Chin Kee Onn ’ s Ma - rai - ee and the Narration of the Malayan Nationalist Subject in the Aftermath of the Pacific War

an inpenetrable fortress, the Gibraltar of the East and one of the four Bastions of the British Empire, fell to the lightning Japanese advance that took a mere seventy days down the Malay Peninsula from the Thai border. On 15 August 1945, after the Americans had dropped the devastating nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese finally surrendered to the British. Between those two dates everything in Malaya changed. The Japanese Occupation was Malaya’s first national trauma.’ It both formed the modern independent nation of Malaysia (which included, for a time, Singapore) and contributed to the break-up of the nation into the current components of Malaysia and Singapore shortly after in 1963. It also deepened racial tensions, culminating in the riots of 13 May 1969. The historian of the occupation has no lack of materials: the Pacific War inspired