War landscapes as 'battlefields' of collective memories: Reading the Reflections at Bukit Chandu, Singapore

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 12, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 345-365

  Muzaini, Hamzah ^a   Yeoh, Brenda S A ^b  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE   (Singapore)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MEMORY; WAR;

ASIA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; SINGAPORE [SOUTHEAST ASIA]; SOUTHEAST ASIA; WORLD;

EID: 21544480273     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1191/1474474005eu335oa     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. See M. Halbwachs, On collective memory (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992);
2. J. R. Gillis, 'Memory and identity: the history of a relationship', in J. R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: the politics of national identity (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994).
3. B. Anderson, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, Verso, 1983).
4. For examples of how 'collective memories' are spatialized through landscapes to reflect dominant national ideologies, see N. Johnson, 'Cast in stone: monuments, geography and nationalism', Environment and planning D: society and space 13 (1995), pp. 51-65;
5. K. Till, 'Staging the past: landscape designs, cultural identity and Erinnerungspolitik at Berlin's Neue Wache', Ecumene 6 (1999), pp. 251-83;
6. M. Azaryahu, 'RePlacing memory: the reorientation of Buchenwald', Cultural geographies 10 (2003), pp. 1-20;
7. M. Heffernan, 'For ever England: the western front and the politics of remembrance in Britain', Ecumene 2 (1995), pp. 293-323.
8. D. Mitchell, The lie of the land: migrant workers and the California landscape (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 27.
9. For discussions on how dominant memories may be contested by alternative popular readings, see J.C. Leib, 'Separate times, shared spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue and the politics of Richmond, Virginia's symbolic landscape', Cultural geographies 9 (2002), pp. 286-312;
10. C. Withers, 'Place, memory, monument: memorializing the past in contemporary highland Scotland', Ecumene 3 (1996), pp. 325-44;
11. A. Charlesworth, 'Contesting places of memory: the case of Auschwitz', Environment and planning D: society and space 12 (1994), pp. 579-93.
12. D. Atkinson and D. Cosgrove, 'Urban rhetoric and embodied identities: city, nation and empire at the Vittorio Emanuele II monument in Rome, 1870-1945', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88 (1998), pp. 29-30.
13. P. Gough, 'Sites in the imagination: the Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial on the Somme', Cultural geographies 11 (2003), pp. 235-58.
14. N. J. Saunders, 'Matter and memory in the landscapes of conflict: the Western Front 1914-1919, in B. Bender and M. Winer, eds, Contested landscapes: movement, exile and place (Oxford, Berg, 2001), p. 37.
15. See S. Cooke, 'Negotiating memory and identity: the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial, London', Journal of historical geography 26 (2000), pp. 449-65;
16. J. Winter, Sites of memory, sites of mourning: the Great War in European cultural history (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995);
17. see also D. Jeans, 'The First World War memorials in New South Wales: centers of meaning in the landscape', Australian geographer 19 (1988), pp. 259-67.
18. T. Ashplant, G. Dawson and M. Roper, 'The politics of war memory and commemoration: contexts, structures and dynamics', in T. Ashplant, G. Dawson and M. Roper, eds, The politics of war memory and commemoration (London, Routledge, 2000), pp. 3-86.
19. See for exceptions P. Raivo, 'Landscaping the patriotic past: Finnish war landscapes as a national heritage', Fennia 178 (2000), pp. 139-50;
20. J. Foster, 'Creating a temenos, positing 'South Africanism': material memory, landscape practice, and the circulation of identity at Delville Wood', Cultural geographies 11 (2004), pp. 259-90.
21. For examples, see V. Smith, 'War and its tourist attractions', in A. Pizam and Y. Mansfield eds, Tourism, crime and international security issues (Chicester, Wiley, 1996), pp. 247-64;
22. J. Lennon and M. Foley, Dark tourism (London, Continuum, 2000).
23. Though such tensions may sometimes lead to fruitful exercises in forging relations - such as when inter-nation commemoration leads to 'trans-border' sites through which the respective war dead can be remembered - as well as to promoting peaceful causes between former adversaries in war. See P. Gough, 'From heroes' groves to parks of peace: landscapes of remembrance, protest and peace', Landscape research 25 (2000), pp. 213-28, for examples of how countries who have gone through similar historical experiences have sought to work together in the production of contemporary memoryscapes.
