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SPI Investigation
Sixty years later as of today, it is difficult for anyone to find fresh evidence
about the massacre. The official estimate said merely thousands were killed,
but there are sources as mentioned before in this article indicate that would be a
total death toll up to 50,000.
Do you think the innocent victims who died will be able to rest in peace? Perhaps they had died
of no reason. They didn't know why they were chosen to be
massacred, and surely they
would not like to see their fact of death had been quietly covered up,
forever...
Purely motivated and endeavored for justice, SPI spent a lot of efforts in
tracing the brutal evidence of such a huge number of Chinese who got
innocently killed 60 years ago. Our investigation approach
embraces several ways: (1) collecting historical facts as they are
shown in the previous sections, (2) collecting on-site evidence in
present day, and (3) an attempt to cross the spiritual realm for
x-results (x = unknown).
We visited the original sites of
the massacre ground, surveyed the areas and collected evidence.
Not hoping that we would be able to recover an anticipated figure of
50,000 bodies, but we want to explore the truth by following traces
of minor details at the original massacre sites. Even we tried using the psychic methods. "When
all the conventional approaches do not apply due to the vanishing of all the
physical evidences in 60 long years, paranormal approach seems to be
the only way...", sighed by one of our SPI members.
Tracing Evidences on Punggol Beach
Starting from Punggol Point where a memorial plaque was laid by NHB in
1995, we walked along the beach feeling the environment. Quiet
and nature as it was next to a strait facing the new town of Johor in
the north. A vacant beach of fine sand would be the first sight
just after we have walked opposite from the jetty. On the sand,
there seemed to be many more paw prints than foot prints as this
portion of inland beach looked pretty deserted. A little dense
bush in the south set the boundary of the beach. Just outside of
the bush, there was a sign post and a boom gate installed by the
Government marking the inland beach as a State land.
Roughly we could resemble this area as a part of the execution ground
60 years ago. Some accounts described here as a disposal land of
countless corpses that were everywhere as far as eyes can see.
Burial work was threatened to stop by the Japanese and the whole area
including the bus terminus was announced to be a restricted zone.
Hence the bodies were mostly "cleaned" up the wild dogs who lived in
the bush. To our surprise, 60 years later as of today, there
still lived so many dogs around as suggested by the numerous paw
prints on the sand!
This open inland area
used to be disposed of countless number of corpses for the wild dogs
to have feast on.
Nowadays there are many paw prints still found on the sand.
A shrine of gods who were
not to be worshipped, but were required to safe guard this massacre
land.
Concrete road blocks are set to prohibit vehicles driving in.
But it was not so completely sealed off 60 years ago.
The boom gate in the last photo witnessed that used to be a military
restricted area - only the Japanese lorries transferring people to be
massacred here can enter.
At the most west end of the beach, a fence was erected to separate the
main road (where the bus terminus was) and the beach. Right in
the middle of the fence placed a small "temple" (or shrine) painted in
red-color and made of wooden boards. This is quite an uncommon sight as a small shrine
having more than just the Earth God was put at this rural area.
It looked as if the shrine was hastily setup for some urgent purposes.
You can look carefully into the altar in the photo and see this
arrangement (start from the center where is believed to be of greatest
power):
The Goddess of Mercy or Guan Yin - one of the most superior
gods whose name means "listening to the cries of the world".
In her earthly incarnation, this model of compassion was a devout and
long-suffering princess named Miao Shan. He came to be thought
of as a female, illustrating the way in which the Taoist and Buddhist
pantheons become amalgamated in the popular imagination. He is
among one of the highest rank in the hierarchy of gods.
Pudai or Qizi - was a Chinese monk of Hempen Sack, incarnation
of Maitreya, the future Buddha.
The Earth God - the ubiquitous local territorial deity, is the
closest to the lives of villagers and is amongst those most frequently
seen on the alters. He is the tutelary god of each sector of
suburb; protector of the well-being of dwellers.
Kuan Ti - the Taoist patron deity of soldiers and policemen.
