Description
Object description
Excellent ms account (ca.250pp), in three notebooks, with ts transcript (84pp) written while he was an internee in Changi Gaol between 1942 and 1944 and recording in great detail his experiences and duties as a police officer during the Malayan campaign (December 1941 - February 1942), initially in his own police district in Perak and then, as the Japanese advanced, on temporary attachments in Kuala Lumpur and finally, from mid January, in Singapore. The account includes some graphic descriptions of the scenes as they steadily withdrew down the Malayan peninsula, of coming under Japanese air attack and later shelling, of his wife's evacuation in the EMPRESS OF JAPAN and of the chaos prevailing in Singapore in the final days before capitulation and there are also frequent and strongly expressed criticisms of the Army's shortcomings, notably their obsession with alleged Fifth Column activities and the lack of discipline among Indian and Australian troops, of the general complacency of the European population, particularly in Singapore, and of the unseemly conduct in the crisis of some of his acquaintances and fellow police officers.
Content description
Excellent ms account (ca.250pp), in three notebooks, with ts transcript (84pp) written while he was an internee in Changi Gaol between 1942 and 1944 and recording in great detail his experiences and duties as a police officer during the Malayan campaign (December 1941 - February 1942), initially in his own police district in Perak and then, as the Japanese advanced, on temporary attachments in Kuala Lumpur and finally, from mid January, in Singapore. The account includes some graphic descriptions of the scenes as they steadily withdrew down the Malayan peninsula, of coming under Japanese air attack and later shelling, of his wife's evacuation in the EMPRESS OF JAPAN and of the chaos prevailing in Singapore in the final days before capitulation and there are also frequent and strongly expressed criticisms of the Army's shortcomings, notably their obsession with alleged Fifth Column activities and the lack of discipline among Indian and Australian troops, of the general complacency of the European population, particularly in Singapore, and of the unseemly conduct in the crisis of some of his acquaintances and fellow police officers.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 1995-02