Alexander William Bourne and the Fall of Singapore

Alexander William Bourne (1915-1997),
8th Division, AIF (Australian Imperial Force)

Murray: My father had many war stories, which included:

• Being a POW (prisoner of war) under the Japanese in Changi (Singapore)
• Witnessing General Percival marching to surrender at the Ford Factory in Bukit Timah in 1942
• Being taken to Korea and suffering extreme cold, hunger and sickness

There is considerable irony given that I married a Japanese and we lived for 13 years in Bukit Timah with our daughter, only a few km from the location of my father's war-time camp and from where he was marched, along with thousands of other allied soldiers, to Changi for internment.

This article follows the events and locations of his story. It is based on some interviews he gave, some of his writings, and from hearing the stories many, many times!

Murray: We currently live within walking distance of that naval base in the northern part of Singapore. It's now a commercial ship-building and repair facility that still also serves military purposes, with ships from the US, Australian, and NZ navies stopping here for maintenance and supplies.

Sembawang shipyards, at the northern extremity of Singapore. Our flat (marked "Home") is shown in the lower left. [Source: Google Maps]

We walk through a beautiful "black and white bungalow" area of residential housing built for the British military personnel on our way to Sembawang Park, which has a small beach on the Johore Strait.

Black-and-white bungalows built for the British navy near the Sembawang shipyards

Murray: We travelled to Malaysia fairly often when we first came to Singapore and it was usually a hassle getting across the Causeway because of the crowds. One time it was a public holiday (possibly Chinese New Year) and the queues for buses were just ridiculous. A lot of people started walking across the Causeway so we joined them, pulling our suitcases along behind us.

I thought a lot about my father's causeway story during that walk.

Murray: I'm not sure if AWB ever talked about this aspect of his experience. I imagine the pressure on everyone to repair phone lines would have been quite immense. A lot of the incompetent military decisions was no doubt due to poor communication.

The Japanese had driven their trucks at night to the East of Johor Bahru (and driven back with their lights off) and had feigned an attack from there, fooling the British into believing their main attack would be from that direction.

The Australians were responsible for defending the North-West of the island and were not expecting the full force of the Japanese attack.

Murray: The North and West of Singapore was mostly mangroves (which are disappearing with Singapore's relentless pursuit of development). One of the areas has been preserved as Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and it's one of our favourite places for bird and monitor lizard watching. (It's at the northern-most tip of the map above.)

These photos are taken near where the Japanese landed using their boats.

Looking through the mangroves to present-day Johore Bahru on the other side of the Johore Strait, from Sungei Buloh.

It is quite eerie to imagine the events of 80 years ago here. It would have been very difficult for the Australians to defend their positions as they were thinly spread out, and inadequately trained and equipped.

Murray: Being the highest point of Singapore, Bukit Timah hill offered a key strategic advantage. My father often talked about how terrible it was when Bukit Timah hill was lost, and I imagine they felt an increasing sense of doom.

Bukit Timah is well-known to us:

• The staff quarters and campus of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where I worked as a lecturer and staff trainer for 13 years, are just off Bukit Timah Road, and we did our shopping in Bukit Timah Plaza, the site of Bukit Timah village.
• One of our favourite recreational activities was to walk to the top of Bukit Timah hill. It's not that high at 480' (164 m), but the climb was always taxing given the heat and humidity. It's one of the few remaining parts of Singapore with virgin rainforest, and has extraordinary biodiversity.

I'd often think how challenging it must have been to run through the jungle carrying water, food, ammunition and weapons, given how demanding it can be just walking.

Murray: We used to walk and ride bicycles through Sleepy Valley, now called Toh Tuck, for our evening exercise. I didn't realise then the significance of it.

Towards Sleepy Valley (mid-distance) from our staff apartment.

Murray: This photo actually looks more like a rubber plantation, not the dense tropical rainforest that Bukit Timah is today.

Murray: This site is well-known to us. It's on Clementi Road (formerly Reformatory Road), and:

• It's about 2 km South of Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where I worked for 13 years.
• It's about 1 km West of the campus of the Australian International School Singapore where Naomi was a student from 1998 until when it moved in 2003.
• It's about 4 km West of Holland Village (near Buona Vista) where Yumi and I lived from 2010 to 2020.

Botanic Gardens: We spent a lot of time in the beautiful Botanic Gardens. It gained UNESCO World Heritage Listing in 2015.

Yumi and Naomi in the Botanic Gardens, 2003.

