The Imperial Japanese Army had swept through Singapore with a chilling efficiency, encountering little opposition. Already, one column of their troops had occupied the Rumah Miskin Police Station, poised at the junction of Upper Serangoon Road and Lavender Street—a mere stone’s throw from my divisional headquarters at Kandang Kerbau. That night, I made a silent vow to remain at my police station, to await the inevitable. I would not abandon my post again; I had been forced to do that once already. Now, there was nowhere left to run, and frankly, I was weary of running.
I had never felt so utterly alone, so completely helpless in my entire life. I had sworn an oath to defend these colonies, but like everyone else, we were all caught in the inexorable current of events far, far beyond our control. Some, in their despair, headed for the churches, the temples, the mosques, seeking divine protection for the terrifying hours ahead. Many more simply gathered their loved ones close, waiting out this unholy night and the crushing consequences that were sure to follow. Some police officers had gone home, choosing to spend these final, precious hours with their families, promising to return at dawn. Like the others who remained, I chose to stay behind.
“Halford, what are you still doing here?” It was John, a British police officer and a good friend. For a time, we had both been attached to the same police station in Alor Gajah.
“Not doing a whole lot,” I replied, the words feeling hollow in my throat. “What about you?”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go. My family is on the other side of the world, remember? You know, we’re probably going to get overrun tomorrow if the army doesn’t surrender first. The Japs are just a couple of streets away.”
“Yeah, I heard. We haven’t received any orders from the military. I guess there’s not much chance of a counter-attack, huh?”
“It’s over, Hal,” John stated, his voice flat with grim resignation. “It was over the moment the British withdrew from Malaya. Singapore is just too small to be defended.” He paused, then added, “You heard the church bells?”
“Yup, I think just about everyone did,” I replied, the words thick with a sullen resignation.
“You think it was signalling the surrender?” John’s voice, a hesitant probe, broke the heavy silence.
“Maybe… or maybe it was a reminder to pray… for deliverance… or for a miracle.” The thought, fragile as a butterfly’s wing, offered a momentary reprieve from the encroaching despair.
“Perhaps that’s all we can do now,” John sighed, rubbing his weary eyes. “We’ve done our best, and now it’s simply over.”
“Do you truly believe that, John?” I pressed, a bitter edge to my tone.
“What—that we did our best?”
“Yeah. This was supposed to be a fortress, protected by thousands of troops, yet we didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. No, I’m not convinced we did our best, not even close,” I retorted, the words a raw wound.
“We followed our orders, Hal. The British Army—it was their show, for King and Country, and all that rah-rah that comes with it. I don’t think we could have fought any harder, but perhaps we could have fought a lot smarter. Still, we are all going to live with the consequences. It’s going to take a long time to turn this war around, even with the Americans in on it now,” John mused, his voice trailing off into the deepening gloom.
“Yeah, assuming we all survive that long.”
“You take care now, Hal. Keep your chin up and your head down,” John offered, a flicker of his old mischievous smile breaking through the grim façade as he turned to leave.
“Hey, isn’t that a contradiction?” I called out, a hollow laugh escaping my lips.
“This whole bloody war is a contradiction, Hal. Just go with the flow,” John shouted back, his form receding into the darkness, sensing, rightly, that I needed to be alone with my thoughts.
John’s instincts were unerring. I craved solitude that night, for this truly felt like the end of all things. Never in my life had I experienced time’s relentless march so agonizingly slow. The seconds ticked by, each one a mocking chime in my mental anguish. The sky above glowed an angry orange, a grotesque parody of dawn, as the fires around Singapore continued their hungry feast through the night. No one, it seemed, even attempted to extinguish them anymore. It was all a lost cause.
In the twisted labyrinth of my thoughts, a line from the Lord’s Prayer surfaced, unbidden: ‘…And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’ I had recited that prayer countless times, its profound significance always just beyond my grasp, until this very night. The temptation to surrender to despair, to yield to the burgeoning evil at our doorstep, was almost overwhelming. The soldiers of an ungodly empire lurked just around the corner, and in a few short hours, they would be upon us. Perhaps those church bells were a sign after all—a sign telling me to be strong, to cling to the tattered remnants of faith.
Eventually, I saw the first fragile rays of dawn sweep across Singapore in the distance. It felt as though the curtains of the final act had just opened, and the stage was set. The crushing weight of defeat swelled deep inside me, an unbearable pressure, as I bowed my head to pray one last time.
That afternoon, a small, somber contingent of British officers, led by the stoic Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, made their way from their command bunker at Fort Canning to the Ford Factory on Bukit Timah Road. There, before the unyielding gaze of Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, he unconditionally surrendered Singapore to the Empire of Japan.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would later brand the ignominious fall of Singapore as the ‘worst disaster’ in British military history. In a single, horrifying instant, some 80,000 British, Indian, and Australian troops became prisoners of war, surrendering to an enemy whose numbers were a mere third of their own strength. The fate of countless more civilians, abandoned by their European protectors, remained chillingly uncertain.
At 7 AM the following day, Japanese soldiers marched into the skeletal remains of my police station. They looked bone-weary and unshaven, their bloodshot eyes lending them an even more menacing aspect. They moved with an uncouth, almost barbaric air, stuffing handfuls of rice directly from their pockets into their mouths as they kept their weapons pointed at us. Once they had secured control of the station, they kept us all under armed guard. I supposed they were waiting for their next orders, and so were we.
