Contested Memoryscapes by Hamzah Muzaini Brenda S.A. Yeoh

Author:Hamzah Muzaini, Brenda S.A. Yeoh [Hamzah Muzaini, Brenda S.A. Yeoh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138546936
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Universalising Kranji as a Space for All Humanity

They died for all free men.

Such is the simple inscription on the marble plaque at the memorial side of KWCM (see cover). To reflect the multiracial (and multinational) nature of the site, these words are also translated into Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, Gurkha, and Gurmukhi. Increasingly, an emergent discourse – with a broader, more ‘universalist’ reach in congruence with these words and running somewhat counter to the ‘nationalist’ imaginary – is also developing in visitors’ encounters with Kranji. Although Kranji had once been the main purview of war pilgrims and their families, there to personally commemorate close relatives who died during the conflict in Singapore, a number of local visitors are also beginning to see Kranji in a different way: as a landscape that is relevant to all visitors, regardless of nationality, race, and whether or not one was involved in the war or has relations who were. According to one Singaporean in her twenties, ‘Kranji reflects the sacrifices of all people, all nations, all humanity. In wars, people die’. As another local puts it, ‘we all die someday, don’t we? No one is immortal. Kranji is a very good reminder of that’. This perspective is based on the fact that one should go beyond the memoryscape as a Second World War site and focus on how it is also a place where lessons of humanity and universal ideals can be extracted. As one Chinese in his fifties, said:

When you remember that these soldiers died fighting for an ideal, to defend the British Empire, you are also inspired by the thought that when we die, we too should have been fighting for our own ideals […] Life must be full and purposeful.

As such, death not only becomes the leveller for all humankind, but that which makes KWCM a place shared by all humanity and to which all (Singaporeans) may relate. This echoes what the state (via the National Archives of Singapore) had attempted to do with Reflections at Bukit Chandu (Chapter 4), although emphasis at Kranj i is on the extraction of universal ideals from war to bolster ‘post-national’ interpretations of conflict (see Yoneyama 2001).

For some visitors, the salience of Kranji lies in its anti-war message: as a site where all can be reminded that war should never be replicated. According to Rugg (2000: 271), war cemeteries function as ‘an inherent critique of conflict, in forcefully underlining the sheer number of individual sacrifices that war demands’. This is premised on the grounds that, regardless of what the conflict was about or what the men were fighting for, the end result is still death on a massive scale. Looking at it that way, KWCM becomes, as one Singaporean puts it, ‘a symbol of how drastic and dreadful a war can be in terms of the toll that it can take on the whole nation’. This point is driven home by the fact that it is sometimes possible to witness visits by family members who have

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