On the morning of Friday 13 February 1942, with Japanese forces just a few miles from the city of Singapore, the commander- in-chief of imperial forces, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, called a conference of senior officers. He announced he had received orders to fight to the finish and the defence of the city must continue.
His principal corps commander, General Sir Lewis Heath, said his troops were exhausted, totally dispirited, and there was no point in further fighting. The commander of the Australian troops defending the island, General Gordon Bennett, argued that the only option was surrender. When Percival said he had to consider his honour, Heath replied, ‘You need not think about your honour. You lost that a long time ago up in the North [of Malaya].’
The Japanese had timed their invasion of Malaya to coincide with their attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on the morning of 7 December 1941. Malaya had become a wealthy British colony exporting tin and rubber. The Japanese wanted to assault their two principal adversaries, the US and Britain, by air and land at the same time. They landed ground troops about 500 miles north of Singapore in Thailand and at Kota Bharu in northern Malaya.
Voices on the Path