The mystery has finally been unveiled! Two weeks back, whilst explaining how the final exams would look like, Prof Peleggi looks as if he were playing a game of Taboo: attempting to provide as much hints as possible without giving the obvious away. The furthest – and most obvious – cue that he provides is that our oral presentation would be involved!

(For oral presentation, we had to examine certain facets of Singapore life that cuts across both personal and official memories. Topics that have were chosen included SARS, upgrading, the Malaysian Cup, the Speak Good English Movement – my group chose the topic on Phua Chu Kang.)

The more Peleggi said it, the more mystifying (and anticipatory) it becomes, reminiscent of directions for a treasure hunt: reassurances that the treasure will be at this specific spot if you will find.

Right, so here are the exam questions. 2 hours to answer 3 questions, one of them being compulsory.

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HY3226: Memory, History and Heritage

SECTION I (40%)

1. (Compulsory) The National Museum intends to mount a temporary exhibition on your group project for this module. Accordingly, you must submit a memo containing:

(1) The list of the objects to be exhibited
(2) The basic guidelines on the exhibition’s design
(3) The outline of the script for the exhibition’s panels

Your memo is the answer to this question.


SECTION II (30%) – answer any ONE question:

2. In what ways have colonialism first, nationalism later and globalisation during the past two decades shaped the historical knowledge and cultural heritage of Southeast Asia?

3. Discuss the following statement: ‘National commemorations play a central role in nation-building by ritually embedding history in social memory.’


SECTION III (30%) – answer any ONE question:

4. To what extent do the personal memories of female war victims, such as the Dutch Jan Ruff-Herne and the Vietnamese Kim Phuc, accord with the dominant historical narratives of the Pacific War and the Vietnam War respectively?

5. While the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Choeung Ek mass grave site in Phnom Penh memorialise the tragic history of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-78), the ex-Khmer Rouge who were granted amnesty have never apologised for their crimes. Do you think such a compromise between the moral imperative of remembering and the political expediency of forgetting is necessary if Cambodians are to move on as a nation? Or is the attainment of historical truth and justice the necessary condition for national reconciliation in Cambodia? Motivate your answer.


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I answer questions 1, 3 and 4. When I first look at Question (1), I have to admit I was stumped for the moment. On one hand, how am I supposed to write a memo? On the other… it looks deceptively straightforward. I always have a gut feeling towards straightforward questions… always suspecting that the professors might have cunningly inserted some hidden agenda – in other words, a trick question designed to ‘Gotcha!’

Doing 3 questions in 2 hours is pretty painful: that means 40 minutes allocated per question. I do Question (3) last, and I think I lost it there – halfway I fear I was probably writing something that was irrelevant to the question – here I am talking about national commemorations and how it contributes to social, collective memory and I forget to specifically direct how everything contributes to nation-building. I have to cancel one entire paragraph because of this; hence some measure of time is wasted.

Question (5) is out of the question (pun unintended): I did not revise about the Cambodian Genocide (also I missed that lecture and everything about it) so I am unable to write about it. That leaves no choice but to do Question (4). Thank goodness I did not miss those lectures, because the two ladies mentioned there are from the documentaries that we watched in class.

Here’s some background information about who these two women are. Jan Ruff-Herne and several other Dutch women were seized from a POW prison in Batavia (the former name for Jakarta) and sent to work as ‘comfort women’ to serve Japanese officers during World War II. ‘Comfort’ is really the inappropriate word for use even historically, because these women were blatantly sex slaves. They were not alone: t thousands of other women from countries invaded by Japan, in East and Southeast Asia, were also forced into similar situations. After the war, few had the courage to talk about their predicament, not even to their loved ones. Pressure from society, embarrassed by these acts, also discouraged them. At last Jan Ruff-Herne decided to step out and tell the world her story. She attended several of conferences where former sex slaves came up to tell their stories, some of these in Japan, the homeland of her former captors. At the same time she organised a support group for the other Dutch women who had been with her at that brothel for officers in Batavia.

Kim Phuc is the girl in the photograph from the Vietnamese War: the one where she is seen running down the road, screaming, completely naked because her clothes had all been burned off following a napalm attack on her village by South Vietnamese. The photograph was a measure of coincidence: the journalists were there to take pictures of the aerial bombing. Instead they saw a bunch of people running through the smoke after the bombs had struck the ground – they had been hit by the napalm that was contained in those bombs. The photograph itself does not show it, but in the documentary we watched, the journalists present at the site poured water over her body to cool her down, then whisked her off to hospital for immediate surgery. They were able to save her, and then she became some kind of national monument for the Communist government as a bastion against the evil Americans and their South Vietnamese ‘cronies’ who terrorised the Vietnamese during the war. It sickened her to be discouraged from attending school in return for publicity campaigns – eventually she decided to seek asylum with her husband in Canada following their honeymoon to Cuba. She is now a Canadian citizen. Kim Phuc bears an excellent story of forgiveness: she met and forgave the man who had contributed to her becoming a victim of a napalm attack. John Plummer – a veteran of the Vietnam War who is now a Reverend – had called for the air strikes on instructions from higher authorities without verifying that there were still civilians in the village. The purpose for aerial bombing had been to flush out Viet Cong (Communist) hideaways. None of the troops knew that Kim’s family and fellow villagers were still hiding in the temple located close to the strike zone.

So I argue that accounts of female victimisation in war have often been undermined in the official historical narratives of these wars. Victimisation is seldom mentioned – at best in passing – there is a greater tendency to trumpet the heroism and sacrifices of the victors while demonising the enemy. (I did not write this in my script and sorely regret not thinking of it at the moment. Anyway it’s over.) That is not to say that women are completely out of the picture, but the heroism and sacrifices made by women tend to be emphasised instead. This means that women who had contributed to the war effort were recognised. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese women took part in combat – they tended to the fields and their daily chores with rifles slung over their shoulders. Women were also honoured as mothers – the very people who bore and raised the young men who sacrificed themselves for their country. Hence commendation for these ‘Heroic Mothers’ were created in 1994 (strangely little late though – the war ended in 1975). A Women’s Museum was also built in Ho Chi Minh City, commemorating the efforts of women in warfare. However, as said, cases of victimisation are usually mentioned in passing – ‘rape occurred in so-and-so place’ and that’s about it. Well I could be wrong, but that’s how most historical narratives seem to portray themselves.