Fortress: The Story of the Siege and Fall of Singapore

By Kenneth Attiwill

Fortress: The Story of the Siege and Fall of Singapore, first published in 1959, is the sobering account of the failed defense of Singapore in late 1941 and early 1942 against the advancing Japanese Army.

In Fortress, author Kenneth Attiwill—himself a prisoner of the Japanese for three and a half years—recreates, in vivid detail, the fall of Singapore in World War II: the unforgettable atmosphere of chaos, misunderstanding, panic bombings, evacuation of civilians, ill-trained troops, the invasion of Japanese troops, and the beginnings of tortures as the “Fortress” fell.

Here is an engrossing analysis of the Singapore defeat—in strategy caused by the failure of the Chief of Staff in London to activate the British defense in Malaya; in the air due to disorganization at Air Command Headquarters; on the sea, because Japanese efficiency was underestimated; and on land, through misjudgment of the invasion of Malaya.

Richly illustrated throughout with 14 pages of maps and photographs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eschenburg Press
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787206007

Kenneth Attiwill

Kenneth Andrew Attiwill (September 23, 1906 - 1992) was an Australian journalist, writer and actor. Born in Adelaide, Australia in 1906, he began his career as a journalist for the Adelaide Register, followed by the Sun and Herald in Melbourne. He then moved to London, where he was a journalist for the Daily Sketch. During the Second World War, he was a Prisoner of War of the Japanese. His novels draw on his experiences in journalism, at war and at sea. He resided in England for some years after World War II. He was married to Evadne Price (1888-1985), an Australian-British writer, actress, astrologer and media personality. The couple retired to their native Australia in 1976. Attiwill passed away in 1992.

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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.

© Eschenburg Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

FORTRESS

THE Story of the Siege and Fall of Singapore

by

KENNETH ATTIWILL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6

ILLUSTRATIONS 8

MAPS 9

INTRODUCTION 10

I — High Explosive Overture 12

II 14

III 15

2 — The Four Defeats 17

II 18

III 20

IV 26

V 30

VI 33

3 — The Great Myth 36

II 38

III 40

4 — Cloud-Cuckoo Island 44

II 53

III 55

5 — Last Boat Home 58

II 62

6 — Across the Causeway 70

II 73

III 75

7 — The Siege Begins 78

II 86

8 — The Vital Eight Days 94

II 95

III 97

IV 99

V 102

9 — Waiting for the Blow 106

II 116

10 — The Storm Breaks 118

II 120

III 122

IV 124

11 — The Dying Island 128

II 132

III 140

12 — The Tightening Noose 146

II 149

III 153

13 — The Fortress Falls 156

II 163

III 166

Postscript 169

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 176

DEDICATION

To Evadne

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Author wishes to express thanks to all those people—those quoted in the text and those who for various reasons do not wish their names made public—who gave generously of their time and memories during many interviews which have so greatly helped to make this book.

The Author also wishes to express gratitude to the Authors and Publishers of those many books and official dispatches without whose views and conclusions so many aspects of the Singapore story could not have been known. A list of these sources is given below; but it must be understood that none but the present Author is in any way responsible or liable for any statements or conclusions published in the text.

Among the books and dispatches consulted were:

"The War Against Japan, Vol. 1. The Loss of Singapore (U.K. Official War History), by Maj.-Gen. S. Wood burn Kirby and Others (H.M.S.O.)

The Japanese Thrust (Official Australian War History), by Lionel Wigmore

The Civil Defence of Malaya, compiled by Sir George Maxwell (Hutchinson)

The Second World War, by Winston S. Churchill (Cassell)

Why Singapore Fell, by Lt.-Gen. H. Gordon Bennett (Thacker, Bombay)

Malayan Postscript, by Ian Morrison (Faber)

Who Dies Fighting, by Angus Rose (Cape)

In Seventy Days, by E. M. Glover (Muller)

Of Death But Once, by Roy Bulcock (F. W. Cheshire)

Singapore to Freedom, by O. W. Gilmour (Burrow)

Behind Bamboo, by Rohan Rivett (Angus & Robertson)

The Jungle Is Neutral, by F. Spencer Chapman (Chatto & Windus)

Last Flight From Singapore, by A. G. Donahue (Macmillan)

Retreat In The East, by O. D. Gallagher (Harrap)

Malayan Climax, by Carline Reid (Mercury Press, Tasmania)

History of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, by Brig. I. McI. Stewart (Nelson)

Suez to Singapore, by Cecil Brown (Random House, N.Y.)

