8 The unexpected increase in the population put severe pressure on food supplies, which was not a good thing as Singapore imported most of its food. The sudden spike in the population between 19 arose from the influx of refugees from Malaya in search of safety on the island as well as the injection of some 100,000 British Army troops into Singapore for the defence of British Malaya. 5 In 1943, the Chosabu (Department of Research), 6 estimated that the population in Syonan-to – the Japanese name for occupied Singapore (meaning “Light of the South Island”) – was around 900,000. The only pre-war figure available is a 1939 estimation by the British, who cited the population size as 767,700. The 1931 census put the population of Singapore at 557,700 4 (although a census had been planned for 1941, it was never carried out because of the war). Singapore’s rural areas were, in fact, so large that the Municipal Council that administered the island had a Rural Board.
The town centre made up less than a quarter of the island and there were plenty of rural areas with kampongs that were engaged in market gardening, poultry and pig rearing, 3 along with Indian dairy farmers who kept cows to produce milk for sale. 1 Although the first commercial plantations of nutmeg and pepper never quite took off, 2 there were considerable swathes of land where pineapple, coconut and rubber grew in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Singapore has always been a port city, its lifeline fuelled by trade and commerce. For the people who lived through Singapore’s harrowing Japanese Occupation years from 1942 to 1945, survival was made all the more difficult for a number of reasons. In times of war and occupation, food is about survival and not quality or flavour. Deprivation and hardship were a constant feature of life during the Japanese Occupation. A father and daughter having a simple meal of porridge and nuts.
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