Sook Ching Massacre - Aftermath

Aftermath

In 1947, after the Japanese surrendered, the British authorities in Singapore held a war crimes trial for the perpetrators of the Sook Ching massacre. Seven Japanese officers -- Takuma Nishimura, Saburo Kawamura, Masayuki Oishi, Yoshitaka Yokata, Tomotatsu Jo, Satoru Onishi and Haruji Hisamatsu -- were charged with conducting the massacre.

During the trial, one major problem was that the Japanese commanders did not pass down any formal written orders for the massacre to be conducted. Documentation of the screening process or disposal procedures had also been destroyed. Besides, the Japanese military headquarters' order for the speedy execution of the operation, combined with ambiguous instructions from the commanders, led to suspicions being cast on the accused, and it became difficult to accurately establish their culpability.

Kawamura and Oishi received the death penalty while the other five received life sentences, though Nishimura was later executed following convicting for his role in the Parit Sulong massacre by an Australian military court. The court accepted the defense statement of "just following orders" by those put on trial.

The condemned convicts were hanged on 26 June 1947. The British authorities allowed only six members of the victims' families to witness the executions of Kawamura and Oishi despite calls for the hangings to be made public.

When Singapore gained full self-government from the British colonial government in 1959, waves of anti-Japanese sentiments brewed within the Chinese community and they demanded reparations and an apology from Japan. The British colonial government had demanded only war reparations from Japan for damage caused to British property during the war before Singapore's independence. The Japanese Foreign Ministry declined Singapore's request for an apology and reparations in 1963, stating that the issue of war reparations with the British had already been settled in the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 and hence with Singapore as well, which was then still a British colony.

Singapore's first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew responded by saying that the British colonial government did not represent the voice of Singaporeans. In September 1963, the Chinese community staged a boycott of Japanese imports (refusing to unload aircraft and ships from Japan) but it lasted only seven days.

With Singapore's full independence from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, the Singapore government made another request to Japan for reparations and an apology. On 25 October 1966, Japan agreed to pay S$50 million in compensation, half of which as a grant and the other half as a loan. Japan did not make an official apology.

The remains of the victims of the Sook Ching massacre have been unearthed by locals decades after the massacre. The most recent finding was in late 1997, when a man looking for earthworms to use as fishing bait found a skull, two gold teeth, an arm and a leg. The massacre sites of Sentosa, Changi and Punggol Point were marked as heritage sites by the National Monuments of Singapore in 1995 to commemorate the end of the Japanese occupation.