Malaysia: Remembering Japanese Occupation

Ooi Boon-Leong remembers life as a young kid in Malaysia during the World War 2 Japanese occupation. “We were disturbed by the Japanese only once when they came in trucks. We heard the rumbling of their trucks when they went over a bridge which they had to cross to reach the rubber estate. All of us then ran deeper into the jungle which surrounded the rubber estate. All the younger women would put on ugly torn and patched peasant clothes and make themselves as uninviting as possible by rubbing ash or mud on their face or arms and were the first to run away for everyone had heard of their rapes.”

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