24. This paper is based on information gathered through the textual analysis of the Reflections of Bukit Chandu and through interviews with its key personnel (e.g. the NAS officer in charge of the Centre, the former manager and the staff), as well as through feedback gathered from visitors either through personal interviews or from visitors' books at the Centre. In analysing the perspectives of the visitors, attention is paid to the viewpoints of the Malays who visit, although non-Malay perspectives have also been included. The reason for this ethnographic focus lies in the fact that, given that the site commemorates the Malay Regiment, visitors have tended to be Malays, making them the easiest to approach and solicit for an interview. Furthermore, upon analysing the data, we also found that the main contentions with regard to the site come predominantly from this particular ethnic community.
25. B. Yeoh, 'Postcolonial cities', Progress in human geography 25 (2001), p. 461;
26. see also D. Yang, 'The malleable and the contested: the Nanjing Massacre in postwar China and Japan', in T. Fujitani, G. White, and L. Yoneyama, eds, Perilous memories: the Asia-Pacific Wars (London, Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 50-85.
27. The war in Singapore was mainly fought by Allied forces consisting of men from Great Britain, the USA, France, Holland, Australia and other former British dominions.
28. D. Wong, 'Memory suppression and memory production: the Japanese occupation of Singapore', in T. Fujitani et al., Perilous memories: the Asia-Pacific Wars (London, Duke University Press, 2001), pp. 218-38.
29. This was essentially due to the fact that the Japanese treated the different races in Singapore differently. While they were very aggressive (and sometimes brutal) in their treatment of the Chinese because of the latter's affiliation with China, then Japan's sworn enemy, the Japanese soldiers generally treated the Malays and Indians very well, with the aim of winning them over with the propaganda of 'liberating' them from European imperialism.
30. This is not to say that there was no commemoration of the war at all prior to this period. Many of the earlier instances of commemoration, however, were undertaken not by the state but by foreign and local private organizations. See K. Blackburn, 'Commemorating and commodifying the prisoner-of-war experience in Southeast Asia: the creation of Changi Prison Museum', Journal of the Australian war memorial 33 (2000), pp. 1-18.
31. Wong, 'Memory production and memory suppression'.
32. L. Hong and J. L. Huang, 'The scripting of Singapore's national heroes: toying with Pandora's box', in A. T. Ahmad and L. E. Tan, eds, New terrains in Southeast history (Singapore, Singapore University Press, 2003), p. 223.
33. B. Yeoh and L. Kong, 'The notion of place in the construction of history, nostalgia and heritage in Singapore', Singapore Journal of tropical geography 17 (1996), pp. 52-65.
34. Wong, 'Memory production and memory suppression', p. 223.
35. Major F. J. Lim, 'Of fighting spirit and flaming sword: reflections on our will and wherewithal to survive, defend and die for an island in the sun we own called home', Pointer: Journal of the Singapore Armed Forces 28 (2002), pp. 1-13.
36. Hong and Huang, 'The scripting of Singapore's national heroes'.
37. See also K. Hack and K. Blackburn, Did Singapore have to fall? Churchill and the impregnable fortress (London, Routledge Curzon, 2004).
38. Straits Times, 'Signboards will be put up to mark World War II sites' (1 Jan. 1992).
39. Apart from historic markers, memorial sites have also taken the form of museums, monuments, commemorative dates and performative ceremonies as well as restored battle-sites.
40. It is also further justified by the fact that most visitors to these sites continue to be foreign.
41. The date chosen - coinciding with the fall of Singapore and the mark of Britain's failure to defend its dominions - is in itself symbolic; one need only recall how, immediately after the war, the British rejected local requests for a public procession commemorating the local dead, suggesting instead 15 August as a more suitable date, given its significance as the day the Second World War ended and the British were victorious.
