Fear Itself: Death of Truth

 

The 9 March 1942 edition of the Syonan Times

During the Japanese occupation of Singapore (1942–1945), renamed Syonan-to, propaganda was a key tool used by the Japanese to control the population, enforce loyalty, and reshape societal values to align with their imperial ideology. The Japanese employed various methods to disseminate propaganda, targeting the multi-ethnic population of Singapore to suppress dissent and promote their vision of a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

The Japanese controlled all media, replacing English-language papers like The Straits Times with publications like The Syonan Shimbun (later Syonan Times), and the Chinese papers with the Zhaonan ri bao  (昭南日报). These papers were filled with pro-Japanese articles, reports of Japanese military victories, and instructions for civilians.

Any news the newspapers carried was heavily censored by the Japanese authorities. As such, the dailies were not particularly thick nor informative – peaking at six pages for the English edition, and a mere four pages for the Chinese edition.

For instance, the 29 Feb 1944 edition of the Syonan Times reported that the Allies lost an aircraft carrier near the Marianas Islands on 22 Feb 1944. However no Allied carriers were lost at the Marianas Islands throughout the war. Ironically, Japanese fleet carriers Taiho and Shokaku were instead sunk near the Islands in June 1944 (four months later).

A sliver of truth
Yet there was one area where even the news would find hard to cover up. This would have been the price lists of essential goods, which today serve as a valuable record of the runaway inflation Singapore experienced at the time. This was hard to alter as any local could go to a nearby shop and see the costs of items before their very eyes.

References

National Library Board