Ford Factory: Construction of the Ford Factory on Bukit Timah Road was completed in October 1941, just weeks before the outbreak of war. It was taken over by the British Royal Air Force in December of that year to assemble fighter aircraft that would arrive from the US in wooden boxes. However, most of the planes produced there were not used in the defence of Singapore and were flown out towards the end of January 1942 (another lost opportunity).

The Japanese took over the factory when Bukit Timah fell, and they used it as their military headquarters for the next few weeks until the surrender, which took place there. They then moved their headquarters to Raffles College, one of the top Singapore schools (to this day), a few kilometers to the East along Bukit Timah Road.

Nissan took over the factory and produced trucks and other motor vehicles for the military until the end of the War.

The factory was returned to the Ford Motor Company in 1947 and they produced cars and other vehicles, tyres and engine components until 1980, when they shut down operations permanently. [Source]

The derelict Ford Factory before it became a museum.

It laid empty until 2006 when it was preserved as a National Monument and it now has a visitors' centre with a museum of the events that happened there.

Machine Gun Battalion narrative: On 25th May 1942, Major Bert Saggers took a party of 278 AIF to Serangoon Road Camp. This camp had been an internment camp for the Chinese and consisted of attap huts even less palatial than the Sime Road Camp. This group shared their accommodation with a number of British Prisoners of War employed at the Ford Motor Works. [Source]

An attap village of the 1940s [Source]

Murray: He grew up in a cold place (Hazelbrook, in the Blue Mountains, West of Sydney). He was never happy in hot, humid conditions and always did appreciate a cool breeze.

This hospital visit must have been fairly early in his POW days, as Changi Hospital didn't have the capacity to serve the needs of 50,000 prisoners and so its operations were moved to the nearby larger Roberts Barracks.

Yumi and I have stayed in Changi Village a few times on "staycations". It's one of the few parts of Singapore that retains an "early days" feel, and we enjoy exploring around the area. On our evening walks we used to go past the old Changi Hospital.

From the Alf Kirk narrative: They were transported on the Fukkai Maru to Korea (Chōsen). The group were marched from the Changi Camp at Singapore to the Harbour and then loaded onto the ship.

Waiting on the docks

They were first all forced to strip and take a fumigation bath before boarding.

Fumigation bath

Conditions were poor on board, the men were overcrowded onto small holds, Insects & rats ran free all over the ship. The journey became a living hell, not only the cramped and poor conditions to deal with and the rough seas but the men also became increasingly ill, falling prey to various exotic diseases such as malaria, beriberi & worse of all dysentery.

Boarding the Fukkai Maru.

Conditions on board the Fukkai Maru were terrible. Prisoners had to crouch over to move around.

They had actually been on the ship for four days before it sailed on the 20th; four days in hot and overcrowded conditions without even a sense of movement to distract the mind from the horrendous conditions. The ship's holds were dirty and infested with vermin, which rendered rather pointless all the disinfecting and fumigating that had preceded the men's arrival on board.

On the Tuesday it rained heavily and all the men were kept in the holds with the hatch covers on. It must have been a relief when, at quarter past eight in the morning of Wednesday 19th August, the ship slipped its moorings and headed out to sea. Whatever lay in store, they were at least on the move.

The first meal on board.

Many of the ships were also sunk by Allied submarines, unaware of their human cargo.

The Fukkai Maru was 3,000 tons and carried 1,100 prisoners. [Source]

Alf Kirk narrative: Alfred and the POWs aboard Fukkai Maru are forced to work as stevedores unloading bauxite until they are reembarked on Fukkai Maru.

Journey of The Fukkai Maru


Cap St. Jacques is the port of modern-day Ho Chi Min City.
Takao is the Japanese name for Kaohsiung and Formosa is modern-day Taiwan.
Fusan, Pusan and Busan are the same place;
Chōsen is the name Japan gave Korea after colonising it in 1910.
[Map source]

The prisoners spent some two weeks working in the docks to load the Fukkai Maru with its cargo of bauxite. The men had to load the cargo into lighters, either shovelling it or carrying it on their backs like sacks of coal. It then had to be unloaded from the lighters into the ship's holds the same way. It was hard physical labour; the only consolation being that the men were fed better rations and had three meals a day.

Alf Kirk narrative: On most of the days that they were in harbour it rained, usually heavily; it was the beginning of the typhoon season. Finally the ship was fully loaded and set sail on Tuesday 15th September. The men were then housed on top of the cargo of bauxite for the duration of the next part of the voyage.

