Southeast Asian Minorities in the Wartime Japanese Empire

The Japanese invasion and occupation of southeast Asia provided opportunities for the peoples of the region to pursue a wide range of agendas that had little to do with the larger issues which drove the conflict between Japan and the allies. This book explores how the occupation affected various minority groups in the region. It shows, for example, how in some areas of Burma the withdrawal of established authority led to widespread communal violence; how the Indian and Chinese populations of Malaya and Thailand had extensive and often unpleasant interactions with the Japanese; and how in Java the Chinese population fared much better. Overall, the book provides a great deal of interesting new material on this complex subject from a range of Southeast Asian countries. The essays are grouped together by country: Japan and Southeast Asia, Burma/Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaya, Borneo, Thailand and the Philippines. The contributors include Lorraine V. Aragon, Cheah Boon Kheng, Gregory Clancy, Hara Fujio, KawashimaMidori, Paul H. Kratoska, Didi Kwartanada, Kaori Maekawa, Eiji Murashima, Ooi Keat Gin, E. Bruce Reynolds, and Elly Touwen-Bouwsma.

Paul H. Kratoska is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore.