The Bridge at Parit Sulong (Lynette Ramsay Silver)

I must first declare that I have met the author of this book. As the book is no longer on sale here, I purchased it directly from her and I am very grateful that she lugged the books (I bought two other books) from Australia, through Sabah, before handing them over to me in Singapore. These books are printed on good-quality coated paper, meaning they won't turn yellow in my climate, but it also makes them really heavy. I'm therefore doubly grateful for saving a lot on shipping. The fact that I got them from the author made them really special to me and I am therefore positively disposed to them even before reading them.

This book is divided into two parts: the build-up to and including the Battle of Muar and the aftermath of the massacre in Parit Sulong. I really appreciate the inclusion of the first part for so few books were written on the Australian experience in Malaya. So much of what I have read has but included a mention of the Australian and where they fought (or giving them the dubious distinction of having deserted before Singapore fell) but none like this book, gave such a blow by blow account of the 27th Brigade, 8th Division, 2nd AIF in action in Malaya. What I have read generally focused on the British experience and the undeserved Impregnable Fortress that is Singapore. Yet this is not just a general description of the major battles and lines of movement. The author recounted the actions of individuals so dramatically that makes you think that she must have spoken to the men individually. Her description of the village in Parit Sulong where the battle and then massacre took place was so vivid that you think she might have been there. This, of course, is not possible because while some buildings remain today, so much has changed. If anything, this provides evidence of the depth the author went to research the book.

The battle ended, the massacre took place, and many of the remaining men were taken prisoner. First in Pudu Goal in Kuala Lumpur, then to Changi in Singapore and for many, the Death Railway in Thailand. The author wisely stayed away from talking too much of that last place that is so notorious already so that she would not distract the readers from the next part of the book: the investigation, falling into oblivion, revival, pursuit, politics, and prosecution.

The second part of the book  lays bear the difficulties involved in investigating and prosecuting the war criminals that perpetuated the massacre. To be sure, the effort by the Allies to bring the war criminals to justice started out well enough. But even without the 'external factors' coming into play, investigating a particular incident is terribly difficult. Particularly in the case of Parit Sulong, there were but two survivors out of the more than 100 massacred. After a few years, memories faded or got distorted. Cyril Ward, the first investigator of the massacre was killed in the middle of his work in an accident. The massacre was at risk of being forgotten if not for Captain James Godwin who came across the file while investigating other incidents. But the 'external factors' would quickly make his work close to impossible. These would include the devious nature of the accused, the collusion of the Japanese police and underworld with those being investigated, and the geo-political developments that dictated the cessation of all investigation work by 30 September 1950. It was to Godwin's credit that the accused were eventually apprehended and prosecuted.

The obstruction of the investigations due to geo-political expediency was unfortunate and would have enduring consequences. Japan feels that since they are accepted as the new allies against Communism, they have paid their dues, there was therefore no need for further delving into their deeds in the War. China and Korea would milk this against the Japanese right up to this day and as predicted by Godwin, the whitewashing of Japanese deeds from the history textbooks would lead to a generation who did not know what happened allowing some right-wingers today to accuse the USA of war crimes during the War.

One other aspect that caught my attention was the author's description of the Indians in the book. There are different dimensions to this. The Indian troops, the Rajputana Rifles in particular, was a disaster. But most of them were young, unprepared and untrained, some would later turn after the Fall of Singapore. There is always ambivalence in the portrayal of the Indians in the war. This happens at two levels. At the geo-political level, India was part of the British empire and so a big number of Indians served (and served well) in the Indian Army. On the other hand, there were those taking advantage of the British's war with the Japanese to try and fight off the British through the Indian National Army (INA). At the other level there were the Indians who were in Malaya during the War.

