- Title
- More bitter than sweet: reflecting on the Japanese community in British North Borneo, 1885-1946
- Creator
- Sato, Shigeru
- Relation
- Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied p. 88-106
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137408112_5
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- In the city center of Tawau in Sabah, Eastern Malaysia, stands a little belfry. It was built in 1921 by the local Japanese community to commemorate the restoration of peace after World War I. Sabah was then called British North Borneo and had been administered from 1882 by the British North Borneo Chartered Company (BNBCC). Britain and Japan entered into an alliance in January 1902 and fought World War I together against Germany. This alliance, however, became defunct in December 1921, and relations between the two were at their worst during the Asia-Pacific War when Japan attacked and occupied Borneo. The Allied forces fought back and, through intensive bombing, turned British Borneo into 'a state of devastation unequaled throughout the British Empire'. Ninety-nine per cent of the public buildings in British North Borneo were destroyed, and in Tawau the belfry was the only public building that remained unscathed; it still stands, without a bell, symbolizing war, peace, and emptiness. However, there is no longer a Japanese immigrant community in Borneo; all the immigrants were forced to repatriate after Japan surrendered in 1945. The Japanese people who were in British Borneo at the time of the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War were mostly agricultural immigrants who had been tenant farmers in Japan with no land to inherit. They immigrated to Borneo to become owners of small abaca (Manila hemp) estates, but most males enlisted in 1944 and became part of the occupation army in Borneo. Half of them died in 1945; all the survivors were shipped back to Japan in 1946. Their social position changed as the wheel of fortune turned, from being landless farmers in Japan to estate owners in the tropics, then occupier, occupied, and finally repatriates. This chapter examines what made the wheel turn and how this turning affected them.
- Subject
- Japan; British Borneo; Asia-Pacific War; occupation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1309509
- Identifier
- uon:21896
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781137408105
- Language
- eng
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