When the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other European countries commemorated the 60th anniversary of heroic Operation Overlord, or whenever these countries hold solemn ceremonies to pay respect to their soldiers who fought in the Second World War, especially the Pacific War, many who went through the same ordeals, trials and tribulations in Malaysia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand could only read or listen about this with a mixed feeling of admiration and possibly tacit anger and resentment.

Admiration is easily understandable because those countries always have governments and younger citizens who know how to be forever grateful to their brave fighters and selfless warriors in World War Two: it was those millions of Allied commanders and soldiers who sacrificed almost everything, including lives, to defend human freedom and civilisation against a worldwide attempt to impose barbaric bondage and servitude.

Possible quiet anger and resentment are also not difficult to comprehend or empathize with: many of the people in Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak who stayed behind in occupied areas to fight Japan's imperial troops and military police, feel they have been forgotten, not honoured, betrayed or even defamed by ungrateful opportunists and propagandists.

Worse still, they feel post-war history has also been distorted to attempt to steal the honour and credit that rightfully belong to them.

Indeed, the Japanese invasion and occupation of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Sabah and Sawarak mark a defining moment of the modern history of Malaysia and Singapore.

70,000 people killed

According to an estimate cited in a memorial service by the Chinese community in Kuala Lumpur last year, during the 44 months of occupation, about 70,000 people of all ethnic communities were killed, while another 80,000 perished as the result of tortures and imprisonments and also an additional 300,000 died because of malnutrition and physical exhaustion in performing forced hard labour.

In the total number of those who perished, an estimate of 300,000 were Chinese. That figure represented 17 percent of the then entire Chinese population in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.

Also, in an estimate presented by Professor P Ramasamy in a 1984 study of Indian Malaysians' socio-political development, " 60,000 Malayan Indians died while working for the Japanese on the Siamese 'Death Railway'.

In addition, after the fall of Singapore, thousands of Allied soldiers and commanders were interned as imperial Japan's prisoners of war in, among other places, Kuala Lumpur's Pudu Prison, Singapore's Changi Prison as well as POW camps in Northeastern China (or Manchuria).

Meanwhile, some of the 165 leaders and members of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) trained in Singapore's 101 Special Training School (101 STS) by Britain's Oriental Mission of the Special Operation Executive (SOE) infiltrated back into Peninsular Malaysia and began the underground war of resistance.

After 44 months of trial and error as well as tribulation, the 165-people nucleas expanded into a resistance force numbering 9,000 to10,000 fully and partially armed personnel organised in eight independent regiments under the united banner of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), the best known unit of which is the Kinta Valley-based 5th Independent Regiment in central and southern Perak.

First-hand memoirs

So, what did the largest and best organised resistance force in Occupied Malaya do? How did they survive and operate? How many battles and other military operations had they conducted throughout Peninsular Malaysia? What were their casualties and those of the Japanese?

Three popular first-hand memoirs were once in public circulation in the late 50s, 60s and 70s, namely Spencer Chapman's The Jungle is Neutral , Sybil Kartigesu's No Dram of Mercy and Dorathy Thatcher and Robert Cross' Pai Naa: The Story of an Englishwoman's Survival in the Malayan Jungle . Even then, with the exception of Spencer Chapman's evergreen classic, the other two memoirs seem to have been out of print and circulation now.

According to a school of opinion, while these accounts are still valuable and memorable, they are, like the first eight chapters of Alias Chin Peng: My Side of History , relatively limited in scope because of the natural constraints imposed by geography and personal knowledge and understanding of the entire situation in wartime.

Moreover, there is the question of differences, real or merely felt, of cultural and political vantage-points.

What is needed is a theme-specific and more-or-less complete narrative of the whole situation and process in the entire period that lasted about 44 months, in the like of Martin Gilbert's one-volume The Second World War - A Complete History (New York, Owl Book, 1991) or Paul H Kratoska's also one-volume The Japanese Occupation of Malaya , 1941-1945 (London, Hurst, 1998)

To find out what has happened and to see what could be done morally and technically to fill up the missing pages of history, this writer spoke to Chen Jian @ CC Chin ( far right ), a Singapore-born historian who, together with Australia's former Chief of General Staff Lt Gen John Coates ( middle ), accompanied Chin Peng ( left ) to visit Australia's Defence Force Academy in Canberra in 1999 (photo).

The bilingual historian, 64, was also one of the academicians who were present in the dialogue with Chin Peng in Canberra's Australian National University in 1999 (photo). Later, he edited the dialogue session in verbatism into book-form with Karl Hack, a young British associate professor teaching and writing war history in Singapore

Born in 1940 in Singapore and a graduate of the now defunct Nanyang University, CC Chin is presently an independent researcher and also a visiting scholar with the Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora, Australian National University as well as a research fellow of South East Asian Studies, Jinan University in Guangzhou, China.

He has been involved in research on the history of the Chinese in South East Asia, and on the Hakka dialect group. He has also been a Council Member of the National Archives of Singapore (1990-2000), Advisor to the Society of Asian Studies and a council member of the South Seas Society, as well as Chief Editor of the Journal of South Seas Society .

Question and answer

He has written a number of articles on the history of the Japanese Occupation and the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), including: The Plight of the Malayan Chinese During Japanese Occupation Period (in Journal of the South Seas Society , August 1998); A Brief History of Singapore and Malaysian Communist Movement (in Rosa Sinensis , May 2000); In Search of Revolution: A Brief Biography of Chin Peng (in The Political Elites in Malaysian Chinese History , edited by Khai-Liang Ho, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, December 2001).

His current focus of studies is the continuing research into the Malayan Communist Movement and the Left-wing parties in Malaysia. He is also advisor and editor to a series of memoirs by the veterans of CPM or MCP and books on studies in this field.

Reproduced in a three-part series below is the complete set of questions and answers between this writer and CC Chin@Chen Jian:

Q: As an academic historian, you seem to have a special interest focusing on the theme relating to the role of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) and the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) in the war of resistance between 1941 and 1945. What motivates or interests you to research and write on the subject or theme with such a persistent passion and interest?

A: There is little or none proper historical account either of the CPM or the MPAJA although there is a huge volume historical accounts of WWII and certain narratives on the war of resistance between 1941 and 1945. The contributions and sacrifices of the CPM and MPAJA have been either purposely ignored or simply distorted to a great proportion in attempts to deprive them of the credits for their effort and importance in the war of resistance.

Until recently, reasons for such ignorance are simple: almost all the historians that deal with such topics are either Western- oriented in their historical narrative or under the Cold-War ideological influence. The slanted viewpoints were considered normal whereas any contrarian judgements to the real happenings were considered " subversive". Being an academic historian, it is important that he or she should now be absolutely neutral and be truthful to the facts of the historical happenings and thereby offer his or her versions of interpretation of the events, situations and people in the historical setting or context.

After reading so much in the collection of literature, both from the Western writings and memoirs of the veterans, I have come to the conclusion that this section of history has to be re-written so as to present a true picture of the happenings. In short, it is to restore justice to that segment of history and thereby reinstall the honour of the CPM and the MPAJA in their struggle against the Japanese invaders and thus also their contribution to the freedom of Malaya and the overall effort in defending the world during WWII.

(Part 2 will be published on Mon, Aug 2)

JAMES WONG WING WON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia