Remembering 1942

Posted by shaun wong under Reflections
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Check out this engaging speech about the fall of Singapore, presented by Dr Chris Coulthard-Clark from the Memorial’s Military History Section, on Friday 15 February 2002 beside the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial.

When Lieut.-General Arthur Percival, the GOC of British forces in Malaya, ordered his troops to lay down their arms and cease resistance at 8.30 p.m. on 15 February 1942, the Pacific War was just ten weeks old. In that time, Japanese forces had steadily driven the British forces defending the Malay peninsula southwards in a relentless but short campaign, before bottling them up in Singapore Island at the peninsula’s southern tip by 31 January. Then, in little more than a further two weeks, the island’s defences, too, had been forced to capitulate.

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