Utuh Paloi Banjar Blog

 

Winston Churchill wrote, “It was the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.” 

 

It has been 68 years to the date - February 15, 1942 - but the memories preceding the catastrophe remain, as a reminder for future generations.

 

How much have we learned from history? As it is, we are right on track of repeating the mistakes of the British. Our leaders - military and politicians - aided by mainstream media are endlessly spinning fairy tales about our defence capabilities.  

 

In 1968, former chief correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Noel Barber, who lived in Singapore before WW2, immortalised the sequence of events leading to the disaster.

 

There was no place in the world quite like Singapore in the last unruffled days of its colonial existence. The dripping jungle foliage seemed to hang over the edges of the city. One could pick orchids from the trees, and occasionally a monkey would stray onto the grounds of a tennis club.

  

In the heart of the city, ‘white’ Singapore lived in luxury. There was Raffles Place where one could buy the latest books, get an Elizabeth Arden facial or dine in the air-conditioned restaurant in Robinson’s department store.

 

It was as though the early planners had tried to build some tangible copy of the life they had left in England, and somehow they had succeeded. Everyone loved the city with its tang of adventure, its exotic noises and smells, its leisurely life.

 

Then came the day of reckoning - December 7, 1941.

 

The headline on the Malaya tribune that Sunday morning reported that 27 Japanese transport were sighted off Cambodia. Such news would have set alarm bells ringing else where, but not in Singapore. The typical white men, or ‘tuan’, still hold firm to the conviction that nothing on earth could disturb the island’s peace and beauty. Eight thousand miles away, German planes might be bombing London, but life would go on in Singapore as it had since Stamford Raffles took possession of the island in 1819.

 

Wasn’t the evidence of security there for all to see? The RAF flew overhead, powerful guns defended the southern approaches and there were thousands of troops in the area. Guarding the narrow waters between the China Sea and the Indian Ocean – between Asia and Europe – Singapore was the British Empire’s mightiest naval base. The battleship Prince of Wales, pride of the Royal Navy and the battle-hardened cruiser Repulse were there, sent by Churchill to deter the Japanese.

 

Such unfounded belief in their superiority prompted Air Chief Marshal to summon the chief managing editor of the Malaya Tribune. He denounced the Tribune’s ‘alarmist views’, and declared that the situation was not half that serious as the paper made out.

 

That Sunday evening, as in many previous Sundays, the British men and women sang in unison “There’ll always be an England. And England shall be free.” Little that they realise, it was the swan song to a way of life, the end of the myth that Singapore was impregnable – a myth believed for decades by the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians, who would soon witness a scene they would never have believed possible - white humanity on the run.

 

While Singapore slept, at 1.15 am on December 8, the phone rang in Government House. When the governor, Sir Shenton Thomas, lifted the receiver and heard the agitated voice of Gen. A. E. Percival, reporting that the Japanese had begun landing operations in Kota Bharu, he curtly replied, “Well, I suppose you’ll shove the little men off.”

 

At that moment, the war seemed far away, but precisely three hours later, at 4.15 am, the first Japanese bombs came crashing on the city. Sixty one people were killed and 133 wounded.

 

Although the Japanese have already captured Kota Bharu, the British were still mired in deep slumber. General Headquarters issued a deceptive war communiqué “The Japanese attempt to land have been repelled. All surface craft are retiring at high speed, and the few troops left on the beaches are being heavily machine-gunned.” But, in reality, it was the opposite. The defenders have retreated inland without semblance of resistance except for the valiant Indian Regiment which have elected to show the British what valour is all about by fighting to the last man.

 

The communiqué was accepted as good news in Singapore, and almost no one suspected how tragically misleading it was. The Japanese landing craft had retired at high speed because their mission was complete. Kota Bharu was already in enemy hands.

 

“We have had plenty of warning and our preparations are made,” announced the Order of the Day issued in Singapore on December 8. “We are confident. Our defences are strong and our weapons efficient.”

 

“I can’t believe it.” cried George Hammonds, assistant editor of the Malaya Tribune, when he read the statement in the news room. “I can’t believe anyone could deliberately tell so many lies.”

 

Hammonds had toured Singapore and Malaya many times, and he knew the boast was empty. Few of the 88,000 soldiers in the area – British, Australians, Indians and the locals – were jungle trained, and some 15,000 were non combatants. Many soldiers had landed only recently and knew nothing of jungle warfare.

