2 - A Long View on the Great Asian War

Summary

On 15 August 1945, as rumours of the Japanese surrender filtered through to the people of Asia, the coerced collaborator and Malay nationalist, Mustapha Hussain, wept bitterly: the collapse of Japan had forestalled the declaration of independence for Malaya by just forty-eight hours. At a stroke, the political promise that the war had seemed to bring was swept away. Yet, a little later, he was to reflect that “although the Japanese Occupation was described as one of severe hardship and brutality, it left something positive, a sweet fruit to be plucked and enjoyed only after the surrender.” The rest of Mustapha's life would be consumed by his need to reconcile himself to these events; by a regret for the lost opportunity and the vindication of his own role. This kind of debate would be played out, privately and publicly, across the region for a generation or more. It largely dictated the terms of historical writing, which has evolved as a pursuit of some kind of balance sheet, or moral reckoning. For example, the dilemma between resistance and collaboration has been presented most often in stark terms, and the question still troubles national historical memory two generations on. Above all, writing has focused on the immediate issue of war: the extent to which the war acted as a defining watershed of modern 8 Tim Harper Asian history. Historians are too easily seduced by idea of watersheds, and ought to be suspicious of them. It is only more recently that historians have begun to view these epochal events through a longer lens, and this has allowed new themes to emerge: of slower, more ambiguous shifts in society, state and region, in the making of identity and memory. It is the aim of this collection to explore these continuing, substantive legacies, and this essay attempts to suggest some areas in which they might lie. It begins with a brief synopsis of the war within the longer duration of Asian history, and then moves to survey its more ephemeral and enduring legacies.