Singapore Burning
Heroism and Surrender in World War II
By
Colin Smith
Published by Penguin Viking 2005
Review by Stephen Kearney 2013 (reviewed 2020)
Historical Background
Singapore is a small island roughly 22 X 14 miles located at the southern tip of the Malayan peninsula, boasting an eponymous capital city. Developed by the British as part of the colony of Malaya (renamed Malaysia after independence in 1957), it formed a type of administrative, commercial and trading hub for the whole of the south east Asian British empire prior to World War II.
Consistent with its status and importance, Singapore also formed a military hub for the entire region and was provisioned and fortified accordingly with a considerable sum invested in the island’s defences during the 1930s. Most notable of these defences were the massive naval dockyards to the north of the island and extensive shore batteries of various calibres including 6, 9 and 15” guns. By way of illustration, the largest guns ever used by the Allies during the course of the war were 16”, all battleship mounted. It was clear that in the installation of these guns at Singapore, the British meant business and wanted everyone to know it. Mounted close to the southern shoreline, the siting of these guns suggests that they were intended to repel any seaborne attack.
Civilian infrastructure in Malaya was not neglected. Over the years a good road and rail network had been built along with the usual apparatus of the effective running of any country in modern times. Singapore, for instance, boasted the world’s longest post office counter.
The Malayan colony appears to have been one of the better British colonies and had grown rich on the production of rubber to cater for an exponential grown in demand from the ever expanding world-wide motor industry. While a certain type of informal segregation, largely social, between the Europeans and other races (of which there were a number including Chinese) was maintained by the British, it seems that this was not overbearing and those who had come from (pre- Apartheid) South Africa to the colony, were surprised at how informal and relaxed the place was. Singapore, after all, had acquired an international reputation as one of the most glamorous and exciting cities of the region in the 1930s, boasting some very stylish modern architecture and, of course, Raffles, the ultimate hotel of the east with a reputation for slightly raffish decadence, something it maintains to this day. Some have interpreted the British way of life in Malaya as being rich, fat, lazy, complacent and decadent – and that applied to the people who ran the colony too.
Military Myths
As Singapore was the most heavily defended British possession in the Far East, its loss after just two months of fighting, with roughly 100,000 British surrendering to 30,000 Japanese was devastating. Winston Churchill described it as “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history”. People wanted explanations. Where there were none, myths would have to do. These myths grew over the years and gradually became accepted as fact. Indeed, when I first became aware of them in the 1960s, I assumed they were, in fact, fact. In this, I merely followed the herd.
One of the enduring myths was that of the ‘impenetrable jungle’. This states that the Malayan peninsula was covered by a jungle and was therefore considered impassable to any advancing army. Any attack, it was reasoned, must therefore come from the sea where the famous big guns would take care of any ship that dared to attack. Firing seaward was all the guns could do: they could not rotate beyond a limited traverse because, because it was simply not needed. It was reasoned, if anyone did attack, they would have to come ‘around the front’. In fact, the Japanese attacked down the Malayan peninsula through the ‘impenetrable jungle’ and entered Singapore. It was always said that the Japanese ‘came around the back’.
It was against this backdrop that the inimitable Spike Milligan in ‘Adolf Hitler – My Part in his Downfall’ created this little sketch following the fall of Singapore, imagining an exchange between Churchill and some big-wig military guy.
Churchill: “The Japa-bloody-nese, why didn’t they come around the front?”
Big-Wig: “They were tradesmen.”
(For those unfamiliar with English etiquette at big houses, tradesmen (delivery men, maids, builders etc.) were supposed to call around to the rear of the house, hence the term ‘tradesmen’s entrance’.)
Part of this myth of the impenetrable jungle explained why the British army had no tanks and no-anti-tank guns and was generally poorly equipped. It was also heavily outnumbered due to commitments in other theatres of war and had to take on a Japanese army of notorious cruelty, many times its size which had no such commitments. Finally, the British were led by a bunch of upper class twits who thought the Japanese would not dare to attack them. The twits had grown so complacent and comfortable in that colony of easy living, representing an empire that was a lot weaker than it looked, that they were completely out of their depth once any real fighting started – unless they were trying to order a gin and tonic.
