Trail Blog Final Reflections - Kelvin

Trail Blog: Final Reflections (Kelvin)

a) What was your impression of Singapore history and cultural heritage before going on the trail? 

b) How has your experience of the trail changed your perception of Singapore history and her cultural heritage? 

c) Share some insights (if any) about Singapore’s past and the way it is represented (symbolically and physically) that you have gained from the trail. 

In this post, I would like to talk about the challenges we faced when researching and putting together this trail. This trail was different from the rest of the trails because we were not restricted thematically (ethnic enclaves such as Little India or Kampong Glam) or geographically (within the Civic District). The trail that we designed incorporates most of the well-known war sites as well as two sites that we added during our research. Out of the 11 sites listed in our trail, 9 of them are official National Heritage Board sites. There is just no avoiding this because of how history has been shaped in Singapore.

However, when planning for this trail, we made the conscious decision to add two more sites that are not part of the official canon. In part, we were inspired by how we have been challenged both in this module, and in Historical Interpretations, that history in Singapore is always presented as a set of dominant narratives. We did not want, however, to present a disjointed set of sites. instead, we first listed all the ‘official’ sites, then tried to site them in a larger context of the areas surrounding them.

Very unfortunately, however, there is simply not much that we can talk about in terms of siting the battles in a wider geographical context. The rapid redevelopment of Singapore in the years that have passed have made it impossible to site the battles contextually. There is also a lack of available sources, either because of the permanently-locked state of the archives, or because we chose to ignore our history for the first ten years or so after independence. Scrambling for memories in the later years doesn’t have the same impact, as some of the ‘history from below’ projects can attest to. 

Our choices of the ‘contextual’ sites are interesting because of how they are so contrastingly different, even when you consider that the problems faced in researching them are so similar. Alexandra Barracks, while not existing as an army camp today, still exists in some form because the buildings that formed the camp have been preserved. However, the opposite is true of Bukit Timah Village, which does not exist today in any concrete form - the entire area has been completely redeveloped. 

This leads us to think about how World War Two is represented in Singapore’s history, both in textual (history texts) and concrete forms (memorials). Personally, I feel that World War 2 is extremely well-documented in Singapore’s history - some may even argue that it is over-represented. We like to tell the story how our colonial masters who had considered themselves superior to us in every way instead capitulated to the ‘weaker’ Japanese invading forces. This is represented in the text of almost every war marker that we come to. Yet what remains of our concrete memorialisation of World War 2 is almost overwhelmingly colonial in nature.  

The sites, for example, are all key battle sites that document the clashes between the allied forces and Japanese invading forces. The key museums - Reflections at Bukit Chandu, Battle Box, Memories at Old Ford Factory - are all installations within conserved colonial buildings. What about the people who lived in villages around the area? Take the aforementioned of Bukit Timah Village - or even any other village, that was involved in the clash in smaller manners - perhaps the Japanese forces passed through there, slept there, or massacred villagers there. Nothing remains of the ordinary people who lived, breathed, slept and died in the campaign. That in itself gives us the reason why we only have one village included in the trail, even though we know that there must have been others at almost every site that we visited. 

Of course, another problem presents itself in the different ways these sites try to ‘remember’ the war. Some sites rely entirely on a single official marker erected by the National Heritage Board. The museums present their stories in entirely different manners - take for example, the differences between Reflections at Bukit Chandu, which is touted as an interpretive centre, and Memories at Old Ford Factory, which is not. Is there a difference between how we remember our history in these two museums? Perhaps. The former relies on visual imagery that has already been interpreted by someone; the latter - and perhaps also the war markers - relies on ‘informative’ boards that forces the reader to conjure his or her own images. Which manner is better? There is perhaps no definitive answer to this question.

As part of this trail blog, we have included activities for each site - extra work for us, unfortunately, and partially my fault. We have approached this from the perspective of future teachers (although admittedly only Gabriel and myself will actually be teaching Social Studies, so this may have been a forcing of our perspective on the ladies!). We wanted this to be more than just a touch-and-go visit to different sites, but rather forcing us to look at the campaign from multiple perspectives and sources and not just from the sites. Pre-visit and post-visit activities are designed to stimulate interest and hopefully encourage greater reflection and perspective-taking after visiting each site. At each site,we rely on source-based questions that, hopefully when combined with the pupil's knowledge of the site and general sense of being in the location, will impart in them a sense of empathy and understanding of the event.

For example, at the Bukit Timah site we start with basic map-reading skills in the pre-activity where we discuss the importance of the location of Bukit Timah Hill to the invading forces. At the site itself, after an introductory tour, we will look at a document that suggests that the Battle of Bukit Timah could have been avoided if the secret orders of Lt General Percival had not been misinterpreted. We are not trying to revise history here, but rather we are trying to look at the importance of the defence line and perhaps ask ourselves why the forces were so eager to abandon their positions. Hopefully, there would be a greater sense of understanding towards the defending forces who have been, up to now, portrayed as capitulating on Singapore's defences.

After this, we would probably adjourn to the Bukit Timah village site (estimated to be around the current Bukit Timah Plaza) where we would discuss the villages that had existed around the area during the war. At this time, pupils would listen to the audio clip of Mr Tan Wah Meng, a resident of the area. Post-visit reflections would capitalise on this as some of the content within the clip is rather heartbreaking.

This is inspired by the Inquiry Approach which is the foundation of learning Social Studies. Of course, since we are all primary school teachers we wanted to make sure these activities could be carried out by Primary Four to Six students. Hopefully in the future we can create a more coherent trail activity for a variety of levels.