Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Money, measurement and terminology
- Introduction
- PART 1 CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES
- 1 ‘If only I knew what has become of him’: The loss of Australia's prisoners of war
- 2 Witness to war: The first journeys
- 3 Bring up the bodies: Commemorating our war dead
- 4 Unspeakable histories: From Singapore to Hellfire Pass
- 5 The Death March: Journeys back to Sandakan
- PART 2 DESERT AND ISLAND
- PART 3 AIR AND SEA
- PART 4 AUSTRALIA'S FRONT LINE
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
4 - Unspeakable histories: From Singapore to Hellfire Pass
from PART 1 - CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Maps
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Money, measurement and terminology
- Introduction
- PART 1 CAPTIVITY NARRATIVES
- 1 ‘If only I knew what has become of him’: The loss of Australia's prisoners of war
- 2 Witness to war: The first journeys
- 3 Bring up the bodies: Commemorating our war dead
- 4 Unspeakable histories: From Singapore to Hellfire Pass
- 5 The Death March: Journeys back to Sandakan
- PART 2 DESERT AND ISLAND
- PART 3 AIR AND SEA
- PART 4 AUSTRALIA'S FRONT LINE
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Singapore was Britain's most humiliating defeat of World War II and diminished Australia's relationship with the British Empire. A hundred and thirty thousand British and Commonwealth troops were captured, including 15 000 Australians. The siege was brief but bloody. In February 1942 Japanese troops surged across the narrow strait separating Singapore and Malaya. Australian forces were caught in bitter fighting in the north-west of the island, where they were hampered by waterways that bisected their positions, inadequate communications, and poor command and tactical decisions. From Singapore the Japanese raised work contingents for Borneo, Thailand and other parts of their empire. Tens of thousands had been reassigned from the island by 1943; many would never return.
It wasn't the first time Charlie had clambered up onto a rice truck on the Thai–Burma railway. The old man grimaced with the heat of the iron as he pulled himself into position. ‘The first time I did this, I was the guest of the Imperial Japanese Army,’ he jested, but he had posed for the cameras several times since then. Charlie didn't say how many times he'd returned to Thailand. There had been a string of private and RSL pilgrimages marking regular reunions and significant anniversaries in the wake of World War II.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Anzac JourneysReturning to the Battlefields of World War Two, pp. 74 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013