What I was Looking For
I have read a number of accounts on the fall of Singapore, some quite good in their own way. They all tell roughly the same story. The Japanese landed in Northern Malaya and advanced down the peninsula to finally overwhelm the much vaunted ‘Fortress Singapore’. All the books explained the facts, including the surprising one that that the Japanese army consisted of only 30,000 men and was less than one third the size of the British one. Another surprising fact to emerge was that in general, the British army was better equipped, especially in motor transport. But what none of these books gave me the reason why – at least none to my satisfaction. I had never read any truly overriding analysis at to why the British, with so many advantages, collapsed so quickly and what the Japanese made of their opponents. Singapore Burning, I hoped would rectify that.
And now: Singapore Burning
At 628 pages with full indexing, acknowledgements, source listings and bibliography – and 63 photographs, Singapore Burning promises to be a good academic and interesting work on this much discussed and documented subject – the largest capitulation in British history. The promise continues on the dust jacket:
Using much new material from British, Australian, Indian and Japanese sources, Colin Smith has woven together the full and terrifying story of the fall of Singapore and its aftermath. Here, alongside cowardice and incompetence are forgotten acts of enormous heroism; treachery yet heart-rending loyalty; compassion as well as brutality from the bravest and most capricious enemy the enemy the British ever had to face.
What of the author? The dust jacket describes him thus:
Colin Smith, an award winning journalist, covered many conflicts for the Observer, including the 1975 fall of Saigon which, he says, had its rough moments but nothing like the horrors that struck Singapore in 1941.
But would the dust jacket promise from both plot and author live up to expectations? Would this book finally give me the answers I was looking for?
Singapore Burning opens with a good, historically sound, general overview of the region and its past. Smith writes well in a lively and interesting way. What I particularly like is the way that the book is written historically, that is, not telling the reader the outcome of any particular action beyond the date of it occurring. So, for instance, within the book’s context, it would not have been surprising to read that the dispatch of Force Z (HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales) to deter Japanese aggression achieved exactly that.
Debunking the Myths
The myths get debunked at a fairly early stage. Those big guns that pointed out to sea, could point everywhere else too. Nearly all of them could turn a full circle. The real problem was not that they could not fire landwards – which they did in the closing stages of the campaign – but their ammunition was unsuitable for this type of work. They were intended for use against ships which meant they were supplied with armour piercing shells which penetrated a ship’s hull before exploding. If these shells were used against, say, infantry, they would be of limited use because they would penetrate the ground before exploding, losing most of their power in the shock-absorbing soil. What these guns actually needed were high-explosive shells but they were never supplied in any number.
Contrary to what I have read elsewhere, the British did have anti-tank guns. It seems, though, there weren’t enough of them and they would never have stopped German tanks – but they certainly stopped Japanese ones. Japanese tanks were poor by European standards, but they were a lot better than no tanks at all – which is what the British had. Reading between the lines, I detect a certain ambivalence in the British attitude towards armoured warfare in Malaya.
However, they seemed well equipped with Bren-gun carriers (light, open topped, tracked vehicles). As previously mentioned, the British in general, were better equipped, including in general weaponry, than the Japanese except in one key area – aircraft. With better pilots and planes, the Japanese quickly gained air superiority, much to the surprise of the British. For all that, Smith reckons the Japanese air force was fairly ineffectual in ground attack operations.
Another myth was that of the ‘impenetrable jungle’. Apparently, the British themselves never really believed this and were quite aware that that infantry could penetrate the wooded areas. Indeed, their pre-war preparations and defence plans were, in part, based on the fact that the jungle could be penetrated.