Singapore and After, by Lord Strabolgi (Hutchinson)

Impregnable Fortress, by John C. Sharp

The Affair at Alexandra Hospital (Imperial War Museum)

Official Dispatches by:

"Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham (Suppl. London Gazette, 22.1.48)

Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton (Suppl. London Gazette, 26.2.48)

Lt.-Gen. A. E. Percival (2nd Suppl. London Gazette, 26.2.48)

Air Vice-Marshal Sir Paul Maltby (3rd Suppl. London Gazette: 26.2.48)

ABDA Command, by General Sir Archibald Wavell (H.M.S.O.)"

The Author also wishes to thank Mr. Douglas Warner for his assistance in preparing the manuscript for press.

ILLUSTRATIONS

LT.-GEN. A. E. PERCIVAL, G.O.C. MALAYA

LT.-GEN. TOMOYUKI YAMASHITA, COMMANDER OF THE VICTORIOUS JAPANESE FORCES

SIR SHENTON THOMAS

AIR VICE-MARSHAL SIR ROBERT BROOKE-POPHAM, GENERAL SIR ARCHIBALD WAVELL, AND VICE-ADMIRAL SIR GEOFFREY LAYTON

MAJ.-GEN. H. GORDON BENNETT

BRITISH REINFORCEMENTS DISEMBARK AT KEPPEL HARBOUR, SINGAPORE

AUSTRALIAN ARMY NURSES ARRIVE ON THE ISLAND

THE LAST OF A GROUP OF 131 MEN AND ONE GIRL LEAVE THEIR BOMB-SHATTERED STEAMER DURING EVACUATION FROM SINGAPORE

A MALAY CHILD LIES DEAD AFTER AN AIR RAID, WHILE RELATIVES WEEP

ADMIRAL SIR TOM PHILLIPS WITH ADMIRAL PALLISER

The Prince of Wales SINKING

AN AUSTRALIAN ANTI-TANK UNIT COVERS A ROAD BLOCK

WRECKED JAPANESE TANKS BURN IN THE JUNGLE ROAD

JAPANESE TROOPS WADE ACROSS A STREAM

JAPANESE ARMY LORRIES CROSSING AN IMPROVISED BRIDGE

ENEMY INFANTRY CREEP FORWARD ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF SINGAPORE CITY

JAPANESE REST ON A HILLSIDE OUTSIDE THE CITY

A LAUNCH LEAVES SINGAPORE ISLAND ON FEBRUARY 13, 1942, WHILE KEPPEL HARBOUR BURNS

A PILLAR OF HEAVY SMOKE RISES OVER SINGAPORE CITY

THE LAST ISSUE OF THE ONE-PAGE NEWS SHEET PUBLISHED IN SINGAPORE BEFORE THE SURRENDER

LT.-GEN. PERCIVAL AND STAFF OFFICERS MARCH TO LT.-GEN. YAMASHITA’S H.Q. WITH A WHITE FLAG

THE SCENE AT THE SURRENDER

YAMASHITA INSPECTS THE WORST-HIT AREAS ON SINGAPORE ISLAND

VICTORIOUS JAPANESE TROOPS MARCH THROUGH THE CITY CENTRE

CHINESE MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN HERDED TOGETHER BY JAPANESE TROOPS AFTER THE FALL OF SINGAPORE

BRITISH PRISONERS OF WAR ARE FORCED BY THEIR CAPTORS TO SWEEP THE STREETS

Pictures are reproduced by courtesy of Keystone Press Agency Ltd., and the Imperial War Museum

MAPS

MALAYA

SINGAPORE

INTRODUCTION

ON the morning of January 31, 1942, under the bright light of the equatorial moon, the remnants of the British Imperial troops who had retreated down the length of the Malay Peninsula, filed across the causeway into Singapore Island and prepared for a siege defence.

