1819 is considered to be the start of modern Singapore. It is the year Britain signed the Treaty of Singapore, which allowed a company to open a trading post in Singapore. The company was the British East India Company, infamous for importing Opium into China and triggering the Opium Wars in the 19th century. In 1826, Singapore became part of the British Straits Settlements and later became a Crown colony in 1867.

Around 100 years later, the British built the Singapore Naval Base as part of their defensive strategy in the Far East. It was known as the Singapore Strategy. The base was completed in 1938 at a cost of £60 million – equivalent to 6 billion in 2024.

Fall of Singapore

One year later, in 1939, World War II broke out. In 1942, the Japanese military had achieved significant successes, rapidly expanding its territory through conquests in Southeast Asia. Defeating Britain and occupying Singapore became critical for Japan’s total occupation in Southeast Asia.

On 8th Feb 1942, Japan invaded Singapore from the Malay peninsula. Within a week, the British surrendered. About 5,000 were killed or wounded, and 130,000 were captured, with one-third of them dying in prison later. Winston Churchill described it as “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history.”

The fall of Singapore shattered the myth of Britain’s invincibility. For the first time, Britain lost to a non-Western power. Ironically, if Japan had not defeated Britain and other Western powers such as Germany and France, the Southeast Asian countries may still have been colonized by Western powers. After Japan surrendered in 1945, nationalism rose. It marked the beginning of the end of Western imperialism and colonization in Southeast Asia.

As Lee Kuan Yew put it:

emerged [from the war] determined that no one—neither Japanese nor British—had the right to push and kick us around… (and) that we could govern ourselves.

Singapore Massacre1

Right after occupying Singapore, the Japanese conducted mass killings, targeting overseas Chinese in Singapore and Malaya. Lee Kuan Yew stated that at least 70,000 Chinese were killed.

Less than five years earlier, starting on December 13, 1937, Japan committed the Nanjing Massacre, where 300,000 were killed, and 40,000 were raped, including children.

The brutality and inhumanity of the Japanese during the war are hard to imagine, evidenced by the grim accounts and images of these massacres.

Impact to Australia

Since World War I, Australia had been relying on Britain’s so-called “Singapore Strategy” for defense. Australia, started as the penal colony of Britain, always considered itself a child of Britain.

However, with World War II escalating in 1941, Australia realized it couldn’t depend on Britain anymore for its defense. When the US declared war on Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, Prime Minister Curtin announced on December 26, 1941, that Australia would align itself strongly with the United States of America. He said:

We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces. Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

The fall of Singapore reaffirmed it was the right decision. It was a bittersweet coming-of-age moment for Australia.

Just four days after the fall of Singapore, on February 19, 1942, Japan bombed Darwin, a harbor in the northern tip of Australia. It was the largest single attack ever mounted by a foreign power on Australia. The ally of Australia this time was the US Navy, not Britain.

Fast forward 80 years, Australia and Japan are allies. Hmm.

  1. The wiki page of this event is called Sook Ching. Initially I thought Sook King was a place, as some of the massacre are named after the place it were taken place. But actually Sook King is the pronouncing of 肃清，meaning eradication. The proper name of the event is the Singapore Massacre. ↩