LIFE AS A FEPOW · SINGAPORE 1942–1945

 

Changi Prisoner of War Camp

 

After the fall of Singapore, Changi became the starting point of three and a half years of captivity for tens of thousands of Allied soldiers.

 

 

 

The March to Changi

 

On 15 February 1942 Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. It was the largest surrender in British military history. Two days later, the order came for the defeated British and Australian troops to march to Changi, on the eastern tip of Singapore Island.

 

Around 50,000 men made the journey of some 22 kilometres (14 miles) on foot, carrying what little they could. Among them were Scottish soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Gordon Highlanders, men who had fought through Malaya and the battle for the island itself.

 

 

 

Life Behind the Wire

 

Changi was not a single camp but a large military area of pre-war British barracks — among them Selarang, Roberts and Kitchener Barracks — built for a fraction of the men now crowded into them. The Australians were concentrated at Selarang; the British spread through the surrounding barracks.

 

At first the Japanese left the prisoners largely to organise themselves inside the wire, under their own officers. Men were sent out daily on work parties into the city: clearing bomb damage, working at the docks, and building a Japanese war shrine.

 

 

 

Hunger and Disease

 

Food was the constant worry. Rations were mainly poor-quality rice, a shock to men used to a British army diet, and there was never enough. Within months, deficiency diseases such as beriberi and pellagra appeared, alongside dysentery, malaria and diphtheria.

 

Prisoners fought back as best they could: planting vegetable gardens, raising chickens, and running a hospital at Roberts Barracks where army doctors worked with almost no drugs or equipment.

 

 

Three and a half years behind the wire.

 

CHANGI, FEBRUARY 1942 – SEPTEMBER 1945

 

 

 

Keeping the Spirit Alive

 

Despite everything, Changi became known for the determination of its prisoners to stay human. They organised lectures and classes — the so-called “Changi University” — along with libraries, sports, concert parties and theatre.

 

Faith mattered too. Prisoners built chapels from whatever materials they could find. At Roberts Barracks, Bombardier Stanley Warren painted a series of murals on the walls of a makeshift chapel; the Changi Murals survive today as one of the most moving relics of captivity.

 

 

 

From Changi to the Railway

 

For many men, Changi was only the beginning. From 1942 the Japanese sent large working parties out of Changi — to Borneo, to Japan, and above all to the Burma–Siam Railway. Thousands who left Changi in apparently good health never returned.

 

In 1944 the remaining prisoners were moved into and around Changi Prison. They were finally freed when British forces returned to Singapore in September 1945, after three and a half years of captivity.