 begins with the section inviting readers to re-experience the initial atmosphere of the Japanese invasion and occupation of Southeast Asia. Then the author illuminates the fundamental gap between the “holy war of liberation” perceptions as imagined by the contemporary Japanese public and the practical objective of a war to secure material resources for its continuation. Intoxicated by the initial military success, the Japanese press trumpeted such ideological nuggets as liberation, holy war, race war, correction/rehabilitation, and Asian authenticity, which rhetorically urged the occupied people to follow Japan’s lead and transform their societies, economies and cultures. In reality, however, the initial “success” of the occupation in most of Southeast Asia was predicated on maintaining or even rehabilitating existing structures of domination built by the Western colonial regimes. However, this policy which even appears as appeasement was after all not the purpose of the occupation but rather the means for implementing the above-mentioned three occupation principles underlying a war for resources, and thus always had to be backed up by coercion and armed force, as exemplified so clearly by the atrocities committed in the Sook Ching crackdown and purge in Singapore during February and March 1942.
