Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941-45

Abstract

This article examines a series of wartime massacres (sook chings) conducted at various Southeast Asian sites with a view to teasing out broader lessons about justice, compensation, apology and the uses of memory both on the side of the victims as well as the nation that perpetrated the crimes. Characteristically, the sook chings of Southeast Asia, occurring in ethnically complex societies with mostly Chinese as victims, displayed a planned character of strictly ethnic and political “cleansing” that meets broad definitions of genocide. This article also considers historical memory. Obviously, as with Japanese war crimes in China, the sook chings of Southeast Asia are remembered locally. But also, as in China, remembrance of the sook chings has been modulated by the state, mostly in the interest of good relations and business links with Japan (with some notable exceptions). But, alongside the Nanjing Massacre, much contested in Japanese historiography, the sook ching massacres remain virtually unknown to the Japanese public, and have not become an issue between Japan and the Southeast Asian countries where these events occurred.