He protects the realm and looks after state officials. He was
regarded as the guardian of righteousness who protects men from strife
and evil. In popular belief, he was famed for casting out
demons.
Bishamon - the god of war, came from the Hindu pantheon.
He stood for benevolent authority. He was a warrior and always
full of armor. He carried a lance and a miniature pagoda to
symbolize his dual virtues as a soldier and a missionary.
Obviously as we can see, the gods were placed there by the nearby
citizens, hoping for peace and security control of the land in the
power of the gods. This is quite rare in modern Singapore,
meaning that you can hardly find this team of gods in a natural
park instead of a proper temple. What makes this land so necessary to have spiritual
protection like this? Furthermore, as shown in the photo, there is
no incense holder (!) on the altar. This is another unusual
sight. Our speculation is, this band of gods in the shrine are
not really meant to be there worshipped by people as in temples, but are employed to
guard the land as a defense force. Your natural response is
"Guard against what?". Well, think..
Covering up the mess
On the shore of wet sand near the strait, there is a very important
sign that may go unnoticed by the public. By comparing to the
photos taken decades ago and what appears as it is now, this stretch
of sea shore was used to be a sandy beach, just like the inland area.
According to the historical records, this is exactly where the massacre took
place killing thousands of Chinese men during the Operation Clean-up.
The victims were shot and bayoneted so near to the sea because the
bodies would be washed off by the sea wave easily in high tide, as intended by the
Japanese to keep the massacre secret. Nowadays this area running
along the full skirt of the beach has got artificially covered up by
many boulders. In some photos, you can see the covering is so
artificially until the beach was paved so symmetrically and so
levelly in steps. This project should have cost certain amount
of money - not a small sum. And you don't see any other beach in Singapore was
done up like that. Is this a coincidence of a designer's idea in
a environmental beautifying program or a Government conspiracy to
cover up something?
Years ago, there were news report on The Straits Times about some
people dug up a skull and then human remains on this beach. This
horrified everybody for sure, but did not surprise them. It is a
well known fact that here is the massacre ground everybody knows
about. Our speculation is, instead of cleaning up by perhaps
turning over the whole shore, a more economical method is to cover the
whole area by boulders. These rocks are chosen of right size -
not too small to be easily removed by hand, and not too large to make
the beach a rocky hill.
We have collected an evidence of timing. Look at the last photo
below, on which sprayed a date - 22-9-2000. We assume that is
the completion date of the beach reconstruction project. The
news about a fisherman digging earthworms found instead skeletons was
reported on 10-2-1998. So possibly, after the news, from the
time that the Government decided to remedy on this area to the
completion of this project, it took about 1.5 year. This is
approximately the right amount of time taken for such scale of
beach-paving project according to a civil engineering friend. It consequently shows that covering the
beach is due to the fact that skeletons can be found so easily in the
depth of earthworms.
If our speculation on the Government conspiracy is true, the following
reasoning would also make sense. Why the Government bothered to
spend the money in reconstructing Punggol beach into a pebble bay?
It is part of our national park development plan of course. In
addition to that, Punggol was intended to be developed as a new
satellite town. Many new HDB flats, roads and community services
are being built as scheduled. So simply the Government doesn't
want to have any more news of "discovering skeletons" to horrify the
neighboring residence. Knowing yourself stay near a massacre
ground is already an unpleasant experience. But seeing a real
skeleton from where you live would surely become unbearable.
On the other hands, if the skeletons were merely disposed less than a
meter deep, then why not the Government exhume them all? This
obviously relates to the estimate number of how many remains are
there. If they were in the range of dozens to hundreds, no
problems, the job
is still possible. But what if it is more beyond that (thousands
or even tens of thousands)? This somehow backs up a belief that
a LARGE number of remains are underneath the boulders. Likewise,
this belief proves that a very LARGE number of Chinese men had got
slaughtered there as a matter of fact. This large figure
dissuades any thought of digging over the ground massively.
A sandy beach got covered
overall by big boulders, so did the "evidence" underneath.
