Survival in Singapore

The triumph and tragedy of Australia’s greatest commando operation

By Tom Trumble

Published by Penguin Books

RRP $36.99 in paperback | ISBN 9780143778059

 

In September 1943, Australian commandos, comprising six men and three two-man folboats, entered Singapore Harbour, sinking and damaging numerous Japanese ships but this book goes beyond the attack itself, codenamed Operation Jaywick.

The mission’s target was kept secret until the host ship, the Krait, left Exmouth Gulf in Western Australia. It was disguised as a Japanese fishing vessel.

Miraculously, all men returned, having achieved their aim.

The first part of the book consists of a series of chapters describing events in Japanese-occupied Singapore either before the attack or after. Each chapter has a helpful timeline in relation to the attack.

Inevitably the Japanese believed the planning for the mission had been done from within Singapore.

Trumble’s account of the horror of Japanese brutality in attempting to uncover conspirators is visceral and unsettling, ensnaring dozens of British internees in Changi Jail and countless Chinese Singaporeans.

Among those swept up in the aftermath are Elizabeth Choy, a courageous schoolteacher who risks her life to smuggle aid into Changi Prison, and Robert Heatlie Scott, a senior diplomat and propagandist who miraculously survived the sinking of a ship and two days drifting on a dinghy in the open sea only to be recaptured by the Japanese.

How they survived the torture and treatment meted out to them is incredible.

Yet Elizabeth Choy lived a long life, dying at the age of 96. Scott was 76 and retired to salmon fishing when he died.

Both were unlikely survivors of Singapore.

VERDICT: By turns tragic and eventually triumphant, Trumble has spared nothing to bring to life the grim reality of the sadistic and brutal occupation of Singapore.