ABSTRACT
On 15 August of every year, representatives of various Chinese associations hold a commemorative ceremony at a mass grave of victims of Japanese military action at the Hokkien Cemetery in Sungai Besi, Kuala Lumpur. This initiative was started in 1995, 50 years after the end of the war, prompted by the United Nations' declaration of 1995 as the Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of WWII worldwide. In 2003, parallel commemorative activities were initiated by a separate group following the rehabilitation of a cenotaph commemorating high-ranking leaders of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), killed in a Japanese ambush on 1 September 1942. The cenotaph was discovered in 2000 in Batu Cave, north of Kuala Lumpur. The MPAJA was headed by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), whose resistance against the Japanese was officially recognized and honoured by the British government. However, the one-time war allies became bitter enemies from 1948 when the MCP fought an anti-colonial war against the British in Malaya. The conflict did not end formally until a peace treaty with the Malaysian government was signed in December 1989. Hence, the commemoration of WWII has long been a sensitive issue in Malaysia, and the rehabilitation of this cenotaph, organized by a number of veteran leftist politicians (and some veteran MCP fighters), would have been unthinkable during earlier times.
