Editing Sook Ching (section)

==Planning of the massacre==
According to postwar testimony taken from a war correspondent embedded with the 25th army, Colonel Hishakari Takafumi, an order to kill 50,000 Chinese, 20 percent of the total, was issued by senior officials on Yamashita's operations staff, either from Lieutenant Colonel [[Tsuji Masanobu]], Chief of Planning and Operations, or Major Hayashi Tadahiko, Chief of Staff.<ref>{{cite book|author=Yuma Totani|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul2XBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA146|title=Justice in Asia and the Pacific Region, 1945–1952: Allied War Crimes Prosecutions|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2015| isbn=9781316300060 }}</ref><ref>Kevin Blackburn, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/41493428 "The Collective Memory of the Sook Ching Massacre and the Creation of the Civilian War Memorial of Singapore"] ''Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society'', Vol. 73, No. 2 (279)(2000), pp. 71–90, p.73.</ref><ref name="geocities.jp">{{cite web|author=Hayashi Hirofumi|url=http://www.geocities.jp/hhhirofumi/eng18.htm|title=Massacre of Chinese in Singapore and Its Coverage in Postwar Japan|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110144706/http://www.geocities.jp/hhhirofumi/eng18.htm|archive-date=10 January 2017|quote=in [Akashi Yoji & Yoshimura Mako (eds.),''New Perspectives on the Japanese Occupation in Malaya and Singapore, Singapore'', National University of Singapore Press, 2008 Chapter 9.}}</ref>

[[Hirofumi Hayashi]], a professor of politics at a university and the co-director of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, writes that the massacre was premeditated, and that "the Chinese in Singapore were regarded as anti-Japanese even before the Japanese military landed". It is also clear from the passage below that the massacre was to be extended to the Chinese in Malaya as well.

{{blockquote|The purge was planned before Japanese troops landed in Singapore. The military government section of the 25th Army had already drawn up a plan entitled "Implementation Guideline for Manipulating Overseas Chinese" on or around 28 December 1941. This guideline stated that anyone who failed to obey or co-operate with the occupation authorities should be eliminated. It is clear that the headquarters of the 25th Army had decided on a harsh policy toward the Chinese population of Singapore and Malaya from the beginning of the war. According to Onishi Satoru, the Kenpeitai officer in charge of the Jalan Besar screening centre, [[Kenpeitai]] commander Oishi Masayuki was instructed by the chief of staff, [[Sōsaku Suzuki]], at Keluang, Johor, to prepare for a purge following the capture of Singapore. Although the exact date of this instruction is not known, the Army headquarters was stationed in Keluang from 28 January to 4 February 1942 ...<p>The Singapore Massacre was not the conduct of a few evil people, but was consistent with approaches honed and applied in the course of a long period of Japanese aggression against China and subsequently applied to other Asian countries. The Japanese military, in particular the 25th Army, made use of the purge to remove prospective anti-Japanese elements and to threaten local Chinese and others to swiftly impose military administration.<ref name="Hayashi"/></p>}}