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00:00Singapore, a thriving multicultural world city, an Asian tiger playing a key role on the world
00:13stage. But just below the surface of this former British colony lies a history of foreign invasion,
00:22smoldering racial tension and violent struggle against imperial power.
00:30After more than a hundred years of colonial rule, in 1941, the flames of independence were lit when Japan bombed Singapore.
00:40It was the next morning when I went up to my room and that's what I discovered.
00:44The shrapnel right in the middle of my pillow where my head would have been.
00:48A brutal campaign began to expel the white colonials from Asia.
00:53The Japanese despised the Anglo-Saxon powers that had occupied most of Asia.
00:57The propaganda at the time is all about reading Asia of the white man.
01:02British Empire forces were plunged into war in Southeast Asia, fighting a determined enemy in the unfamiliar jungles of Malaya and Singapore.
01:12The only Commonwealth unit to have any idea of how to fight the Japanese was the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.
01:18They were what I call a first-class soldier, highly trained to jungle warfare.
01:24They played the Japs at their own game.
01:27The invasion unleashed an explosion of social conflict amongst the Chinese, Malay and Indian communities who resented British rule.
01:35The coming of the Japanese presented a very good opportunity for them to get independence.
01:41It was a call to arms that echoed within the ranks of the British army, causing 20,000 British Indian army soldiers to switch sides and fight for the Japanese.
01:51When those men at the end of the war go back to India, they're hailed as national heroes because they fought against an imperial power.
01:57Singapore, the bastion of the British Empire, fell in just 70 days.
02:04It was Japan's greatest victory and Britain's most humiliating defeat of World War II.
02:10The fall of Singapore changed the face of Southeast Asia forever and heralded the beginning of the end of the British Empire.
02:27In the early 20th century, the bustling trading port of Singapore and the fertile Malay peninsula to its north were the jewels in the crown of Britain's East Asian colonies.
02:48The existence of Singapore really underlines the power of the empire.
02:53This is a place where in 1820 it was a fishing village.
02:56By 1920, it's the biggest commercial city in Asia.
03:00It's the clearinghouse for where it's from all over the East heading back to Europe.
03:05It's a massive commercial success.
03:09To power the colonial economy, the British brought Chinese and Indian workers into the predominantly Malay community, creating an undercurrent of ethnic tension.
03:19The Chinese were doing very well, especially with the prosperous thin mining industry, giving employment to thousands of thin mine workers who came from China.
03:32The Chinese were a very large component.
03:36By 1900, they were about 70% plus of the population of Singapore itself.
03:44Both Chinese and Indians, they formed the biggest racial groups within the country.
03:49And the Malaysians are not very happy about this.
03:51They are really not very happy with what the British have done for allowing the unrestricted entry of Chinese, especially Chinese, into the country.
04:01But the British colonial ruling class were largely oblivious to the tensions around them, as they reveled in the prestige and privilege of empire.
04:13We had a lovely bungalow, and I was looked after by an armour.
04:20I remember my mother was very fond of armour.
04:24I don't know armour's real name.
04:26All I know is that in the war, she protected me.
04:30I can remember there was a very big social life, lots of sports days, lots of events.
04:37Howsy, howsy, as it's called.
04:39Bingo.
04:40Well, we look up to them, and we call them the big masters, and they call us natives.
04:54Well, the British colonials, of course, they're a breed apart.
04:57They think they're very superior, because they had servants to look after them.
05:03The women did nothing during the day, except just go out to chat her.
05:10Local people weren't allowed in their clubs.
05:13Natives had to travel in different compartments on trains.
05:17They behaved so much as if all this was the natural order of things, that they were brilliantly successful in maintaining this illusion for a very, very long time.
05:26At this time, Britain was the superpower.
05:33Its empire covered a quarter of the globe.
05:35From Africa, the Middle East, India and the Americas, to one of its far-flung dominions, Australia.
05:43A very British country on the fringe of an Asian world.
05:46The importance of Britain to Australia pre-war was critical to our identity, to our culture, to our economy.
05:56If a war was to come to Australia, we would look to the mother country, to Britain, to defend us.
06:00They're our protector.
06:01They're our ally.
06:03Britain was everything.
06:04The 1933 census, most Australians identified themselves as British.
06:07Britain was not the only colonial power in Southeast Asia.
06:19The Netherlands, France and America were also plundering the riches of the Orient.
06:24But there was one Asian country that had its own imperialist ambitions, and saw itself in direct competition with the West.
06:33Japan.
06:34Japan felt that it had a destiny to have an empire in Asia.
06:38And when it looked around and it saw all these European empires in Asia, it thought, why not us?
06:43It saw racism, condescension of a kind that proud Japanese imperialists, and especially proud Japanese soldiers, found intolerable.
06:54In 1931, Japan made its move.
