Duff Cooper, sent by Churchill to co-ordinate inter-service operations as the resident minister in the Far East, confided to the prime minister that Percival was not a natural leader and could not take a large view. Cooper went on, ‘it was all a field day at Aldershot to him […] he knows the rules as well and follows them so closely and is always waiting for the umpire’s whistle to cease-fire and hopes that when the moment comes his military dispositions will be such as to receive approval.’ To his many critics, Percival also seemed to lack the requisite ruthlessness to prevail during a military crisis.
So, was it appropriate making Percival responsible for the disaster at Singapore? Many argue that ultimate responsibility for the failure to defend Singapore adequately rests with Churchill, who was often focused on events in the Middle East and diverted important assets to that theatre. General Sir John Dill, as CIGS, wrote to Churchill in May 1941: ‘Egypt is not even second in order of priority, for it has been an accepted principle in our strategy that in the last resort the security of Singapore comes before that of Egypt. Yet the defences of Singapore are still considerably below standard.’ Even the American military and naval experts endorsed the warning and expressed the view that Singapore should be given priority over Egypt. Factually, the desired air force strength of 300 to 500 modern aircraft was never reached in the Malayan theatre. The Japanese invaded with over 200 tanks, the British Army in Malaya did not have a single one. Indeed, Churchill himself had diverted 350 older model tanks from Malaya to the Soviet Union following the German invasion in June 1941, as a show of good faith between the Allies. As these older infantry and cruiser tanks were more than a match for the light and medium Japanese tanks used in the invasion of Malaya, their presence could well have easily turned the tide of battle on either the Malay Peninsula or Singapore Island.
According to Ronald Lewin, biographer of Archibald Wavell, ‘nobody can carp with any justice at an officer who is posted to a position for which he is not suited; the responsibility lies with his superiors or the military secretariat […] and it was a cruel fate that put him in charge of Singapore’s defences.’ According to a very harsh critic General Henry Pownall, ‘there is no doubt we underestimated the Jap. But suppose we’d made a better show and got the Jap at his true worth, would it have made any real difference? I very much doubt it.’
Atrocities were committed by the Japanese immediately after the surrender and during the lengthy imprisonment and forced labour of the Allied soldiers. When the Allies liberated Malaya and Singapore after the Japanese surrender, control was taken over swiftly with the enemy usually complacent. Troops of all the Allied forces returned to Singapore Island and the peninsula to re-occupy airfields, military installations and the harbour. Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, who eventually succeeded Wavell as the Allied commander in the Far East (also known as Southeast Asia Command or SEAC) conducted the surrender ceremonies of the Japanese at Singapore Town Hall on 12 September 1945, with General Seishiro Itagaki signing the document, as British and Indian troops poured into the island to reclaim it. SEAC had planned to liberate Malaya and Singapore by invading the west coast of central Malaya and advance southwards, Operation Zipper, with D-Day being set for 9 September 1945. However, before they could attack, the two atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki compelled the Japanese to surrender. After the instrument of surrender was signed, Mountbatten and his entourage left the chamber and took up positions on the terrace before the municipal buildings for the order of the day to be read by the SEAC leader. After that a British flag that had been hidden in Changi jail since February 1942 was run up and Mountbatten gave three cheers for the British monarch. After signing the documents, the Japanese generals were paraded without their swords in front of a jubilant crowd of civilians and military.
While other generals who were held captive by the Japanese, such as the American, General Jonathan Wainwright of Bataan and Corregidor, had become public heroes, Percival found himself disparaged for his leadership in Malaya and Singapore. However, aboard the battleship USS Missouri, on 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay, Percival and Wainwright stood at MacArthur’s side behind the table bearing the Japanese surrender documents. Percival’s memoir in 1949, The War in Malaya, like its author, was restrained and did not reverse the criticisms of many others. Unusual for a British lieutenant-general, Percival was not knighted for his service to king and country. Percival and Wainwright were also present at another surrender ceremony, in which Yamashita sat opposite them to reverse the humiliation that these two Allied generals had suffered in 1942.
General Percival survived his three-year imprisonment under the Japanese and died in 1966. General Yamashita never suffered at the hands of his political opponent General Tojo and, in fact, commanded the Japanese forces in the Philippines after the fall of Singapore. He surrendered to American forces in the Philippines on 2 September 1945, walking down a mountain path by himself with some of his officers trailing him from his redoubt in northern Luzon. The following day, he and his staff formally surrendered to the Americans in Baguio, Luzon. Yamashita was tried for the atrocities committed in Manila in 1945 and they weighed heavily against him despite the fact that he ordered Japanese troops to leave the city and spare the civilian population from house-to-house fighting. Unfortunately, Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi re-occupied Manila and, with his 16,000 seamen, committed many atrocities against the civilian population along with destruction of all naval facilities and port warehouses. MacArthur made sure that Yamashita’s trial was conducted hastily and he was sentenced to death for war crimes. President Truman refused to commute the sentence to life imprisonment. A now gaunt-appearing Yamashita was calm and stoical as he was hanged on 23 February 1946 in Los Banos, a town 35 miles south of Manila.