A little more than a fortnight later—at 7.50 p.m. on February 15—Lt.-Gen. A. E. Percival, General Officer Commanding Malaya, signed the instrument of British surrender to Lt.-Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the victorious Japanese 25th Army.

Singapore—the impregnable fortress, the bastion of Empire, the Gibraltar of the Far East—keystone to British naval strategy from the Indian Ocean to Australia—had fallen.

The shock went round the world.

To Germans, Italians, Japanese and all enemies of British colonial rule, the reaction was unrestrained glee and triumph. The pride of Great Britain had been humbled in the dust of Singapore. The weak hand in the velvet glove diplomacy of British civilization had been stripped of its pretensions.

To millions of people in Asia, the ugly side of frightened, demoralized white humanity had been exposed to public view like the flayed skin of an Aztec sacrifice.

To Britons, long persuaded to picture Singapore as a distant Gibraltar or Malta, the news was shattering. The skies could have fallen more easily than the famed and boasted Singapore fortress.

This was disaster. Mr. Churchill, the British Prime Minister, described it as the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history. The retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 had been a heavy blow, but the heroes of Dunkirk had not surrendered. Singapore was collapse, cease fire, surrender.

A sense of shock and shame has persisted through seventeen years. It was implicit in Mr. Ian Morrison’s indignant refutation of cowardice in his book Malayan Postscript, written only three months after the surrender. It is implicit in the stubborn refusal of successive British Parliaments of both parties to conduct an official inquiry into all the circumstances of the collapse—though the American Congress investigated Pearl Harbour immediately after the devastating Japanese air raid in December 1941, and within two months had named the men who failed and the reason why. It is implicit in the urbane smothering of vital facts amid a mass of technical detail in The War Against Japan, Vol. 1, published in 1957 as part of the British history of World War II. It is implicit in the refusal of many men and women who were in Singapore to help by telling their part in the true story. They prefer to let the truth he. I do not think that any useful purpose would be served, said one man. After all, what good will it do?

I believe there are millions of people who want to know the truth. I wanted to know it, for the surrender of Singapore cost me three and a half years’ suffering in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. During and after the fighting we felt resentful. In the prison camps we swore there would be a big showdown when we came home and told our story. We were not to blame. We blamed those in authority, the British Government, the generals. Some people blamed the Australians, the Chinese, the Malays, the civilians; others blamed the Navy, the Army, the Air Force. Few people at the time of the fall of Singapore were aware of what Mr. Churchill later called the hideous efficiency of the Japanese war machine. After the war, the official dispatches and Cabinet secrets were revealed; and we who fought in and around Singapore felt that many of the explanations were glib and glossy and inadequate.

The full and proper answer to all the doubts and suspicions and rumours would have been a Royal Commission on Singapore, while men who knew the truth were still alive. That opportunity was allowed to pass.

In the following pages is an attempt to encompass the whole range of events which culminated in that dismal surrender to the Japanese. I have read as much as I could find, interviewed widely, studied official documents. I have tried to eliminate personal feeling and bias in order to record the dramatic, heroic, tragic story of Singapore as readably and as faithfully as I am able.

London

December 1958.

I — High Explosive Overture

SUNDAY in Singapore was a time for relaxation. The week’s exertions had ended and there was the weekend peace to be enjoyed before work was resumed. There were long, cool drinks to combat the heat; cricket, golf, tennis, yachting, swimming, or bridge for entertainment, according to personal taste and means. There were dinners and dances at luxury hotels, or conversation at club or home over whisky and cocktail and iced beer. It was the customary life of the white man in the tropics.

