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World War II Remembered: The Fall of Singapore
By Jennifer King and Timothy Rollins
February 18, 2002

Dateline: 15 February 1942
The Fall of Singapore
Pacific Theater of Operations

Winston Churchill called the loss of Singapore, "The greatest disaster in our history" and "a grievous and shameful blow to British prestige."

>Singapore was a sleepy island village, sparsely populated, when Sir Stamford Ruffles, searching for a location for a forward based British port, first visited it on 29 January 1819. Ruffles, along with Major William Farquahar chose Singapore as the port due to its strategic location between the trade route linking India, China and Europe. Singapore was also blessed with a deep water port and a good quantity of fresh water. Ruffles and Farquahar located, and signed a treaty with the Sultan of Johor in Malaya. The British were to pay an annual stipend for the privilege of developing their Asian port.

Singapore grew rapidly as British, American, Portuguese, German, Chinese, Arabian, Indian and East Indian settlers moved in. It soon became famed as an entrepot trading capital (entrepot trading being the importing of goods from one area, for export to another). Singapore was a favorite of the trading companies because it was a free port, and the British security forces put a lid on piracy. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, faster trade was available between Europe and Asia. The Industrial Revolution further enhanced the city, for there began a great clamoring for raw materials such as rubber (found in Malaya, and also coveted by the Japanese some 70 years later), tin and oil.

Alarmed at the Japanese aggression against China in the 1930's, the British built a Naval Base on the island. The base was finished in 1938, and the island was widely thought to be impregnable. Fortress Singapore, as she was known. However, when the war in Europe broke out in 1939, Britain was forced to focus her energies on the fight with the Third Reich.

The Japanese, who had landed on Malaya on 8 December 1941, made quick headway down the Malay Peninsula. By 31 January 1942, British troops and over a million refugees were huddled inside the city. It is often said that the fall of Singapore occurred because "the guns (the Jahore Battery) were facing the wrong way". That is, that the guns were poised to ward off a shore assault, and not one originating from land. According to John Keegan, The Second World War, the guns had been turned towards the mainland, but they were supplied with the wrong ammunition and were unsuitable for use against land combat troops.

The British Commander, General Sir Arthur Percival, was in an untenable position. He was forced to defend a northern shore over thirty miles long, across a strait less than a mile wide. Also, the British air cover was almost nonexistent, and the aging planes were no match for the superb Japanese Zero. Lastly, fearing capture by the Japanese, the British had destroyed their naval base, leaving them with essentially no sea borne defenses.

The Japanese Commander, General Tomoyuku Yamashita, also planned a careful campaign. He made a diversionary feint attack at Changi on 7 February, thereby stretching further Percival's forces, while he positioned his main attack force directly across the northwest channel. On 8 February, Yamashita invaded and the Australian 22nd and 27th Brigades rapidly crumbled. By the next week, Yamashita was surrounding the city proper, and he was in possession of the reservoirs which supplied the city with water.

Gen. Percival, fearing an urban disaster, surrendered. He was photographed carrying a Union Jack next to a white flag borne by a staff officer, an offense for which he was never forgiven by Churchill and the Naval Command. The Japanese, (who, unbeknownst to Gen. Percival, had run out of ammunition) had defeated a force which outnumbered them 3:1. Gen. Yamashita, earned the moniker of "The Tiger of Malaya" for his actions. The Japanese renamed the city "Syonan-to", or Light of the South, a bitter irony in lieu of the tyranny that was about to befall the hapless inhabitants.

A further disaster awaited the 130,000 British, Australian, Indian and Chinese POWs. Marched across the island to a hastily constructed prison facility at Changi, the POWs were deprived of food and water, forced to bury the dead and clean the city. 68,000 Allied and 200,000 Asian troops were sent to Thailand to work on the infamous "Death Railroad", where it was estimated that one life was lost for every 28 yards of track laid. 96,000 men, including 16,000 Allied troops died on this 16 month project, immortalized in the film, "Bridge Over the River Kwai".

Signalman Eric Lomax, who had assembled a map of the railroad and also put together a secret radio, was found out and brutalized by the Japanese interrogation forces. Years later, his interrogator, Nagase Takashi, still tormented by his actions during the war, contacted him. Lomax, initially unforgiving, eventually met with Takashi at the River Kwai in 1990 and reconciled with him.

Interestingly enough, the fall of Fortress Singapore - where a superior Western force was crushed by a smaller, traditionally viewed as inferior Asian force - is credited by some historians with setting the seeds of the post-war move towards nationalism and decolonization. ***