by Pacific War Uncensored: A War Correspondent's Unvarnished Account of the Fight Against Japan
One of the first people who I interviewed in Singapore was an old navy commander who had previously been in charge of an H-boat. His name was Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, and he had an office at the naval base. After I had finished my interview with him, he invited me back to his house for an, “off-the-record” chat. We went there in an official car, and I always remember the way he strode up to the veranda at the front of his house and sank down into a chair. Sir Geoffrey Layton then stripped off various parts of his uniform with some apparent relief, and declared; “Now I’m a bloody civvy too!” He then gave me a very honest and enlightening account of what he thought about the situation regarding the naval defences in Singapore. The main point that he made was that the island had twenty-six square miles of deep-sea anchorage offshore, which was large enough to take the whole of the British and American fleets, along with a dry-dock and workshops onshore. The only thing that was missing was a navy! It did seem incredible that although Singapore had such an extensive naval defensive facility, there were so few ships to form a fleet.
Pre-war Singapore. Author collection
As our news service became increasingly busy, John Morris decided to send me an assistant, whose name was Darrell Berrigan. He was a young American who had done a great deal of work for the United Press on the Chinese war front, as well as Indo-China. One of the earliest stories that we had to cover was the arrival of Australian troops onboard the Queen Mary. They were quickly disembarked at the naval base in Singapore, and shipped away “up country” into Malaya, to an area on the west coast known as Mersing. Now that I had an additional member of staff, I took advantage of the situation and travelled up into the Malay Peninsula to find out what conditions were like for the troops.
I was not able to cover the whole of the peninsula in my travels, as it is actually quite a large area. There were also a limited number of roads and railways that could be used, with quite a lot of the land being covered in thick vegetation. From a military point of view the density of the jungle was a good thing, as it meant that observations of the ground from aircraft were limited and would provide protection for any foot soldiers. The jungle could, though, also be inhospitable, with the protective canopy making conditions underneath it very hot and damp, which was not conducive to a lot of physical activity and made you feel very un comfortable.
Despite this there was a great deal of commercial activity in and around the rubber plantations, and it was near the plantations where it was easiest to find a road or railway. Occasionally it was also possible to find a road that went out to a coastal port—where the jungle became less dense, movement was less prohibitive. I was also told that there were more open areas of land in the north of the peninsula where there were rice fields, although moving from the west to east coasts could be hampered by a range of hills that pretty much ran all the way down it’s length.
Singapore waterfront before the war, a hive of marine activity. The Sydney Sun
On my first visit to the Mersing area on the west coast, where the Australians had been sent, I found the troops to be in a very disgruntled mood. Despite there being some sandy stretches of beach on the west side, there were also some very unpleasant mangrove swamps. Their mood had not been made any better by reports coming from the Middle East, where their comrades were having some notable successes and covering themselves in glory. The Australians stationed in Malaya seemed unsure as to what they were doing there, and were almost in a militant mood when I spoke to them. I then went further up country where the Indian regiment was taking part in exercises. This visit proved to be most enlightening in regards to the benefit of the Malayan jungle as a natural defence for Singapore Island.
Officials wait at the Singapore dock to greet Australian troops. From the right in the foreground is Admiral Geoffrey Layton (wearing white) and Sir Shenton Thomas, Governor of Malaya. Troops were quickly dispatched and sent up into the Malay peninsula. Newspaper unknown
One of the officers commanding a regiment had previously been told that the section that he was responsible for was easy to defend because it was well protected by jungle. He had felt sceptical about these claims and decided to conduct an experiment, by taking some of his men along a road to a point where the jungle appeared to be at its thickest. He chose an objective point that was eight miles in the distance, and gave his men the order to make their way towards it. They managed to reach the destination within a few hours, and even though the jungle appeared at first to be dense in places, the undergrowth in some areas was composed just of saplings and shrubs, which could be cut down quite easily with a jungle knife. The giant trees of the tropical forest also were found at times to grow at intervals wide enough to make it possible to cut a path between their trunks. Staff officers came and inspected the area, and watched the Indians cut their way through the jungle. As a result, the defence scheme for that area was changed and applied to other areas as well. I witnessed this myself and was convinced that if the Japanese were to attack, they would be able to approach from the north and make their way easily through what was previously thought to be impenetrable jungle.
I also visited some Royal Air Force stations to find out what type of aircraft they had, and found that they mostly had two small airplanes, one called a Vildebeast and the other a Brewster Buffalo. These planes’ top cruising speeds was about ninety miles per hour, and the Air Force ground staff were not too pleased, as they felt that the quantity of planes in their squadron was not big enough. My first trip up country had given me a very good insight as to the state of preparedness of the defences, which in addition to the comments made to me about the navy by Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, seemed to present quite a worrying situation.
