Today is the 75th anniversary of the fall of Singapore, a big turning point in Australian history. I have two ancestors that I know of who were captured in Singapore and spend the rest of the war as Japanese POWs. They both spent time in Singapore and Burma, one of them was then sent to Nagasaki to work the coal mine (he was there when the bomb hit and died of cancer a few years after he returned).
My question relates to the story my grandmother (the daughter and niece of the two men mentioned earlier) has always told me about their capture. She says they didn't fight in the Battle of Singapore, but arrived after Singapore had already fallen. She says they didn't know Singapore had already fallen, and their guns and ammunition were on a separate boat. Apparently they landed at Singapore, got off the boat, and were immediately taken prisoner.
Now like any Australian I have a healthy belief in the incompetence of the British command in the Pacific, but I'm skeptical about this story. I haven't found anything like this in online accounts of the battle or the aftermath, and this seems a little too comically incompetent even to me. Did this actually happen? If we don't know, could it have happened?
Do you know what units your relatives served with?
I can't say for certain if the story your grandmother told you is accurate. Is it possible? Yes.
If it did happen, it is likely your relatives would have been members of the 7th Division. After the outbreak of war in the Pacific, the Australian government, realising that Australia itself was severely under defended, recalled the Australian 6th and 7th Division from North Africa. On the 30th of January, the first elements of the 7th Division embarked for the return journey. Due to the numbers involved plus equipment, it was necessary for the division to be spread across several convoys, staggering their departure dates. The majority of the division arrived in Adelaide throughout the month of March with the exception of one element mostly made up of the 2/6th Field Company which was diverted along the way to Java. Most of these men, after a brief period of action alongside Dutch forces, became prisoners of war.
The return of the 6th and 7th Divisions was a point of contention between Australia and Great Britain. Upon their withdrawal from North Africa, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested that the Divisions be diverted to Burma to push back Japanese advances. The Australian Prime Minister John Curtin, believing his first priority to be the defence and survival of Australia, refused to allow Australian forces to be diverted for what he viewed to be Churchill's desire to preserve British interests at the cost of Australia.
The return of the 7th Division has since become to be seen as a watershed moment in the relationship between Australia and Great Britain wherein Australia de-emphasised the traditional relationship in favour of a new emphasis on its relationship with the United States.