Life was like that on Sunday, December 7, 1941, in Singapore. The city on its island, suspended like an emerald below the scimitar blade of the Malayan peninsula, was wrapped in its blanket of security. The streets, their shops and bazaars gay with holly and mistletoe and Christmas toys, were thronged with people—Europeans and Chinese, Malays and Indians, civilians and soldiers—especially soldiers. There were British and Australian, Moslem and Sikh, Gurkha and Malay. There were airmen from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and the Netherlands East Indies. There were European and Asiatic members of the Volunteer Forces. At dances and in the crowded cinemas, three-quarters of the audiences were in uniform. They were a great comfort to the civilians.

Above the island droned the aircraft—Buffalo fighters, looking speedy and manoeuvrable to all those people who had never seen Hurricanes or Spitfires; Blenheim bombers, Hudsons, Wirraways, Catalina flying-boats, torpedo-carrying Vildebeestes. In the great docks of the Naval Base lay more comfort still—the ships of the British Eastern Fleet, including the battleship Prince of Wales and battle-cruiser Repulse, which had arrived amid the thankful cheers of the onlookers only a few days before. The Army, the Navy and the Air Force were ready on Singapore Island for anything that might happen; and for thousands of trusting people this meant that nothing would happen. If it did, if the Japanese were foolish enough to try anything, it would soon be over. The enemy wouldn’t stand a chance.

Conversation in the clubs and hotels and comfortable tropical lounges centred mainly on the current war scare which flared into prominence a week before when the civilian Volunteers were mobilized. But it was well spiced with business discussion, gossip about forthcoming social events and sporting fixtures, plans for Christmas. In spite of reports of mounting tension in the Pacific as peace talks between America and Japan reached an impasse, despite notices flashed on cinema screens to recall troops to barracks, armchair strategists held forth at length on the reasons why there would be no war in Malaya. The Japanese were bluffing. Japan could not go to war. Economic sanctions imposed against her a few months earlier by the United States and Britain meant that Japan could not afford a war. The vital materials without which war cannot be fought—oil, manganese, bauxite, tin, rubber—had been denied her. Besides, she had her own worries nearer home. She was still deeply committed to the Incident in China. Her ancient enemy, Russia, though fighting for her life against the Nazi onslaught in the West, still contrived to maintain her Far Eastern forces on the frontiers of Manchuria—Japan therefore could not afford to weaken her defences in case Russia and China should act to overwhelm the puppet-state. It was true that for several months Japanese forces had been infiltrating south into French Indo China to fill the power vacuum left by France’s defeat in Europe; but the Japanese would not be so foolish as to risk a war against the combined strength of the United States, the British Empire, and the Dutch.

There were some defeatists who believed that war with Japan was not only possible but certain, and that the Japanese would make headway. But these pessimists did not disturb Singapore’s complacency. If war came, there could be only one answer: the crushing defeat of the aggressors. The optimists pointed to the well-known inefficiency of the Japanese, who in four and a half years had failed to defeat the Chinese. There was the north-east monsoon to handicap any attempted Japanese invasion of Malaya; and the jungle was generally considered impenetrable to any large body of troops. As for Singapore itself, the island was said to be impregnable, with its great fortress guns mounted in concrete. Singapore could repel invasion from the sea. Now that the Eastern Fleet had arrived, any cause for uneasiness had been removed.

There was a further picture, latent in the minds of the Europeans in Singapore, which coloured the views of the optimists with a rosy glow—the cartoon of the Jap as a small man with a tombstone grin and large spectacles, who had no inventive genius and could only copy his rivals’ wares. Nobody could take that comic fellow seriously. He could not see to shoot straight, he could not sail ships, he could not fly aircraft.

To be fair, the amateur strategists had a certain amount of official backing for their arguments. Only four days earlier, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief Far East, had told a Press conference: There are clear signs that Japan does not know which way to turn. Tojo is scratching his head. There are no signs that Japan is going to attack anyone. He had added that his greatest worry had been fighter aircraft, but he was satisfied with the Brewster Buffalo. We can get on all right with Buffaloes out here, he said, but they haven’t got the speed for England. Let England have the super-Spitfires and hyper-Tornadoes. Buffaloes are quite good enough for Malaya.