When I got back to Singapore I immediately started to write a report on what I had found out. I can remember the exact sentence of the first line of that story which said, “The theory that the ‘back door’ approaches to the fortress island of Singapore are sufficiently protected from northeast attack by natural jungle defences, which are almost as strong as the coastal batteries and protect it from seaward attack, no longer holds good.” The story went on to outline a lot of the deficiencies in all our defences, and caused an uproar amongst the Singapore government. They even issued a statement that called my story a canard—a word that I had to look up in a dictionary to find its meaning. I think the definition is a loathsome type of lie, which I thought was an incredible response as I considered my findings to be important news.
Australian troops presenting arms on parade. Harold found them to be in a disgruntled mood, unsure as to why they had been stationed to Malaya. The Hong Kong Telegraph
I was continuing to live in the Raffles Hotel, where there were some very interesting visitors from time to time. The first I remember was Sir Charles Vyner-Brooke, who was the white Rajah of Sarawak. He was very worried about the prospect of war threatening his little domain of Borneo, which his family had ruled over for more than a generation. My old friend General Two-Gun Cohen also came to the Raffles Hotel, accompanied by a man called Wong Tai Sin who was the governor of Guangdong Province in China, and had been travelling around on a fund-raising mission for the war in China. I found, however, that life in the Raffles Hotel was proving very expensive, so I decided to move out and find myself a little flat in a building known as the Cathay Building. My room was very comfortable, and there were three other flats on my floor. One of them was occupied by an engineer lieutenant in the Royal Navy whose name was Tom Wall, and like me had served as a boy artificer. The other belonged to an elderly Dutch woman who ran a library in Singapore known as the Blue Circle Library. She was very adept at cooking Malay and Chinese dishes, and in the evenings we used to take turns at inviting each other into our homes and having dinner together.
Work in our office was very busy, and there was always a lot of news coming in and out. In June 1941 we had a report that Hitler had invaded Russia, which was totally unexpected everywhere in the diplomatic world and changed everything in the Far
East. It had only been in 1939 that Hitler had made a non-aggression pact with Russia, and I am sure that had been the thing that had put a stop to the Japanese advance in China.
Though now Hitler had changed his tune, and I felt quite sure that the Japanese would soon go on the rampage in Asia. The Japanese had themselves formed what was known as the “Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.” This altered the situation in Indo-China, and we did not know how their government would react. One thing that did result from the Axis agreement was that the Japanese were able to have free access to Indo-China, and they were soon occupying places such as Hanoi and Haiphong in the north of Indo-China, increasing their potential threat to Malaya. It was of some comfort to me then to get letters from Marie, letting me know that both she and Pat were safe. In them she told me about their experiences since leaving Hong Kong, which had initially entailed a rough passage down to Manila in the Philippines. After a short stay there they had then gone onto Sydney, Australia, sailing on the SS Awatea.
Australian cook orderlies peeling potatoes for the troops. The Hong Kong Telegraph
Though in Singapore, every day seemed to take us closer to an attack by the Japanese. I went back for a talk with Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton, and found that he shared my views about the vulnerability of the island defences. He told me that he had put forward a plan to the British Government that he thought would help us defeat the Japanese, which involved occupying the Kra Peninsula, a piece of land connecting Siam with Malaya. Sir Geoffrey Layton’s plan was to travel to Siam and make the government there an offer of oil, which they were short of, but Singapore had in abundance. In return he would ask for permission to garrison the Kra Peninsula with the necessary forces to defend Malaya from a Japanese invasion. The British government had not taken kindly to his idea, which left Sir Geoffrey Layton feeling very angry because like me, he could envisage that an attack could be made by the Japanese from the north. I feel sure, though, that if he had been allowed to pursue it, Singapore would have been a lot more secure, and the ensuing events that happened may have taken a different course.
The Australian government then decided that they wanted to send army schoolmistresses from Australia to India, which was somewhere that Marie did not want to go. She sent me letters telling me how worried she was about the situation, and after much thought I replied by cable that if she did not want to go then the only option left would be for her to resign her position, and she and Pat could then join me in Singapore. That was a pretty hard decision to make given the current circumstances. The situation on the island was becoming less and less safe.
So Marie resigned. I told her that the United Press would pay the air passage for her and Pat to Singapore, and I booked a room in the Raffles Hotel for their arrival so they could experience life in a first class hotel. After their arrival we all stayed there for about a week, and during this time Marie was told that her resignation was not necessary, as there was a post available for her in Singapore as headmistress of a school on a little island off the coast called Blakamati.
She was allotted quarters in the Alexandra Barracks, which were in a very pleasant part of Singapore, and in no time at all we managed to settle in. I also bought an American Dodge car, even though I was unable to drive it, and employed a chauffeur to drive us around. He would take Marie every morning down to the dockside where she would get a ferry to Blakamati Island, and then collect her again at midday to bring her home.