07:03Short of raw materials, it invaded Manchuria.
07:08The poorly equipped and badly led Chinese were no match for the modern, powerful Japanese army, who eventually overran nearly a third of China.
07:17In 1936, Japan moved closer to all-out war when it signed an alliance with Nazi Germany.
07:29They sent rising general Tomoyuki Yamashita to meet with leaders of the Third Reich, to learn of the German plans for making war.
07:44Those plans became brutally clear three years later, on September the 1st, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and the world was plunged into war.
07:54With the war expanding, Britain's dominions from around the world rallied to the defense of the mother country.
08:13Australia straightaway dispatched tens of thousands of troops to the Middle East and Europe.
08:17And so off went 100,000 Australian troops, off went all of our Air Force and our Navy, and we were left effectively defenseless.
08:31Now the thinking was, if Japan were to invade, we would rely on Britain, and God help us, if the British didn't come.
08:38Standing between Australia and Japan, was the supposedly impregnable British fortress of Singapore.
08:47During the 1930s, they'd fortified the island with 20 huge coastal guns, guarding the approaches against any Japanese seaward invasion.
08:56The British feared that if Japan entered the war on Germany's side, it would attack Singapore.
09:11As a deterrent, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sent a multinational force of British and Indian troops to strengthen the island's defenses.
09:20The Gordon Highlanders and the Argyle and Southern Highland Highlanders were among the first British troops to arrive.
09:29We'd waited three weeks because of a tremendous snowstorm.
09:34When we actually arrived, the heat was so oppressive, we just wondered just what we were coming to.
09:44Going through the old Singapore was the Chinese sitting, smoking the pipes, and playing mahjong.
09:54And the smell of the villages was something you'd never experienced before.
10:01When it was a hot and sunny place, a remarkable way, one has sun nearly every day,
10:07people were living very normal lives as they were used to it.
10:14The Argyles were the next generation of the ferocious, kilted soldiers from World War I
10:23that the Germans nicknamed Ladies from Hell.
10:29Their commanding officer was Lieutenant Colonel Ian Stewart.
10:33He was my CEO.
10:35He used to call him Busty.
10:37He was a thin fella.
10:39He didn't say much.
10:40He was quite a hard man in many ways, but he wanted his battalion to be the best one there was,
10:49and made this feeling go into all the men there.
10:52The Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders had come from the harsh cold of the Scottish winter.
11:01They'd no idea how to fight in the tropics.
11:05Stewart led them deep into the steamy jungles of Malaya on rigorous training exercises.
11:10In jungle warfare, it is the quality of the men far more than the quality of the weapons that counts.
11:23His psychological, his physical and tactical training, his morale, his toughness, his discipline.
11:29You've got to learn how to move through it, how to keep in touch with each other.
11:36Before I went there, it was normal sort of weapon training, and that sort of thing had to be done.
11:42But after that, I was taken to the jungle, and we had to deal with the other problems that arised.
11:51Jungle is neutral, but you've got to live in it.
11:54You suddenly find your legs are covered in leeches.
11:58How do you deal with this?
12:00They were learning to cope with all the jungle creatures,
12:02and they were learning to cope with the climate and the rivers.
12:05In fact, that was probably the key to their success for the Argyles,
12:08that they had this superb training of, I think it was up to five weeks,
12:12and there's photographs of Stewart with them ploughing through the mud and so on as well,
12:16as they crossed creeks and did all the things that they had to get used to,
12:20you know, to finding snakes curled up beneath their bedding and things like this.
12:24But they felt they could trust him very much so, and that was pretty important.
12:31In September 1940, with the Battle of Britain raging,
12:35the Japanese rolled into French Indochina, just to the north of Malaya.
12:41The French gave up without a fight.
12:44The first of the colonial dominoes had fallen.
12:47The Singapore fortress needed to be bolstered.
12:56Australia's response was emphatic.
12:59In February 1941, it sent the first wave of 10,000 troops
13:03to join their British allies in Singapore.
13:06Well, it was supposed to be secret, and there must have been 5,000 people there.
13:11And we went like first-class passengers.
13:14Great way to go to war.
13:19As far as I was concerned, it was an adventure that was too good to miss.
13:24We were going to war, and in wars, other people get killed, but you don't.
13:33I knew that our freedom was at stake, and I thought to myself,
13:39this war can't go on without an Edwards, did it?
13:45Two days into the journey, the troop convoy split.
13:53In a symbol of Australia's now divided responsibilities,
13:56the main fleet headed for the Middle East,
13:58while the Queen Mary peeled off towards the tropics,
14:02taking the 8th Division to Singapore.
14:05Well, the first thing I noticed was no swimming, sharks.
14:10It was on the end of the wharf.
14:11In big letters like that, oh, that thought made me feel at home.