 

The island’s vaunted 15 inch guns, Hammonds knew, would be totally ineffective against land operation. Facing the sea, they had limited traverse and their ammunition consisted solely of armour-piercing shells. Worse still, the supporting 9.2 inch guns had only 30 rounds of ammunition each. Hammonds reckoned that if Singapore were threatened, it would take six months before naval relief could arrive. Thus, in the event of a siege, the gunners would be able to fire only one shell every six days.

 

While the British in Singapore were still muddled in unfounded security, the Japanese moved swiftly inland, completely bypassing the impenetrable jungle. They used bicycles and rode through the rubber plantations and the roads that linked them together. Many wore nothing but shorts and undershirts. It was a war for which even the few seasoned British troops were unprepared. To the Japanese, the jungles and plantations presented no fears. To the British, they were unknown worlds of tigers, snakes, flying foxes and elephants. In there, the enemy could be anywhere, or everywhere.

 

Then suddenly, having traverse the country side and jungle where the British had insisted that tanks could never operate, the first Japanese tanks appeared, manoeuvring easily between rows of rubber trees. As they rolled southwards, there was not a single British tank in Malaya to oppose them.

 

And the British keep on running.

 

The RAF was falling back too. There were now only 50 planes fit for operations and most of these were being withdrawn to Singapore. When 27 Japanese bombers attacked Penang, the British had no fighters in the sky. After devastating raids, the island was quickly abandoned. As soon as the Japanese infantry arrived, they discovered a fleet of boats, junks and barges which the army had failed to destroy. They used them to ship their men down the west coast and land behind the British lines.

 

By Christmas, half of Malaya’s tin mines and one sixth of the rubber plantations were in enemy hands. The Japanese were heading straight for Johore.

 

Late on the night of December 26, Brigadier Ivan Simson hurried to General Percival’s residence in Singapore. Simson, perhaps above all other men, knew the danger Singapore now faced. He had been sent to Malaya four months earlier as Chief Engineer with instructions to improve the defences of the area. Since then, he had travelled extensively and had learned more about the country’s weaknesses than any other officer. Unfortunately, he could do very little about them.

 

Everywhere he went, it seemed, he met with indifference. The greatest shock he received came when he inspected the northern beaches of Singapore. They were completely undefended. No gun or pillbox, or even a strand of barbed wire.

 

Time and again Simson had pleaded for fortifications on these shores but General Percival had always refused.

 

It now seemed inevitable that the Japanese would soon reach Johore and attack Singapore. Simson told Percival that he had the staff to fortify the northern shores with pillboxes, fortified gun positions, anti tank defences, underwater obstacles, fire traps, mines and barbed wire. He had all the material – they had been available long before the Japanese attack. The job would now be of extreme urgency, and it could still be done.

 

It was a rational plea that could have knocked some senses into the thick skull of most leaders, but not Percival. Simson reiterated his stand, “I must emphasize the urgency of doing everything to help our troops. They are tired and dispirited. They have been retreating for hundreds of miles. The Japanese are better trained and better equipped.”

 

Simson had tried to speak dispassionately, but as the clock ticked by, he found it hard to control his anger, “It has to be done now, sir,” he pleaded, “before the area comes under fire.”

 

Percival still refused to budge.

 

At last, in desperation, Simson cried, “General, I’ve raised this question time after time, you’ve always refuse, and you’ve always refused to give me any reasons. At least tell me one thing – why are you taking this stand?”

 

Percival finally gave his answer, “I believe that defences of the sort you want to throw up are bad for the morale of troops and civilians.”

 

Simson remembered standing in the room, suddenly feeling quite cold, and realising that, except for a miracle, Singapore was as good as lost. As he started for the door, his parting words would have sent shivers down the spine of most men except Percival “Sir, it’s going to be much worse for morale if the Japanese start running all over the island.”

 

Soon after, London appointed General Archibald Wavell to head the Far East Command. Upon arriving in Singapore, he was briefed by Simson. Immediately after, he summoned Percival and drove to the northern beaches. There he discovered the shattering truth. Shaken, he turned to Percival and demanded to know why there were no defences. Percival replied with the same explanation he had given Simson - the effect on morale would be bad. Wavell ordered construction of defences to begin immediately.

 

It seemed incredible, but even now, when the news began to reach Singapore that the Japanese were overrunning Johore, the civilian population did not seem able to grasp its implications. Many believe that the British had deliberately retreated to Singapore, where the terrain would be more favourable. Despite the evidence before their eyes – streams of refugees and wounded troops from peninsula, the incessant bombing – people did not see the enemy advances as Japanese victories, but as skilful Allied ‘delaying action’.

