People from a dozen modern states were directly involved in the 1942 fall of Singapore: The United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Indonesia, China and above all Malaysia and Singapore. To commemorate its 60th anniversary, the Department of History at the National University of Singapore organised an international conference of historians, students and war veterans on the theme Sixty Years On: The Fall of Singapore Revisited. This book presents a selection of the papers presented at the conference, revised for publication. It is not meant to be the last word on all aspects relating to the Malayan campaign and the fall of Singapore but rather an attempt to pull together reassessments of arguments of very long standing about major issues such as the Singapore strategy, with fresh contributions to our knowledge such as a discussion of how Japanese soldiers experienced the fighting on Singapore Island. Both conference and volume aimed to provide a well-rounded, state of the art discussion of the central issues and some of the shadows, relating to the fall of Singapore. READERSHIP: University lecturers/researchers, undergraduate students, academicians and those interested in History.

Hong Kong Internment, 1942-1945: Life in the Japanese Civilian Camp at Stanley tells the story of the more than three thousand non-Chinese civilians: British, American, Dutch and others, who were trapped in the British colony and interned behind barbed wire in Stanley Internment Camp from 1942 to 1945. From 1970 to 1972, while researching for his MA thesis, the author interviewed twenty-three former Stanley internees. During these meetings, the internees talked about their lives in the Stanley Camp during the Japanese occupation. Long regarded as an invaluable reference and frequently consulted as a primary source on Stanley since its completion in 1973, the study is now republished with a new introduction and fresh discussions that recognize later work and information released since the original thesis was written. Additional illustrations, including a new map and photographs, as well as an up-to-date bibliography, have also been included in the book.

Stranger In My Heart is about the search for understanding oneself, answering the question “Who am I?” by seeking to understand the currents that sweep down the generations, eddy through one’s own persona and continue on – palpable but often unrecognised. My father fought at the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and then escaped in February 1942, making his way across 1200 miles of inhospitable country to reach China’s wartime capital at Chongqing. Seventy years later I retraced his steps in an effort to understand a man who had died when I was 18, leaving a lot of unanswered questions behind. My book is the quest that I undertook to explore my father’s life, in the context of the Pacific War and our relationship with China. A picture of a man of the greatest generation slowly unfolds, a leader, a 20th Century Great, but a distant father. As I delve into his story and research the unfamiliar territory of China in the Second World War, the mission to get to know the stranger I called ‘Dad’ resolves into a mission to understand how my own character was formed. As I travel across China, the traits I received from my father gradually emerge from their camouflage. The strands of the story are woven together in a flowing triple helix, with biography, travelogue and memoir punctuated with musings on context and meaning.