In the book, half the time, the escaping Australian soldiers would be helped by the Indians but equally frequently, they would be betrayed to the Japanese. Contrast that to the help the local Chinese population rendered to the Australians almost all the time, the Indians did not come out well. But one has to view this from the perspective of who the 'mother country' was fighting. The Chinese in Southeast Asia closely identified themselves with China. The businessmen in Southeast Asia were doing their utmost to raise funds to support the Kuomingtang in the fight against the Japanese who had invaded China. The Sino-Japanese War had gone on for five years by 1942, longer if we start counting from the Manchurian Incident. The local Indians' equivalent would be the British, and by extension, her allies including Australia. Unfortunately for the Indians, the Japanese lost eventually and they would always be viewed as people who allied themselves with the enemy. In my conversation with the author which occurred after I read A Gentleman's Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia, but before I read this book, I brought this issue up (due to currency). Ms Silver's merely said "They switched sides". That was spoken in a matter-of-fact way and she left it at that. Now having read the book, I must state my respect for how she was so unusually calm, in no way did she try to influence me with her opinion. In my ignorance, I had thought that she did not have a strong opinion because it was 'not her area'. Now I know better. How can anyone researching into the Malayan Campaign not know a lot about the Indians' participation at all levels? If I need more evidence, it was all in the book.

This book provides many more issues for the reader to ponder upon: the change in the Japanese attitudes from demanding that everyone dies for the Emperor to finger-pointing once they knew they were implicated; the morality of sending one to death even though the ambiguous Japanese language might have given grounds for doubts; the controversy behind Ian Ward's accusation of Godwin's method of extracting confessions (very well rebuffed by Ms Silver) among others. This event is so little known that there are only two books written on it. This being one and the other is from the recollection of one of the two survivors, Lt Ben Hackney. It is a shame that this book is not more well-known or more easily available for it is a thoroughly researched, engagingly written and highly educational. Those who are interested in the Malayan Campaign should not miss this one.

A Gentleman's Word (Nilanjana Sengupta)

This book, written by an admirer of Subhas Chandra Bose, attempts to draw a link between what the man did before his untimely death and what eventually happened in Southeast Asia.

Bose was a nationalist who fought the British to gain independence for India. Based on strong nationalism and progressive outlook described in this book, it is not hard to understand why he is so respected and loved by Indians to this day. But the controversy that would always stay with him is his relationship with the Axis powers and in particular, his collaboration with the Japanese in the Second World War. In the end the Axis lost, and it became hard to place this man.

The author probably knew the challenge she faced. On one hand she obviously, like many other Indians, have tremendous admiration for Bose and would love to write glowingly about him. But on the other hand she has to square the fact that he was indeed on the side of the Axis. The atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese during the war are well documented and Bose risked being guilty by association. The author tried feebly and unconvincingly to tell her readers that Bose was not like Japanese, in fact, he was sympathetic to the fate of the China (pg. 70, 131). All to no avail. Bose himself was clear as to who his enemies were - the British, and anyone against the British was his friend (pg. 131). In addition, Bose was invited to attend the Greater East Asian Conference, as were other nationalists who sought support front he Japanese, including Wang Jingwei (汪精卫), considered by the Chinese as a traitor. Redeeming Bose in the eyes of those against he Japanese would not be easy.

It might have been better for the author to dispense with this effort altogether and portray Bose for who he was - a nationalist whose preoccupation was to free India from Great Britain, gain independence for India and let the people determine their own fate, a very noble cause. While it may be hard to conceive now, what was happening then in China was not India’s or Bose's problem. His priority was his country and people. That, at least to me, is a very acceptable position. To try to forcibly put him in a different light was vain and in the end, unsuccessful.

What about his legacy in Southeast Asia? The author made a somewhat tenuous link between Bose and what happened in Southeast Asia after the war, namely, the rise of nationalism, the increase in activism, and the fight for independence from their colonisers. To what extent one can attribute this to Bose is arguable. Many surely looked up to him, but his role in sparking or sustaining their fight is hard to gauge. In fact, Indians' political roles in the countries of Southeast Asia would be small, perhaps with the exception of Singapore.

