Dalforce
Dalforce , or even the Singapore Overseas Chinese Anti-Japanese Volunteer Army ( Chinese:. :星华义勇军- Xinghua Yi Yong June), was one of the volunteers assembled vigilantes of Chinese descent population of Singapore , just before the city in February 1942 by the Japanese was taken (→ Battle for Singapore ).
history
After more and more Chinese volunteers reported to the British Army towards the end of 1941 , the latter sent them to Lieutenant Colonel John Dalley , who served in the Malay State Police, on December 25th . He gave the Chinese a short basic training and equipped them with the most necessary weapons. There was no special uniform. The Chinese usually wore their normal street clothes and no helmets. After Dalley, the unit was soon named with the abbreviation Dalforce.
The Dalforce consisted of about 1,000 to 3,000 Chinese who came from all parts of Singapore's population. Among them were people from simple backgrounds as well as intellectuals from the upper classes. Politically, too, the Dalforce consisted of a mixture of people close to either the communists or the national Kuomintang .
Since women also applied to the Dalforce, Dalley formed a small medical and supply force out of them .
After protests against the British, who complained about the undersupply of the Dalforce, the British leadership considered better equipping the unit and ordered a supply to Singapore. But it never arrived there, as the SS Empress of Asia troop transport was sunk by the Japanese on February 5, 1942, shortly before reaching Singapore.
Although the Dalforce units were almost completely untrained and had only a limited arsenal of weapons and ammunition, they were used by the British under the command of Lieutenant General Arthur Percival in various parts of the city's defense, mainly in northwest Singapore. There they fought alongside the British , Australian and Indian troops .
Most of the Dalforce soldiers were killed during the fighting. Those captured by the Japanese army were later killed as part of the Japanese "purges" . Most of the survivors managed to go into hiding in the jungle after the Dalforce was disbanded on February 13, two days before the fall of Singapore. After a while they were able to establish contact with the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army and join them in guerrilla warfare .
Legends
The people of Chinese origin in Singapore saw in the Dalforce a mediator who enabled them, together with their comrades who had remained in China, to fight the Japanese, who at the time had occupied half of the Chinese coastal provinces. Above all, the Dalforce stood as a symbol of the unity of all Chinese who, regardless of their political views, turned against a common enemy. Something that wasn't the case in China itself. Hence, the members of the Dalforce have often been revered as heroes and become a legend of the Chinese people of Singapore.
From many Chinese and some English-language writings of the time, the hero worship of the Dalforce members is clear. This can also be read from a number of orally transmitted stories about the missions.
The popularity of the Dalforce declined quickly in the 1950s. It only regained importance in the 1990s, when the Singapore government began to process the events of the war in order to underpin its everyday politics.
swell
- ↑ a b Dalforce at the Fall of Singapore 1942: The Creation of an Overseas Chinese Legend at: Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