So much for European reaction to the explosive situation in the Far East up to December 7, 1941. Complacency ruled the island—solid, more impenetrable than the Malayan jungle. It was a compound of easy living, wishful thinking, misinformation, ignorance, and deceptive appearance.

But the British were only a minority of the population—and a tiny, élite minority at that. What did the Chinese think, for instance? The Chinese totalled more than three-quarters of the population of Singapore Island. Their homeland had been under Japanese attack for more than four years. True, they were torn asunder by political differences. There was the Kuomintang faction (the party of Chiang Kai-shek, who headed the official Government of China) and the Communists. There was also a large proportion of people who had weaker ties with China, Straits-born Chinese who had never seen their mother country, whose parents had lived in Singapore for four and five generations. If war came, would not the Chinese fight against the aggressor who had devastated their native homeland? And would not the Singapore Chinese discover a civic pride in the city which had been their home for so long? Most of the Europeans did not know, and made no effort to find out. The Chinese Communist Party in Singapore had been outlawed the year before, and had not been rehabilitated when Russia was attacked in the previous July. The Communists were dangerous, and you could never be sure that the Kuomintang Party was entirely free from them. As everyone knows, you can’t tell one Chinese from another—especially if you never look at them. Apart from tenuous business contacts with the richer and more powerful Chinese in commerce, White and Yellow did not mix. The only thing common to all was the desire to make money.

If they did not understand the feelings of the Chinese, still less did the Europeans understand the Malays and the Indians. The Malays were courteous, good-mannered, easy-going and easily governed. Most of the Indians were Tamils from South India. They were the poorest members of the community, a source of cheap manual labour on rubber estates, docks, railways and in the cities. Few cared about the Indians’ viewpoint, if they had one.

There was a wide gulf between officers and other ranks. Officers had their own clubs and drinking places, the men had theirs. The best European hotels were out of bounds to the ranks. There was, with a few honourable exceptions, little fraternization and a good deal of segregation. Officers were welcomed in the homes of the rich Europeans, other ranks found hospitality where they could. It was a division to which even the Australians, much more democratic than the British about officer-men relationships, were not immune. And it was a wider gap than any which existed in Britain after two years of war. In short, it was the British Colonial pattern—a narrow élite of Service, commercial and plantation people at the top, living comfortably in huge houses or luxurious flats; and below were the lesser Europeans, the Chinese, the Malays, the Indians, the Eurasians, the Arabs and the Jews, all living their separate lives at varying levels according to their means. Between these disunited sections of the crowded community was a gulf of selfish ignorance and prejudice, which led to grotesque misjudgement of public morale, hastened the crumbling of resistance when things went wrong, and prompted some ludicrous public pronouncements by the military High Command and the Government.

II

These things worried very few people in Singapore on December 7, 1941. The traditional pattern of living was agreeable—why should it change? As daylight vanished under the swift onset of equatorial night, Singapore City blazed with light. Like a confirmed rake bent on self-destruction, the community moved about its complex teeming way of life in streets and kampongs, homes and fields. Only in the rarefied atmosphere of High Command was there concern and the furrowing of brows. Thirty-six hours earlier—at midday on December 6—a lone Hudson bomber had reported Japanese convoys with naval escort steering west and north-west from near Cape Cambodia in Indo-China. Were the movements innocent, or did they presage an attack on Siam or Northern Malaya, or both? Or was it political bluff? The High Command could not make up its mind, and bad weather prevented any new sightings which would resolve the dilemma.

At nine o’clock that night, the full moon rose above Malaya. About the same time, further reports of movements of Japanese vessels in the Gulf of Siam reached the headquarters of Far East Command in Singapore. Shortly after midnight, troops defending the beaches above Kota Bharu, north-eastern tip of Malaya, reported that transport vessels were anchoring off the coast and that the shore defences were being shelled. Two hours later, the main Japanese invasion force landed in Siam, and Japanese fighter and bomber aircraft flocked across from South Indo-China.

At 3.30 a.m. Fighter Control Operations Room reported unidentified aircraft 140 miles from Singapore, approaching from the

Reviews for Fortress

[Damien Kee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant account of the chaos and terror of combat and divided leadership.