There is one other aspect of his legacy that the author did not explore - the race relations in Southeast Asia after the war. Unfortunately Bose died an untimely death and we can only guess the impact he had made. Much was made of Bose's speech at Cathay and Padang in Singapore in 1943. His appearance in Padang was accompanied by a review of the INA. With Sook Ching barely a year prior to it, I cannot help wondering how the Chinese perceive such a parade of Indian forces under the auspice of the Japanese, especially when many amongst the INA were originally with the British Indian Army.

Subhas Chandra Bose led a colourful albeit short life. He lived for a cause which gave him the opportunity to meet many important people and to travel to many places. He was revered by the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia and it is here that the book is situated. I have argued that the author's depiction of Bose is incomplete yet she wrote an engaging and interesting book. It was an honest effort and much credit must go to the hard-work that she put into the research. This is only the first book on Bose that I have read but it has already piqued my interest in the man and I will certainly try to learn more about him. This book is recommended for those who are interested to learn about Bose’s days in Southeast Asia.

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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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The Garden of Evening Mists (Tan Twan Eng)

This is an award winning book which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. Written by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, the story is set in the Cameroon Highlands in Malaysia and is about the main protagonist, Teoh Yun Ling's effort to discover the truth behind the people she met and her own experience as a prisoner in a Japanese camp during the Second World War.

Many good reviews are available on Goodreads and I encourage you to read those. I intend to write my own reflection after reading the book, not a review.

The last time I went to the Cameroon Highlands must have been 40 years ago, I haven't been back since. But reading this book certainly brings back a lot of memories and for once, I was able to visualise the place described by the author, fictitious maybe, but real enough for me. I must confess that I am not an avid reader of local Singaporean literature and this is the first time I venture into Malaysian literature. The experience of trying to imagine the place as described is an interesting one, familiar, yet not being able to call my own. It is not only the places, the language also has that same effect on me. The author made liberal use of Bahasa Malaysia, a language which I cannot claim to be fluent at but still knowing enough to make out what was being said. Others, like Cold Storage is also comfortingly familiar though could pose a problem to readers unfamiliar with the supermarket chain that has been around for more than a hundred years.

I came to know of this book after sitting through two back-to-back paper presentations in a conference that focused on this book. I read it because one of them referred to this book as 'fiction augmenting history', in particular WW2 history. A huge part of the book focuses on the time a few years after the war, when Yun Ling took up an apprenticeship with Aritomo. This was augmented with significant parts of contemporary times, and completing it were small sections on Yun Ling's experience in the internment camp. Among the few thread that ran through the book, the evolution of Yun Ling's attitude towards her captors struck me most. How she must have first hated the Japanese because of their treatment of her and her sister, to slowly embracing the culture (gardening and archery amongst them) and finally as she reached her own retirement age, being more interested in finding the truth than settling scores.

This is how people in Southeast Asia have changed over the 7 decades after the war, except that, most of us have moved on to another phase - consigning the whole national experience to history whether we know the truth or not. Just like the two goddesses mentioned in the book, Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory and her twin sister, the goddess of Forgetting, whose name we cannot remember anymore, some things we choose to remember, others we choose to forget.

Empires in the Balance (H.P. Willmott)

This is a book that tries to address the problem with the frequent singular emphasis on individual theatres in the Pacific War. The British perspective of the war at the end of 1941 in the Far East is invariably on the Malayan Campaign and the subsequent fall of Singapore. The American view starts with the attack on Pearl Habor and in terms of land campaign, is centred on the Philippines. There are two other theatres that are given less attention, the Burma Campaign and the war in the Dutch East Indies. To the author, these are not individual campaigns but are linked particularly in the eyes of the Japanese as one big operation. And in order to get a better idea of the tremendous success of the Japanese, one has to look at their multiple engagements together. With this book the author tries to give the reader a broader and more complete view of the war in the Far East once Japan unleashed its military might in the region.