This brings me to the next myth-buster. The British were only too well aware of their vulnerability to a Japanese attack, while at the same time hoping that they could bluff their way out of it, as evidenced by the arrival of Force Z (see ‘Prince of Wales’ below). Interestingly, the main planning for this eventuality, centred on a presumption of a land attack down the very peninsula that was ‘impenetrable’. Not only was an attack expected in northern Malaya, but the British had devised a counter-strategy in the event of it occurring. Operation Matador was a planned pre-emptive strike designed to stop any Japanese attack on northern Malaya in its tracks. As part of a wider counter-attack, it detailed a British advance into pro-Japan Thailand without formality to occupy any coastal areas that might afford the Japanese a landing. It was to be implemented at the very first sign of any obvious intention of a Japanese invasion. Ultimately, British nerve failed at the critical moment through fear of precipitating the very war they were trying to avoid.
Finally, the ‘upper class twits’ did not look so idiotic under close examination. The British army leaders appeared to be men of reasonable calibre, ability and experience but had probably received one promotion too many.
First Doubts about Singapore Burning
Dreadnoughts
The first ‘blip’ on my radar screen occurs as early as page 7, though I attribute it more to historical conceit than any deliberate falsification, though it should act as a warning to historians not to let themselves be carried away on an ill-considered flourish.
The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 confirmed the progress Japan had made in modernising itself in the forty-eight years since it had begun to put an end to two and a half centuries of self-imposed isolation. It recognised that here was a strong and independent Asian country, as technically advanced as parts of Europe with an effective military. For the British, competing with Germany to build the most dreadnoughts, the Alliance enabled it to keep most of its fleet in home waters while the Japanese watched Czarist Russia, whose Pacific port at Vladivostok was seen as the biggest threat to Britain’s Asian interests. In February 1904, the Japanese went to war with Russia over Manchuria, which both were determined to wrest from the control of a feeble Chinese administration.
Let me say at the outset, that I have no objection historically to this neatly potted and accurate overview, essential to understanding the rise of modern Japan, but for a single word: dreadnoughts. It is clear that Smith is using the term as a more evocative way of saying “battleships” or maybe “old battleships” or even “battleships from another era”, though I wonder how many general readers would understand that. Alas, there is a problem here. During the battleship race (battleships were the most heavily gunned ships ever built) between Germany and Britain, both sides were trying to out-produce each other in building the same kind of ship, essentially an overgrown ironclad, usually sporting a large, two-gunned turret fore and aft and a big variety of multi-calibred smaller guns, seemingly haphazardly disposed around the rest of the ship. The overall appearance was more like that of a floating medieval castle than that of a modern warship. The Royal Navy then developed a new design that would change the shape of the battleship forever, dictating the shape of fighting vessels that we would still recognise today. In short, this revolutionary design had five main two- gunned turrets, its ten twelve inch guns more than doubling the firepower over every ship afloat. The secondary armament was greatly streamlined and rationalised. Suddenly, this new type rendered obsolete every battleship afloat. Among other things, the effect of this ship was to eliminate the huge advantage in ship numbers the British had over the Germans, for once the Germans saw the new type, and a battleship cannot be kept hidden for long, they too would have started on their own. Both sides had to, in effect, restart from scratch. The name of this seminal ship that heralded a new paradigm in naval warfare was HMS Dreadnought.
As the British had predicted, a new naval arms race followed, only now it was in the Dreadnought class. As more of these ships appeared, they became known as “dreadnoughts” and the older battleships, of which there were still plenty, were known as “pre-dreadnoughts”. Now, here is the problem for Smith: HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906, four years after the Alliance. Had he used the plainer but less glamorous term of, for instance, “battleship”, “warship”, “naval vessel”, “capital ship”, or even plain “ship”, he would have been, dare I say it, in safer waters.
Prince of Wales
To deter what was seen as further Japanese aggression, the British dispatched ‘Force Z’, consisting of the battle-cruiser (more lightly armoured battleships) HMS Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales, to Singapore in early December 1941. On page 91, Smith describes their arrival at Singapore thus:
All the media – print, radio and cinema newsreel – were invited to the naval base to witness the arrival of the Prince, one of the slayers of the Bismarck, four destroyers and what the official communiqué described as ‘other heavy elements’.