 

On January 16, General Wavell cabled Churchill, “Until quite recently all plans were used on repulsing seaborne attacks. Little or nothing was done to construct defences on the north side of the island to prevent crossing of Johore Straits.”

 

For the first time, the truth dawned on Churchill that Singapore was indefensible, and he was horrified. In place of the legendary fortress in which he had believed, he now saw ‘the hideous spectacle of an almost naked island.’ He later wrote, “I ought to have known, my advisers ought to have known and I ought to have been told and I ought to have asked. The possibility of Singapore having no landward defences no more entered my mind than that of a battleship being launched without a bottom.”

 

To Wavell he cabled, “I want to make it absolutely clear that I expect every inch of ground to be defended, every scrap of material blown to pieces to prevent capture by the enemy, and no question of surrender entertained until after fighting among the ruins of Singapore city.”

 

This was a moment when the great city, its normal population doubled to a million, should have been rallied under a dynamic leader to prepare for the siege. There should have been thousands of troops hurriedly throwing up defence works. Instead, at this moment of great urgency, the island was like a storm-tossed ship without a captain, with troops as well as civilians confused and insecure.

 

On January 28, thousands converged on the port, lining up to board four troopships which had just brought the British 18th Division to the Island. Some were to be evacuated to UK and the rest to Ceylon.

 

On Saturday night, January 31, the last troopship sailed. As it started out to sea under a tropical moon, no civilians in Singapore had the slightest suspicion of what had been happening on the other side of the island. Secretly, on the night of January 30 - 31, some 30,000 exhausted troops of the Commonwealth forces retreated to Singapore, crossing the huge concrete causeway. The causeway, 70 feet wide, and more than 1000 yards long, had been dynamited at 8.15 on Saturday morning signifying the end of the battle of Malaya and the beginning of a new chapter.

 

The siege of Singapore…

 

For days the sky had been darkened by the writhing plumes of smoke from two huge fires at the naval base. At first people believe that the Japanese had scored lucky hits on the oil dumps, but then a rumour spread that the fires had actually been started by the British. It seemed unbelievable, but the rumour was suddenly confirmed at an off-the-record press conference. Not only had the oil dumps been set on fire deliberately, the entire naval base had been evacuated by the Royal Navy.

 

This was the place where six million cubic feet of earth had been excavated after hills had been swept aside and a river deflected, where eight million cubic feet of earth had been used to reclaim swampland before construction had even started. At a cost of more than £60 million, and 17 years of concentrated effort, a vast and mighty base had risen, with oil tanks holding a million gallons of fuel, with machine shops, underground munitions dumps, warehouses and an enormous floating dock – towed all the way from England.

 

This was Britain’s great symbol of naval dominance of the Pacific, a base with 22 square miles of deep sea anchorage, barracks to house 12,000 workers, and a self contained town with cinemas, churches and 17 football fields. It had been built for only one reason - for a moment of destiny as Britain now faced. Nothing in the story of Singapore’s defeat can match in grim irony the fact that when the moment of destiny arrived, the base was abandoned. Worse, it had been abandoned before the troops had crossed the causeway.

 

Any notion that the British retreat to Singapore was to defend the base and the island had vanished.

 

Shortly after ten on the night of February 8, the black sky was lighted by two rockets, one red and one blue, bursting far to the north. These were Japanese signals, announcing a successful landing on the island.

 

The attack was made on the northwest shore, exactly the area west of the causeway that Brigadier Simson had wanted to defend. But General Percival had been obsessed with a conviction that the Japanese would assault the northeast beaches, and that was where he had deployed his main forces. There was only a single Australian division to oppose the landings in the northwest. Although the Australians opened a withering fire on the first two waves of boats, the Japanese soon overwhelmed the defences of the entire front. By the morning of the 9th, the Japanese had secured a firm footing on the island.

 

By the end of the first week, the city was slowly running down. At least 200 people a day were killed, and there was mounting evidence of an uglier mood. The troops seemed to wander in bewildered knots all over Singapore as though there was no one to direct them. Soldiers desperate with fatigue had nowhere to sleep because there were not enough tents. Drunken troops were reeling around the main square, waving bottles of cheap liquor. Looting became widespread.

 

Singapore, the dream world, was fast turning into a nightmare.

 

Errors of judgement, panic retreats against orders – everything that could go wrong went wrong, and there was no bad luck about it. All coherent military plans seemed to have vanished in the deep recess of the rubber jungles and swamps. Time and again unaccountable decisions were taken. At one bizarre moment, the Japanese were down to their last hundred rounds per man, while the British were retreating and burying their ammunition in pits.

