Changi POW Camp
The Changi prisoner of war camp was built by the Japanese occupiers in Changi , in the east of the main island of Singapore , on the site of three former British barracks after the conquest of Singapore in mid-February 1942 . In this prisoner of war camp , they soon brought almost all of their allied prisoners of war ( British , Australian and Dutch ) as well as many civilians .
In the course of its existence the camp accommodated a total of about 87,000 prisoners, of whom about 850 died directly in Changi. A far larger proportion of the Allied soldiers died in labor camps , for example in Burma , Siam and Borneo , to which they were transferred from Changi during the course of the war .
The site of the former camp now houses the Singapore International Airport and Changi Prison, among others .
Camp life
Contrary to its reputation, the Changi POW camp was, according to a majority of reports, far less uncomfortable than the other camps of the Japanese army . In truth, apart from a few exceptions, regular attacks such as torture or shootings , as launched in public after the war, probably did not occur.
At first the prisoners were left to their own devices. The Allied soldiers were responsible for both maintaining discipline and keeping them busy. It was not until later that the Japanese appointed guards, the majority of whom were Indian Sikhs who had previously served in the British Indian Army .
As in many other POW camps, there was also a choir and a camp university in Changi - including its own library of 20,000 books - which offered literacy courses in addition to lectures in almost all common disciplines . Around 400 prisoners of war learned to read and write in captivity. Many prisoners of war became artistic during their time in Changi. The murals by the artilleryman Stanley Warren in the former camp chapel and the drawings by Harold Young and John Harrison , which document life in the camp, became particularly well known . One of the most famous inmates of the camp today, however, was the author James Clavell , who processed his experiences in Changi in his novel Rattenkönig .
Selarang Barracks Incident
In September 1942, four Australian prisoners were captured trying to escape. The Japanese then asked the prisoners of war to sign a declaration of honor in which they should assure that they would not try to escape under any circumstances. At the instruction of their officers , the soldiers initially refused to do so. The Japanese then executed the four Australians in front of their former commanders and rounded up the 15,000 or so prisoners who were in the camp at the time in the Selarang barracks. In the confined space of the building, which was actually only designed for around 1,200 men, and the parade ground , the conditions for the Allied soldiers quickly became unbearable. Nevertheless, they continued to deny the Japanese the "declaration of refusal to flee", which violates the Geneva Conventions . Only after the Japanese threatened to fetch diphtheria patients from the camp hospital and lock them up, which in the catastrophic sanitary situation would certainly have meant the death of most of the prisoners within a few days, did most of the inmates sign the required declaration - with reservations and often under a false name in order to avoid persecution by the military's own criminal justice organs after the liberation.
Consequences of Operation Jaywick
In October 1943 the situation came to a head again after Operation Jaywick , a British-Australian command company in which several Japanese merchant ships were sunk in the port of Singapore . The Japanese suspected inmates of the camp to be involved in the operation and had around 100 of them interrogated by the Kempeitai , the notorious Japanese military police .
See also
literature
- Keith Wilson: You'll Never Get of the Island - Prisoner of War, Changi, Singapore , Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1989, ISBN 0-04-352241-6
- Freddy Bloom: Dear Philip - A Diary of Captivity , Changi 1942-1945, Bodley Head Ltd., London 1980, ISBN 0-370-30345-8
Web links
- Changi POW Camp Museum website
- Drawings by John Harrison
- Survivor's website with reports and photos ( Memento of July 17, 2008 on the Internet Archive ) (in English)
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 1 ° 21 '25.5 " N , 103 ° 58' 25.1" E