Dorothy Rowe

Learning from History

In 1942, when Singapore fell to the advancing Japanese army, Russell Brandon, a 21-year-old Australian gunner, was captured and spent four years in Changi prisoner-of-war camp. He survived, and went on to become an outstanding journalist. On April 23, 1983, two days before Anzac Day, he wrote an article for the Sydney Morning Herald called 'Remember Singapore'. Here he reminded Australians of their country's past relations with Britain and the USA, and he recalled how two British prime ministers, first Neville Chamberlain and then Winston Churchill, lied to the Australian government.  With the USA weakened by the Great Depression of the thirties and with a president, Roosevelt, who was a critic of British imperialism, Australia could not look to America for protection from the Imperial Army of Japan. Russell Brandon wrote, 'Australia's safety depended upon the ability of the Royal Navy to keep the Mediterranean a British lake and Singapore an impregnable fortress.' When the Australian government sought reassurance that, in the event of the Imperial Army advancing south, a British fleet would be despatched to the Far East, Neville Chamberlain lied. In a cable to the Australian prime minister he said, 'The idea that, in the event of war, we might not be able to defend our overseas possessions is entirely false.'

Two British ships were sent to Singapore but without air cover. They were immediately sunk by the Japanese. Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister, asked the Australian government to send a division of Australian troops to Malaysia. Mindful of Australia's 'special bond' with Britain and the Empire, and of how Australian troops had fought in the Boer War and in the First World War alongside the British, the Australian government complied. The troops arrived in time to be killed or captured by the Japanese.

As a twenty-one-year-old gunner was to discover,

We were fed lies about our potential enemy. Disregarding Japan's recent history (of which we were ignorant), our intelligence officers were required to assure us that Japanese soldiers were both physically and militarily inadequate.

Yet they had hated Britain and America ever since the 1920s when the one had refused to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the other had banned them from immigrating.

 And when they joined (or were drafted into) the Emperor's forces, their instructors had never stopped telling them, 'Do not be afraid of combat, and do not come home alive.'

 And every one of them who was about to be shipped to Malaya carried a booklet entitled Read This Alone, which said of us: 'Here before you is a man whose death will lighten your heart of its burden of brooding anger. Should you fail to destroy him, you may never rest in peace - and the first blow is always the vital one.'

Compare that with what we were told about them - which was that they were puny, myopic, afraid of the dark and badly armed. Would that we had been armed as they were to march the full length of the peninsula, constantly encircling our defensive positions as they raced through the jungle with confidence.

The victorious Japanese army was halted, first by a 'mere battalion or two' of Australian troops stationed at Milne Bay and on the Kokoda trail in New Guinea, and then by the Americans, forced into the war by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour.

Russell Brandon concluded his memories of Singapore with

So the moral for this Anzac Day is that, in either diplomacy or war, there is no excuse for bad intelligence; and that good intelligence is not the exclusive prerogative of our more powerful allies. We may not be in a position to defend ourselves for another hundred years, but we should never again be asked to face an enemy about whom everything that we have been told is either untrue or wishful thinking.

How short, or non-existent are the memories of those who govern us! It is said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Tony Blair, George Bush and John Howard repeated history and achieved a simultaneous tragedy and farce. This is the tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the farce of these three men still strutting upon the world stage and claiming to be wise, honourable statesmen. It is said that Blair once admitted to wishing that he had studied history. The only history Bush seems to have learnt is a falsely glorified history of his own country. Howard cannot claim to be ignorant of Australian history. There are still many of us alive who remember the fall of Singapore in the way that Americans remember the fall of the Twin Towers. I was eleven when Singapore fell, and it was the first time I had seen my father be afraid.

 Blair, Bush and Howard claim to be Christians, but they have failed to remember the Christian teaching that, when we sin, we must acknowledge our guilt and shame, and embark on a life of penitence and unostentatious humility. Christian or not, it is only by guilt, shame and penitence that we can learn from our mistakes and err no more.

'Remember Singapore' was republished by the Sydney Morning Herald on April 22, 2006.

9 December 2006