Within days of Percival’s surrender, Wavell returned to India to resume command of that theatre. The Dutch took over the ABDA Command but it too was short-lived with the impending fall of Java to the Japanese, and this onerous command structure was disbanded on 22 February 1942, one week after British and Commonwealth capitulation on Singapore. On 13 June 1943, after helping to successfully create Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Operation Longcloth, as well as supervising failed invasions of Burma’s Arakan region, Wavell was offered the Viceroyalty of India by Prime Minister Churchill, who was searching for a way to graciously remove him as C-in-C India.
Among many other atrocities, a Japanese officer positions his firing squad to execute Sikh prisoners. (NARA)
Sikh prisoners sit atop a small knoll blindfolded awaiting execution by a Japanese firing squad. (NARA)
The Japanese firing squad discharges its rifles, each infantryman with a pre-assigned and numbered target. (NARA)
After the firing squad completed it execution duties, a Japanese infantryman with a bayonet attached to his rifle (left) and a Japanese officer with a pistol (right) kill any survivors of the condemned Sikhs. (NARA)
Elements of the RAF Regiment disembark from their troopship at Keppel Harbour to start their march for Kallang Airfield soon after the Japanese surrender in September 1945. (NARA)
Indian troops of the 5th Division cheerily ride through Singapore’s streets in open lorries while a local crowd lining the road waves to them. (NARA)
An Indian sentry of the 5th Indian Division stands guards with his Sten machine-gun pointed on Japanese troops standing in front of their former headquarters in Singapore after the surrender in September 1945. (NARA)
A Malay soldier gives directions to 5th Indian Division troops as their officer in charge pores over a map in September 1945. (NARA)
Disarmed Japanese troops walking out of Singapore City while 5th Indian Division soldiers disembark from their lorries in September 1945. (NARA)
Japanese officers surrender their swords at a ceremony to both British and Indian officers. (USAMHI)
Japanese troops pulling some carts while others walk besides their bicycles loaded with gear on their way out of Singapore City as 5th Indian soldiers look on. (NARA)
A surrendering Japanese officer with his sword still at his side gives directions about Japanese installations to British troops in Singapore in September 1945. (USAMHI)
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, SEAC commander, and Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, CIGS, drive to the surrender ceremony at the Municipal Building on 12 September 1945. (NARA)
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, SEAC commander, presides over the surrender ceremony as Japanese officers, led by General Seishiro Itagaki, C-in-C of the Japanese 7th Area Army, sitting in the front row sign the documents of surrender. (NARA)
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, SEAC commander, reads the order of the day after the surrender documents were signed by the Japanese delegation in the municipal building minutes before this photograph was taken. (From left-to-right): Admiral Sir Arthur J. Power, RN; General Sir William Slim 14th Army commander; Mountbatten; General Raymond A. Wheeler, United States Army; Air Chief Marshal Keith Park, RAF and unsung hero of the Battle of Britain. (NARA)
General Seishiro Itagaki, C-in-C of the Japanese 7th Area Army, who was subsequently hanged for covering up evidence of Japanese atrocities in Singapore, is flanked by a pair of Royal Navy officers, as the procession exits the Municipal Building, 12 September 1945. (NARA)
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, SEAC commander, gives cheers for the king on 12 September 1945 after the signing of the surrender documents and the raising of a British flag that had resided in Changi Prison since 1942. (NARA)
The two adversaries Lieutenant-General Arthur E. Percival and Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita sit across from one another at a surrender ceremony in Japan in September 1945. Percival sits to the left of the microphone, while Yamashita is the middle of the three Japanese officers in the foreground. (USAMHI)
General Yamashita, commanding officer of Japanese forces in the Philippines, surrenders on 2 September 1945. He walks by himself in front of his officers from a redoubt in Northern Luzon. (USAMHI)
General Yamashita is met by US Army officers as he surrenders his forces in the Philippines on 2 September 1945 in Northern Luzon. (USAMHI)
The gaunt, aged Tiger of Malaya, Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita, photographed shortly before his execution for war crimes. He was calm and stoical as he was hanged on 23 February 1946 in Los Banos, a town 35 miles south of Manila. (USAMHI)