 

On February 10, Wavell flew in for the last visit to Singapore. Everywhere the fronts were shrinking. Over the head of Percival, he ordered a desperate counter attack, hoping against hope that it could turn the tide. But, it failed completely. Wavell’s decision was probably influenced by an extraordinary cable he had just received from the Prime Minister. The words were uncompromising. “The battle must be fought to the bitter end. With the Russians fighting as they are and the Americans so stubborn at Luzon, the whole reputation of our country and race is involved.”

 

Despite this, Wavell decided to order all serviceable aircraft to Java. Of the fifty one Hurricanes that had been sent as reinforcements in mid January, only eight remained operational. Together with the remaining six Buffalos, and on their last day in Singapore, the RAF pilots shot down six Japanese bombers and damaged 14 more.

 

Two days after the Malaya Tribune was closed, a government paper appeared filled with meaningless phrases that Singaporeans had come to know so well, “Enemy pressure slackened during the night. It is hoped to stabilise our position.”

 

In reality, the true story could be read in the streets of the city. Every road in the heart of Singapore was jammed with streams of civilians heading out of the city, rushing towards the east of the island – anywhere, so long as it was away from the Japanese. By February 12, enemy tanks had captured the strategic village of Bukit Timah and soon hand-to-hand fighting flared up in places whose very names were evocative of the good old days – the racecourse, and the greens of the Singapore Golf Club.

 

By sundown the Allied forces and a million civilians were trapped, in a perimeter that had shrunk to two and a half miles, along the edge of the city.

 

At the docks, the evacuation committee were busy organising evacuation, among them were some 1200 skilled personnel who would be useful to the war effort elsewhere. At 6.30 pm the boats were filled and the gates closed. Admiral Spooner, who had supervised the evacuation, was on board a small launch. So was Air Vice-Marshal Pulford, whose last words to Percival had been, “I suppose you and I will be blamed for this, but God knows we’ve done our best with what we’ve been given.”

 

Self comforting words though but deep inside, Percival must have realised his error of judgement.

 

This was Singapore’s version of ‘Dunkirk’ – a flotilla of tiny ships, rowboats, junks, naval sloops, yachts and tourist launches. But unknown to any of the people on board the little fleet, Admiral Ozawa of the Japanese Imperial Navy was waiting in the narrow waters south of the island with two cruisers, a carrier and three destroyers. When the flotilla approached his ships, he attacked with all the force at his command.

 

Some of the smaller vessels were literally blown out of the water, and it is known that at least 40 ships were sunk. The few who managed to escape were wrecked on the small islands that dot the archipelago. Many were to die of starvation, thirst and tropical disease. Among them were Admiral Spooner and Air Vice-Marshal Pulford.

 

On Saturday, February 14, Percival cabled Wavell and asked for wider discretionary powers. Wavell replied that while water remained, the fight must continue.

 

Early Sunday morning General Percival received a cable from Wavell giving him the power to capitulate. At 9.30 am, he summoned the commanders of the various units for a conference. It lasted barely 20 minutes. Unanimously, they agreed to surrender.

 

Late that afternoon, General Percival and three staff officers drove up the Bukit Timah road. At the approach to the village they got out of the car, unfurled a white flag and the Union Jack and marched under enemy escort to the Japanese headquarters – the Ford Motor factory.  

 

Any hopes Percival might have entertained of getting conciliatory terms vanished immediately. Stubborn as a mule, Yamashita sat with his clenched right fist ready to pound the table. “The Japanese will consider nothing but unconditional surrender.” he announced.

 

At 8.30 that night, an eerie silence fell across Singapore. The shelling, bombing and bark of guns were abruptly stilled. It was the silence of death – the death of a great city – broken only by the crackling flames and falling timbers of uncontrolled fires.

 

But the fall of Singapore meant much more than an English military defeat. It was an earthquake that sent tremors across the world. In its wake an empire would crumble.

 

The greatest debacle in the history of British arms, in which thousands of men and women of all races and creeds died in a mythical fortress, destroyed forever the legend of the white man’s supremacy. And though it is true that the Allies returned to liberate the country, it was never quite the same again. The awe, the mystique surrounding the ‘tuan’ had gone forever.

 

Related posts:

1. General Yamashita - the master deceiver
2. HIROSHIMA & NAGASAKI
3. Remembering Prince of Wales & Repulse
4. Graf Spee - the man and the ship
5. Price of “ciri-ciri yang berbeza”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 6:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.