In the early chapters the author explored the question of why Japan went to war in the Far East. Not much was spent on Japan's involvement in China and Manchuria despite these being the major factors which first induced Japan's imperialism and then necessitated her to move south to the South East Asia, and finally condemning her to a war with the United States of America which she had no hope of winning. The author's detailed investigation of the situations of the allies in detail (Great Britain, the US and the Dutch; the French having the dubious honour of being more of a collaborator of the Axis). I, being Singaporean, naturally paid most attention to the situation in Malaya and Singapore and here, the author gave a most damning appraisal of the British in the inter-war years. Not only was there much complacency, the reality of a cash-strapped Treasury ensured that the naval base would not be fully operational by the time the war started. And when the war did start, the constraints on all sides ensured that when the chiefs of staff realised the impossibility of sending the fleet to defend Malaya, "they turned to air power in order to economize on troops, and in the end they sent troops to economize on aircraft" (pg. 105). To the author, Singapore was lost before the war even started.

The Americans fared better in the Philippines, putting up a spirited fight that lasted months after Singapore was lost. The main criticism was on MacArthur who boasted much but did not have the results to show for it. The Dutch, with what was left of their home, were most under-manned but stout-hearted in the defence of what they had left. Throughout the book, the author, a British, reserved the most scathing criticism for the British; less for those who did the fighting but more for the decision makers in Whitehall and also Wavell. There were many occasions when I felt the author overdid the sarcasm (for example on pg. 221, 229, 322, 404) but he probably felt strongly enough about it.

That aside, the writing throughout the book is thoroughly enjoyable. This is not a short book, standing close to 500 pages, yet at no point was I bored. The battles were described with an equal dose of energy and frustration, the author's own analyses throughout the book were engaging and well considered. This is not a book that skims the surface and tries to pass off as a go-to book for the war in the Pacific; the details provided in the book at the various fronts attest to the breadth of knowledge the author possesses.

The title made it clear the book ends its coverage at April 1942, now generally regarded as the point beyond which the Japanese started tasting defeat. It was by no means clear then, and at the end of the book, the author tried to assess the various options open to both the Japanese and the Allies. This final chapter is well-worth reading, for the scenarios considered by the author might actually have happened. This book is highly recommended especially if one is looking for a book that gives a good survey of the months immediately after Japan made it 'southward advance'. It may just be the best book I read for the year.

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Main Fleet to Singapore (Russell Grenfell)

This relatively short book has an interesting title: Main Fleet to Singapore which gives one the impression that it is about the naval decisions concerning British dispositions in the Far East. This is largely correct if one were to look at the proportion of the book dedicated to the events and decisions leading up to the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. But it has a sub-title: An Account of Naval Actions of the Last War. This suggests that the book is more ambitious and it indeed covers the Dutch Indies which fell after Singapore, going all the way to the Battle of Midway. A book that is a little more than 200 pages might not be able to give adequate cover to the naval aspect of the Malayan Campaign, let alone the naval campaigns leading up and including the Battle of Midway. Readers should therefore not expect too much if it is the strategic and tactical details they are looking for. But what make this book invaluable are critical analyses and therefore persuasive arugments and great writing.

The first few chapters of the book detailing the situation in the Far East including the rise of Japan and the Singapore Base is largely a historical account. From Chapter 9 Inquest on the Disaster (the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse) onwards however, the author's incisive analysis starts to come through and he was able to persuade the reader as to why the situation was rather precarious for the British after the loss of Southeast Asia to the Japanese - the Japanese would be able to move into the Indian Ocean against a weak British naval force and do untold damage to the Indian subcontinent and would potentially be able to link up with the Germans in the Middle East. Indeed the Japanese had attacked Ceylon from sea and was simultaneously moving to India through Burma overland; this theory is not far-fetched.