14:19With the war in Europe a long way away,
14:21the mood in Singapore was relaxed.
14:25The mix of Commonwealth troops largely kept to themselves,
14:29but when they did meet, there was often fireworks.
14:33On payday, the jocks went to visit their usual haunt,
14:37only to find the diggers in full occupation.
14:39Before you could say, Jack Robinson, a riot started.
14:44What a battle.
14:46Boys would be boys, and we can't take this too far,
14:50but there were a lot of brawls between Australian and British troops
14:53in Malaya and Singapore in 1941.
14:55It was pretty clear that there was a lot of rivalry
14:59and chest-thumping going on.
15:00Afterwards, there were a number of very belligerent jocks
15:04being rounded up by the military police
15:06and herded into the trucks,
15:08whilst numbers of Australians were loaded into ambulances.
15:16The young men of the British Empire forces
15:19quickly awakened to the delights of Singapore.
15:21Clubs featuring exotic taxi dancers were a favourite new experience.
15:38He paid so much, like a dollar or something,
15:40he got so many tickets.
15:41And then on the back of them, funny enough,
15:45was all the photographs of these taxi dancers.
15:48And he'd say, oh, fancy number six.
15:50Oh, good, ask her for a dance.
15:53Very, very attractive women
15:55always wore these long dresses.
15:58They were split right up to the hip, almost.
16:01They looked very, very attractive
16:03to we young Australians.
16:05While Commonwealth troops
16:12happily rubbed shoulders with the locals
16:14and absorbed Asian culture,
16:16they were being fed virulent anti-Japanese propaganda
16:19designed to convince the troops
16:22that the Japanese were racially inferior
16:24and would pose no real threat.
16:27That was the first thing they said.
16:28They all wear glasses, they can't see.
16:30Oh, yeah, intelligence officer came round and said,
16:33oh, they only shoot with .25 guns, like a P-rifle.
16:37We were told that they were short-sighted,
16:40they wouldn't fight to the night.
16:42That they were useless buggers,
16:43that one Australian was worth 10 Japanese.
16:48At its most shocking,
16:50it cast the Japanese people as subhuman,
16:53as monkeys, as baboons,
16:54as Churchill described them, yellow dwarves.
16:59We found out how good they were.
17:03In May 1941,
17:06with Japan on the brink of war,
17:08the British sent Lieutenant General Arthur Percival
17:11to Singapore
17:12to command the assortment
17:14of multinational empire forces.
17:17His appointment gave the first inkling
17:19that Singapore was not a British priority.
17:23Because the British were then prioritising
17:25the campaigns in the Mediterranean
17:27and the Middle East,
17:27they sent their best or at least least bad generals there.
17:32And Malaya was bottom of the queue
17:34for good command,
17:36as it was bottom of the queue for anything else.
17:38But Percival was a pretty poor specimen.
17:43While Percival was coming to grips
17:45with the task of defending Malaya in Singapore,
17:48his Japanese counterpart,
17:50General Tomoyuki Yamashita,
17:51was in southern China
17:53drawing up his battle plans
17:54for an invasion of the British colonies.
17:58Contrary to British propaganda,
18:00he was accomplished and battle-hardened.
18:02Memakouuki Yamashita was in a completely different class from Percival.
18:08The idea of putting him in the ring together,
18:10I mean,
18:11a lot of war-hardened.
18:11He was just a powerful weapon on the ship.
18:12He was a very difficult weapon.
18:13You have to think,
18:14you know,
18:15you know,
18:16the battle-hardened.
18:17Yamashita was probably the best Japanese general of the war.
18:22Very tough, very experienced, very clear-sighted.
18:26Yamashita was in a completely different class from Percival.
18:30The idea of putting them in the ring together, I mean, it was ludicrous.
18:35On December 4th, British Signals Intelligence intercepted Japanese orders.
18:41The Imperial Army was heading towards northwestern Malaya.
18:45Percival scrambled his forces at Cotaburu.
18:53With few British troops available, the defence of the coastline was left to the 8th Indian Brigade.
19:03The Indians had fought loyally alongside the British for generations and were expected to hold the line.
19:09On December 6th, an Australian Air Force bomber flying out of Cotaburu spotted a large Japanese fleet steaming towards the coast.
19:21On the 8th of December 1941, Japan entered World War II when it sent an invasion.
19:51A Russian force of 25,000 men to attack the British colony of Malaya.
19:565,500 went straight to the Indian troops of Cotaburu.
20:00With the
20:28The Japanese made simultaneous landings on undefended beaches in Thailand
20:37and advanced quickly towards the Malay border.
20:43But at Kotobaru, the battle raged.
20:47The 5,000-strong Indian force took the brunt of the attack.
20:51But first, under the British officers, they put up a stubborn fight.
