The British prisoners-of-war in world war two Singapore : a reconstruction of their captive identity

Abstract

The Second World War in Singapore is often a topic that revolves very much around the stories of local heroism, the sufferings of the locals, as well as the war atrocities that the Japanese army had committed. Insufficient amount of attention has been given to a significant group of people who also experienced some of the worst treatments and tortures: the British prisoners-of-war (POWs), who made up the bulk of the POWs in Singapore. The current historiography only focuses on the bestial prison conditions and tortures that the POWs had experienced, and the research is confined to war period. Yet, there has been a wide array of literature that addresses the POWs’ lived experiences during captivity and the post-war traumas and afflictions that they had to endure for the rest of their lives. This paper argues how the British POWs in Singapore should not only be characterized and identified by the tortures during captivity but through factors such as religion, diseases, and families, where each prisoner has his own unique experience. More specifically, I seek to re-examine the experiences of the POWs and how they used it to reconstruct their own captive identity.