ABSTRACT
Studies of Singapore's memory sites have often taken as their temporal starting point the nation's independence in 1965, ignoring the highly dynamic two decades that preceded this. Focusing on the role of prominent actors during this transitional period, Schumacher examines the complex power relations and changing loyalties that influenced war remembrance. A particular case in point is Colonel Chuang Hui-tsuan's campaign during the late 1940s and 1950s to have his close political and military ally, the prominent wartime guerrilla leader Lim Bo Seng, memorialized. Schumacher argues that this case illuminates Singapore's role as a thriving regional laboratory of local and transnational memory-production in the aftermath of World War Two. Besides tracing the evolution of communal identities, such as that of the overseas Chinese, he shows how struggles between China and Britain for influence and allegiance in the region were already shaping patterns of remembrance before the island embarked on an independent nation-building programme, and long before the contemporary “memory boom” engulfed much of East and Southeast Asia. His chapter thus calls into question the usefulness of periodizations that identify the end of the global Cold War as lending special impetus to Asia's war memory boom, instead emphasizing the role of regional and local factors.
