The Forgotten Highlander (Alistair Urquhart)

This is the first time I read a first-hand account of a POW involved in the Malayan Campaign. I am greatly affected by it, despite being brought up on a diet of Japanese atrocities in Asia in World War 2. Much is said about the killing, maiming, raping and torture, but a reader is usually left to imagine the magnitude of these atrocities through the statistics; this book describes in graphic details the actual behaviours of the Japanese and their equally brutal Korean subjects and the horrible conditions the POWs were subjected to.

The author escaped the fighting in Malaya and Singapore as he was assigned to administrative work in the Battle Box in Fort Canning but was taken prisoner after the surrender and hence went on to suffer more than three years in various ordeals including building the notorious Death Railway in Thailand and Burma, being torpedoed in 'hellships' and then almost being close enough when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He survived to tell the story and the story was all the more stirring precisely because it was not told with heroics in mind. He told an honest story of how he survived and how he tried to go on, he also told a story of how he eventually became almost immune to the death and suffering that was happening around him. But while this book can be read as a superficial description of one man's experience, there are hints of bigger issues that worth exploring. One of these is the author's attitudes towards the Japanese.

It is no surprise that the author loathed his enemies, especially the camp guards who tortured them no end, yet there was one interesting episode that he mentioned briefly near the end of the book that could have given the readers much to think about - he and Dr Mathieson attended to a sick Japanese girl towards whom he felt no animosity. How does a POW, having gone through such systematic inhumane treatment, feel towards another of 'the other'? This complex attitude of the POWs, even if just that of the author, would have added much to the richness of the book.

Another one is the Koreans who were conscripted to serve in South-East Asia. The Koreans today generally still harbour great dislike of the Japanese owing to the bad legacy Japan left as their colonial master. Yet, in the treatment of the POWs and the populace of South-East Asia, Koreans are known to be no less harsh than the Japanese. In fact, the author even alluded to the Japanese being more measured when it came to beating the POWs (pg. 219). The Koreans today paint themselves as the victims of the Japanese imperialism and in the current K-pop wave, most Asians other than the Japanese, are eager to agree. But were they? This is one subject that is worth exploring (together with the attitudes of the Taiwanese who were also conscripted and served in South-East Asia).

The final one is the parallel that I could not help drawing between the author's experience in signing the agreement with the Japanese in the Selarang Incident and with the British government when he returned to Britain. He described himself signing a name that would not identify him, only in this case if he were to be like his comrades who signed 'Mickey Mouse' in Selarang, he would surely blow his own cover. That bitterness in how he was treated upon his return would stay with him. This is not the first time I came across this theme, it was how General Percival was treated upon his release.

This book resonates a lot with me, mainly because it describes the experience of a soldier who was in Singapore in the days before I was born. His description of the sights and sounds of Singapore then gives me much to imagine. The bumpy road he rode along from 'Singapore' (known as 'town' today) to Changi has long since been replaced by an expressway (our term for 'highway') but it was still there when I was young, so is Selarang camp, which I drive past on occasions just to see the white buildings since its so near home. Now I know it was once home to the Gordon Highlanders as well.


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Singapore And After: a study of the Pacific Campaign (Joseph Montague Kenworthy and Lord Strabolgi)

This book was published in 1942, immediately after South-East Asia fell to the Japanese and when India and Australia were threatened. What it means is that much was still not known when it was written. Not only was the final outcome of the Second World War a few years away, most of the documents related to the Campaign were still not released. The reader therefore cannot expect a book that is filled with facts substantiated with data nor one that critically analyses the Campaign. The author did not claim this book to be one, and from the length as well as the tone of the book, I get the impression that this book was written to inform the people in the United Kingdom of what had just happened to the colonies in the Far East, not just Malaya and Singapore, for the book includes a survey of Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch Indies.

This book was written in a hurry because on my copy, inside the front cover, an earlier owner had dedicated the book to her son/daughter with the date 2nd April 1942 written on it. The rush to get the book published resulted in inaccuracies in many places. Some of these are error of facts, for example the number of artillery batteries in Singapore (definitely more than two) (pg. 88) and Chiang Tso-lin dying in 1918 (it was in 1928). There are others relating to names of places; many of these I reserve my judgement because they could be spelt differently from how they are now due to the Romanization of the names for example Tjilatjap instead of Chilachap as spelt today. But there is one I find unacceptable - Tengate (Tengah) Aerodrome in Singapore (pg. 93). It took me a while to conclude that he was referring to Tengah.

Other faults include the rather random pictures that appear in random places throughout the book, for instance, why would a picture of Georgetown, Penang appear in the chapter on the Philippines and a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Appendix? Even more perplexing is Appendix I - A short chronology of Chinese History. Yet there is something that I must commend about the editing - mis-spelt names of places may be a result of ignorance of the Far East (it was 1942 after all), but beyond these, I did not come across any other editorial mistakes such as a spelling error. Why do I think this is amazing? Some of the printing is of such quality that reminds me of a facsimile typed on an old typewriter that did not have a clean set of strike bars. That reminded me that those were the days without spell-checkers. In 1942 under such dire conditions, someone (not the author, I think) has done a really good job.