21:00A second wave of Japanese swept ashore, and the Indians were overrun.
21:30General Yomashita had successfully landed his invasion force.
21:39As the Japanese army was taking Kotobaru, their air force was en route to the American naval base in Hawaii.
21:47They inflicted a crippling pre-emptive strike on the American fleet moored in Pearl Harbor.
22:02Three hours later, a second wave of bombers headed for an unsuspecting Singapore.
22:10There was no blackout, and the streets were brightly lit, allowing the Japanese pilots to easily find their targets.
22:18I remember looking up at the sky. The sky was full of planes.
22:35I remember looking up at the sky. The sky was full of planes. Each one had a little light.
22:50And what I remember most is the noise. It was like thousands of bees flying overhead.
22:56We had a lot of siren warning going on and off, and we didn't care very much about it, you see.
23:02I was observing there was a small black dot right very far above the sky.
23:08The Japanese bombing raid on Singapore delivered the alarming message to the island's citizens that their colonial masters could not keep them safe.
23:26It also set alarm bells ringing in Australia.
23:32It is our privilege tonight to introduce the Prime Minister, the Honourable John Curtin.
23:38In a sign the government was beginning to think independently, Prime Minister John Curtin didn't wait for Britain to declare war first, as was the protocol.
23:47He broke the news to the Australian people.
23:49Men and women of Australia, we are at war with Japan.
23:54Suddenly we had war on our doorstep, and we just weren't ready for it. It shocked people.
23:59They were forced to curtail their golfing parties. They were forced to forego Christmas parties.
24:04There was all sorts of war rationing was suddenly introduced. We were on a war footing very quickly.
24:09With the American fleet crippled at Pearl Harbor, the only Allied warships in the region to take on the Japanese were the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in Singapore Naval Base.
24:21But there should have been many more.
24:24Britain had promised to send a large battle fleet from Europe to defend Singapore and Australia if the Japanese showed aggression.
24:32It was always naive of Australia ever to suppose that in the middle of a desperate struggle in which we had our backs to the wall in Europe and in the Western Hemisphere,
24:43that there were ever going to be forces available to reinforce in Asia.
24:50On the 8th of December, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, with four destroyers, left Singapore harbour to support the embattled British Empire troops in northern Malaya.
25:01Two days later, they were sighted by Japanese bombers.
25:04Without air cover, this tiny fleet was fatally exposed.
25:10One day, the President of the Republic of the SDR, the Japanese chase.
25:33I can still remember the ship bouncing when the bombs and the torpedoes hit us.
26:03I still remember going down a rope 10 feet down and catching my foot in one of the portholes.
26:17With that, I just sort of give a heave and let go and drop the 60 foot straight into the water.
26:26In less than three hours, a thousand British sailors had perished.
26:33Early next morning, Prime Minister Churchill was informed that for the first time in history,
26:39ships of the Royal Navy had been sent to the bottom by the supposedly inferior Japanese.
26:44The full horror of the news sank in upon me.
26:49There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific.
26:53Over all this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme and we, everywhere, were weak and naked.
27:02With the seas belonging to the Japanese, it would be down to the British Empire army to defend the colony.
27:10In northern Malaya, near Grick, the Japanese, moving south from Thailand, encountered an army that was eager to take them on.
27:23The jungle trained Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.
27:26They were men who really learned to be this band of brothers.
27:33There was this considerable bond, which wasn't just heritage.
27:37It was the fact that they had worked hard, trained hard and suffered in the training too, let's say, because it wasn't easy.
27:46We had to attack the Japanese in front of us, and being fresh, we showed, we pushed them back.
27:57As I was looking, a young soldier came up to my side.
28:02He wasn't one of mine, he was one of the other platoon.
28:05And when he was there, a bullet went straight through his head, and he died just like that.
28:24Then the fullness of hatred against the Japanese came at that point, thinking there is a young life stuffed off.
28:33And the Japanese were right in my sights, so I joined in with my pistol.
28:55The Argyles hung on tenaciously at Grick.
28:58But suffering heavy casualties, and with large numbers of Japanese troops pouring across the Thai border, they begrudgingly gave ground.
29:07As the Japanese army pushed deeper into Malaya, in village after village, they were welcomed as liberators by indigenous Malays.
29:24Feeling overrun by the large numbers of Chinese and Indians brought in by the British, they saw the Japanese invasion as their chance to regain control of the country.
29:36Before the war, there had been a growing independence movement among Malays, but the British had arrested and imprisoned the leaders.
29:43They were trying to end British colonialism in Malaya, to bring Malaya as an independent nation.
29:44Even if this means collaborating or working with the Japanese, they were trying to end British colonialism in Malaya, to bring Malaya as an independent nation.
29:50Even if this means collaborating or working with the Japanese.
