Singapore WORLD WAR II, 1941-45
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Supreme Allied Commander in
Southeast Asia, reading the order of the day following the Japanese
surrender in September 1945
Courtesy National Archives
Parade celebrating return of British to Singapore in 1945
Courtesy National Archives
The British had begun building a naval base at
Singapore in
1923, partly in response to Japan's increasing naval
power. A
costly and unpopular project, construction of the base
proceeded
slowly until the early 1930s when Japan began moving into
Manchuria
and northern China. A major component of the base was
completed in
March 1938, when the King George VI Graving Dock was
opened; more
than 300 meters in length, it was the largest dry dock in
the world
at the time. The base, completed in 1941 and defended by
artillery,
searchlights, and the newly built nearby Tengah Airfield,
caused
Singapore to be ballyhooed in the press as the "Gibralter
of the
East." The floating dock, 275 meters long, was the third
largest in
the world and could hold 60,000 workers. The base also
contained
dry docks, giant cranes, machine shops; and underground
storage for
water, fuel, and ammunition. A self-contained town on the
base was
built to house 12,000 Asian workers, with cinemas,
hospitals,
churches, and seventeen soccer fields. Above-ground tanks
held
enough fuel for the entire British navy for six months.
The only
thing the giant naval fortress lacked was ships.
The Singapore naval base was built and supplied to
sustain a
siege long enough to enable Britain's European-based fleet
to reach
the area. By 1940, however, it was clear that the British
fleet and
armed forces were fully committed in Europe and the Middle
East and
could not be spared to deal with a potential threat in
Asia. In the
first half of 1941, most Singaporeans were unaffected by
the war on
the other side of the world, as they had been in World War
I. The
main pressure on the Straits Settlements was the need to
produce
more rubber and tin for the Allied war effort. Both the
colonial
government and British military command were for the most
part
convinced of Singapore's impregnability.
Even by late autumn 1941, most Singaporeans and their
leaders
remained confident that their island fortress could
withstand an
attack, which they assumed would come from the south and
from the
sea. Heavy fifteen-inch guns defended the port and the
city, and
machine-gun bunkers lined the southern coast. The only
local
defense forces were the four battalions of Straits
Settlements
Volunteer Corps and a small civil defense organization
with units
trained as air raid wardens, fire fighters, medical
personnel, and
debris removers. Singapore's Asians were not, by and
large,
recruited into these organizations, mainly because the
colonial
government doubted their loyalty and capability. The
government
also went to great lengths to maintain public calm by
making highly
optimistic pronouncements and heavily censoring the
Singapore
newspapers for negative or alarming news. Journalists'
reports to
the outside world were also carefully censored, and, in
late 1941,
reports to the British cabinet from colonial officials
were still
unrealistically optimistic. If Singaporeans were uneasy,
they were
reassured by the arrival at the naval base of the
battleship
Prince of Wales, the battle and four destroyers
cruiser
Repulse, on December 2. The fast and modern
Prince of
Wales was the pride of the British navy, and the
Repulse
was a veteran cruiser. Their accompanying aircraft carrier
had run
aground en route, however, leaving the warships without
benefit of
air cover (See
Historical Development
, ch. 5).
Data as of December 1989
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