Why Britain surrendered Singapore to an army half its size
On the afternoon of 15 February 1942, General Arthur Percival walked down a road in Singapore behind a white flag and the Union Jack, on his way to surrender in what Churchill later called the largest capitulation in British history.
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Sources
Sources
- A. E. Percival, "Operations of Malaya Command from 8th December 1941 to 15th February 1942", Supplement to the London Gazette, 26 February 1948
- A. E. Percival, The War in Malaya (1949)
- S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan, vol. I: The Loss of Singapore (HMSO, 1957)
- Masanobu Tsuji, Singapore: The Japanese Version (1960)
- Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (1950); Hansard, House of Commons, 17 February 1942
- Lionel Wigmore, The Japanese Thrust (Australian War Memorial, 1957)
- Reports of General MacArthur, vol. I and Supplement (US Army Center of Military History)
- War Report of the OSS, vol. 2
- United Nations War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, vol. IV (1948)
- In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1946)
- Wire reports of September 1945 to February 1966 via Papers Past (National Library of New Zealand)
- National Archives of Singapore, Former Ford Factory; Ministry of Defence, Singapore, Total Defence Day
Film and photographs
- the Nippon Eigasha newsreel of the fall of Singapore, Frank Bagnall's films of Singapore in 1942 and of Baguio in 1945, and George Aspinall's photographs (Australian War Memorial, public domain); Asahi Shimbun and Kageyama Kōyō photographs of 1942 (public domain); Imperial War Museum photographs (Crown copyright expired); US Army Signal Corps, US Navy and United News film and photographs in the National Archives; Library of Congress; Reports of General MacArthur, Plate 30; Djawa Baroe, 1943; Nationaal Archief / Anefo (CC0); a 1932 home film of Singapore; prewar Japanese postcards of Mukden and photographs of Karenko and eastern Taiwan; Harris & Ewing (Library of Congress) and the US Supreme Court. The Civilian War Memorial, Singapore; items from the Sook Ching mass graves; the Yamashita execution site at Los Baños; the Former Ford Factory and its plaque; a Changi Prison cell door (National Museum of Singapore); the Distinguished Service Order (Tallinn Museum of Orders): Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. A Sook Ching centre marker: Commons, CC BY 2.5. Soviet troops entering Harbin, 21 August 1945: Commons, CC BY 4.0.