Sook Ching massacre The Sook Ching massacre ( ) was a systematic extermination of perceived hostile elements among the Chinese in Singapore by the Japanese military during the Japanese occupation of Singapore , after the British colony surrendered on 15 February 1942 following the Battle of Singapore . The Sook Ching operation was later extended to include the Chinese in Malaya as well . The massacre took place from 18 February to 4 March 1942 at various places in the region . The term " Sook Ching " ( ) means " a purge through cleansing " in Chinese and it was referred to as the " Kakyōshukusei " ( ) , or " purging of Chinese " ) by the Japanese . The Japanese also referred to it as the " Shingapōru Daikenshō " ( ) , literally " great inspection of Singapore " . Singapore ' s National Heritage Board uses the term " Sook Ching " in its publications . The memories of those who lived through that period have been captured at exhibition galleries in the Old Ford Motor Factory at Bukit Timah , the site of the former factory where the British surrendered to the Japanese on 15 February 1942 . The current Japanese term for the massacre is " Shingapōru Kakyōgyakusatsujiken " ( ) , literally " ( the ) Singapore Chinese massacre " . There is no dispute in scholarly circles that the massacre took place , but Japanese and Singaporean sources disagree about the death toll . According to Hirofumi Hayashi ( see next section ) , the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs " accepted that the Japanese military had carried out mass killings in Singapore . . . During negotiations with Singapore , the Japanese government rejected demands for reparations but agreed to make a “ gesture of atonement ” by providing funds in other ways . " Planning of the massacre . Hirofumi Hayashi , a professor of politics at the Kanto Gakuin University and the Co - Director of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan ’ s War Responsibility , writes that the massacre was premeditated , and that " the Chinese in Singapore were regarded as anti - Japanese even before the Japanese military landed . " It is also clear from the passage below that the massacre was to be extended to the Chinese in Malaya as well . the purge was planned before Japanese troops landed in Singapore . The military government section of the 25th Army had already drawn up a plan entitled , " Implementation Guideline for Manipulating Overseas Chinese " on or around 28 December 1941 . [ 9 ] This guideline stated that anyone who failed to obey or cooperate with the occupation authorities should be eliminated . It is clear that the headquarters of the 25th Army had decided on a harsh policy toward the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya from the beginning of the war . According to Onishi Satoru , [ 10 ] the Kempeitai officer in charge of the Jalan Besar screening centre , Kempeitai commander Oishi Masayuki was instructed by the chief of staff , Suzuki Sosaku , at Keluang , Johor , to prepare for a purge following the capture of Singapore . Although the exact date of this instruction is not known , the Army headquarters was stationed in Keluang from 28 January to 4 February 1942 . . . Clearly , then , the Singapore Massacre was not the conduct of a few evil people , but was consistent with approaches honed and applied in the course of a long period of Japanese aggression against China and subsequently applied to other Asian countries . To sum up the points developed above , the Japanese military , in particular the 25th Army , made use of the purge to remove prospective anti - Japanese elements and to threaten local Chinese and others in order to swiftly impose military administration . Definition of target group . After the Japanese military occupied Singapore , they were aware that the local Chinese population was loyal to either Britain or the Republic of China . Some wealthy Chinese had been financing the National Revolutionary Army in the Second Sino - Japanese War through a series of fund - raising propagandist events . The Japanese military authorities , led by Tomoyuki Yamashita , decided on a policy of " eliminating " those who harboured strong anti - Japanese sentiment s . The Japanese military authorities defined the following as " undesirables " : Yamashita instructed the " Syonan " garrison to cooperate with the " Syonan Kempeitai " , the Japanese military police , to " punish hostile Chinese severely " . The massacre . The " screening " . After the fall of Singapore , Masayuki Oishi , commander of No . 