The Many Falls of Singapore

Kevin Blackburn, Karl Hack
Email: kevin.blackburn@nie.edu.sg

Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack from Humanities and Social Studies Education are researching how the fall of Singapore has been remembered since 1942 by different groups - the British, Australians, Japanese, Indians, and the various ethnic communities of Singapore and Malaysia. The version of the past being recalled has varied depending who is doing the remembering. The history of the fall of Singapore is a political battleground of contesting interpretations of the past presented by the competing nationalities and ethnic communities involved in the conflict of 1942. All have remembered the sacrifices of their war dead in different ways, according to their own rituals. Fully documenting this multicultural mosaic of memories of a pivotal historical event has not been attempted before, and the project should thus add understanding of the construction of memory in history. This is especially relevant in the local context of Singapore and Malaysia. In these countries, national interpretations of the event and its consequences have emerged to try and transcend different ethnic memories of the fall of Singapore and the events that followed. The research has been partly funded by an AcRF grant from Nanyang Technological University; and it has been assisted by co-operation and consultancies with the Singapore Tourism Board and the Sentosa Development Corporation.

Source of funding: AcRF