Singapore rediscovers its history 70 years after Japanese invasion

By Jan Lund Feb 14, 2012, 3:58 GMT

Singapore - Winston Churchill branded it the biggest loss in the history of the British Empire.

For George Prior, a young Singaporean who joined the British military as the threat of Japanese invasion loomed, it was the end of the world as he knew it.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the fall of Singapore to the Japanese on February 15, 1942 some 1,000 people are to gather Wednesday at the War Cemetery in Kranji on the northern tip of the island.

Among them will be the few surviving veterans including Prior, who remembers the night a couple of months earlier when the first bombs unexpectedly fell out of a moonlit sky.

Singapore was attacked by air at the same time as Pearl Harbour. But bad weather east of Malaya forced most of the attacking Japanese bombers to return without delivering their deadly cargo.

Seventy days later Singapore was overrun by the Japanese army.

The fall of the British island fortress was one of the major game changers of World War II, creating shockwaves that resonate today. It was arguably the beginning of the end for the British Empire and the basis for a new world order in Asia.

The loss was a military and strategic disaster, and many explanations, excuses and accusations about what happened have been offered up in hindsight. History has not been kind to the surrendering British commander Arthur Percival, especially in the decades just after the war.

Today the events are seen in a more mature light and have been the subject of renewed interest among Singaporeans.

The fact that tens of thousands of British, Australians, Indians, Malays, Chinese and various other nationalities were imprisoned, wounded or killed defending Singapore has gained new recognition.

Most survivors were sent to prison camps all over Asia and subjected to hard labour. Many like Prior ended up as slave labourers constructing the infamous Death Railway through the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand.

By being sent to the camps, Prior escaped the fate of tens of thousands of locals, mostly Chinese. In the weeks after the surrender the Japanese rounded up all male Singaporeans between 18 and 50 years old and killed whomever they considered a potential threat.

The occupation lasted for three years, six months and 28 days, and ended with the official Japanese surrender on September 12, 1945. During that time the population suffered tremendously.

After the liberation, tribunals dealt with the most brutal crimes from the occupation. Some perpetrators were hanged, others imprisoned.

But for British Malaya - consisting of Singapore and much of the territory that would later become Malaysia - it was a new dawn pointing directly to independence. The sense of safety and security was gone, said Jeya Ayadurai, director of the Changi War Museum.

'During the countdown many foreign women and children were evacuated by ship. That picture of people fleeing the sinking boat was amplified after the war, disguising that many, many others fought and defended Singapore,' he said.

'The notion of being left alone had a huge effect on the development of Singapore. It has been a key factor in our nation building never to rely on outside forces for our security. We learned that we have to rely on ourselves for our protection. That's why Singapore has such a strong military.'

For more than a generation World War II was far from the public's daily thoughts, which were firmly focussed on the future. Not until the late 1990s and recent openings of new memorials, museums and exhibitions did the war surface again as a significant issue. Interest has never been higher than now, just as the living memory is fading away.

'The war left Singapore dirt poor,' Ayadurai said. 'We had to establish everything from scratch. All focus was on the economy, independence and nation building. A whole generation lost their history because of that,' he said.

'Now the new generations are trying to understand why things are more complex and complicated than it seems. Among the young generations the interest for the war and other parts of our history has grown tremendously.'

There is also a growing recognition that the British did not abandon the territory, and that 137,000 troops tried to defend Singapore.

'Our commemoration is also recognition of these men and women and their families. You could say Singapore is in a process of rediscovering its own history.'

For Prior, now 88 years old, the war is a distant memory. He has come to terms with the events and is at peace with his former enemies.

'We closed a chapter. The (war crimes) tribunals paved the way for a new code of conduct among people, and I believe that we will never see that kind of cruelty again.'