Abstract

  This article examines the memory of Southern Internment in post-war Japan through the case of the Rempang Island internment, where more than 110,000 Japanese soldiers and civilian employees were held between 1945 and 1946 under British supervision. Despite its scale, the Rempang internment has been almost absent from Japan’s collective memory, in contrast to the Siberian internment. The study argues that this absence resulted from two interrelated processes: “literary purification” and “disconnection from locality”. First, memoirs written by former internees framed the experience as a contribution to national reconstruction, while professional writers transformed it into fictionalised accounts emphasising “Robinson Crusoe-like” island life or alternative moral values. This literary purification marginalised the harsh realities of hunger, forced labour, and military hierarchy. Second, because the internment was preceded by the forced removal of local inhabitants, and because physical traces of the camps quickly disappeared, later commemorative visits lacked interaction with local society. This disconnection prevented the renewal of memory through local engagement. The combination of purification and disconnection rendered Rempang an isolated memory, perpetuated only within limited circles of former internees and their families. The article concludes by proposing a transregional approach that situates Rempang within South-East Asian post-war history and Japanese memory studies.