To get a bit more specific, say I'm the median person in the Dutch East Indies or French Indochina. If I understand it correctly after the Japanese invasions locals were put in control after many years of rule by Europeans. Did this feel like liberation or more like another foreign occupation?
I haven't heard much about Japanese atrocities against the population in those areas, in stark contrast to the war and occupation in china and korea. Is this due to those stories never really reaching me or was there actually a significant difference in the way Japan handled those areas?
Googleing around tells me that there are definitely plenty of reports of Japanese soldiers and collaborators attacking civilians but it's hard for me to gauge the scale and compare it say china due to the difference in length of occupation, population, etc.
The Japanese conquered quite a lot of diverse territory in SEA. I can answer only for the British colony of Malaya (present-day Peninsula Malaysia and Singapore), which is already going to be a really long answer.
In these territories, if the locals weren’t sympathetic to British rule before the Japanese Occupation, they certainly were after. The local population never embraced Japanese rule.
Malaya under the British
In 1941, before the outbreak of war in Asia, the population of Malaya was composed of 4 main ethnicities.
The smallest was the Europeans. Some were high-ranking civil servants administering the colonies, others came with capital and access to technology which they employed as plantation and tin mine owners. There were also doctors, accountants and so forth who serviced the community.
Then came the Indians. More than 80% of these were Tamils from southern India, most of whom were estate labourers. Many were not locally born, but had arrived on contract, working to pay off their debts and hopefully save enough money to remit back to India. The British had also “imported” large numbers of Indians, partly as convict labour and partly to help administer the country as policemen, soldiers and so forth. Political activity was not widespread, what there was tended to be concerned with developments in India rather than Malaya.
Next were the Chinese. Like the Indians, most Chinese had not been born in Malaya but were there to work. Most fully expected to head home one day and die in China. The Chinese were extremely concerned with political developments in China, even among those born in Malaya. The KMT was extremely active in Malaya and there were many Chinese, both “local” and from China, who gave generously to the KMT cause. When war between Japan and China broke out, Malayan Chinese organised to send money and volunteers to fight in China. They orchestrated a boycott against Japanese goods, causing Japanese imports to fall to a third of their previous value. When the Japanese attack on Malaya came, the Chinese again organised various bodies to help in the war effort, and after the fall of Singapore, several joined resistance groups to carry out guerilla warfare. You can read more about the Chinese in Malaya here.
The above three groups were largely content with British rule. Many were economic migrants and the British ran the economy well. Goods were sold, not seized. Labour was paid for, not forced. Malaya was the world’s largest exporter of tin and rubber, and in the lead up to war, there had been great demand for these two raw materials as countries aggressively expanded their militaries. British rule was liberal - there was freedom of religion, for example. During the Japanese Occupation, since return to their native lands was impossible, these three groups were all considered “locals” and suffered accordingly.
The largest ethnic group was the Malays, who were indigenous to the area. Among the Malays there was nascent nationalist sentiment but this was still very underdeveloped. Even among the nationalists there was disagreement about what they really wanted.
Part of this was because, whether out of cynicism or not, the British treated the Malays with a great deal of sensitivity. Positions in the civil service were reserved solely for Malays, on the understanding that as the indigenous population, they should administer their own lands and people. When land was rapidly being bought up for rubber plantations, the British set aside tracts of land as “Malay Reservations”, on which only Malays were allowed to live and no rubber plantations were allowed.
The Sultans of the various Malay states had no powers beyond decisions on religious matters. Indeed, during closed-door meetings the British were sometimes dismissive of their views. But in public the British took pains to portray them (or allow them to portray themselves) as authoritative leaders of the people.
All in all, the British may have been racist but they were not oppressive. They were capable administrators who ran the economy well, did not meddle much in community affairs, and knew how to keep the disparate cultures of Malaya happy. There was not much concept of an independent Malaya, nor was there much desire for one.
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