Life During The Japanese Occupation

Life During The Japanese Occupation
 
15 February 1942 marked the beginning of suffering for all Singaporeans, rich or poor. People all around was devastated when they heard about the surrender of the British to Japan. The Japanese introduced lots of changes to Singapore's system such as the currency, law and order and also the name of our beloved country.

Back then during that period, Singapore was known as Syonan To which means " The Light Of The South ". Not only did the name of our beloved country changed, we were also forced to sing Japan's national anthem at that time. It was called Kimigayo. We had to face towards the direction of Japan while singing the national anthem. It was a new thing for us and it took us some time to adapt with the new national anthem as it was hard to pronounce the words.

Another change which took place during the Japanese Occupation was the currency of our money. The currency changed drastically from Singapore Dollars to Japanese ' banana notes '. It is called banana notes as there is a picture of a banana tree at every single piece of notes. A disadvantage about these notes is that these notes are unlimited. These means that whenever the Japanese had a shortage of these notes, all they had to do was to print out more of these notes. There was also no serial numbers on these notes which makes it easier to forge it.Due to that, the value of these 'banana notes' dropped and prices began to soar. This makes life harder for us.

Banana Notes

Ration Cards

We were also forced to take up Japanese subjects in our school. All subject's in our school was thought in Japanese. It was hard for we students to adapt to these changes as we could not understand Japanese. Some parents resorted to finding a tuition teacher who teaches English or even Mother Tounge to their child to avoid their child from losing out.

Movies in cinemas and the radio station broadcasting in Singapore was played in Japanese. Most movies on the cinema was about the Japanese winning the war one by one.They would also show propaganda films to influence we Singaporeans in working together with them.Those caught listening to foreign radio stations were severely punished.

Lastly, the Japanese rationed out food when they were experiencing food shortage as all resources were distributed to the Japanese in effort to help the Japanese in conquering other parts of Asia. Hence , each household was given a number of ration cards to help them purchase essential goods. This resulted in a huge queue when collecting rations and at times, supplies were not sufficient to distribute throughout the crowd.

We were waiting for the time when the Japanese surrenders, we waited and waited till the day finally came...



Source: 2007) Singapore From Settlement To Nation Pre-1819 to 1971 (Second Edition), Times Centre,1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196, Marshall Cavendish Education
Images from Google Images( Date Found: 17 February 2013 )