29:57These men were now freed, and increasingly, many local Malays began to escape.
30:02They were trying to end British colonialism in Malaya, to bring Malaya as an independent nation, even if this means collaborating or working with the Japanese.
30:09These men were now freed, and increasingly, many local Malays began to help the Japanese.
30:22They were working with the Japanese.
30:27They were working with the Japanese.
30:32They were working with the Japanese.
30:39They were working with the Japanese.
30:41They were working with the Japanese.
30:46To encourage their Asian neighbors to join the fight against European colonialism, the Japanese promoted their vision, the Greater East Asia Coal Prosperity Sphere.
31:00The Japanese
31:18Anti-British propaganda quickly spread the message.
31:21The Japanese were remarkably successful in persuading Southeast Asian nations that there was a place for them, an honoured place for them, in Japan's Greater East Asia Coal Prosperity Sphere, in which they would have rights, in which they would have their own governments, in which they would be treated with a respect that was denied to them by the European powers.
31:46As well as persuading the Malays of their common interests, the Japanese had set up a spy network before the war.
31:55There had been a sizeable Japanese community living in Singapore and Malaya for years, and many had been feeding information back to their homeland.
32:04During the weekends, the Japanese barbers, dentists, doctors, all would go to the countryside, saying they were visiting the Malaysian countryside, not knowing they were really photographing all the shortcuts, so much so when they attacked our country.
32:22They were using bicycles to bypass the British who were waiting on the main roads.
32:28The bicycle brigades were a vital asset of the Japanese army, and the routes were planned long before they invaded, using information supplied by Japanese spy networks.
32:38With the Japanese now in Malaya, the British routed out the spies and dealt with them brutally.
32:48Oh, you wouldn't believe, no matter where you turned spies.
32:54The Japanese planned them there.
32:59Our hairdresser was a spy.
33:02People would go up there and have a haircut and say so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so, and in two seconds, the Japanese knew about it.
33:11By the 11th of December 1941, the Japanese, advancing from Singora in Thailand, had reached Jitra in northern Malaya.
33:27Here, they came face to face with a large empire force of mainly Indian troops.
33:41Many of the Indians were poorly trained, and the Japanese had little regard for them.
33:50The Japanese invaded Malaya already assuming that the Indian army would not put up much of a fight.
33:55They took a rather contentious attitude towards it on the grounds that it was a servile army, therefore it probably wouldn't be very efficient.
34:04They broke through Indian regiments, and there was casualties flying in all directions.
34:11And that forced the powers of being to pull us back out of there, otherwise the Japs got across there where they'd been cut off in the first week.
34:24The British Indian army was faltering under fire.
34:28But the unexpected potency of the Japanese soldiers was only partly to blame.
34:34Something was eating away at their resolve, and it had its roots in their homeland.
34:42Seeds of anti-British descent had been growing in India for decades under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
34:52With the rise of the Indian independence movement, Britain's hold on imperial power was becoming tenuous.
34:58It was a pretty scary reality for the British that for much of the Second World War, they had to deploy 50 battalions of infantry for internal security duties in India.
35:12Many Indian nationalists were on record then as saying, why should we be asked to fight for freedom when that freedom has been denied to us?
35:19Nearly 3,000 British Indian army soldiers surrendered at Jitra.
35:26The Japanese, aware of the growing discontent, believed they could persuade them to change sides and fight against the British.
35:34Intelligence officer Fujiwara Iwachi targeted one of their leaders, Captain Mohan Singh.
35:41Mohan was a die-hard anti-imperialist who wanted to drive the British out of India as soon as possible by whatever means available.
35:51Fujiwara begins to share his ideas that maybe we can set up some kind of force, maybe if you get the Indian troops to move away from fighting the Japanese.
36:03And this is where really some notion of the Indian national army begins to form.
36:11Singh agreed to become commander of this new Indian national army and help recruit amongst his fellow Indian soldiers from those who the Japanese were able to capture in Malaya.
36:22Mohan Singh chose the flag of the Indian independence movement for his new revolutionary army that would fight alongside the Japanese.
36:29flying colours that would one day become the national flag of India.
36:38At first, the Japanese gave the Indians menial duties, carrying supplies.
36:44The unprecedented union of the two forces did cause some confusion.
36:50Under the eastern Union soldiers come on in front of thecómo.
37:13As they moved southward, the Japanese captured British airfields and destroyed aircraft.
37:31With total freedom in the air, Japanese bombers headed for the island of Penang.
37:38Penang was home to a population of mainly Chinese and Eurasians.
37:43They'd been born and bred on the island and were fiercely loyal to the crown.
37:54On the 11th of December, 41 Japanese bombers blasted the island and the British could do nothing.
38:05Oh, terrible.
38:07Incredible. Nearly 2,000 casualties in the first day of bombing and the other days that followed.