From this point on, the author concluded subsequent chapters with equally thoughtful analyses. In the final chapter he presented his views on how British naval domination for centuries were handed over to the Americans. He traced how it happened to the British sentiment at the turn of the century when it became increasingly pacifist, even rejoicing at the outcomes of the Washington Conferences where the naval treaties were signed. That would not be the only reason for the subsequent difficulties that Britain found herself in when defending her interests in the Far East but I would leave readers to get the rest from the book.

What I particularly enjoy about the book is the writing. That the writer has a great command of the language is beyond doubt. His combination of adjectives, verbs and other elements of the English language is greatly appreciated if not educational. I shall share three examples:

"If fortune was against the Japanese that day, they had invited its disfavour." (pg. 173)

Referring to how military people tend to look at defensive tactics with disfavour:

"And a system that leads to the destruction of the highest proportion of enemy warships cannot have much wrong with it, whatever it is called." (pg. 206)

My personal favourite is this. Referring to Admiral Spruance's realisation that he might be able to catch the Japanese carriers unready at the Battle of Midway:

"... a chance had opened out to catch the enemy carriers when they were embarrassed with the recovery of the Midway force." (pg. 198)

I could not help imagining the carriers with their pants down.

All in all, a very readable book that is informative and engrossing if a little dated. Yet, if the reader is going for a critical perspective rather than the history, he will not be disappointed with this enjoyable book.


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Percival and the Tragedy of Singapore (Sir John Smyth, V.C.)

The title of this book accurately describes the foci of the book: General Percival and the fall of Singapore. However, the objective of tying the man and the campaign together can only be achieved if the narrative is weaved carefully and in this, there were points when the book risked achieving neither.

The book started off fine enough, concentrating on General Percival's early military career, detailing his time in Northern Ireland, his time in staff college and his first stint in Singapore where he made some good calls about what the defence of Singapore would entail should the Japanese ever attack south. All went well until the middle section of the book on the Malayan Campaign. Here it became less clear if the book was about the General Officer Commanding (GOC) or if it was about the campaign. Of course, as the GOC, he was intricately tied to the campaign, but the author focused overwhelmingly on the Japanese's tactics and the British's countermeasures and only gave the GOC passing mentions. Part of the reason could be the author's attempt to show the hopelessness of the situation right from the start and so to absolve the GOC of responsibilities for the inevitable outcome.

But once the campaign was over, the focus went back to the General and on his years in captivity and the post-war life, closing on a bitter-sweet note on his passing on January 1966. Again, if the book is on the General, the post-war section should receive as much attention as the pre-war part which is unfortunately not the case. I found this part well worth reading for it allows me to know a little more about his life after the war. Equally interesting is the author's description of his work with the general in the Far East Prisoners of War Association which was set up to support the POWs taken in Malaya/Singapore and Burma.

Since the publication of this book (1971), a lot more information has become available, scholars have published many articles on the subject, and other books have also been written on the Campaign. If it is the Malayan Campaign that a reader is interested in, this is one that can be considered: Singapore Burning by Colin Smith. For one written from the Japanese perspective, readers can consider Japan's Greatest Victory/ Britain's Greatest Defeat by Masanobu Tsuji. There is a more recent (1993) book that takes on a similar thread Scapegoat: General Percival Of Singapore by Clifford Kinvig that readers may want to consider as well.

(I could not find a picture of the cover of this book, so I used the most dignified picture of General Percival available.)

父亲与我 （尤今）

You Jin (尤今) is a prolific Singaporean author whose genre spans short stories, fiction, travelogues and autobiography, among others. She is not a historian and did not claim to write this book as a piece of scholarly historical work. This is a book that is divided into two parts, the first about her father and his days as a member of Force 136, and the second on the life of her parents.

The first part is her arrangement of her father's (Tham) diaries and documents left from his days in Force 136, a branch under the Special Operations Executive (SOE) that operated in Malaya behind the enemy lines during the Second World War. Tham was an important member of Force 136 that was given training in special operations in China and India before returning to Malaya with fellow operatives in 1943.

