The place of surrender

Posted by June Yong under Museums/Heritage Galleries
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There was a deep solemnity as I climbed the long flight of stairs to the main hall of the Old Ford Factory. Belonging to a generation born to post-war boomers, I too had forgotten that wars were fought on our tiny island. I did not know what to expect of this place - the place where Ford cars were assembled, also the place where on 15 February 1942, Singapore came under Japanese rule.

I had to walk through the tunnel…

filled with sounds and other ghostly things of the past…

before I got to the surrender chamber, which was the company board room of Ford Motors. It was here that Lt.-Gen. A.E. Percival, Commander of the British Forces in Singapore, signed the surrender document. You can even read the dialogue and insider story of what went on.

Quotes such as this one recorded by Rudy Mosbergen set the morbid scenes of war:
“I went down to Bras Basah Road, next to Hotel Rendezvous now. And from there I could see, I looked across next to the Cathay Building, there was a table and that fellow’s head was there. They just left it open and when you leave it in the sun, the rain and so on the face became black. It is no longer a human face you are looking at…”

Though this is a black and white illustration done by master artist Liu Kang, the cruelties of war remain stark to the human eye.

Photographs and life-sized statues sing the same sad tune.

Yet, as this diary entry of a POW humorously shows, ‘The show must go on, and so must we’.

School went on, albeit in very different ways.

People got married.

And they went to the cinemas (although these were made up mostly of Japanese shows, some Chinese and Indonesian films were screened too).

What struck me most, is that in times of great trial, humans soldier on. Here, you can see how the POWs lived.

And their triumphant smiles after the Japanese surrender. The show does indeed go on.

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