The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew

by Lee Kuan Yew

Some countries are born independent. Some achieve independence. Singapore had independence thrust upon it.

I have no doubts about whether the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary. Without them, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Malaya and Singapore, and millions in Japan itself, would have perished.

The three and a half years of Japanese occupation were the most important of my life. They gave me vivid insights into the behaviour of human beings and human societies, their motivations and impulses. My appreciation of governments, my understanding of power as the vehicle for revolutionary change, would not have been gained without this experience.

As a result I have never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime. That was not my experience in Singapore before the war, during the Japanese occupation or subsequently.

My education in the unfairness and absurdities of human existence was completed by what I saw happening in the immediate aftermath of the war. If three and a half years of Japanese occupation had earned me my degree in the realities of life, the first year in liberated Singapore was my postgraduate course.

I thought then that wealth depended mainly on the possession of territory and natural resources, whether fertile land with abundant rainfall for agriculture or forestry, or valuable minerals, or oil and gas. It was only after I had been in office for some years that I recognised that performance varied substantially between the different races in Singapore, and among different categories within the same race. After trying out a number of ways to reduce inequalities and failing, I was gradually forced to conclude that the decisive factors were the people, their natural abilities, education and training. Knowledge and the possession of technology were vital for the creation of wealth.

I was so attracted by the Fabian approach that for years after my return from Britain I subscribed to their magazines and pamphlets. But by the early 1970s, I was despairing of their unworldliness. One particular issue stuck in my gullet. It was about education. Two headmasters had written a serious article to argue that British comprehensive schools were failing, not because they were wrong, but because the best teachers were still teaching the best students. The best teachers should be teaching the weakest students, who needed them in order to become equal. The good students would do well anyway. This Procrustean approach was too much for me. I stopped subscribing.

I was too young, too idealistic to realise that the cost to the government would be heavy; worse, that under such an egalitarian system each individual would be more interested in what he could get out of the common pool than in striving to do better for himself, which had been the driving force for progress throughout human evolution.

The people as a whole must have self-respect and the will to strive to make a nation of themselves. The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly. And this is not easy to achieve.

They did not understand that when you lose, you have to be defiant, to keep up the morale of your supporters, to live and fight another day.