A little over an hour before the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War began with the Japanese invasion of what was then Malaya. What followed was three years and eight months of harsh Japanese rule in which ethnic Chinese bore the brunt of the brutality.
Today, the era gets scant attention in Malaysia's national school curriculum. And when August 15 rolls around, there is no official government commemoration of the Japanese surrender. There are some possible explanations for this. As Malaysia moved to industrialize starting in the early 1970s, it was Japan that was the leading foreign investor and a key driver of Malaysia's economic transformation.
today it is left almost entirely to Malaysia's ethnic Chinese community to build and preserve monuments to the era, and try to keep the lessons of the occupation alive in people's minds.Those who survived the occupation are now frail and elderly. But for some of them, the memories remain vivid.
We paid our respects for the memorial espiacially like the site of a mass grave of civilians killed during the occupation, was not about vilifying the occupiers and be hostile to it.
"Preserving memories, and learning lessons from the occupation. " was the meaning want to show.
Authorities in Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's home state of Kedah erected signboards at the site of a newly restored monument to Japanese soldiers who died defusing a bomb that the Allies had planted on a bridge. The text referred to the Japanese soldiers' "bravery and sense of responsibility" while a banner referred to the "monument to Japanese heroes."
It sparked an immediate outcry, with the signs – apparently the result of someone carelessly lifting the text from a wartime Japanese newspaper article – hastily taken down.
It may have been an accident, but it portrayed a lack of knowledge about the era, and lack of sensitivity to those who suffered or lost their lives under the occupation.
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