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This yr marks 80 years since Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. One space of the occupation years that hasn’t been coated as a lot is sport when the second world warfare got here to Singapore. We’d not suppose that sport would have had a spot in occasions of warfare, however the truth is it had performed a major position in bettering the morale of athletes, folks and prisoners of warfare, based on writer Dr Nick Aplin. Dr Aplin (Deputy Director of Sport Heritage, Sport Singapore) who just lately held talks on the Singapore Sports activities Museum and Sports activities Hub Library on what the native sporting scene was like from 1942 to 1945, and shared on how sport was very a lot alive throughout these tumultuous occasions.
Introduced by Sport Singapore, the speak was held along side ‘Sport in Syonan: Triumph Over Despair’, an inaugural digital exhibition, which relies on Dr Aplin’s ebook ‘Sport in Singapore: The Colonial Legacy’.
It was a possibility to find a few of Singapore’s most prolific athletes in the course of the period. Does the title Chia Boon Leong ring a bell? Avid soccer followers would possibly acknowledge him as one of many founding members of the Pasir Panjang Rovers. Submit-war, Chia performed soccer on the 1948 London Olympics, representing China, and stays until in the present day the one Singaporean to have taken to the sphere on the olympic video games. Like Chia, many athletes who continued taking part in sports activities and coaching regardless of the robust circumstances of the occupation years demonstrated tenacity and fortitude.
Dr Aplin additionally shared how sports activities served as a distraction from the grim actuality of incarceration for a lot of prisoners of warfare at Changi POW camp, and as a way for these prisoners to construct resilience. Many varieties of sports activities had been performed, together with rugby, basketball and boxing. Cricket was fairly in style amongst Australian and British troopers, and amongst them had been some highly-skilled Australian cricketers and county cricketers from England.
Nevertheless, soccer proved to be the most well-liked total. Each gamers and officers took the video games and its guidelines significantly, and soccer was the one sport to outlive a ban imposed for aggressive gameplay. There have been even tips in place in regards to the ‘switch’ of gamers from ‘membership’ to ‘membership’ besides on this case, these transfers typically concerned bowls of rice bartered for gamers.
The exhibition ‘Sport in Syonan: Triumph Over Despair’ is now on. Visit it to study extra about Singapore’s wealthy and interesting sporting historical past. Don’t miss out!
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