Selarang Barracks incident

[1] Built in 1938, the Selarang Barracks was part of the Changi Garrison, a heavily fortified coastal defence where most of the British forces were based during the Battle of Singapore.

The Selarang Barracks housed the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders, a British Army infantry regiment which recruited its soldiers mainly from North East Scotland.

General Fukuye was furious at the mass display of insubordination and the following day he ordered all prisoners, except the three who had agreed to sign, to congregate at the parade square in Selarang Barracks.

[1] The Selarang Barracks, originally built to accommodate 800 men, consisted of a parade ground surrounded on three sides by three-storey buildings.

[1] An Australian POW, George Aspinall documented the situation: The first and most urgent problem we had to face up to was the lack of toilet facilities.

[5] When there were no signs of the POWs backing down on the third day, General Fukuye ordered the Commander of the British and Australian troops in Changi, Lt-Col E. B. Holmes and his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Galleghan, to attend the execution of the four recent escapees: Breavington, Gale, Waters and Fletcher.

Without food and little water available and coupled with latrine pits, kitchens and hospital beds crowded into an area of about a square kilometre, dysentery broke out quickly and the sick began to die.

[8] During the Singapore War Crimes Trial in 1946, General Fukuye was sentenced to death on 28 February and executed by firing squad on 27 April at the spot where the four POWs had been shot three years earlier.

Today, Selarang Barracks is the headquarters for the 9th Division of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), and access to the camp is restricted.

[14] On 19 April 1996, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his wife, Nicky, made a personal pilgrimage to Changi Prison, to see the cell his father was kept in as a prisoner-of-war during World War II.

Downer also visited the Changi Memorial Chapel, where Sir Alexander had worshipped during his internment, the Selarang Barracks, and the camp parade square, where 17,000 Allied POWs were ordered to assemble in 1942.

A view from above of a square crowded with prisoners-of-war surrounded by the buildings of a military barracks. There is one building to the left and one to the right, with another building in the background with trees and vegetation either side of it. Within the square are thousands of prisoners, some visible at work in the foreground, and a large number of tents, some with a red cross symbol painted on them.
A display of POW artefacts at the Changi Chapel and Museum. The picture in the background shows Changi Prison during World War II
The main entrance leading to the Changi Chapel and Museum at Upper Changi Road North, Singapore. In the background lies the replica of the Changi Chapel