Chapter 7 - Surrender

Summary

On 10 February 1942 the Japanese Army had confronted the British Army on Bukit Timah heights on Singapore Island. The Army Commander in Malaya, Lt-General Yamashita Tomoyuki, despatched to Lt-General A.E. Percival, the British Army Defence Commander, a note demanding a parley. The text had been written in English by Lt-Col Sugita, Intelligence Commander at HQ, and was dropped by aircraft into the British lines. The gist of it was that General Yamashita expressed his respect for the gallant fight put up by British Army troops but that, encircled as they were, it made good sense to make a cease-fire in the battle and to advocate a surrender as men would be uselessly, and increasingly, sacrificed: if by any chance this advice was not followed, in a general offensive even more would be lost. The note ended: ‘The truce-bearer must hoist the British flag and a white flag, and must proceed on foot along the road leading to Bukit Timah.’

On 15 February the truce-bearers as instructed hoisted the white flag and a Union Jack, and accompanied General Percival along the road to Bukit Timah. In a room in the Ford factory, which was on the hill above the troops’ position, the two generals conducted their parley. Their conversation at the parley was printed in a special ‘ Singapore’ issue of the English post-war production, a monthly magazine called After the Battle (November 1981). It was described from beginning to end and said that General Yamashita conducted it calmly in a gentlemanly manner: General Percival, who was urged to accept unconditional surrender when pressed for a prompt answer was said to have turned rather pale and in a low, small voice answered, ‘Yes.’ General Yamishita is said to have threatened him but in fact this was not true: he spoke in an ordinary conversational tone and is himself on record as saying, ‘I did not take up a positively overbearing attitude’, a statement quoted in an article in The Southern Cross, a bulletin of the Singapore Nipon-jinkai (the Association of the Japanese).