38:13They were dead bodies. So what we could pick up, we picked up.
38:17That was really the beginning of the bombing of Penang. Ruthless bombing.
38:23After four days of constant bombing, with Japanese forces advancing, Penang's local commanders gave the order to evacuate white women and children and British military personnel.
38:33All the Europeans got out. They were all panic-stricken. There's no doubt about it. Absolutely panic-stricken.
38:38They started running and didn't stop running, if I may tell you that. Evacuation was very, very fast.
38:44Halt!
38:45Some local Eurasians also tried to escape.
38:49When I went to the jetty, I think the last ferry that was going across, I was stopped. So I went up, the ferry was half empty. I said, can I go across? No, no, no.
39:01You're not British.
39:02You're not British. You're not British. You can't go across.
39:04The British very quickly made it plain that escape was something that was reserved for white people, that what happened to Malayan people or Chinese people or Indian people, the British, by their actions, showed they simply did not care.
39:22And this destroyed, in a matter of weeks, centuries of instinctive respect by colonial subjects towards the British imperial power, and so it deserved it.
39:38As well as the locals, the British left behind soldiers from the strait settlements' volunteer forces, made up of Chinese, Indians, Malaysians and Eurasians.
39:48Left in the lurch, they had no choice but to throw off their British uniforms.
39:56The Japanese are very ruthless. If you are in uniform, they will shoot you, you know. So I took off my shirt and even my pants and all I took off.
40:06I was only with my shorts and we were running. That was the end. Then we knew the end was coming.
40:13On December the 17th, 1941, after more than a century of British colonial rule, Penang fell unopposed to the Japanese.
40:26In their haste, the British left behind a functioning radio station.
40:34The Japanese soon had Radio Penang back on air, feeding propaganda to Singapore.
40:40Hello Singapore, this is Radio Penang calling. How do you like our bombing?
40:44As the British withdrew through the ravaged Malayan countryside, stunned locals tried to comprehend the sight of British Empire soldiers on the run from an Asian army.
40:58We saw troops moving, British troops going in the north, and less than a week later, we saw them returning the other way, going back south.
41:10They stopped their van and asked for water to drink. Their beds were not shaven, and then we knew something was wrong.
41:18They looked weary, they were bloodstained, they were dirty. They're like warriors from another world to me. But they were splattered with mud, and they wanted some food.
41:34As his army took flight, General Percival was forced to abandon headquarters, supplies, ammunition, and equipment.
41:45He was struggling to counter the speed of the Japanese onslaught.
41:51In just over three weeks, General Yamashda had captured all of northern Malaya.
41:56By the end of 1941, the battle reached Kampar, where the Royal Artillery made a stand.
42:09All the artillery was so powerful, we were evacuated to the hills.
42:14My father used to bring some cotton wool and stuff into the ears.
42:20The whole ground was shaking.
42:22For four days and four nights, my God, how many thousand rounds were fired.
42:32We were in there as a regiment with roughly over 24 guns there, and we were just belting at them.
42:39It was New Year's Eve.
42:41Our colonel says, right boys, get them out.
42:44And every shell that went into the breach of every gun, I did it.
42:48Happened year to year, you bastards.
42:52And every gun fired, five rings, rapid fire, open sights.
42:58And you could just see them flying through the air like little bits of butterflies.
43:05The Royal Artillery delayed the Japanese at Kampar for four days,
43:09before they were encircled by Japanese troops and forced to retreat.
43:13In Australia, news of the deteriorating situation in Malaya was greeted with mounting concern.
43:24With the best Australian troops fighting in Europe, Prime Minister John Curtin felt exposed.
43:30Curtin is a very worried man in the summer of 1941-42.
43:34In a move that saw Australia, for the first time, question its 150-year-old ties with the mother country,
43:46Curtin looked to America.
43:47We feel that our fate and that of the United States of America are unbreakably linked.
43:54We know that our destinies go forward hand in hand, and that we will stand or fall together.
44:04Churchill regarded Curtin's pronouncement as gross disloyalty.
44:08I am deeply shocked by Curtin's insulting speech.
44:12Curtin's New Year's Day message really drew a line in the sand with Britain.
44:17He realised that the British were not going to help us, that we were not going to receive the troops,
44:23the hoped-for resources, military resources that would help us defend our nation at its hour of peril.
44:32By the 7th of January 1942, the Japanese reached Slim River, less than 300 miles from Singapore.
44:41Here, they launched a heavy attack on the British Empire forces.
44:45A tank column broke through the defending Indian troops.
44:50The Argyles were the last line of defence.
44:55I was sent forward to find out what was happening.
44:59Suddenly, my sergeant, who was in the rear, said,
45:04Come back at once.
45:06Get back!
