The Fall of Singapore, by Frank Owen

[p021] The Fall of Singapore. By Frank Owen. Michael Joseph, 21s. When British troops reoccupied Singapore in 1945 one of the first orders of the command was for the blowing-up of the memorial to Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist who had raised an army from among Indian Army prisoners-of-war to fight alongside the Japanese against the British, The morning after the blowing-up the memorial’s ruins were covered with flowers. A few months later, the sentencing by a British military court of an officer of Bose’s ‘Indian National Army’ sparked off the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy. in Bombay harbour, which led to the British withdrawal from India. These memories are recalled by reading Frank Owen’s book about the overthrow of British power in Malaya at the end of 1941 and beginning of 1942. He has drawn upon a great deal of material, both published and unpublished, for this detailed account of the operations, and among his quotations is one from the Australian official history of the war in the Far East which includes the following passage: ‘About half the force at [General] Percival’s disposal comprised Asian soldiers. These, in the main poorly trained and inexperienced, and with many officers who were more or less strangers to their units, were pitted against other Asians who had become veterans of campaigns in China and were fighting ardently for their country instead of as subject people.’ Owen tells the story of a military disaster even more disgraceful and shattering than Dunkirk and he notes that although Churchill wrote in 1951 that there ought to be an inquiry into responsibilities (‘ This, however, has not been instituted by the Govern- ment of the day’): ‘ Now, nine more years have gone by (including four under a Churchill Tory Government and five more under other Tory Governments), but no Royal Commis- sion has even yet been set up to sift the mystery of the Fall of Singapore, and maybe it is now too late, since many of the leading personalities of the first bomb...” ALF.

[p022] 60 Background to Tito