LIFE AS A FEPOW · CHANGI, SEPTEMBER 1942

 

The Selarang Barracks Incident

 

For refusing to sign a pledge not to escape, more than 15,000 prisoners were packed onto a single barrack square for four days.

 

 

 

A Pledge Not to Escape

 

In August 1942 the Japanese ordered every prisoner of war at Changi to sign a declaration promising, on his honour, not to try to escape. The order came from Major General Fukuye Shimpei, newly appointed to command the prisoner of war camps in Malaya.

 

The senior British and Australian officers refused. Under military law and custom, prisoners had a duty to try to escape, and a promise forced on men in captivity had no value. Almost every prisoner followed their lead: only a handful signed.

 

 

 

Into the Square

 

On 2 September 1942 the Japanese ordered all British and Australian prisoners who had refused — more than 15,000 men — to move into Selarang Barracks. The barracks had been built for around 800 soldiers.

 

Men crowded the parade square, the verandas, the stairways and the roofs of the three-storey blocks. There was almost no shelter from the sun, only a couple of water taps for thousands of men, and latrines had to be dug by hand through the tarmac of the square.

 

 

 

The Executions at Changi Beach

 

On the same day, the Japanese forced senior Allied officers to watch the execution of four prisoners who had been recaptured after trying to escape: two Australians, Corporal Rodney Breavington and Private Victor Gale, and two British soldiers, Privates Harold Waters and Eric Fletcher.

 

They were shot on the beach at Changi by a firing squad of Indian soldiers who had gone over to the Japanese. The first volleys did not kill them all. The execution was meant as a warning of what would happen to anyone who tried to escape.

 

 

Four days. One square. Over 15,000 men.

 

SELARANG BARRACKS · 2–5 SEPTEMBER 1942

 

 

 

Signing Under Duress

 

Day after day the conditions grew worse. Dysentery spread rapidly and diphtheria broke out. The Japanese threatened to move the sick from the hospital into the square as well.

 

On 5 September, to save the lives of his men, the British commander, Lieutenant Colonel E. B. Holmes, ordered the prisoners to sign, making clear that they did so under duress and that the pledge was therefore not binding. Many signed with false names. The men then marched back to their barracks.

 

 

 

Justice After the War

 

After the war, Major General Fukuye was tried by a British military court for war crimes, including the executions at Changi Beach. He was found guilty and executed by firing squad in 1946, close to where the four escapees had been killed.

 

The Selarang Incident is remembered today as an example of the prisoners’ courage and solidarity: men who, even in captivity, refused to give up the right to resist.