Last Sunday was Anzac Day celebrations when Australians and New Zealanders remember their dead in the first and second world wars.

Ordinarily, the occasion would not mean anything to Malaysians save those who possess a memory of soldiers from the two countries who died in the course of Imperial Japan’s drive for dominion over Southeast Asia in the first half of the 1940s.

A Malaysian resident happened to be holidaying in Kanchanaburi in the west of Thailand last Sunday and observed the commemoration of Anzac Day there, held to...