During this time we received a visit from two very well known United Press men. One was Wallace Carroll who had come down from Russia, and was quite a famous name in the newspaper world; the other was a vice president of the United Press whose name was Virgil Pinkley. He was a very nice fellow who we entertained at our house several times, and in return he would take us to a famous restaurant in Singapore called the “Pig and Whistle.” But one of the things that Virgil Pinkley most wanted to do was to interview Mr. Alfred Duff-Cooper, a British cabinet minister who had been sent out to be chairman of a war council that had been formed in Singapore. An alliance had been formed between America, Britain and China; we used to call it the “ABCD Alliance,” because it included the Dutch as well.
Mr. Duff-Cooper, who was a prominent British politician, arrived in Singapore with his wife, who before they were married was called Diana Manners. She was a very famous stage beauty, and was tall with fair hair. We arranged an interview at Duff-Cooper’s house out near the botanical gardens. Virgil Pinkley and I and Duff-Cooper were sitting down talking, when Lady Diana walked in with a towel wrapped around her head, as she had been washing her hair. She said that she was sorry, and did not realise that her husband had visitors. Duff-Cooper said that it did not matter, that she could stay if she wanted, and so she did. I got the job of helping her dry her hair, while Virgil Pinkley and Duff-Cooper sat and discussed the current circumstances in Singapore.
Australian troops changing the guard at the Battalion Headquarters in Malaya. The Hong Kong Telegraph
In Singapore the British government was starting to set up what they called a Ministry of Information, which was to be directed by an Australian named Commander John Proud, who had been given a commission in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). During the following weeks the Ministry of Information rapidly expanded, and on more than one occasion I managed to get myself into trouble with their censors. However, I was pleased to find within the ministry’s staff an old acquaintance of mine called Bob Scott, who had by this time been given the title Sir Robert Scott. This proved to be a very useful contact, because when I did meet with the officialdom of the censors it was Bob Scott who managed to help me out. There was also a man called Ian Morrison, a scholarly chap who had been teaching at a university in China, but the war had driven him out and he had come down and given a job in the Ministry of Information. Ian Morrison was killed years later in the Korean War, and he appears as the central figure in a novel called Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, which was also made into a film.
My poor relations with the Ministry were not helped when Commander John Proud asked me if I would take some publicity photographs for them. He had found out that I had a good camera, and wanted me to use it to take photos of the Malay Defence Corps taking part in exercises, such as crossing rivers and climbing trees. I duly obliged and took three films in total, only then to find out afterwards that one of the sprockets had broken inside my camera and that the films had been ruined, by the same shot being taken over and over again. Needless to say my career as a cameraman came to an abrupt end, and my reputation within the ministry tarnished.
Company of Seaforth Highlanders, formerly stationed in Hong Kong, return from a route march in Malaya. The Hong Kong Telegraph
CHAPTER FIVE
Attack on Singapore
The last three or four months of 1941 seemed to fly past, but in spite of the uncertainty over the future, life in Singapore seemed to go on as normal. Marie, Pat and I lived quite happily in our quarters at the Alexandra Barracks, and in the mornings the chauffeur would arrive ready for work. I was, however, aware that events were turning, not only in the Far East but also in Europe. Hitler had already started to invade Russia, and seemed to be progressing through successive invasions of other countries with nothing to stop his will. This news seemed to have a tremendous impact, and under the surface of normality that prevailed in Singapore, a tense uncertainty mounted, with the Japanese now virtual occupants of the northern part of Indo-China and in full command of the ports of Hanoi and Haiphong. I also made a lot of friends inside Singapore, including George Seabridge who was the editor of the Straits Times, Singapore’s leading daily newspaper, and David Waite, the editor of the Straits Times sister paper, The Singapore Free Press.
The first indication I received that an attack on Malaya and Singapore was imminent came from a Japanese acquaintance called Johnny Fuji. He was a very amiable and jolly type of character who talked with an Americanised accent, and was also a great baseball fan. One day Johnny asked me if I would lik
e to buy his refrigerator at a knock-down price, which to me seemed a most extraordinary thing to want to do, as there were shortages of food and such an item was extremely useful. I asked him if he was thinking of moving. He was initially evasive in his manner and said that he knew I had been setting up home in the Alexandra Barracks and wanted to give me first option in buying the refrigerator. His story still did not make sense to me, so I pursued with my questioning, and Johnny eventually admitted that he was making plans to leave the colony. He also said that he thought most Japanese residents would also soon be going, and when I asked if he thought that war would soon break out, he said that he was unable to say any more, which pretty much answered my question.
Alexandra Barracks in Singapore, where Marie was allotted quarters after returning from Australia in 1941. Author collection