Creating and Mobilizing “Syonan” Youth: Youth and the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, 1942-1945

Abstract

In 1942, The Japanese Occupation of Singapore (1942-1945) interrupted British rule in Singapore and paved the way for the island-city’s independence in 1965. The scholarly literature on this dramatic and traumatic period usually focus on the military aspects of the British capitulation to the Japanese invasion or submerge Japanese military officers and civilian administrators’ efforts to mobilize and discipline children and youth within the broader examination of Japanese social policies. This article examines these different efforts to school and mobilize youth in Singapore during this period. to create new subjects out of Singapore’s children and youth and to discipline their bodies for incorporation into a new pan-Asian Japanese empire. Even though these attempts failed, they paved the way for the subsequent social policies and disciplinary projects of the British colonial and local nationalist governments after the war. Thus, the Occupation heralded the intersection of state-society relations and age relations in Singapore.