Fukkai Maru hold where 200 men were packed above the bauxite. Sketch by J. D. Wilkinson. [Source]

The men were divided between two holds, 550 men in each. Wooden shelving had been placed on top of the cargo in each hold, making two tiers each with about a metre of space. There was not room to stand or even kneel; it was sit, lie or crawl.

The men stripped off their clothes, sweated and made the best of it. At first the weather continued to be extremely hot, many of the men suffered from heat rash and beriberi was all too common.

Meals, if such they could be called, were twice a day at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. The mainstay was rice, steamed using steam from the boilers, and a thin soup made with flour, water, a few onions and 14 tins of Irish stew – 14 tins between 1,100 men.

As the Fukkai Maru steamed north towards Korea the weather deteriorated and the sea became increasingly rough. As they headed into the South China Sea the ship pitched and tossed for hours on end; a good many of the men now fell prey to seasickness.

In order to accommodate the thousand men on board several outrigger style latrines had been rigged on the decks; these were washed overboard as the ship ploughed through the tail end of a typhoon. Conditions in the overcrowded holds now worsened considerably as the men suffered from seasickness, diarrhoea and dysentery. It also got distinctly colder. [Source]

Alf Kirk narrative: On Tuesday 22nd September the ship finally reached its destination, Fusan in Korea. Although the men had initially believed that they were heading for Japan, the majority of them were destined to see out the rest of the War in Korea.

The ship docked, the holds were fumigated and the men subjected to a medical examination by a team of Japanese doctors. More than twenty men were found to have contracted dysentery and most of the others were suffering from beriberi and acute diarrhoea. The serious dysentery cases were taken ashore immediately to the local military hospital.

The men then spent the next day, Wednesday 23rd September, stuck in the same holds, going nowhere and not knowing what was in store for them. It was the next day before the men were finally ordered to disembark.

Just before unloading the POWs of the Fukkai Maru at Pusan on 24 Oct 1942 [Source]

The Fukkai Maru sailed away and continued to ply its trade in the area for another year or so. It was torpedoed, carrying Japanese troops, off Palau on the 13th December 1943. [Source]

Fusan Victory Parade: After the ship docked the Japanese guard split the prisoners into two groups, assigning the Loyals, the AIF and all field officers to Keijo prisoner of war camp, and the 122nd Field Regiment and personnel from other corps to Jinsen camp.

A further day's delay on board ensured that the disembarkation of the prisoners coincided with the Japanese autumn equinox festival (Shūbun no Hi) on 24 September.

Pusan, Korea. 24th Oct 1942. Looking down on the crowded deck of the Fukkai Maru a Japanese prison ship which has transported English and 8th Australian Division prisoners of war from Singapore. The prisoners are ready to disembark. AWB could be one of these POWs. [Source]

As in Takao, the entire local population, clad in their holiday finery had been commandeered to line the streets as compulsory spectators of the victory parade. No sooner had the Fukkai Maru tied up at Fusan dock than Japanese journalists and photographers swarmed aboard to interview selected prisoners about the Malayan campaign.

As the captives filed down the gangplanks, their boots and hands were sprayed with disinfectant. On the dock, Kempeitai officers and customs officials subjected them to a double search, confiscating gold rings, packs of cards and cameras but sometimes missing more incriminating items, like Capt Des Brennan's Malay kris and a British prisoner's compass and makeshift brass knife. (Another British prisoner of war managed to discard a large handgun prior to being searched.)

Like several of his mates, Bill Gray from the 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion had filled his pack with unlabelled tins of M&V (meat and vegetable) "liberated" from the hold under the ‘tween-decks planking where the purser had stashed them for sale later in Japan. His booty exposed, he anxiously awaited punishment for theft. Instead, the Kempeitai NCO who found them accused him of hiding "bombs" in his kit. To Bill's amazement and relief, he was permitted to keep them after proving that the tins contained food by opening one. His delight soon turned to woe, however, when he and his fellows were formed up into lines of four abreast and forced to march with full kit for three and a half hours around the streets of Fusan.

The victory parade was supervised by scores of red-capped, red-booted Japanese Kempeitai officers and followed closely by the press corps who "snapped every wilting or fainting soldier".

