Don't Forget to Fight! : Singapore's History Education and War Commemoration, 1945-2005

Abstract

This dissertation examined how and why official memory of the Second World War was transmitted by the state to the younger generation of Singapore through history education and war commemoration. In Singapore¿s history textbooks and war exhibitions, the official portrait of the Second World War was reconstructed from the present point of view and it was affected by present interests, aspirations and needs of the state, such as the need for inculcating national identity and patriotism in the minds of people. The inculcation of national identity and patriotism was needed due mainly to the structure of the nation-state system: the anarchical nature of the international system and the structure or mechanism that a nation-state unites people. The driving force of the state¿s efforts to transmit a particular war memory to people was created from the interplay between the above contextual and structural factors.