A little over an hour before the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pacific War began with the Japanese invasion of what was then Malaya. What followed was three years and eight months of brutal Japanese occupation and of course, ethnic Chinese bore the brunt of it.
The invaders remained until their surrender to the Allies in 1945. The first Japanese garrison in Malaya to lay down their arms was in Penang on September 02 of that year aboard HMS Nelson.
For context, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Imperial Japan to the Allies in a radio broadcast to the nation on August 15, 1945. And on September 02, the Japanese instrument of surrender was signed on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Whether it's August or September, there is no official Malaysian government commemoration of the Japanese surrender.
There are some possible explanations for this. First, the resistance to the Japanese occupation was spearheaded by the ethnic Chinese-led Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), which doesn't fit with the national narrative in this predominantly ethnic-Malay country. Secondly, many of those who fought in the MPAJA later joined the left-wing insurgency that continued even after the British had quit Malaya. Also, as Malaysia moved to industrialize starting in the early 1970s, it was Japan that was the leading foreign investor and a key driver of Malaysia's economic transformation.
But Chinese Malaysians have not forgotten this dark episode of history. And on Friday, they marked the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of the Second World War:
CGTN correspondent Rian Maelzer covered the memorial ceremonies in Kuala Lumpur and opening of a new site to commemorate the sacrifices of some 3,200 volunteers, referred to as the Nanyang Volunteer Drivers and Mechanics, who ferried essential supplies and donations to China to help fight Japanese forces:
We mustn't forget!
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