Cash and Blood: The Chinese Community and the Japanese Occupation of Borneo, 1941–45

Abstract

Less than four months after the stealth assault on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawai‘i, Imperial Japanese forces occupied territories in Southeast Asia (except Thailand, a wartime ally of Tokyo). Borneo, an island strategically situated as a landing base for aerial operations on two regional targets, namely British Malaya to the west and Dutch Java to the south, was occupied with scant resistance from Western colonial regimes. These regimes included the British protectorates of Sarawak under the Brooke Rajah, British North Borneo administered by the British North Borneo Chartered Company (BNBCC), and the British-protected Malay Muslim sultanate of Brunei (all collectively referred to as British Borneo), and Dutch Borneo, comprising the southern and western parts of the island. Imperial Japan occupied Borneo from December 1941 to September 1945. The Japanese military administration differentiated between indigenes and Chinese in the multi-ethnic populace, displaying different attitudes toward each group which were then translated into divergent treatment and policies. The Chinese community received the proverbial short straw of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) and Navy’s (IJN) iron-fisted military administration.