45:06And I fell into this ditch with the sergeant who'd been beside me.
45:19I said, I'm afraid I've been hit.
45:21And he said, so have I.
45:23And with that, they started shooting us like mad.
45:27Everyone missed me.
45:32But I was actually pouring with blood.
45:36I could see the blood pouring, jets pouring out of my arm.
45:41So I picked up some mud from the bottom of the ditch and made a sort of poultice over it.
45:46I think I must have passed out a bit.
45:50But when I recovered, nobody was near me at all.
45:53So I nipped out of the ditch and ran for the jungle for several weeks.
46:00Eventually, I met a group of Indian soldiers.
46:04But the Japanese came across a paddy field and saw us there.
46:08And there was nothing we could do.
46:11So we all had to hold up our hands and say, we surrender.
46:21At battle's end, there were less than 100 Argyles who hadn't been killed or captured.
46:27They acted as a rear guard for the defeated British and Indian troops
46:31who were making their way southwards, abandoning the capital of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
46:38Along with the troops, civilians fled in the thousands towards the sanctuary of Singapore,
46:44just three days' march away.
46:47There were a lot of refugees, Europeans, there were Chinese, Indians.
46:52Everybody was getting out.
46:54People were rushing away and we couldn't find a carriage.
46:58And the train was starting to move, so Dad said, jump onto the fender behind the engine.
47:04So there we were, hanging on for dear life.
47:07My father's arm around, one arm around me, my face buried in his neck,
47:12eyes closed, praying that we wouldn't fall off.
47:15I was scared, I was really scared.
47:17I didn't know what was going on.
47:19It was dark.
47:20The shadows of the trees looked pretty ghostly.
47:23The thought in everybody's mind was that Singapore was the place to be,
47:27where it would be safe.
47:29Ah, how wrong we were.
47:32As the advancing Japanese army relentlessly pushed the multinational British Empire forces
47:44back towards Singapore, General Percival resorted to desperate measures.
47:49Come on!
47:50Before the war, fearing the spread of communism,
47:55the British had rounded up and imprisoned the leaders of the emergent Malayan Communist Party.
48:01Many British people, and some of the rulers of Britain,
48:04had been much more frightened of communism than they had been of fascism and Nazi.
48:08It was very striking, one of the reasons that some of the British aristocracy
48:13were not unenthusiastic about making friends with Hitler.
48:16Kneeling positions!
48:18Percival now released the communists and trained them as guerrilla fighters.
48:23Go magazine!
48:24Enemies became friends, united against a common foe.
48:27Friend position!
48:29Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
48:33Then Britain was allied to the Soviet Union as a result.
48:37And because of that alliance,
48:39you couldn't keep on, you know, imprisoning communists.
48:44Fire!
48:46Communism suddenly became, at least for a season, respectful again.
48:49And we were making friends with them and letting them out of jails all over the empire.
48:53Fire!
48:53Fire!
48:54Fire!
48:55Fire!
49:00Fire!
49:01By mid-January 1942, Yamashita's army had reached the southern Malayan states of Johor,
49:07just two days' march from Singapore.
49:11Here, they faced Australian troops in combat for the first time.
49:18The Australians, still believing the Japanese to be inferior,
49:21were full of confidence and expected to stop them in the tracks.
49:28The commander of the 10,000 Australian troops, Major General Gordon Bennett,
49:33had made his reputation in World War I as a fearless front-line soldier.
49:38But he had one weakness.
49:40One of the skills of generalship is getting on with your superiors and your allies.
49:44And Gordon Bennett was absolutely incapable of working with anyone.
49:48He was abrasive, he was abrupt, he was arrogant.
49:50And he believed he knew better than anybody else.
49:53And in the end, he proved to be the worst choice for a very delicate situation for Australian commanders.
49:59At Gurmas, Bennett planned a decisive first strike.
50:04He wanted to blow up a bridge and ambush a Japanese tank column led by infantry on bicycles.
50:10I don't know why the Japanese didn't twig that there was something wrong.
50:20Anyway, they're riding down on their pushbikes.
50:23They've got pushbikes by the dozens.
50:25As his infantry trained the weapons on the bicycle brigade, Bennett had artillery waiting for the signal to fire on the tanks following behind.
50:35They were so keen to get the pushbikes on the bridge that they let too many go past the front.
50:41The bridge was blown, but the Japanese, who'd already made it across, cut the communication lines to the Australian artillery.
50:51We were incommunicado then.
50:55We're down at 2,000 metres back, waiting to fire, and nothing happened.
51:04As the artillery waited for orders to fire, the Japanese tanks reached the Australians.
51:10Coming under a heavy attack, they were forced to withdraw.
51:17It had been another missed opportunity in a campaign that was becoming a shambles.
51:23Japanese engineers quickly repaired the bridge, and the military machine kept rolling towards Singapore.