42. The NAS is a statutory board under the National Heritage Board 'responsible for the collection and management of the nation's public and private historical records'. In its brochure (n.d.), it is said to 'house the memory of the nation ... the diversity, richness and historical development of our country' so as to enable 'generations of Singaporeans to not only understand and appreciate who they are and how they became a nation, but also enculturate a national identity that they will be proud to proclaim and share'.
43. This is not the first instance of national recollection of the trials and tribulations of the MR. As part of the plaque-placing frenzy of the 1990s, a plaque was placed (and still exists) at the nearby Kent Ridge Park where the MR's story is related.
44. Most of the exhibits in the Centre are borrowed from overseas institutions like the Imperial War Museum and the Australian Archives. During the research phase, field trips were also made to Malaysia as a means of garnering support for the Centre as well as to collect artefacts from living relatives.
45. D. Brunero, 'Heritage and nationalism: a critique of Reflections at Bukit Chandu, paper presented at the Singapore-Malaysia Conference, National University of Singapore, 2002.
46. I b i d.;
47. see for examples Straits Times, 'Honour WWII defenders of Pasir Panjang Ridge' (25 Feb. 1992);
48. 'Make bungalow at World War II battleground a museum' (1 Mar. 1992).
49. This quote was taken from Straits Times, 'Stories of duty, honour, courage', (27 Dec. 2001).
50. See Hack and Blackburn, Did Singapore have to fall?
51. The major ethnic groups in Singapore are the Chinese (76-80%), Malays (13.9%), Indians (7.9%) and Eurasian/others (1.4%) (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2000).
52. A. Appadurai, 'The production of locality' in R. Fardon, ed., Counterworks: managing the diversity of knowledge (London, Routledge, 1995), p. 215.
53. Straits Times (27 Dec. 2001).
54. Hong and Huang, 'The scripting of Singapore's national heroes', p. 225. Earlier on, in recognition for Lt Adnan Saidi's wartime contributions to the cause of the empire, the British government had also posthumously given him the Star Medal, the Defence Medal, the War Medal and mention in dispatches;
55. see New Straits Times (Malaysia), 'Posthumous gallantry award likely for WWII hero' (11 Dec. 1999).
56. C. H. Lim, 'The battle of Pasir Panjang revisited', Pointer 28 (2002), pp. 1-6.
57. Malaysia and Singapore gained their independence from the British in 1957 and 1965 respectively. For a brief transitory period, between 1963 and 1965, Singapore was merged with the then already independent Malaysia.
58. Translated from S. Hafizzi, 'The development of Museums today and its hopes for the future', (Available at: www.muzium.terengganu.gov.my/web/ shahrul.html (accessed Dec. 2003);
59. see also New Straits Times (Malaysia), 'Proud traditions started in 1934' (28 June 1991).
60. Ibid., (11 Dec. 1999).
61. Straits Times, 'KL to make patriotic film on war hero' (13 Nov. 1999).
62. Associate Professor Kevin Blackburn, personal interview, 2002.
63. Hong and Huang, 'The scripting of Singapore's national heroes', p. 223.
64. Cited in ibid., pp. 225-6.
65. Ibid., p. 226
66. Straits Times, 'Malay soldiers fought without question' (8 Apr. 1987).
67. Gough, 'From heroes' groves to parks of peace', p. 220.
68. Pasir Panjang might have been deemed unsuitable because it refers to a whole line of ridges of which Bukit Chandu was but one.
69. Brunero, 'Heritage and nationalism', p. 12.
70. V. Savage and B. Yeoh, Toponymics, a study of Singapore street names (Singapore, Eastern Universities Press, 2003), p. 219.
71. P. Raivo, "This is where they fought": Finnish war landscapes as a national heritage', in Ashplant et al., eds., The politics of war memory and commemoration, p. 159.
