Chapter 2: Hardship and Heroism
War and Conflict: The Fall of the Hospital
On 8 December 1941, World War II hit Singapore when the Japanese military dropped their first bombs on the island and then invaded on foot two months later. Many members of the British Army’s Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) were posted by the War Office to the British Military Hospital (BMH) to provide medical aid to soldiers and civilians during the war. On 13 February 1942, the hospital came under the attack by the Japanese troops. The BMH became a massacre site where approximately 200 staff members and patients lost their lives.
According to a typescript of unknown authorship found in the British Imperial War Museum, in the morning before the attack, electricity was cut off and the water supply around Singapore was greatly reduced and rationed as a result of intense shelling that damaged mains supplies. The BMH was at full capacity.
Built to serve the British military, it was operating with a force of approximately 20 officers and 130 staff members of varying ranks, with close to 1,000 patients. Initially designed to house 450 patients, its bed capacity was increased to accommodate 550 persons, and later further stretched to hold 900 with the use of makeshift beds.
A map made by massacre survivor Walter Salmon and Peter Bruton, whose uncle John Bruton lost his life in the carnage. This was published in the 1989 memoir, The Matter of a Massacre: Alexandra Hospital Singapore.
This, accompanied by Japanese gunfire that damaged parts of the hospital’s architecture, made living conditions even more precarious. The hospital was in a state of complete panic and disarray. Against orders given by the Japanese to cease all activities, members of the RAMC continued to tend to their patients and other personnel who were wounded by the attack.
In spite of the ongoing gunfire in the corridors outside the operating theatre, operations proceeded under the most stressful of situations due to the sheer dedication and bravery of the medical staff. Captain Thomas Smiley of the RAMC lived to tell the tale of his encounter with Japanese troops in the operating theatre.
Along with anaesthetist Captain Ransome McNamara Allardyce and three other orderlies, Captain Smiley had been performing a leg surgery for Corporal Robert Veitch of the Armoured Cars Battalion in perhaps one of the most dangerous conditions for surgery recorded in history. As bullets from the Japanese soldiers were striking near the operating theatre, a decision was made to operate in the corridor dividing the theatre and the surgeons’ and sisters’ rooms as the staff believed the area to be well-protected.
They eventually returned to the operating theatre when they noticed Japanese soldiers approaching them.
Part One
While routine work in the hospital was carried out, Japanese troops were seen for the first time at about one in the afternoon.
Led by a soldier carrying the Japanese flag, they were sighted from a verandah on one of the upper floors of the hospital, marching from an adjacent railway along Ayer Rajah Road towards the sisters’ quarters. Despite the hospital being marked with Red Cross flags, the troops overran its grounds with explosives and bayonets.
They entered the hospital through its main entrance, firing small arms while ignoring the reception staff holding white flags in an act of surrender. Even the Red Cross brassards worn by the staff could not prevent the attack.
A second group of Japanese troops infiltrated the hospital through its rear entrance, and a third came through the windows of the operating theatres and surgical wards. At the rear, an RAMC officer, Lieutenant Weston, appeared with a white flag to signal the hospital’s surrender.
However, the Japanese took no notice of the flag and bayoneted him to death. In just a short span of time, countless hospital staff members and patients fell to machine-gun fire and bayonets.
The western wing of the hospital still showed signs of damage even after the liberation of Singapore, as seen in this photo by former radiographer Corporal Alan Boon, taken in 1946.
The Struggle for Survival
During the massacre at the BMH, several hundred hospital staff members and patients were imprisoned by the Japanese troops.
After their valuables were confiscated, they were led away from the hospital, some still dressed in their pyjamas, others barefooted, and many in bandages and plasters. They were confined in the servants’ quarters of the sisters’ mess—a red-brick, two-storey outbuilding set above the ground on piles.
The building consisted of three small rooms of varying sizes, the largest being 10-feet by 12-feet, and the smallest being 9-feet by 9-feet. Its windows were shuttered with wood and its doors were barricaded. The only avenue for ventilation in one of the rooms was through a tiny lattice screen and loose tile, while the other two rooms were denied this comfort.
In a display of panoptic power, a Japanese machine gun was positioned at the corner of the building, overlooking Ayer Rajah Road and beyond its railway embankment.
A map depicting the alleged positions that soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army 18th Division took, signed by Major Ito Kojiro, whose battalion was also involved in the assault on Pasir Panjang.
Meanwhile, shells that were falling every half an hour landed around the servants’ quarters. One blew open the doors and window shutters, wounding several prisoners but giving others the opportunity to escape. A number managed to get clear of the building, but most were fired at by a machine gun at point-blank range.
