Spies in British Controlled Singapore: Policing the Japanese, 1921-1941

by Edward J. Drea PhD, Dong Wang PhD (Editor)

Overview

Imagine being Japanese, living in Singapore in the nineteen twenties and thirties, suspected by everyone around you of being a spy.

Prior to December 1941, Singapore was the site of a major naval base for the occupying British. As tensions increased between the imperial powers of Japan and Britain, Japanese expatriates living in Singapore became the focus of both governments in the struggle for control and power, resulting in further marginalization, suspicion, and othering from the Singapore authorities.

Based on British police records and Japanese military records of the time, this book explores what it meant to be Japanese in those circumstances, and how people were used – sometimes without their knowledge and consent – as spies and intelligence agents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781915271730
Publisher:	Lived Places Publishing
Publication date:	02/22/2023
Series:	Asian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	234 KB

About the Author

Edward Drea PhD is a celebrated military historian and veteran. After military service in Japan and Vietnam, he received his M.A. in International Relations from Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, and his Ph.D. in modern Japanese history from the University of Kansas. In 2003, he was awarded the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History.

Dr Dong Wang PhD is a historian of U.S.-China relations, modern and contemporary China, and China and the world. She is a naturalized American citizen (since 2006) and a permanent German resident (since 2012) based in Boston, Massachusetts, the Lower Rhine of Germany, and Shanghai where she holds a university chair in history. She conducts original research in Chinese, English, French, German, and Japanese while also learning Russian.

Her books include Longmen's Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Modernity in China (2020), The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (2nd and rev. ed. 2021), Managing God's Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952 (2007), and China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (2005).

Table of Contents

Preface
Learning objectives
Introduction
1: The First Spy Scandal
2: Under Suspicion
3: Tokyo Reconsiders a Singapore Strategy
4: Another Singapore Spy Scandal
5: The Imperial Japanese Army Takes Charge
6: The Singapore Consulate and Fifth Columns
7: Final Measures, the Singapore Consulate and the KAME
Aftermath
Suggested Projects and Discussion Topics