Later on, on page 207, Smith in describing some of the death throes of this ship, writes:
Some men were trapped as the oily sludge swirled into cramped, unlikely action stations, such as the magazine hoists for the big 14-inch guns that had not fired a shot in anger since they helped sink the Bismarck.
Smith is being disingenuous here. While it is true that the Prince of Wales took part in the initial action against the Bismarck, to portray it as its “slayer” is a distortion of the facts. The truth is that having inflicted significant but non-crippling damage on the Bismarck, the Prince of Wales took direct hits itself that so crippled it, it was forced to retire. Having already sunk HMS Hood, the Bismarck was then able to make its escape and was not located for several days after that. Smith lets the true story leak out in dribs and drabs throughout the text, but most people would miss it, especially given the author’s stirring descriptions above. Perhaps Smith is trying to ‘big up’ the Prince of Wales to make a better story but it is not better history.
The Doubts Gather Pace
I would have been prepared to ignore the above historical inaccuracies as writer’s flourish but other little blips began appearing on the radar screen too. At first I ignored them just as one-offs, minor slips or even my own pedantry (surely not). By page 208 I was less forgiving and started making notes. Concerning the Japanese action against the ‘Repulse’, the other capital ship of ‘Force Z’, Smith states:
But they (Japanese bombers) had the sense to concentrate to on the Repulse, Tenant’s ‘lucky ship’ where his crew continued to give a good account of themselves, just as he predicted they would in his message to them when they slipped anchor and left Singapore a thousand years before. (my italics)
A thousand years before? Is this a typographical error or was Smith trying to bring some more flourish, colour or flavour to the action? It grated.
By page 275, the rot is under way.
He was accompanied by Company Sergeant-Major Arthur Bing, a deceptively mild-mannered individual, and his batman cum bodyguard, Private James Anderson. Known as Big Jimmy in the battalion, Anderson came from that part of Glasgow where a man’s razor was not always kept for his own face.
Increasingly, this type of writing was to mark a gradual shift from objective history to that of a glorified comic needed for wartime propaganda.
The whisky fell on the fruitful ground of regimental camaraderie. In the last three weeks the Argylls, the old 93rd, the thin red line, had done damned well and they knew it.
The Lancashire Yeomanry’s monocled commander was Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Murdoch, who like many dismounted yeomanry officers, clung to a cavalry code and, even when astride the thoroughbred BSA motorcycle he had acquired, was rarely seen without his leather riding crop.
These pieces typify the style that comes to increasingly dominate the author’s narrative – and he clearly doesn’t know much about motorcycles. Every minor skirmish in which the British are victorious is described in fine detail. Slowly, the author seems to abandon objectivity and becomes wholly sympathetic to the British struggle, or at least the individual participants. The Japanese, despite sporadic, independent mention, gradually seem to exist only as a foil for successful British operations, as the Somalis appeared in ‘Black Hawk Down’. Yet, even I was taken aback at the following:
……. he thought it likely that the Japs (my italics)would attack first.
I had to re-read the above several times before it sank in. At first I thought it might have been a quote or that I had misread it but I hadn’t. I believe that this indicates of how one-sided the author has become.
The author’s growing enthusiasm for the British upsets the overall narrative drive. The reader might be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese advance had been halted time and again only to find, on the turn of a page, that they were now 100 miles south of their last reported position. Indeed, despite all the British victories recorded in loving detail, I was astonished to learn how light Japanese casualties actually were.
It had taken him (Yamashita) a mere fifty-five days to conquer British Malaya (excluding Singapore) at a cost of 1,793 Japanese dead and 2,772 wounded. In that time, he informed Tokyo, he had advanced 700 miles, repaired 250 bridges, killed an estimated 5,000 enemy troops and captured another 8,000, including two Indian Army brigadiers.
This illustrates a further point of note. Despite the one-sided nature of the account, the author does not slide into an anti-Japanese diatribe. The Japanese, when mentioned, are treated quite fairly and, occasionally, are even praised and admired. One trick that caught the British out time and again, was that of lobbing firecrackers by mortar to land behind the British lines, leading to panic in the ranks. Even the notorious Japanese cruelty to prisoners is dealt with evenly. Smith stresses treatment was utterly random, from very bad to very good, the officer on the spot seeming to be the deciding issue. Most interestingly, however, Smith suggests that the 1946 execution of General Yamashita, the campaign’s mastermind, for war crimes was perhaps, at least in part, driven as much by a British desire for vengeance as the man’s actual guilt, at least insofar as Malayan operations were concerned.
