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| A memorial at the Police Heritage Centre to police officers who died on duty |
One immediate consequence of being occupied is the loss of security. After all the British administration had fallen, and this meant that the institutions that kept Singaporean safe such as the police, military and other aspects of the civil service were no longer operation.
It was pretty obvious that the new Japanese occupiers could do whatever they want to the populace. Almost immediately, Japanese would round up Allied collaborators. One of the operations, named "Sook Ching"sought to eliminate as many as Chinese rebels as they could. This meant that whoever the occupiers deemed to be an undesirable based on arbitrary information or random intuition would be placed on the execution list.
Now imagine if you lived during those times, never knowing if you be picked up by the Kempeitai (Japanese secret police) and be loaded on to a truck to be executed. While Japan estimates 5,000 were murdered, other estimates put it as high as 50,000.
During the Occupation, no one was safe.
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