51:28For the Australians, one of the few small victories in the Malayan campaign, unfolded on the peninsula's west coast, near the Moor River.
51:54On the 15th of January, the Japanese launched an attack on 4,000 untried Indian troops Bennett had positioned there.
52:06Now, the Indians were very much all young men, untrained, and they just went through them like butter.
52:12When Bennett got word, he rushed 2,000 Australian reinforcements to Moor, to back up the Indians.
52:18In what was one of the few Japanese mistakes in the campaign, they sent a tank column straight down the main road towards the Australians.
52:33Japanese tanks had proved decisive in the campaign, because the British brought none, thinking they would be ineffective in the jungles.
52:40But on a bend in the road, the tanks ran into two Australian anti-tank guns.
52:53The anti-tank inflicted heavy casualties on their tanks.
52:57They took them out.
52:58One went up in smoke, the other one started to circle around, and they got hit.
53:02Our two guns knocked out the eight tanks, and they immediately rushed us up to the front line.
53:09So when I got there, and our gun was set up, the tanks were still on fire.
53:16All the ammunition, the small arms ammunition that they had started to go off, and then the smell of hamburgers.
53:24That was the crew of the tank being burnt.
53:27Now they'd all been killed, either killed in the tank, or some had got out of the tanks, and the infantry had shot them.
53:41War is a terrible, stinking, horrible, shocking state of affairs.
53:48You're asked to kill a man you've never met, and if you don't kill him, he'll kill you.
53:54And we were in the middle of a battle, and this was the result of the battle.
54:01The victory was short-lived.
54:04The Japanese sent 5,000 troops to outflank the Australians.
54:10We realised we had been cut off, so the order was given to withdraw, so we withdrew down the road to a place called Parrot Salon.
54:18Unfortunately, the Japanese got there first, and they had heavily fortified the bridge.
54:26We are running out of supplies.
54:28Our Lieutenant Colonel Charles Anderson, seeing that the situation was hopeless, ordered every man for himself.
54:35Anderson made the painful decision to abandon the most seriously wounded, assuming they would be cared for.
54:41115 Australians and 35 Indians were left behind on the bridge.
54:48The Japanese moved them from the road to behind this building.
54:52They were all wounded, some very badly, and we were hoping that they'd be treated humanely.
54:57Humanely.
55:05The Japanese shot all wounded them, poured petrol over them, and set them on fire.
55:10política in human life.
55:32My views of what they did, the Japanese, it was an act of war.
55:38We did the same in similar situations.
55:42Up towards Muir, the Japanese wounded there.
55:47They were lying in a trench, but they were also about to pull out pins of grenades
55:53and blast the advancing troops with them.
55:58Our men were told to kill them, shoot them.
56:01We were shooting their wounded and they, when we got back to the bridge,
56:10the Japanese shot our wounded because they, what could they do with them?
56:16In just 55 days, the Japanese Imperial Army had pushed the British Empire forces
56:23over 600 miles southward down the Malay Peninsula.
56:28They'd killed or captured over 20,000 Empire troops
56:32and were within striking distance of Singapore.
56:37On the 27th of January 1942, Percival received a signal from High Command
56:43permitting him to withdraw to Singapore Island.
56:48Most of the surviving units managed to scramble across the causeway
56:52connecting the island to the mainland.
56:55The last to cross were the Royal Argyle and Southern Highlanders.
57:00As an act of defiance and inspiration to their Empire comrades,
57:04they piped themselves across.
57:07They struck up the pipes and we were going across the causeway
57:11and to Singapore itself.
57:14And the tunes that was getting played, Highland Laddie.
57:19Where have you been all the day, Highland Laddie, Bonnie Laddie?
57:26I don't, I don't know much more.
57:29Once these drums get up and the pipes are playing and, oh, there's something.
57:39That kind of defiant in-your-face gesture on the part of the Argyles,
57:45that sort of stiff upper lip, well, that's the response to adversity that wins you empires.
57:51And it's the kind of response to adversity that an Empire at bay backed into a corner
57:57would be prone to show.
57:59Fighting spirit.
58:00We're not done yet.
58:01Come and get us.
58:02And so it had come.
58:06The prized British colony of Malaya had fallen.
58:09And over one million people were bailed up in the supposedly impregnable fortress of Singapore.
58:15As the Japanese prepared to lay siege to the island, the realization dawned.
58:20If Singapore were to fall, the British Empire could fall with it.
58:25And Southeast Asia would never be the same again.
58:28The American Empire.
58:29The American Empire.
58:30Gysia!
58:31The American Empire.
58:34The American Empire.
58:36The American Empire Umarいただивается.
58:37The American Empire.
58:38It's been a difficult time.
58:40The American Empire of Labor's Day.