The purpose of Tham's return to Malaysia was to set up a communications channel with the British Command, then in India in preparation for an eventual British landing in Malaya. But it was not the intent of this book to explore this issue in depth, rather, Tham's diaries provide readers with a very good peek into occupied Malaya between 1943 and 1945 particularly how the anti-Japanese militias with which Force 136 co-existed, lived and evaded capture. Ironically, this group of comrades would become the Malayan Communists Party after the war and would be pursue with deadly force by the British.

Personally, I feel that the most interesting parts of the books were on the few interactions Tham and members of Force 136 had with the populous. First of all, there was this divide between the Chinese and the other races. The Malays more or less went about life as usual and in fact viewed the Chinese with suspicion (pg. 60). Whether it was because of natural enmity or for fear that the Chinese would bring trouble to them because the Japanese tended to treat Chinese more cruelty is unclear. However, one experience with the Indians is instructive. On one occasion, in order not to arouse suspicion, Tham and his colleagues had to pretend that they were Japanese, shouting unintelligible Japanese, cowing the local Indians into silence (pg. 57). The enmity might therefore have also sprouted from the fact that the Malays and Indians could not tell Chinese and Japanese apart. Secondly, among the Chinese there also seemed to be people who were able to get on with life rather undisturbed by the Japanese, this is contrary to the more common narrative of popular Chinese resistance.

In fact knowing now that the British did not make any serious attempt to retake Malaya, one has to wonder about the agency of Force 136. What exactly did they achieve as operatives in Malaya? The current historical narratives surely make quite a big deal of them. There is no doubt their life was hard and fraught with danger and on many occasions they had to suffer deprivation and pain. But in the end did they matter? This would be an interesting area to explore in future.

Leading the team of operatives was John Davis, CBE, DSO. This Englishman, who could speak Cantonese, not only struck up a good relationship with the members of Force 136, on many occasions he provided strong leadership to the group. Whether it is going off to look for water in hostile territory (pg. 16) or getting everyone out of a the jungle when the local guides were lost (pg. 60), one can see that it was he who the rest of the team looked up to. His story is told in Margaret Sheenan's (2008) book Our Man in Malaya.

The story of Force 136 has been recounted in several books (see for example Chen & Tan, 1995; Taylor, 1989; Trenowden, 1983) and this one adds in a small way to that body of literature. But its contribution is more of a first-hand account of the operatives' life in Malaya. Although it was a bit too brief for me, this serves as a good introduction to a topic that a reader may want to delve deeper into in future.

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Chen, C. and Tan, C. T. (1995). Force 136: Story of a WWII Resistance Fighter. Singapore, Asiapac Books Pte, Ltd.

Shennan, M. (2008). Our Man in Malaya: John Davis, CBE, DSO, Force 136 SOE and Post-War Counter-Insurgency. UK, The History Press.

Taylor, C. G. (1989). The Forgotten Ones of South East Asia Command & Force 136. NY, Hyperion Books.

Trenowden, I. (1983). Malayan Operations Most Secret Force 136. UK, Heinemann.

Guns of February (Henry Frei)

The Malayan Campaign involved three major parties: the allied forces, the Japanese army, and the civilians caught in the crossfire. The story from the allied perspective have been told in numerous books, spanning the view at the strategic level (Kirby, 1980; Allen, 1977) right down to the tales of the ordinary soldiers fighting the Japanese on land (Chapman, 1949) and in the air (Cull & Sortehaug, 2003). Similarly, the civilian side of the story has been richly documented, if not in English, then translated (Shinozaki, 1992; Chew & Lim, 1992). The story of the Japanese, on the other hand, tends to be less heard of. Besides one important albeit self-serving account that was written by the Chief Planner of the campaign, Col. Tsuji Masanobu (1988) that has been translated, little else has emerged.

