ABSTRACT
Battlefield tourism to Second World War historic sites in the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines increased exponentially in the late twentieth century. In the 1970s, Singapore embarked on a state coordinated campaign to promote battlefield tourism to historic sites that were associated with the conflict of the great powers of the Second World War. When the tourism officials of the Singapore state were creating many of these war sites for British and Australian visitors, and even Japanese tourists too, they were aware that the local population felt that they were part of colonial history, not their national history. Tours of the former battlefield sites and POW locations were in the early 1970s increasingly being organised by Singapore travel agencies. Singapore tourism officials were very much aware that a 1942 surrender tableau could appeal to the Japanese who are not likely in the foreseeable future to establish a war museum in their own country.