2 Field Kempeitai , set up his headquarters in the YMCA Building at Stamford Road as the Kempeitai East District Branch . The Kempeitai prison was in Outram with branches in Stamford Road , Chinatown and the Central Police Station . A residence at the intersection of Smith Street and New Bridge Road formed the Kempeitai West District Branch . Under Oishi ' s command were 200 regular Kempeitai officers and another 1000 auxiliaries who were mostly young and rough peasant soldiers . Singapore was divided into sectors with each sector under the control of an officer . The Japanese set up designated " screening centers " all over Singapore to gather and " screen " all Chinese males between the ages of 18 and 50 . Those who were thought to be " anti - Japanese " would be eliminated . Sometimes , women and children were also sent for inspection as well . The following passage is from an article from the National Heritage Board : The inspection methods were indiscriminate and non - standardised . Sometimes , hooded informants identified suspected anti - Japanese Chinese ; other times , Japanese officers singled out " suspicious " characters at their whim and fancy . Those who survived the inspection walked with " examined " stamped on their faces , arms or clothing ; others were issued a certificate . The unfortunate ones were taken to remote places like Changi and Punggol , and unceremoniously killed in batches . According to the " A Country Study : Singapore " published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress : All Chinese males from ages eighteen to fifty were required to report to registration camps for screening . The Japanese or military police arrested those alleged to be anti - Japanese , meaning those who were singled out by informers or who were teachers , journalists , intellectuals , or even former servants of the British . Some were imprisoned , but most were executed . The ones who passed the " screening " would receive a piece of paper bearing the word " examined " or have a square ink mark stamped on their arms or shirts . Those who failed would be stamped with triangular marks instead . They would be separated from the others and packed into trucks near the centers and sent to the killing sites . Execution . There were several sites for the killings , the most notable ones being Changi Beach , Punggol Beach and Sentosa ( or Pulau Blakang Mati ) . The Punggol Beach Massacre saw about 300 to 400 Chinese shot at Punggol Beach on 28 February 1942 by the Hojo Kempei firing squad . The victims were some of the 1 , 000 Chinese males detained by the Japanese after a door - to - door search along Upper Serangoon Road . Several of these men had tattoos , a sign that they could be triad members . The current Changi Beach Park was the site of one of the most brutal killings in Singaporean history . On 20 February 1942 , 66 Chinese males were lined up along the edge of the sea and shot by the military police . The beach was the first of the killing sites of the Sook Ching massacre , with another one at Tanah Merah . Another site was Berhala Reping at Sentosa Beach ( now Serapong Golf Course after land reclamation ) . Surrendered British gunners awaiting Japanese internment buried some 300 bullet - ridden corpses washed up on the shore of Sentosa . They were civilians who were transported from the docks at Tanjong Pagar to be killed at sea nearby . In a quarterly newsletter , the National Heritage Board published the account of the life story of a survivor named Chia Chew Soo whose father , uncles , aunts , brothers and sisters were bayoneted one by one by Japanese soldiers in Simpang Village . Extension to Malaya . At the behest of Tsuji Masanobu , the Japanese High Command ' s Chief of Planning and Operations , Sook Ching was extended to the rest of Malaya , particularly Penang . However , in these rural areas , the population was less concentrated and hence the Japanese lacked sufficient time and manpower to conduct a full " screening " of the Chinese population . The Japanese still proceeded with a widespread indiscriminate massacre of the Chinese population though . The killings ceased on 3 March . Death toll . The figures of the death toll vary . Official Japanese statistics show fewer than 5 , 000 while the Singaporean Chinese community claims the numbers to be around 100 , 000 . Lee Kuan Yew , Singapore ' s first prime minister , said in a Discovery Channel programme that the estimated death toll was , " Somewhere between 50 , 000 to 100 , 000 young men , Chinese " . In an interview on 6 July 2009 with " National Geographic " , Lee said : I was a Chinese male , tall and the Japanese were going for people like me because Singapore had been the centre for the collection of ethnic Chinese donations to Chongqing to fight the Japanese . So they were out to punish us . They slaughtered 70 , 000 - perhaps as high as 90 , 000 but verifiable numbers would be about 70 , 000 . But for a stroke of fortune , I would have been one of them . Hirofumi Hayashi wrote in another paper that the death toll " needs further investigation " . According to the diary of the Singapore garrison commander , Major General Kawamura Saburo , the total number reported to him as killed by the various Kempeitai section commanders on 23 February was five thousand . This was the third day of mop - up operations when executions were mostly finished . It is said in Singapore that the total number killed was forty or fifty thousand ; this point needs further investigations . Having witnessed the brutality of the Japanese , Lee made the following comments : Aftermath . In 1947 , after the Japanese surrendered , the British authorities in Singapore held a war crime s trial for the perpetrators of the Sook Ching massacre . Seven Japanese officers - - Takuma