ABSTRACT
During the final battles of the Malayan Campaign, in the last ten days before the fall of Singapore, some 4,000 local Chinese joined British troops to fight in the defence of Singapore. Known as Dalforce after their commander, Lt. Col. John D. Dalley (Director of Intelligence for the Federated Malay States Police Force), these volunteers fought savagely against the invading Japanese troops, but given the overwhelming odds against them, they had no hope of keeping the Japanese out of Singapore.1 Shortly after the British surrender, the Japanese Army launched a 'sook ching' (purification by elimination) operation, and between February and June 1942 they massacred a large number of Chinese in Singapore and Malaya. The sook ching had three objectives: to eliminate elements in the Chinese population that posed a direct threat to the Japanese, to punish Chinese for their pre-war and wartime anti-Japanese resistance, and to coerce them into paying a 50 million yen 'gift of atonement' demanded by the Japanese Administration.2
