We visited Memories at Old Ford Factory and liked it a fair bit for its curation and pertinent, if not painful links to Singapore's history. The last time we visited was as school kids. Didn't remember much of that. So it's about time we take a look at what the National Heritage Board has done with it since the front portion of the factory was gazetted as a national monument in 2006.
It was easy to simply spend an hour browsing through the stories, artefacts and photos. There weren't other visitors while we were walking through, so there wasn't a need to peer over anyone's shoulders. We grinned at some of the wordings used for certain events that totally contradict the versions at Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. Like..."extortion" of the infamous $50million from the Chinese community to the Japanese Imperial Army, as opposed to "donation". We were inexplicably pleased that there were mentions of the anti-Japanese volunteer Force 136 led by Lim Bo Seng and others, but none of Sun Yat Sen. Really, what has Sun Yat Sen got to do with Singapore besides inspiring beginnings of nationalistic thought that ought to have nothing to do with the word 'motherland'?
While I'm curious about the stories (every family has a different tale to tell), I don't enjoy hearing stories of suffering or heroic acts during World War I or World War II. It's depressing, and for many reasons, I don't want to know. I can read about it in a flat history text, but I don't want to see photographs or human voices re-telling their suffering and pain. Which probably explains why whenever I sit through docufilms about them, I'm also fiddling with the iPad or the laptop so that I can be distracted and skip the mournful portions.
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