047.East End of Singapore

The Imperial Japanese Army had a reputation of brutality ever since they invaded the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937. During the first days of the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese Army was responsible for killing as many as 250,000 Chinese residents including women, children, and the elderly in the Nanking Massacre of 1937.

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Because of the Nanking Massacre, most British, Dutch, Malayan, and Indian soldiers who surrendered in Singapore thought they would face a fate worse than the Chinese civilians. However, those Prisoners of War were immediately interred at the Changi Prison on the eastern cost of Singapore.

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Ironically, the prison was constructed by the Royal British Army in the early 1930s to house civilian prisoners during the British occupation of Colonial Singapore. However, with just a capacity of 6,000, the Changi Prison was in no way equipped to handle the group of over 300,000 P.O.W.s the Japanese Army had captured in Malaya and Singapore.

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To correct this, the POWs were forced to construct barbwire fences around the barracks and mess hall which had previously been used to house and feed the Royal Army stationed in Singapore.

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Then, the Japanese forced the POWs to live in cramped conditions with only the bare essentials to survive.
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The Japanese had an overcrowding problem in Singapore, but they also had a solution in Burma that would end up being much worse for the POWs than their miserable conditions at the Changi POW Camp.

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