A strangle wooden tablet
was set up at the beach, as a altar for the lost souls?
This split used to be a favorite killing spot with the victims lined
up at the edges and fell down when they got shot. Now turned
into a concrete drainage.
At the turning corner of the beach, there
is a small cliff in the west side. This high plain is believed
to be the hideout from which the Japanese fired secretly to the
volunteered burial
workers who tried to clean up the corpses. It was not that the
Japanese didn't want the corpses to be cleaned. They were
reluctant to let the public know the corpse count, so they classified
this whole area as a military restricted land. Anybody who
trespassed would be shot from the gunmen hiding up on the cliff.
The Japanese gunmen used
to ambush on the cliff, preventing anybody to enter the massacre
ground.
Revealing the truth
After the corner, there is a very large vacant land of white sands.
Vacant as it looked like, but when observing the ground closely, we
found things that are common in cemeteries but certainly not in a
beach. There are butts of joss sticks and ritual candles left
over on the sands. Many bunches of them, are equally spaced, and arranged in some
tailored pattern. Each bunch consists of exactly seven joss-sticks and
one ritual candle. There are 13 bunches on each of two parallel
straight lines making a seven feet wide passage. Note that the
number seven has some significant meaning and is very commonly used in
Taoism. What is more, at the end of each line of joss-stick and
candle bundles, marked an oil-lamp and a wooden stick tied with a
yellow cloths. These strange markings made the passage looks a
bit like an airport runway, in a much smaller scale of course.
Well, all the passages or runways share one thing in common: it is for
something to travel across from one place to another; e.g. from
ground to air, from a room to another room, or from one world to
another.
By walking around the site, we discovered ashes of burnt offerings and
some unused paper offerings. At the ashes of offering, you can
see there are some left over silver coins, or the paper-made
symbolized silver coins to be precise. They were believed to be used by souls
as traveling budgets. Just like in this material world, we have
to pay bus fare, MRT fare or taxi fare should you want to travel from
one place to another. Looking at the unused paper offerings in a
fading color red plastic bag, we found stacks of paper charms.
This is a special kind that is believed to help ghosts to incarnate
with the power of a treasure pagoda. So obviously all these were
used and left over by some Taoism ceremony held in this beach not too
long ago. What is the ceremony for and what is it about?
Obviously the ceremony is for ghosts, however it is different from those
performed in cemeteries. In cemeteries ritual performances were
done for offering the souls prosperity and abundance. Food,
paper symbolic of cloth, wealth, sometimes property were offered to
ancestors, for them to enjoy in the other world. But right here, the offerings were travel budgets and
passes to incarnate. The lit-up passage and the leading oil
lamps are pointing the way to where the lost souls should go.
A Taoist master would be reading aloud some special spell, take the
alcohol known as
Wu-Chia-Pi-Chew, during the cult. The idea of taking the
alcohol is believed to let the cult master remain in a not-so-conscious mental status in
order to stay contact with the spirits. The purpose of such
ceremony, as we guess, is to offer the lost souls some traveling
money, and a pass for them to go incarnated through the lit-up
passage. In Chinese belief, it is a tragedy if a soul that
cannot find a place to rest (without a proper grave) and hence have to roam around the
world forever. The saving to them is to go incarnated into
next life - a relief for them from being stuck at this earthly place.
Now comes back the essential question asked. Why such
ceremony is carried out at Punggol Beach and rarely anywhere else?
This leads us to think of nothing but this place really used to be a deadly
massacre site where many had lost their lives innocently.
Although it is not a very material evidence, it proves nevertheless
MANY had died here horribly that needs such a Taoist ceremony to calm
the souls. We argue that everywhere in Singapore would have
death, why particularly bothered a special ceremony here? The
only explanation seems that only here a LARGE number of deaths did
occur, possibly in the scale of thousands. So we need the
ceremony.
Left over of a Taoist
ritual for the lost souls on the beach.
The offerings are hell
money for traveling and passes to incarnate.
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