Inferno - Max Hastings [138]
Another prisoner, Lt. Stephen Abbott, recorded the scene as he and his companions began the long trek through Singapore to improvised prison camps: “The area presented a picture of appalling destruction. Overturned lorries, bicycles, prams, furniture lay in huge bomb craters, or were scattered over roads and pavements. Buildings with gaping holes displayed their pathetic interiors to the world. Naked bodies and grotesque human limbs rested where they had been flung. A repulsive stench rose in the humid atmosphere. The local population—Chinese, Malay and Indian—stood by the wreckage of their former homes in stunned misery, tiny children clinging in fear to their mothers’ clothing. From every building which remained standing in any shape or form, the red ball of the Japanese flag was hung … I stared at the Japanese soldiers in the streets as we passed. Were these the men we had been fighting, and who were now to be our masters? They were like unkempt children in their ragged uniforms, but children triumphant, and more than ready to mock their victims.”
For Singaporeans, after more than a century of colonial rule the revelation of its frailty changed everything. Lim Kean Siew, the eighteen-year-old son of a Chinese notable, wrote: “The heavens had indeed opened for us. From a languid, lazy and lackadaisical world, we were catapulted into a world of somersaults and frenzy from which we would never recover.” Likewise Lee Kuan Yew, who as an eighteen-year-old student at Raffles College watched the British enter captivity: “I saw them tramping along the road in front of my house for three solid days, an endless stream of bewildered men who did not know what had happened, why it had happened or what they were doing here in Singapore in any case.”
Savouring Japanese victory, Major General Imai, chief of staff of the Imperial Guards Division, said to captive Indian Army maj. gen. Billy Key: “We Japanese have captured Malaya and Singapore. Soon we will have Sumatra, Java and the Philippines. We do not want Australia. I think it is time for your British Empire to compromise. What else can you do?” Key replied defiantly, “We can drive you back. We will eventually occupy your country. This is what we can do.” The Japanese seemed unconvinced, because the battlefield performance of Britain’s forces in Malaya had been so pitiful. Yamashita and his officers celebrated victory with dried cuttlefish, chestnuts and wine, gifts of the emperor, set out upon a white tablecloth.
Col. Manasobe Tsuji, one of the Japanese army’s foremost and most brutal militarists, gazed with contempt upon British and Australian prisoners, who had so easily allowed themselves to be defeated: “Groups of them were squatting on the road smoking, talking and shouting in rather loud voices. Strangely enough, however, there was no sign whatever of hostility in their faces. Rather was there an expression of resignation such as is shown by the losers in fierce sporting contests … The British soldiers looked like men who had finished their work by contract at a suitable salary, and were now taking a rest free from the anxiety of the battlefield.”
MP Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary that Singapore’s surrender “has been a terrific