Operation Sook Ching, a Japanese Military Operation

Chinese sources list the total quantity of military and non-military casualties, both dead and wounded, at 35 million. Most Western historians believed that the total quantity of casualties was at least 20 million. Operation Sook Ching was a Japanese military operation aimed at purging or eliminating anti-Japanese elements from the Chinese neighborhood in Singapore. From 21 February to four March 1942, Chinese males between the ages of 18 and 50 had been summoned to different mass screening centres and these suspected of being anti-Japanese have been executed.Causes for the operationSook Ching is a Chinese term which means “purge via cleansing”.

The Japanese term for the operation was Dai Kensho, which means “great inspection”.There had been several achievable reasons why the Japanese military carried out the operation.First, the Japanese military were suspicious of the Chinese in Singapore since of the extended-standing tensions in between Japan and China, and their personal experiences fighting the Chinese in China considering that 1937.Second, several of the Japanese commanders and soldiers have been veterans of campaigns in other parts of Asia where violence and executions were routinely utilized as tools to maintain the civilian population beneath manage.Third, the Japanese wanted to prevent anti-Japanese elements from interfering with their occupation of Singapore right after experiencing resistance by Chinese volunteers and guerrillas during the Malayan Campaign (1941–1942).

Directive. Shortly following the Japanese occupied Singapore, Lieutenant Basic Tomoyuki Yamashita issued a directive ordering the Chinese population to report to designated locations for screening. The directive targeted 5 principal categories of Chinese:5(1) members of the volunteer force(2) Communists(three) looters(four) these possessing harms and(5) these whose names appeared in lists of anti-Japanese suspects maintained by Japanese intelligence.In line with the directive, instructions had been issued to Japanese officers on how the operation was to be carried out. Japanese officers had been instructed to screen all “anti-Japanese elements”, segregate them and dispose of them secretly.

How the operation was carried out. Soon after the directive was issued, notices and posters have been place up informing Chinese males amongst the ages of 18 and 50 to report to designated screening centres. Males also went round with loudspeakers to spread the news.These screening centres had been situated all more than the island, particularly in regions such as Chinatown where large numbers of Chinese resided.The screening was primarily carried out by the Kempeitai (the Japanese military police) in the urban places and by the Imperial Guards Division in the other districts. Initially, the plan was for the operation to be carried out from 21 to 23 February 1942. It was subsequently extended to four March.The screening method was unsystematic and disorganised. Decisions as to who have been anti-Japanese have been based on the whims of the persons doing the screening.

Oral history accounts from eyewitnesses describe different screening strategies getting employed at the various centres. In some centres, victims have been selected based on their occupations, their answers to queries, or whether or not they had tattoos. In other centres, hooded informers would point to guys who have been allegedly criminals or anti-Japanese components.The guys who were fortunate sufficient to pass the screening approach have been permitted to leave the centres. They were provided with proof of their cleared status in the kind of a piece of paper with a stamp that stated “examined”, or by way of equivalent stamps marked on their face, arm, shoulder or clothes.Some individuals were spared from the screenings by means of the intervention of Japanese official Mamoru Shinozaki. Appointed as advisor to defence headquarters right after the fall of Singapore, Shinozaki utilized his position to concern personal protection cards to thousands of Chinese. In some situations, Shinozaki even personally went to the screening centres to ask for the release of males who had been detained.

Thousands of other men were not so fortunate. Suspected of getting anti-Japanese elements, these guys had been loaded into lorries and transported to remote locations such as Changi, Punggol and Bedok for execution. At these websites, the suspects have been machine-gunned to death and frequently their bodies had been thrown into the sea. In some situations, British prisoners of war (POWs) had been tasked to bury the bodies.Recognized massacre sites consist of beaches at Punggol, Changi, Katong, Tanah Merah and Blakang Mati (now Sentosa island). Massacres were said to have also occurred at Hougang, Thomson Road, Changi Road, Siglap, Bedok and East Coast.Due to a lack of written records, the exact number of individuals killed in the operation is unknown. The official figure given by the Japanese is five,000 although the actual number is believed to be significantly higher. Lieutenant Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, a newspaper correspondent at the time, claimed that the strategy was to kill 50,000 Chinese and that half that number had been reached when the order was received to stop the operation.