Eighty years ago, on September 12th 1945, the Commander of the Japanese 7^th Area Army General Seishiro Itagaki surrendered to Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander of the South East Asia Command, in the City Hall Chamber. The moment sealed Itagaki’s fate in more ways than he could know. Tried for war crimes, he was executed in 1948. Notoriety of a different kind lurked in what The Straits Times (ST) described at the time as the “vermillion-coloured wax” on the instruments of surrender into which he pressed his personal seal and that of the Japanese army. For the obverse of Itagaki’s imprint would be his own likeness in wax, reproduced three decades later alongside those of his six fellow officers, and 20 representatives of the Allied forces in a tableau of the scene. 

Now more than half a century old, the “Surrender Chambers” waxwork exhibit of the Japanese surrender remains on display to this day, alongside one showing the British surrender to the Japanese on February 15th 1942. Timeworn and unlovely, the exhibit’s very persistence in Singapore’s otherwise footfall-driven, high-tech experience economy suggests there is more to it than meets the eye. 

Taken together, the story of the waxworks’ creation, their vexed relationship to the event they depict, and the unsettling experience they continue to offer visitors combine to tell a fascinating and overlooked story: one that is all about Singapore, without a Singaporean in sight.