Could Pak Lah please remind PM Koizumi ...

According to an estimate cited in a public memorial service in Kuala Lumpur in 2003, during the 44 months of invasion and occupation of Malaya by Imperial Japan from 8 December 1941 to 15 August 1945, about 70,000 people of all ethnic communities were killed, while another 80,000 perished as the result of tortures and imprisonments and also an additional 300,000 died because of malnutrition and physical exhaustion in performing forced hard labour.

In the total number of those who perished, an estimate of 300,000 were Chinese. That figure represented 17 percent of the then entire Chinese population in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. Also, in an estimate presented by Professor P Ramasamy in a 1984 study of Indian Malaysians' socio-political development, " 60,000 Malayan Indians died while working for the Japanese to build the Death Railway on the Thai-Burmese border.

Hundreds of British, Australian and Indian prisoners of war were interned and tortured in Kuala Lumpur's Pudu Jail, Singapore's Changi Prison and other POW camps.