The author's position was quite consistent in this book: no matter which theatre he was referring to, he would lament the lack of conscription in the years before the war to prepare the locals to fight the enemies. He did not blame the lack of foresight, he felt it was a misguided policy that deliberately excluded the locals. Another area where he was consistent was in his scathing attack of the British politicians' handling of the war and conversely his praise of both the Dutch and the Americans.

If the book suffers from the faults mentioned above, there are a few things that make me think well of the author. First of all, some of his reading of the Japanese's intentions were quite accurate. His conclusion that the Japanese did not intervene in Russia despite Operation Barbarossa was due to their experience in Nomonhan (which he got the year wrong, it was 1939, not 1938) bore out in a well-argued book on the subject written decades later. Secondly, I like his sense of optimism and courage that never falter throughout the book. Remember, this author was not talking with hindsight, he wrote the book immediately after the Far East fell like dominoes, yet he totally believed that Japan would lose. He wrongly predicted  that the loss would result from a combination of the pincer on the Japanese coming from Australia in the south and China in the north but he never wavered in his belief that Japan would lose. He was a courageous man, I have never come across another soul who would take Churchill's famous exhortation of his countrymen to fight the enemies 'in the streets, on the beaches and in the hills' to be a reflection of defeatism. He asked instead why they should not fight in the enemy's streets, beaches and hills.

I am going to keep this book. Not because it is a resource that I think I would return to but for the historic value of the copy I own and as a source of optimism and courage whenever I need them. We don't just read for knowledge do we?


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Did Singapore Have to Fall?: Churchill and the Impregnable Fortress (Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn)

How does one answer the question - Did Singapore have to fall? Was the final outcome a result of a breakdown in discipline in the Commonwealth troops in the final days of the campaign? Was it because of poorer generalship? Was it because geopolitical events overtook the original considerations despite there being political will? Or was materiel committed yet wrongly deployed? Or perhaps Singapore was doomed from the start, going back to when it was wrongly conceived as a naval base and then wrongly perceived as an impregnable fortress? This book written by a pair of academics then teaching in the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore looks at the outcome from these angles and came up with a highly readable and persuasively argued book that took recently-available documents and literature into consideration.

The book spends a chapter looking at each of the questions asked above but in the reversed order. That the world was hit hard by the Great Depression in the 1920s was well-known. That delayed the construction and eventually down-sized the Singapore naval base. It also paved the way for the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Some have argued that Britain's financial situation and ratification of the treaty prevented her from building a large enough navy to counter the Japanese when it mattered and so one can say that Malaya was doomed from that moment. The authors studied this in depth and concluded that this might not be so. In addition they also addressed other issues such as the diversion of a few hundred fighter planes from the thousands going to Russia to Malaya and the commitment of tanks to the defence of Malaya and Singapore. In each case, they concluded that not only was it hard for Whitehall to justify their moving materiel to Malaya, particularly when the Russians were fighting and losing in Europe, the earlier neglect of Malaya would make these too little too late.

Much was also made of Operation Matador, the plan to move troops into Songkhla and Pattani in Thailand to counter a Japanese landing. Whether it would have made a difference, we would not know but Map 4.1 on page 59 of the book shows the options that the Japanese had which would have rendered Matador ineffective even if it had been put into action. If all these were not able to make a crucial difference, it would be down to the defence preparations, the handling of the campaign and the quality of the troops to win the battle.

Even when I was in school, we were told that the guns that were deployed along the southern coast of Singapore were 'pointing the wrong way', implying first of all that the British were not expecting the Japanese to invade from the north, and that the guns were not able to traverse. This, through meticulous research, the authors were able to debunk (right down to the number of degrees the guns were able to traverse and which ones actually fired at the enemy). I wonder how this 'pointing the wrong way' myth can still stand after this book. Unfortunately these guns were actually built for the purpose of coastal defence and were given the wrong type of rounds (armour piercing rather than high explosives). Their contributions were therefore limited.

If the static defences were ineffective, it would be down to the troops to win the war. Alas, it is known that many of the troops were not properly trained nor equipped. Yet there exist plenty of examples of those who performed admirably well. Still that was not enough to make the fortress, if Singapore ever was one, impregnable. However, as a Singaporean reader, my sympathy is with the soldiers who fought, suffered and even died, whatever the objective judgement of them. Even if there exist plenty of evidence of untrained, indiscipline and incompetent soldiers, they died trying to defend this island. Those who did not would suffer years in the POW camps or worse, building the Death Railway.

I live very near Changi, no more than 3 miles away from the Johor Battery and the Changi and Selarang POW camps featured prominently in this book. Most of all, my son is now doing his national service in Changi Airbase, right where much happened. The Singapore Armed Forces has helped to preserve much of 'old' Singapore and I can still ask him about the places in his camp that were referred to in the book. This makes the experience of reading this book a lot more real. Plenty of Australians still visit the Changi Museum and the surroundings when they are in Singapore, I believe many of them have relatives who served in Singapore during the campaign. I cannot bring myself to criticise the men whatever other sources claim, I do not claim to be objective.

This book is well worth reading, particularly for those who are interested in understanding the campaign and the issues related to it more broadly. It is well-researched, logically argued, and clearly presented. This book does not focus on the tactical aspects of the campaign, for that, readers can refer to Colin Smith's Singapore Burning or Masanobu Tsuji's Japan's Greatest Victory/Britain's Greatest Defeat, books that are no less enjoyable.


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