Inferno - Max Hastings [135]
Some British units performed no better: the 18th Division arrived at Singapore as a belated reinforcement, and suffered swift humiliation. One of its battalions, the 6th Norfolks, lost six subalterns and a captain in its first seventy-two hours of action. The attacking force may have been small, but Yamashita’s three divisions were among the best in the Japanese army; they moved fast, and losses seldom deterred them from sustaining attacks. The code of Bushido caused them to treat themselves as mercilessly as they did their foes. A Japanese fighter pilot crash-landing in Johore fired a pistol at curious Malays who surrounded him, then used his last bullet to shoot himself.
From the outset, fleeing British clung to the racial conventions of empire and shamelessly abandoned their native subjects. The commissioner in Penang refused to allow Malay firefighters to enter the European quarter after bombing raids, and rejected pleas to demolish some European houses to create a firebreak. When Penang Island was evacuated, non-Europeans were denied access to shipping. A Chinese judge was evicted after boarding, though the fortress commander’s car was embarked. A refugee from the island said later that the manner of the British evacuation was “a thing which I am sure will never be forgotten or forgiven.” Sikh police in Singapore were assured by their British chief that he would stay with them to the end; instead, he fled. In the Cameron Highlands, departing settlers appealed to Asian members of the local defence force to stick with their units; unsurprisingly, they resigned en bloc. In Kuala Lumpur, British doctors abandoned hospital wards to the care of their Asian counterparts. A young actor with a Chinese theatre troupe told his audience in the mining centre of Ipoh: “The British are treating their empire as property and handling the whole thing as if it was a business transaction.”
The behaviour of British communities in Malaya and later Burma was rational enough: word had reached Southeast Asia about the orgy of rape and massacre which accompanied the fall of Hong Kong at the end of December. But the spectacle of white rulers succumbing to panic mocked the myth of benign imperial paternalism. Racism and self-interest were almost absolutes: when Chinese stewards aboard the light cruiser Durban mutinied, Capt. Peter Cazalet wrote ruefully, “We have not treated the Chinese well in peacetime … they have no real loyalty towards us and why should they have?” He noted that one mutineer expressed a desire to join the Japanese army. An eyewitness at Singapore noticed that as civilian bombing victims were thrown into mass graves, in death as in life European and Asian bodies were segregated. The condescension of the rulers was exemplified by the reaction of Malaya’s governor when his manservant was killed by a Japanese bomb behind Government House. Shenton Thomas wrote in his diary: “Terribly sad about my boy. He was such a faithful soul.” Other nations of the British Empire “family” showed scant enthusiasm for receiving refugees from Southeast Asia. Australia at first agreed to grant entry to just 50 Europeans and the same number of Chinese; Ceylon set an initial limit of 500, with priority for its own citizens. Immigration barriers were lifted only belatedly, in the face of catastrophe.
On 31 January, the causeway linking Malaya to Singapore Island was blown up. The British principal of Raffles College, hearing the explosion, asked what it signified.