Jap Occupation

13 Oct 2004
Time: 00:22
Mood: Good enough


Just wanna mention, lately on Channel 19, AEC Astro if I'm not mistaken, there's a Singaporean drama series at 7pm weekdays. I don't remember the title...something Peace. It ended today.

The series was about the Japanese Occupation in Singapore (c. 1946-1949), and although the story was wholly set there, it applied to (then) Malaya as well, I guess. The story was about young people of Singapore then (now they're your and my grandparents in their 60s and 70s), their anti-Japanese sentiments, their fights, their lives...those who became turncoats, the heartache of aging parents waiting for their children who ended up in torture camps and prisons, children who will never return, the tears and joy of parting, deaths, love and marriage and birth in the midst of harrowing circumstances.

Life wasn't easy. I guess they potrayed it really well. Tomorrow may be yours, but it may also be the end. One day you're married, the next you're widowed. A young girl turned to prostitution rather than being raped and killed. To make it even more cheesier, her script said her birthday's on mid-autumn festival, that's why her name is Yue Guang (Moonlight) and that she served her first client on mid-autumn festival. My mom cried a bit and added stories of her own grandparents' suffering and a wry joke about how a lot of youngsters worship anything Japanese today and those who died in the hands of those Carrot-heads will turn in their graves if they ever knew.

In the end, a young man, Ah Fan was standing on the seaside after the Japanese Occupation ended, and the scene with the lalang and undeveloped area became modern Singapore and a much older him watched NS trainees returning home, carefree...the ending dialogue of the series was "Kita sama-sama anak muda...hidup mereka lebih bahagia..." I can't translate that into English. Nothing can really justify that speech. The series was in Mandarin, by the way. While my Mandarin isn't hot, at least I understand Singaporean Mandarin, and there's Bahasa subtitles.

It's true, I guess. They too, were young. And we're now the young people of Singapore and Malaysia. They had to fight to live. We live to fight. We don't have to move a finger for our nation and for peace. We only have ourselves to worry about. Our lives are really much, much more bahagia.

I feel so small.