Those from the RAMC who escaped were Corporal Cedric Norman Claude Bryer, medical orderlies Private Hoskins and Private Francis Arthur Herbert Gurd, Captain Richard de Warrenne Waller, and Medical Corporal G. W. Johnson, as well as a couple of their patients. While escape seemed almost impossible under Japanese gunfire, several escapees fortunately ran into British troops, who brought them back to their Regiment Headquarters.
Others were recaptured by the Japanese and taken back to the hospital. The British, led by Lieutenant General Arthur E. Percival on 15 February 1942, surrendered Singapore to the Japanese at the Ford Motor Factory on Upper Bukit Timah Road.
Captain Richard Waller, one of the few survivors of the ordeal at the Sisters’ Quarters outhouse.
In these overcrowded conditions, those confined could not move, sit, or lie down, they could hardly breathe, and had to urinate against each other. They were kept there until dawn, and at least five people lost their lives due to thirst, heat, and suffocation.
Amidst all despair, a young soldier and member of the RAMC, Corporal Mitchell, removed a piece of his garment and tied it to an electric light flex hanging from the ceiling above his head, in an attempt to create a breeze in the room by waving it around.
In a letter to Corporal Mitchell’s father, Major James William Douglas Bull recounted this feat, celebrating Corporal Mitchell for his enthusiasm and positivity.
Major Bull writes: “He had all the qualities which would have carried him far—a good brain, an easy manner, a great capacity for work and a highly developed conscientiousness. ... So when I heard the story of him fanning the room with his knicks and encouraging people all the time I was not a bit surprised—it was Hugh Mitchell all over.
His ingenious act and unwavering spirit became a source of hope and encouragement for the others. Some time into the night, a man’s voice was heard. In perfect English, he told the imprisoned that he could get them back to the hospital the next day if they remained quiet. Those who caught a glimpse of him said he was tall and fair, with European features. The next morning, however, Japanese soldiers began removing their prisoners in batches of twos and threes. They were later executed. Several prisoners attempted suicide, one by cutting his wrists and another by hanging himself.
The front and back of the red cross brassard belonging to Private John Albert ‘Jack’ Griffin. Like many other internees captured by the Japanese, Griffin was sent to Thailand. He spent almost 3 years in Chungkai before being liberated from captivity.
The Register of Deaths contains the list of servicemen who perished in the massacre, including those taken to the Sisters’ Quarters outhouse.
British forces surrendered just 8km away from Alexandra Hospital, at the former Ford Factory. On the left of the photo is Colonel Cyril Wild, who would later go on to investigate war crimes including the massacre here, as a War Crimes Liaison Officer.
In the following days, the Japanese soldiers looted the hospital, taking away watches, cigarettes, pens, and rings that appealed to them. On around 16 February, work was allowed to resume, accompanied by a tour of inspection of the hospital by a high-ranked Nippon medical officer. However, the hospital was in an awful condition. Corridors were littered with debris, wards were filled with smelly unwashed linen, chimney soot covered the floors, and latrines were choked.
The porters tirelessly cleaned up the mess in the cookhouse and store, ensuring that the staff and patients continued to receive their meals. Soon after, on 27 February, the Japanese ordered the hospital staff and patients, along with other civilians in Singapore, to be moved to an internment camp at Changi Prison. Food services and medical treatment for patients were halted. With the exception of sick and wounded civilians who remained in their homes, the internees made their way to Changi on foot.
Some were housed in cells in a large barracks block while others were accommodated in makeshift shades and huts built in central alleyways and overflow verandahs. Food was scarce, and sanitation and healthcare were almost non-existent. Some of these internees were eventually sent to construct a railway from Thailand to Burma. Many lost their lives working on the railway as a result of long hours of work and poor living conditions. This railway was later coined the “Railway of Death” by the internees.
Following the massacre, the Japanese Administration ran the BMH for a total of three years and eight months, operating it as part of their network of Japanese military hospitals across Singapore. Irshad Ali Khan, a civilian employed to work at the hospital, stated that it was managed by the OKA 6091 (岡６０９１), a division of the Japanese Medical Corps.
The BMH was transformed into the Tsukushi Branch (筑紫分院) of their military hospitals network. The Japanese were highly meticulous, keeping detailed and comprehensive records of all their military hospitals. Postwar documents from the Seventh Division of the Japanese Southern Expeditionary Army in Singapore, titled 「南方軍•第七方面軍等終戦処理」, revealed weekly handwritten reports documenting medical supplies, logistical and equipment inventories, and patient records at Japanese military hospitals, as well as internment camps in Singapore.
The Japanese military hospitals also managed the outbreak of infectious diseases in Singapore, such as smallpox and malaria. However, it was recorded that there was a lack of dental care and medical treatment at the internment camps under the Japanese Administration.
This record from the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records indicates that BMH Singapore was used by the 1st Southern Military Hospital branch of the Imperial Japanese Army for the treatment of infectious diseases and mental illnesses.