Conspicuously missing is an account from the ordinary Japanese soldier. It appears that the dearth is not just a result of the lack of translation, but the Japanese soldiers seems rather reticent about their experience in the Malayan Campaign compared to their western counterparts. This book, Guns of February: Ordinary Japanese Soldiers' Views of the Malayan Campaign & the Fall of Singapore 1941-42 is an attempt to fill this gap. Collated from diaries of those who were there, archival materials, and also interviews, this book presents a picture of the Japanese that is generally unknown.

The Japanese war machine at its peak between the end of 1941 and the middle of 1942 appeared almost invincible with soldiers like mechanical and robotic cogs acting mindlessly in unison in the big machinery. Perhaps not known to us are that many of these soldiers are individuals who like soldiers in all other conscripted armies are prone to attitudes ranging from fanaticism, to obedience, to indifference. And then there are also those who bully others, malinger, and others who just think that the whole enterprise was stupid.

The characters covered in this book range from junior officers (Onichi) to NCOs (Tsuchikane) right down to the private soldier (Miyake), each unsurprisingly, displaying an amount of fervour commensurating with their ranks. But wherever they were in the hierarchy, it was difficult for them to kill unarmed people at the first. Along the way however, they learned to justify their acts, for how does one know whether those running away in the dark were combatants or civilians? Yet when it came to Sook Ching there was universal agreement that it was on the insistence of Masanobu that it was carried out. This stain would forever stay with the Japanese army, and would not be erased by their victory over the British against huge odds. What is creditable is that they all admitted that the event took place, and even having taken part in it.

The late Prof Henry Frei was an academic and this book can be taken as a scholarly work but written in the style of a novel. It is short, easy to read and importantly, it succeeds in putting a face to the Japanese soldier, whether they are judged man or beast, machines they are not. They also experience the camaraderie that exists between men in war and this came out strongly in the final scene of the battle for a certain Hospital Hill (which I suspect is Alexandra Hospital where a massacre would take place after it was overrun). I shall not spoil it for readers who are interested in picking up the book.

The Japanese side of the story is probably written quite extensively but in Japanese. Historians and enthusiasts alike who cannot read Japanese miss out on an important dimension of this history. It is my wish that more of such works would appear and we will all benefit from a more holistic understanding of the war.

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Kranji War Memorial

The Kranji War Memorial bears the names of more than 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth forces who died during WW2 in the South-East Asian Theatre. Of these, 4,500 were buried and Kranji.

The road leading to the memorial

Gardeners maintaining the cemetery, a bunch of students in the background

The buildings faintly visible in the background are in Johor, where Japanese came to Singapore from

It is one thing to read from books about the different regiments that fought here. 8th Division of the 22nd Brigade sounds very real when one sees it inscribed on a headstone. It is hard to put my head around the many British Regiments that fought in the defence of Singapore. Here are examples, starting with the Australian forces.

Australia

Royal Australian Air Force

2/18 Infantry Battalion (Australian Imperial Force)

Royal Australian Naval Reserve

Great Britain

Air Vice Marshal Pulford - Royal Air Force

HMS Prince of Wales

HMS Repulse

HMS Sultan

HMS Indomitable

Royal Army Chaplain

Army Catering Corps

Royal Army Medical Corps

Royal Army Ordnance Corps

Royal Army Service Corps

Royal Artillery

The Border Regiment

Craftsman

The Pioneer Corps

18th Reconnaissance Corps

The Cambridgeshire Regiment

The East Surrey Regiment

The Gordon Highlanders

135th Hertfordshire Yeomanry

The Leicestershire Regiment

The Loyal Regiment

The Manchester Regiment

The Royal Norfolk Regiment

The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers

The Queen's Royal Regiment

The Sherwood Foresters

The Suffolk Regiment

The Sutherland Highlanders

The West Yorkshire Regiment

Canada

Royal Canadian Air Force

New Zealand

Royal New Zealand Navy

Malaya

Federated Malay States Volunteer Force

Singapore Volunteer Corps