Smith also performs a valuable service in querying some popular misconceptions.
By now the metamorphosis of the Japanese from comic, visually impaired Asians with few discernable military virtues to concern a Great Western Power, to fanatical, highly trained and superlatively equipped jungle fighters was well under way. Aspects of the later image were no more true than the first. But even The Times’ Ian Morrison, an excellent reporter who had lived in Japan and covered the war in China from both sides, would be guilty of contributing to it, though almost certainly his information came from army sources. ‘Nearly all of the Japanese infantry were armed with Tommy guns or other light automatic weapons’, he informed his readers in Malayan Postscript, his account of the campaign published by Faber and Faber in London towards the end of 1942. ‘They were ideal for close-range jungle fighting.’
The only people with Tommy guns or other sub-machine guns, remarks Smith drily, were the British.
In all fairness to the author, some of his researches bring some interesting angles on to light. For instance, I was surprised to find that there was a fair degree of tension between the Japanese commanders with accusations against Yamashita that he was incurring too many casualties, which is certainly at odds with popularly held western perceptions of the subject. Apparently, Yamashita had the option of 60,000 men for the invasion but decided 30,000 would be sufficient. No wonder the British hated him.
Summing Up.
I believe the author started with good intentions – to achieve exactly what it says on the dust-jacket. But somewhere along the line those good intentions seem to gradually fade. Possibly on account of easier access to British records (and their greater volume, I’d imagine), no translation requirement, ability to conduct first hand interviews and, of course, his own nationality, he seems to have become caught up in the individual lives of the British soldiers, almost as though he were embedded with them in spirit. On the modern battlefield, embedded journalists were once seen as a guarantee of objective reporting but now it seems they have become de facto cheerleaders for their side. To get a feeling of this, watch ‘Black Hawk Down’ the film of a downed Black Hawk helicopter over Mogadishu in 1993. Between the skill of the director and the portrayal of the action almost entirely though American eyes, it is very easy to identify with those same eyes and see the Somalis as a series of vast, threatening, faceless hordes that deserve everything they get.
Despite the promise of the dust-jacket, overall analysis is scarce. It is almost as though the author is so anxious to record every individual act of heroism, that the analysis gets lost. Where he does allocate blame, it seems to rest mainly on Indian and Australian troops for not being made of sterner stuff. Indeed, as he records the retreat down the Malayan peninsula, he keeps up constant (metaphorical) sniping on these two groups. Frustratingly, he offers no counter-factual options that might have turned the tide apart from a brief lamentation over the failure to implement Operation Matador.
Maddeningly, however, we hear nothing from the Japanese as to how they regarded the fighting qualities and equipment of the British. In this, alas, Smith is not alone for it appears to be a blind spot of many military historians. For all the literature I have read on the Vietnam war, for instance, I have yet to read anything of how the Vietcong regarded the military abilities and equipment of the Americans – and I still haven’t a clue of how the Taleban or Al-Qaeda make the same judgement.
The book would also benefit from a simple index of commanders and administrators. There are so many people involved, it is easy to forget who did what, often requiring a search in already read text as a memory refresh. A simple index would have obviated the need for this. Even worse is the paucity of maps. I would have thought that a military historian of all people would appreciate that a map is worth a thousand words.
Singapore Burning is clearly the product of an immense amount of work. I believe the author genuinely wanted to introduce a history that was new, clear, fresh and illuminating but, alas, he was led astray by personal involvement in the lives of British soldiers utterly out of proportion to the facts and, apparently, an urge to over-egg British military achievements. The book itself is not without merit but falls far short of its original promise, at least insofar as the one made on the dust jacket.
Singapore Burning – review r1 by Stephen Kearney © August 2020