I learnt more from the three and a half years of Japanese occupation than any university could have taught me. I had not yet read Mao’s dictum that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” but I knew that Japanese brutality, Japanese guns, Japanese bayonets and swords, and Japanese terror and torture settled the argument as to who was in charge, and could make people change their behaviour, even their loyalties. The Japanese not only demanded and got their obedience; they forced them to adjust to a long-term prospect of Japanese rule, so that they had their children educated to fit the new system, its language, its habits and its values, in order to be useful and make a living. The third and final stage, which they would have achieved if they had been given time, was to get us to accept them as our new masters as part of the natural order of things. Morality and fairness were irrelevant. They had won. They were on top and in command. We had to praise their gods, extol their culture and emulate their behaviour. But it did not always work. In Korea, the Japanese met resistance from the moment they attempted to govern the country. They tried to suppress the instincts and habits of a people of an old culture, people with a strong sense of pride in their history and a determination to oppose their new barbaric oppressors. They killed many Koreans but never broke their spirit.
— The Singapore Story (Lee Kuan Yew), Loc. 1143–52