Nishimura , Saburo Kawamura , Masayuki Oishi , Yoshitaka Yokata , Tomotatsu Jo , Satoru Onishi and Haruji Hisamatsu — were charged with conducting the massacre . During the trial , one major problem was that the Japanese commanders did not pass down any formal written orders for the massacre to be conducted . Documentation of the screening process or disposal procedures had also been destroyed . Besides , the Japanese military headquarters ' order for the speedy execution of the operation , combined with ambiguous instructions from the commanders , led to suspicions being cast on the accused , and it became difficult to accurately establish their culpability . Kawamura and Oishi received the death penalty while the other five received life sentences , though Nishimura was later executed following convicting for his role in the Parit Sulong massacre by an Australian military court . The court accepted the defense statement of " just following orders " by those put on trial . The condemned convicts were hanged on 26 June 1947 . The British authorities allowed only six members of the victims ' families to witness the executions of Kawamura and Oishi despite calls for the hangings to be made public . When Singapore gained full self - government from the British colonial government in 1959 , waves of anti - Japanese sentiment s brewed within the Chinese community and they demanded reparations and an apology from Japan . The British colonial government had demanded only war reparations from Japan for damage caused to British property during the war before Singapore ' s independence . The Japanese Foreign Ministry declined Singapore ' s request for an apology and reparations in 1963 , stating that the issue of war reparations with the British had already been settled in the San Francisco Treaty in 1951 and hence with Singapore as well , which was then still a British colony . Singapore ' s first prime minister Lee Kuan Yew responded by saying that the British colonial government did not represent the voice of Singaporeans . In September 1963 , the Chinese community staged a boycott of Japanese imports ( refusing to unload aircraft and ships from Japan ) but it lasted only seven days . With Singapore ' s full independence from Malaysia on 9 August 1965 , the Singapore government made another request to Japan for reparations and an apology . On 25 October 1966 , Japan agreed to pay S $ 50 million in compensation , half of which as a grant and the other half as a loan . Japan did not make an official apology . The remains of the victims of the Sook Ching massacre have been unearthed by locals decades after the massacre . The most recent finding was in late 1997 , when a man looking for earthworms to use as fishing bait found a skull , two gold teeth , an arm and a leg . The massacre sites of Sentosa , Changi and Punggol Point were marked as heritage sites by the National Monuments of Singapore in 1995 to commemorate the end of the Japanese occupation . Legacy . The massacre and its post - war judicial handling by the colonial British administration incensed the Chinese community . The Discovery Channel programme commented about its historic impact on local Chinese : " They felt the Japanese spilling of so much Chinese blood on Singapore soil has given them the moral claim to the island that hasn ' t existed before the war " . Lee Kuan Yew said on the Discovery Channel programme , " It was the catastrophic consequences of the war that changed the mindset , that my generation decided that , ' No . . . this doesn ' t make sense . We should be able to run this [ island ] as well as the British did , if not better . ' " " The Asiatics had looked to them for leadership , and they had failed them . " Germaine Foo - Tan writes in an article carried on the Singapore Ministry of Defence ( MINDEF ) website : While the speedy defeat of the British in Singapore was a shocking revelation to the local population , and the period of the Japanese Occupation arguably the darkest time for Singapore , these precipitated the development of political consciousness with an urgency not felt before . The British defeat and the fall of what was regarded as an invincible fortress rocked the faith of the local population in the ability of the British to protect them . Coupled with the secret and sudden evacuation of British soldiers , women and children from Penang , there was the uneasy realisation that the colonial masters could not be relied upon to defend the locals . The Japanese slogan " Asia for Asians " awoke many to the realities of colonial rule , that " however kind the masters were , the Asians were still second class in their own country " ( 5 ) . Slowly , the local population became more aware of the need to have a bigger say in charting their destinies . The post - war years witnessed a political awakening and growing nationalistic feelings among the populace which in turn paved the way for the emergence of political parties and demands for self - rule in the 1950s and 1960s . The war and the Japanese Occupation will always remain etched in our memories that just as we must ourselves defend our homeland , only we can chart our own future .