Fusan Victory Parade: Lieutenant Terada, adjutant at Keijo, and the detested "mad major" Okuda from Jinsen camp accompanied the parade. Okuda was on horseback during the march and, according to AIF Lt Hugh Frazer, "appeared to derive great enjoyment from stepping his horse almost on the heels of the rear men and having the animal snort and slaver over their shoulders." Many prisoners noted that the festively clad Korean population appeared cowed, sullen and apathetic if momentarily curious about the tartan kilts of the few Highlanders in the column and the slouch hats and colour patches of the AIF.

The Japanese in the crowd, recognizable among the Koreans by their distinctive dress, were more inclined to jeer. In response to the jeering, the British sang "There'll always be an England".

Eventually at 4.30pm, the parade halted at Fusan railway station where bento boxes containing the best food the prisoners had encountered since the fall of Singapore were issued for the overnight journey to camps at Keijo [Seoul] and Jinsen [Inchon]. Guarded by armed sentries and still accompanied by press representatives who continued to ask questions and take photographs, the party was ushered aboard surprisingly modern and comfortable third class rail carriages. The next day when the two roughly equal groups reached their separate destinations, they were again paraded publicly en route to their camps, the first party through the streets of the capital Keijo [Seoul], the second through Jinsen [Inchon], Keijo's important west-coast port some thirty miles distant on the mouth of the Han River.

It may be that as a consequence, conditions in the Korean camps, and especially at Keijo, were significantly better than in most other Japanese controlled camps. This more benign regimen included better food, adequate accommodation, access to Red Cross parcels, delivery of mail (albeit slow), fewer atrocities and well-stage-managed annual inspections by International Red Cross Committee [IRCC] teams.

Keijo, and to a lesser extent Jinsen and Mukden, were manipulated by the Japanese as "show" camps, open to the IRCC, to demonstrate to the Allied powers Japanese chivalry towards prisoners.

Macquarie University Australian History Museum: The treatment of Australian POWs in Korea was generally better than that meted out by the Japanese to POWs in other locations. Keijo camp in Korea was a Japanese 'show' camp where approximately 90 Australians, together with approximately 300 British prisoners grew vegetables and raised rabbits to supplement their diet. The Japanese took photographs to use as propaganda, circulating them as proof of the 'good' conditions and the variety of foods available to the POWS . The Keijo camp was also used to demonstrate the POW's living conditions to visiting International Red Cross Committee (IRCC) officials. However there were many Australian POWs held in Korea who were kept in appalling conditions. Food allowances were often meagre, and death by malnutrition was not uncommon. [Source]

Murray: The Japanese diet makes a lot of use of seaweed (nori), which I was not aware of when I first heard his complaints about being given it from time to time. (I had never eaten Japanese food until much later.) Nori is high in vitamins (A, C and B-6), calcium and iron. So while it was unpalatable to the troops, it was supplying much-needed nutrients.

He kept a block of this seaweed and would bring it out to show us every now and then. I remember it had quite an odour and it seemed like a poison at the time. (I now love nori.)

Attention Allied Prisoners

Allied Prisoners of War & Civilian Internees, these are your orders and/or instructions in case there is a capitulation of the Japanese forces:

1. You are to remain in your camp area until you receive further instructions from this headquarters.
2. Law & order will be maintained in the camp area.
3. In case of a Japanese surrender there will be allied occupational forces sent into your camp to care for your needs and eventual evacuation to your homes. You must help by remaining in the area in which we now know you are located.
4. Camp leaders are charged with these responsibilities.
5. The end is near. Do not be disheartened. We are thinking of you. Plans are under way to assist you at the earliest possible moment. [Source]

Murray: My parents had been married 8 years by the time they were in a position to start having children.

AWB with our mother in 1954, with Ross (b. 1948), Colin (b. 1949) and me (b. 1953)

Murray: In 1988 I felt the need for a complete change in my life, and decided to go to Japan to live for a while. Japan was at the peak of its economic might, there was a lot of interest in the country and the Japanese language in Australia at the time, and I'd heard from a friend there was plenty of work for foreigners in Japan, especially in education.

So, I packed up everything and stayed with my parents for a few days before heading off. I knew neither of them would have been happy with my decision to go there, so I had to tread carefully.

On the day I was leaving, my mother pulled me aside and said, "Go and enjoy yourself, but whatever you do, please don't come back with a Japanese wife."

A few hours later, my father pulled me aside separately and said, "I'd rather you didn't go there, but enjoy yourself and whatever you do, don't come back with a Japanese wife."