72. See also E. Ben-Ze'ev and E. Ben-Ari, 'War, heroism and public representations: the case of a museum of "co-existence" in Jerusalem', in E. Lomskey-Feder and E. Ben-Ari. eds, The military and militarism in Israeli society (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 117-38.
73. Straits Times, 'Stepping onto hallowed ground' (15 Feb. 2002).
74. Straits Times, 'War exhibits more meaningful at historic spots' (2 Oct. 2003).
75. The actual battleground was converted into a car park during the nearby Kent Ridge Park development project in 1987. Several other bungalows were also torn down as a result of this development (Straits Times, 1 Mar. 1992).
76. Centre audio tour script.
77. Brunero, 'Heritage and nationalism', p. 10.
78. Compare this with the type of plants selected for the Commonwealth War cemeteries, which are to reflect 'versions of Britishness', 'powerfully symbolic spaces of Britain and empire';
79. see M. Morris,'Gardens "for ever England": landscape, identity and the First World War British cemeteries on the Western Front', Ecumene 4 (1997), p. 411.
80. For example, at one section of the Centre visitors are able to 'relive the Battle of Pasir Panjang through Binaural Sound Presentation' and lighting displays, where they can partake in the 'life-like quality audio effect' of actually being part of the war as it happens around them. As the official brochure of the Centre describes the experience: 'Feel the same impenetrable darkness that engulfed the soldiers ... Feel the thunder of gunfire from machine guns ... Feel the impact of impact of being shot ... Feel the desperation' (official brochure, n.d.).
81. The actual script is in Malay. The text here represents an abridged summary of what Lt Ibrahim Sidek's wife said, as translated by the Centre.
82. Brunero, 'Heritage and nationalism', p. 11;
83. this and the act of inviting surviving family members of the MR's men to commemorative occasions also serve to bring home the point that, in war, not only soldiers but also their close relations suffer.
84. ibid., p. 12.
85. Straits Times, 'Survivors' art among WWII Centre Exhibits' (7 Feb. 2002).
86. For example, the British divided Singapore City into separate enclaves where different ethnic groups could be settled, Such a method of 'divide and rule' allowed the British not only to ease the administration of the various groups but also to prevented any (racial) conflicts from erupting among the culturally different immigrant groups.
87. NAS, Transcript of 'RBC: building on memories' video.
88. This can be found on the Centre's official visitors' brochure.
89. To provide another example, a map of Pasir Panjang on the ground floor, where the actual battle is illustrated and explained, is also filled almost exclusively with pictures of the British.
90. This displays a mural version of one of the paintings by a (foreign) civilian internee, W. R. M. Haxworth, and a recording relating what life was like in Japanese-occupied Changi, where most of the (foreign) POWs were incarcerated.
91. Hong and Huang, 'The scripting of Singapore's national heroes', p. 223
92. Brunero, 'Heritage and nationalism'.
93. This is to be read as emanating from the fact that Singapore lies largely among Malay-Muslim nations in Southeast Asia, and from the general fear of the (majority Chinese) state that in conflicts with these other nations, the Malays especially may behave more as Malay-Muslims than as loyal Singaporeans. See further L. Z. Rahim, The Singapore dilemma: the political and educational marginality of the Malay community (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, (1998), p. 100.
94. I b i d.
95. NAS, transcript of 'Reflections at Bukit Chandu: building on memories' video;
96. this emerges also in some of the messages in the visitors' books as well as from the many conversations we had with visitors to the site.
97. At present, since there is no shuttle service between the main road and the Centre, visitors without their own transportation must walk up along a winding, steep slope to the Centre.
98. The NAS officer in charge confirms this: 'up till November 2002, out of the 22000 people who visited, only 20 per cent were walk-ins; the rest were students and tourists who come as part of in-coach tours.'
99. This is due to the fact that the original plaque commemorating the MR was at Kent Ridge Park, put up as part of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. While the text on the plaque does not indicate the site as the original battlefield, some visitors might have left with that impression.
100. Yeoh, 'Postcolonial cities', p. 459;
101. see also J. M. Jacobs, Edge of empire. postcolonialism and the city (London, Routledge, 1996).