For a brief moment, Happy World was converted into a trade school by the Japanese authorities to train applicants as mechanics and technicians [1]. The Japanese authorities would shift their focus to aeroplane, motor, engineering and electric and motor car specialisation the following year [2]. This trade school would then have the effect of indoctrinating Singaporean students, possibly having the effect of diluting their past identity as a British/Chinese/Malay/Indian roots and pledge their fidelity towards the Japanese empire. 

The Japanese authorities would later encourage the Shaw Brothers to run gambling dens at all amusement parks, including Happy World [3]. These gambling dens would offer Japanese cigarettes and free refreshments [4] in a bid to “calm the people’s minds.”[5] In reality, the Japanese wanted to profit from the tax and the license-fees of gambling farms and perhaps, maintain a facade of normality. Ironically, while Singaporeans were granted access to Happy World, the Japanese were forbidden to enter the gambling farms [6], though cabarets and night clubs were open to them [7]. It would suggest how the Japanese authorities intend to exploit Singaporeans’ addiction to gambling so as to control Singapore better. Personal accounts such as Chin Kee Onn on the “gambling mania” mentioned many people committing suicide after running into debt [8], revealing the extent of the Japanese success in creating internal problems, reducing any potential threat to Japanese rule.

Happy World, in some sense, became an apparatus of the Japanese authorities to ‘weaken’ Singaporeans, enabling them to subjugate them easily.