Well, I did meet my wonderful wife in Japan (she was learning English in the school I was working in) and she was heading to Australia for 8 months to go to a language school in Melbourne. We wrote letters to each other (no email then) and when she returned to Japan, our relationship deepened.

My parents' words were ringing in my ears when we eventually decided to get married, having held off for a long while.

Of course, I worried whether they would accept Yumi, but they were very warm and accepting, and they loved our daughter Naomi. On Yumi's side, her family were very welcoming of me and were great with my mother when she came to Japan once for a holiday and then for our wedding. (It was disappointing, but perfectly understandable, that my father didn't attend.)

I know it must have been difficult for my father to tell his mates at the RSL (Returned Services League, a support organisation for returned soldiers) about this son of his that went off to (of all places) Japan, and to come back with (of all things) a Japanese wife. He never said anything negative about her to me, or to her, much to my relief.

It probably helped that Yumi's parents were young during the War and had no involvement in it, and her grandfather also was not a soldier.

I taught in an English language school in Tokyo for one year, and then taught mathematics in a US-based college programme in Yokohama for the following 2.5 years.

Sugamo Prison: In Tokyo, I worked in Sunshine 60, the tallest building in Japan at the time. It was built on the site of Sugamo prison, which housed political prisoners under the Japanese, and after the war ended it was taken over by the US military. It held suspected war criminals during their trials, and eventually held 2000 convicted war criminals. It ceased operation as a prison in 1971 and in 1978 Sunshine 60 was built on the site. [Source]

Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro, Tokyo [Source]

Sunshine 60, built on the site of Sugamo Prison.

As the US was pulling out of Japan in the mid-1950s (having written their new pacifist constitution for them), it realised it was going to need to put experienced government officials into power. They were also facing the real spectre of communism taking over all of Asia, so they needed people with appropriate right wing credentials to ensure this wouldn't happen in Japan. Where to find such people? In Sugamo Prison, of course.

So they let a bunch of them (war criminals) out and allowed them to form a government, the Liberal Democratic Party, which has remained in power almost continuously since.

Education about the war: Most Japanese students in the post-war period learn very little about what really happened. History textbooks tend to talk about events up until 1930 or so in reasonable detail, then skip over the next 15 years in a few sentences, and then talk about the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and then reconstruction.

The left-leaning teachers' unions are in a constant struggle to teach more about Japan's actions and responsibilities, but there is a tight control on the "approved" text books.

Most countries have skeletons in their closets which hold those countries back until there is reasonable truth-telling. Japan has not fully been accepted into the international fold (especially by its closest neighbours) and that won't happen until there is a proper recognition of the past.

Emporer Hirohito: The Allies overwhelmingly wanted Hirohito to hang for his role, but US Occupying Forces commander General MacArthur refused to allow it, knowing that the emporer would be an important part of restructuring of Japan. A lot has been written about Hirohito's responsibility for the conduct of the war and we'll never really know whether it was a case of him acquiescing to the demands of the militarist government, or whether he was driving the whole thing. He was a marine biologist and seemed to be more comfortable in his later years tinkering around in his laboratory than anything else. Maybe it was his ultimate escape from the nightmare caused in his name.

I was in Japan when he died in January 1989. I went to the Imperial Palace to witness the thousands of (mostly older) people who came there to pay their respects, and to sign the condolence book. It was a strange atmosphere - quiet and respectful like the Japanese are much of the time, and some sadness. There were a few right wing Emperor-lovers there.

Holding on to the past

I couldn't help thinking that up until the defeat, if you even dared to look towards the palace without scraping on the ground, it would have meant instant death.

Murray: Once again, he is hesitant to show any animosity towards the Japanese and recalls an act of kindness (which would have been very dangerous for that corporal) and points out a positive aspect of Japanese culture in the final paragraph.

I can remember he refused to buy anything Japanese for a long time (after all, their manufacturing during the 1950s and 1960s was often "cheap Japanese junk"), but as they rapidly moved up the value chain in the 1970s and 1980s, it became increasingly difficult to buy anything of quality that was not Japanese. I remember the day he eventually bought a Sony TV and later, a Mitsubishi car. This was quite something, but showed a pragmatic softening of his stance.

One of the many ironies of this story is that I spent about the same time in Japan (three and a half years from early 1988 to late 1991) as he spent as a prisoner of war (1942 to 1945).

Our experiences with the Japanese couldn't have been more different.