Prisoner from Penang

1. Singapore-6

Dad had still not arrived by Christmas. It was a miserable affair that year. On Christmas Day, Hong Kong surrendered, a terrible humiliation for the British Empire in the east. The Japanese were pushing the Allied forces further down the Malay peninsula to Singapore. What had once been a bastion, an impregnable fortress, the symbol of British power, was another fragile skittle waiting to fall.

The disastrous collapse of Hong Kong was a shock to the residents of Singapore. The British there, and until recently further up the peninsula, had largely ignored the war and refused to recognise the Japanese threat.

British women in particular had been living in ignorance and continuing with their pampered expatriate way of life – enjoying the sunshine, the parties, the leisure pursuits and servants to do virtually everything from childcare to catering. And among the men there was a conspiracy of self-delusion. It was simply unthinkable to imagine the British and our mighty empire falling prey to the inferior numbers of the invading Japanese.

I’m certain this inbuilt prejudice and innate arrogance explains why the military leadership was so hesitant in acting promptly and decisively to cut short the Japanese advance, even though the Allies significantly outnumbered the enemy. There was also a lack of preparation – in part due to bad planning and in part to the lack of the necessary aircraft and anti-tank guns. Underpinning all this was a deeply-rooted belief among the British that the Japanese were inferior. But to me, at the time, it was just one great big enormous mess.

As I was to discover as the war proceeded, that ingrained belief about the racial superiority of white men in general and the British in particular, was all too evident to the Japanese and may well account for the enthusiasm with which they perpetrated their atrocities. Bringing the proud British low, treating them with the height of cruelty and depravity, was a way of drumming home that the status quo had well and truly changed.