Changi and Eastern Singapore

February 8, 1942: Nobody expected the Japanese to attack from Malaysia. The British military commanders never expected Singapore to fall under attack at all. While the Second World War was picking up in Europe and Africa, Singapore became legendary for the parties that went on in spite of the war. It seemed so far away.

But the Japanese did attack. The British military was prepared to defend from the sea, but when the much smaller Japanese army that attacked Singapore came overland from the north, they quickly overwhelmed Singapore resulting in the largest British surrender in history.

The Japanese quickly rounded up the educated and wealthy Chinese and systematically executed them on Changi Beach. The colonial administrators and Allied forces were carted off to eastern Singapore to the notorious Changi Prison.

Changi Beach

I took the bus out to Eastern Singapore to visit Changi Prison. It took quite a long time to get there, and at first I missed it and ended up in Changi Village, a sleepy little seaside village that felt very different from the rest of Singapore. I ate lunch and got back on the bus to the prison .

Changi Chapel

The Changi Prison Museum was unlike other museums I've been to. The exhibits were made up of personal accounts of the Allied POW's who were held there, and admission to the museum came with an audio guide of the actual POW's telling their stories, decades later. The museum recounted what it was like in the days leading up to the Fall of Singapore, during the Japanese occupation, life at the prison, and during the Japanese surrender to the British forces at the end of the war.

While most of the prisoners were British or Australian, there were a number of American soldiers held at the prison as well. Life at the prison was hard. The Imperial Japanese Army was not known for treating their prisoners well, and hundreds died of disease and malnutrition. They were allowed some freedoms though. The POW's were allowed to paint murals at their prison chapel. One of the chapel murals was especially moving, given the cruelty of the Japanese guards who were just obeying orders from their superiors.