us into columns and told us to march. We didn’t know where to; we were little more than cattle to our captors. But it transpired that we were to cover the eighteen miles to Changi. The Changi peninsula housed the famous prison, the Selarang barracks and a sprawling ramshackle complex that would become a vast permanent POW camp for twenty thousand prisoners. I dreaded to think how different Selarang would look and what awaited us.
We were in a very poor state on the march from Fort Canning to Changi. Utterly dejected and deep in despair we trudged along, prodded on by bayonets and with stragglers subjected to vicious treatment by the Japanese. There was no defiant singing and little display of pride. We felt defeated and downtrodden. The sheer uncertainty was the worst thing. What was going to happen to us? The thought kept on returning. In the back of my mind the Alexandra Hospital massacre loomed and I really thought that the same fate awaited us. The boys were as anxious as I was but to begin with they did not really show it. They were still in shock.
Then, as we marched along the dusty road, without warning a horrific sight confronted us. We came face to face with a thicket of severed Chinese heads, speared on poles on both sides of the road. The mutilated bodies of these poor souls lay nearby and the heads, with their eyes rolled back, presented a truly shocking spectacle. The sickly sweet smell of rotting, putrefying flesh smothered us. Retching and fighting the instinct to be sick, I shouted to the boys to keep their eyes to the ground. For the rest of our march spiked heads, mainly Chinese, appeared at intervals in this way. The Japanese had been busy with their samurai swords and had created a hellish avenue to terrify and intimidate. The tactic certainly succeeded.
Unknown to us we had just walked into the middle of the ‘Sook Ching’ massacre, a well-planned Japanese purge of Chinese opponents, both real and potential. More than fifty thousand Chinese were murdered with the sickening sadism that seemed endemic in the Japanese Army. The worst of thoughts now flashed through our minds.
Next I saw a column of at least a hundred Chinese civilians being marched across a pedang in the same direction as us. They wore white shorts and white T-shirts but were blindfolded. It struck me then as strange that we had not also been blindfolded. The future of these hapless Chinese, I thought, looked especially gloomy. It was obvious that they were about to be killed. Paradoxically it made me feel a little better about our own immediate future – after all we were not blindfolded.
About a week later I heard that the Chinese we had seen had indeed been massacred – machine-gunned along with hundreds of others on the beach at Changi. British POWs on a work party had to dig a mass grave for hundreds of bodies. When I heard that news my already diminishing spirits sank even lower. I felt that we were sitting on a time bomb and it would not be long until it went off.
During the march we saw plenty of other frightening and dismal sights. Bloated and shattered bodies of all nationalities, both civilian and military, lay strewn everywhere covered in great blankets of flies. Some of the local population lined the streets, waving Japanese flags, welcoming the invaders with open arms. They sneered and spat and snarled at us. Only the Chinese seemed restrained – they knew only too well what Japan’s offer of ‘Asia for the Asians’ really meant, but many of the Tamils, Malays and Sikhs fell for it. It was heartbreaking to see, yet after what I had witnessed I could understand their predicament. A few days earlier the Union Jack had fluttered proudly over the Cathay Building; now the Japanese ‘Rising Sun’ flew in its place. The sun had well and truly set on Imperial Britain’s Far East hopes. Many locals were left with little choice but to support the latest batch of colonisers. A very brave, mainly Communist, minority
We were in a very poor state on the march from Fort Canning to Changi. Utterly dejected and deep in despair we trudged along, prodded on by bayonets and with stragglers subjected to vicious treatment by the Japanese. There was no defiant singing and little display of pride. We felt defeated and downtrodden. The sheer uncertainty was the worst thing. What was going to happen to us? The thought kept on returning. In the back of my mind the Alexandra Hospital massacre loomed and I really thought that the same fate awaited us. The boys were as anxious as I was but to begin with they did not really show it. They were still in shock.
Then, as we marched along the dusty road, without warning a horrific sight confronted us. We came face to face with a thicket of severed Chinese heads, speared on poles on both sides of the road. The mutilated bodies of these poor souls lay nearby and the heads, with their eyes rolled back, presented a truly shocking spectacle. The sickly sweet smell of rotting, putrefying flesh smothered us. Retching and fighting the instinct to be sick, I shouted to the boys to keep their eyes to the ground. For the rest of our march spiked heads, mainly Chinese, appeared at intervals in this way. The Japanese had been busy with their samurai swords and had created a hellish avenue to terrify and intimidate. The tactic certainly succeeded.
Unknown to us we had just walked into the middle of the ‘Sook Ching’ massacre, a well-planned Japanese purge of Chinese opponents, both real and potential. More than fifty thousand Chinese were murdered with the sickening sadism that seemed endemic in the Japanese Army. The worst of thoughts now flashed through our minds.
Next I saw a column of at least a hundred Chinese civilians being marched across a pedang in the same direction as us. They wore white shorts and white T-shirts but were blindfolded. It struck me then as strange that we had not also been blindfolded. The future of these hapless Chinese, I thought, looked especially gloomy. It was obvious that they were about to be killed. Paradoxically it made me feel a little better about our own immediate future – after all we were not blindfolded.
About a week later I heard that the Chinese we had seen had indeed been massacred – machine-gunned along with hundreds of others on the beach at Changi. British POWs on a work party had to dig a mass grave for hundreds of bodies. When I heard that news my already diminishing spirits sank even lower. I felt that we were sitting on a time bomb and it would not be long until it went off.
During the march we saw plenty of other frightening and dismal sights. Bloated and shattered bodies of all nationalities, both civilian and military, lay strewn everywhere covered in great blankets of flies. Some of the local population lined the streets, waving Japanese flags, welcoming the invaders with open arms. They sneered and spat and snarled at us. Only the Chinese seemed restrained – they knew only too well what Japan’s offer of ‘Asia for the Asians’ really meant, but many of the Tamils, Malays and Sikhs fell for it. It was heartbreaking to see, yet after what I had witnessed I could understand their predicament. A few days earlier the Union Jack had fluttered proudly over the Cathay Building; now the Japanese ‘Rising Sun’ flew in its place. The sun had well and truly set on Imperial Britain’s Far East hopes. Many locals were left with little choice but to support the latest batch of colonisers. A very brave, mainly Communist, minority
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