The Surrender of Singapore: Three Years of Hell

Until the late 1930s, Singapore was noted as a popular stop-off point for wealthy European travellers on their way to countries such as Australia and New Zealand. All of that changed with the outbreak of the Second World War. Despite Major-General William Dobbie, the General Officer Commanding Malaya between 8 November 1935 and August 1939, warning that Singapore could be conquered by the Japanese, his concerns went unheeded. As far as the British authorities were concerned, Singapore was an impregnable fortress. There were many reasons which led to the fall of Singapore. The apparent arrogance of some senior British military personnel and politicians; a misconception that Japanese soldiers were inferior to their American and Commonwealth counterparts; a belief that Japan would not militarily engage both America and Britain at the same time; and that as far as the Allies were concerned, victory in Europe was a priority over defeating the Japanese throughout Asia and the Pacific. Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942 and was then controlled by them for the next three years, a time in which Chinese civilians and Commonwealth soldiers were murdered at their hands, in such incidents as the Sook Ching massacre and the Burma Railway death march. Included in this account is one mans never before told story of his time as a PoW in Changi prison. The book explores how he miraculously survived the horrors of working on the Burma railway, only to be sent back to Changi, and reveals how the Japanese authorities held letters that his wife sent him for three years. Winston Churchill decided against a public enquiry into the circumstances surrounding the fall of Singapore, and no subsequent British Government has seen fit to change that decision. This remarkable book seeks to remedy that by using an array of sources to tell the fascinating and largely forgotten story of the fall of Singapore.