In a rare interview to a Japanese media, Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok talked about the brutal killings and rape against people close to him during the Japanese occupation of Malaya from 1941 to 1945

The media-shy business magnate who is known for his reclusive nature was interviewed by a Japanese daily called
The #Asahi #Shimbun, during which he detailed the horrors of the brutal Japanese occupation of Malaya during the World War II.

Kuok, who mostly talked about his wartime experiences, said that he agreed for the interview because he wants many Japanese, who do not know the truth about their country's atrocities, to know what happened more than 70 years ago.

"I want the younger generation to know the #history," Kuok said when asked to explain why he accepted The Asahi Shimbun's request for an interview.

"Once, a young Japanese woman who was our family friend asked me to talk about the war. After I told her about my experiences... she said, 'I cannot believe you. What you have said was not in the Japanese history textbooks.' I was shocked.

"In a town called Ulu Tiram, about 50 kilometres away from Johor Bahru where I used to live, a group of Eurasian families was massacred.

"After the Japanese invaded Malaya, about 80 or 90 Eurasian people took refuge in the town because it had a small Roman Catholic church.

"One day, some Japanese soldiers touched the Eurasian girls. Enraged by this behaviour, the Eurasian men took out their revolvers and asked (them) to stop the nonsense.

"The Japanese left that day but after several days, they came back one evening with three truckloads of soldiers, which was about probably 60 or 80 people, surrounded the whole compound and #killed everyone," Kuok told the Japanese daily.

One of the victims was my close friend. He was an Indian who was close to the Eurasian families and he was there at the time. About 15 or 20 people that I knew, including my school teacher, were killed in this one incident.

Kuok said that there was not only one massacre but many

"My classmates from a family originally from Chaozhou (in China's Guangdong province) in the Johor Bahru Chinese school were also killed.

"When I went back to Johor Bahru from the plantation, I went to look for my classmates and was told that they had been #raped, brutally killed and buried in a sports field, together with their whole family," he said while recalling how when he was a student at the Raffles College, where Lee Kuan Yew (the first Singapore prime minister) was one year his senior, one of the senior students was singled out as anti-Japanese.

The Hong Kong-based tycoon, who considers himself a friend of the Japanese, said that while he has an understanding of the Japanese people, he hopes that they will not #repeat their "#stupid actions"

According to Kuok, Japan is a nation of honest, hard-working people.

"They only wanted to lead normal decent lives. They were misled by a handful of criminal-minded men," he told in his interview with The Asahi Shimbun, 16 August, adding that it is his fervent hope, "that such horrible misdeeds are never done again.

Search on Google WW2 :
World War II was a brutal total war won by the Allied powers of the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union against the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan. This war saw mass human killing, especially in the Holocaust, and the first use of an atomic bomb.

Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war.

"The Japanese Imperial Army began its seizure of Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China. Japanese troops killed remnant Chinese soldiers in violation of the laws of war, murdered Chinese civilians, raped Chinese women, and destroyed or stole Chinese property on a scale that will never be known. "
https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/thoughts-on-the-nanjing-massacre/

In December 1941, Guam, Wake Island, and Hong Kong fell to the Japanese, followed in the first half of 1942 by the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Malaya, Singapore, and Burma. Japanese troops also invaded neutral Thailand and pressured its leaders to declare war on the United States and Great Britain.

Japan badly needed to capture Malaya because it had half of the world's tin and a third of its natural rubber! Initially, the decision to attack was made based on intelligence gathered by Japanese officers who had been secretly despatched to Thailand and Malaya, disguised as commercial travellers.

It was the deployment of a new and terrible weapon, the atomic bomb, which forced the Japanese into a surrender that they had vowed never to accept. Harry Truman would go on to officially name September 2, 1945, V-J Day, the day the Japanese signed the official surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

P/S  All the wars were ignited & instigated by resources robbing , religious fanatic / individual or leaders who pursue their superism to group, organisation or countries.  The world will be a peaceful place to live in should the superpower and alliance countries to put their heads together to resolve the resources distribution and better use of some scarce resources in the world, to join force to explore the space, medical & technology instead of threaten opponents with financial sanctions, bomb and gun ! The world is going to be self destructed by accidents the so call wars !!