by Chew Yong Jack
As a subordinate unit of the infamous Japanese biological warfare Unit 731, the Oka (岡in kanji or Steel) 9420 unit based in Singapore had been not much more than a mere footnote in history. In fact, in Daniel Barenblatt’s “Plague Upon Humanity†(Harper Collins, 2004), which got me acquainted to this little… »
by Fumihito Yamamoto
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter was one of the most famous fighter planes of the Second World War. But do you know what the “Zero†signifies? The Zero of the Mitsubishi Zero fighter represented the last two digits of Year 2600 in KÅki (皇紀) calendar – the year it was first commissioned –… »
by Fathie Abdat
As an undergraduate in the National University of Singapore striving to get the highest classification for a “paper†degree, I honestly thought that the historical discipline simply entailed getting books from a nearby library, sieving out relevant information, and reshaping them into a coherent form.
After graduating with the basic degree, I decided to… »