Stuggle of the Japanese Invasion

Struggle of the Japanese Invasion Looking back into history many people have suffered, struggled and lost their lives over external hardships they had no control of during their lifetime. Kate Furnivall’s The White Pearl takes place in Malaya and Singapore located in Southeast Asia during World War 2 (WW2) following the bombing of America’s Pearl Harbour. Constance Hadley, the protagonist of the novel, is a mid-aged white woman with a family consisting of her wealthy husband Nigel and their son Teddy. She undergoes a drastic lifestyle change after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and when she finds out that the Japanese are coming to invade her hometown Malaya, it causes Constance to flee to safety in Singapore with her family, alongside other characters in the Hadley’s yacht. But little does she or anyone sailing on the yacht know that Singapore is already under siege before they would even reach. The Japanese and their invasion is the sole reason that countless people of different ethnicities had to suffer severe deprivations. Individuals in Malaya and Singapore had to undergo hyper-inflation of currency, endure strict rationing of food and bear with lack of resources. In the novel The White Pearl, the protagonist views and experiences all these different aspects and outcomes of the Japanese invasion first hand. To begin, because of careless effort and senseless laws the Japanese were able to turn areas of prosperous living standards into areas of Asia that later faced severe food deficit, such as Malaya. In Paul Kratoska’s novel The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic History it states that “Before the war, Malaya had managed to import a little more than two-thirds of its annual rice requirements.” Or in other words, before the Japanese had invaded, Malaya had a strong and liable source of food, consequently after the invasion Malayan’s were subjected to unjust and unfair rules by the Japanese which ultimately led them down to an