The next morning, they forced us to line up and bow as a few Japanese officers entered the building. We were then segregated into three distinct groups. One consisted of the British police officers, who were immediately marched away to begin their internment as prisoners of war. I watched John as he and the others were led off. He had thrust his chin up in a mock display of defiance that, thankfully, went unnoticed by the vigilant Japanese guards.
Another group was for Asian police officers, and the third for Eurasians. When it came to the Eurasian contingent, we were further subdivided into two groups: one for the fair-skinned, and the other for those with a darker complexion. The fair-skinned officers were arbitrarily deemed ‘enemy aliens’ and, like the British, were taken away to be interned. As for the others, like myself, whose skin had been darkened by years of playing hockey under the blazing Singaporean sun for Saint Joseph’s Institution, we were simply told to go home. It was this alone, the pigment of my skin, that saved me from spending the remainder of the war behind barbed wire.
The following day, the Asian police officers, predominantly Malays, were permitted to be reinstated into the police force, albeit under Japanese control. However, they were stripped of their ranks, reduced to serving as mere constables. I harboured no intention of rejoining such an organisation, of starting at the bottom all over again, especially not under the heel of our new oppressors.
Apart from my palpable disdain for the Japanese and all they had inflicted upon Singapore and its inhabitants, an even more compelling reason anchored my refusal: my wartime duties in Malaya, specifically my role in apprehending Japanese citizens and local collaborators, might become known. That knowledge alone could easily lead to my imprisonment, if not my immediate execution.
The gnawing fear of being recognised as the man who had arrested Dr. Nakamura prompted me to seek relative seclusion for a while. I found refuge in a Malay kampong—a native village—nestled within a rubber estate close to the junction of Bedok Road and Siglap Road. I moved in with a good friend, a fellow police officer, and adopted the traditional garb of the indigenous Malays, complete with a sarong and songkok.
It did not take the enemy long to assert its dominion over Occupied Singapore. One of the first, most symbolic moves the Japanese made was to rename this former colony. It would now be known as Syonan-to, meaning ‘Light of the South’. Yet, we all braced ourselves for many dark days ahead, and our presentiments proved chillingly accurate. Everything on the island was in utter disarray. Electricity and water supplies functioned intermittently at best. Schools and many shops remained shuttered, while medical facilities for injured civilians were almost non-existent. Japanese soldiers patrolled the streets, their presence a constant reminder of our subjugation, as most of the population remained confined to their homes under curfews that stretched from dusk to dawn. The paramount priority for everyone was simply securing enough food and water each day.
Soon, the Japanese military commenced the arduous task of bringing Syonan-to back to its feet. Many civilians and even some POWs were pressed into service, tasked with the gruesome duty of burying the dead and clearing the debris from the bomb-scarred streets. Food, too, was strictly rationed. Those who had previously worked in the utilities sector were ordered to return to their jobs, reconnecting power lines and mending damaged water pipes. It would still be many long months before any semblance of normal life returned to the island.
I had no immediate plans for the future. I chose to wait, to observe, to assess how the Japanese intended to run the country, and what further restrictions they would impose upon the civilian population. Unknown to me at the time, the very next day following Singapore’s surrender, Dr. Nakamura, alongside several other prominent Japanese nationals, was released from Changi Prison on the direct orders of the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police.
For the next two weeks, I remained in Singapore, maintaining a deliberately low profile in my Malay disguise. This was not particularly difficult, for I spoke the language fluently, understood their customs, and counted a good number of friends within the community. In tightening their tyrannical grip on Singapore, the Japanese sought to divide the populace. They harboured a profound distrust of the large Chinese population, suspecting that many had actively supported China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Indeed, countless Chinese would pay the ultimate price for this mere suspicion. Some 50,000, predominantly young men, were rounded up and taken away to be executed in what would later be chillingly remembered as the Sook Ching Massacre.
The tiny Eurasian community was also singled out for intense scrutiny due to their close blood ties with the British and other Westerners. In the fullness of time, the Japanese would attempt to sway the small Indian population, subtly encouraging them to support the Indian National Army in its fight against the British.
It was the small, indigenous Malay population that the Japanese perceived as the least threatening and, consequently, the easiest to control. Some, like the members of the Fifth Column, had already pledged their allegiance to the Emperor. Many Malays were offered low-level jobs within the police force and other branches of the Japanese civilian administration that now governed the country.
In favouring one race over the others, the Japanese hoped to implement a classic strategy of divide and rule, sowing seeds of suspicion among neighbours and, ideally, making everyone think twice about inciting trouble. This strategic calculation was precisely one of the reasons I chose to dress as a Malay; I felt it would attract less unwanted attention from the Japanese soldiers who constantly patrolled the city.
After a few weeks, I sensed the initial, pervasive anxiety over Singapore’s surrender had eased somewhat. People, with a grim determination, were attempting to get on with their lives. I decided to venture up to Malacca, to visit some of my friends from the Force who had chosen not to evacuate.
However, my visit to Malacca proved to be remarkably brief. Soon after my arrival, a trusted friend warned me that Dr. Nakamura, too, had returned to Malacca, and was now holding a high position within the administrative service. Apparently, the man had made several concerted attempts to trace me, but these had thankfully proven unsuccessful. Fearing that I had, by my imprudent return, metaphorically placed my head in a noose, I left swiftly, still in my disguise, and boarded a train bound for Singapore.
Upon returning to the island, I found refuge with my sister and her intended in-laws at 12 Orchard Road, in an apartment above a shop that repaired and sold radios. I didn’t know it then, but fate, in its intricate design, had just placed me in a position to begin the next, perilous chapter of my life.
