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1. 15,400 British and
Australian troops were herded into an area which usually held 1200
men
2. In the hospital area the wounded were lying under whatever
makeshift cover could be set up.
There were people with bullet wounds, recovering from amputations
and some half-blinded battle casualties.
3. POWs slept on makeshift beds called charpoys, made from four
posts with a mattress woven from coconut-husk rope.
The bedding and washing were hung up to dry overhead in the
barracks
1. Rice cooking; 2. Tropical
ulcers forming on the legs of some of their men in the later days
Living Hell for POWs
(Source: Changi Photographer George Aspinalls' Record of
Captivity)
A general order went out all over the island that all surrendered
Allied troops were to assemble and march out to the Changi area,
to Selarang Barracks. If you had had an aerial view, you would
have seen a long line of Allied troops marching towards Changi
from various parts of the island during the next three days. The
local people were all lined up beside the road watching them walk
past. The Chinese were particularly sympathetic, offering them
bananas, coconuts and drinks of water when they could. The
Japanese had decided to put all the Allied prisoners-of-war on the
Changi peninsula on the north-east side of Singapore island.
Although Changi Gaol was in that area, they didn't go there until
much later - until after they had been to the Thai/Burma Railway
in fact. At first there wasn't even any barbed wire, they just
congregated in and around the buildings of the Selarang Barracks.
After all, there was nowhere to escape to and the Japanese knew
this.
Selarang Barracks was the main camp for the Australians. There
were English and Dutch troops on other parts of the Changi
peninsula. The Dutch were in Roberts Barracks nearby was the
hospital, and where the bulk of the British troops were
congregated.
At 8am of the second morning, all the POWs in the Selarang area
were called out of the buildings and they had to parade in the
Barrack Square, which was an area about two acres and bordered on
three sides by seven two-storey buildings which were their living
quarters at that stage. They were ordered to sign a
no-escape-document by the Japanese. Most of the British troops
were at Roberts Barracks, not far away, and they had to come in
with what equipment they could carry. Robert Barracks was also the
main POW hospital, and all the sick had to be moved to Selarang
with whatever medical equipment that could be arranged. A lot of
the gears was brought on car and truck chassis, pulled and pushed
by the troops. It took all day, but by the evening of September 1
1945, there were 15,400 men assembled in a barracks area that
normally housed one battalion - about 1200 men. There were 1900
Australians in the Square and the rest were mostly British.
The seven barracks buildings were really three-storeyed if you
counted from the roof area, where people camped as well. Different
buildings were allocated to the AIF, the British and the Indians.
And then there was another building set aside for the very serious
hospital patients who had been brought over from the main hospital
at Roberts Barracks. This was only three or four months after the
surrender. People were just recovering from bullet wounds and
amputations or having had their limbs blown off. Some people had
been completely or half-blinded, some had chest wounds or were
recuperating, with their wounds not properly healed. There were
more patients than would fit in one building. Now many of the
patients had been pushed or pulled from Robert Barracks on their
hospital beds, which had wheels on them.
The most urgent problem they had to face up to was the lack of
toilet facilities. Each barracks building had about four to six
toilets, which were flushed from small cisterns on the roofs. But
the Japanese cut the water off, and these toilets couldn't be
used, and people used to line up in the early hours of the morning
and that queue would go on all day. You were allowed one water
bottle of water per man per day, just one quart for your drinking,
washing and everything else.
They had to dig latrines through the asphalt of the barracks
square. Some of these holes were dug twenty and thirty feet into
the ground. The area was infested with flies, which carry
dysentery and a lot of other diseases, so it was vital that the
excreta was covered up so that the flies would not contaminate
what little food were left available.
The first day there was no food available, only a few tins of
stuff that had been hoarded away for emergencies. But by the end
of the second day, the Japanese allowed some rice to come in and
be cooked. The rice was cooked to to a kind of gluey soup.
Actually it wasn't all the cooks' fault. The rice issued came from
a bombed bunker on the Singapore docks - known as 'broken rice'.
It had been mixed with lime, probably to keep the weevils out of
it. It had a most unpleasant taste and was very gritty. Sometimes
the outside of the grains were soft, but the inside was as hard as
shell-grit.
The doctors were worried that the POWs were not getting enough
vitamins, so working parties were sent out to gather great bundles
of lalang grass. Bundles of this grass were put into 44-gallon
drums and boiled over a fire for many hours. It was thought that
this would be a source of vitamin B. The finished brew was called
grass soup, and you were supposed to drink half a pint of this
foul stuff with your pint of rice. It tasted so awful a lot of men
wouldn't drink it. What made the rice taste even worse was that
they had no salt to add to it. Working parties were organized to
carry salt water up from Changi beach to cook the rice in, to make
it a bit more palatable.
The food was bad, water was scarce, and the place was overcrowded
and uncomfortable. Nevetheless, some days later, the POWs were
sent away from the Changi area to Burma where they were ordered to
build a railway - known as the Railway of Death. Many were
tortured and suffered to die, out of exhaustion and deadly
cholera.
Denghi fever and malaria were common over the POWs. When a
person was having a bout of malaria, he felt as if the heart stop.
It would be a kind of malarial seizure, with a high temperature,
perspiration and so on, and the heart seemed to stop beating.
Another more deadly disease is tropical ulcers. Next to
cholera, ulcers were the worst thing that could happen to you.
They would start as a small scratch, or sore, and just eat into
your flesh and keep on growing and growing. One of the
methods used to treat them was to scoop out the bad flesh of the
ulcer with a spoon sharpened on one side. The idea was to
get back to the good flesh, in the hope that it would heal - so
the deeper and the wider the scooping a higher chances of healing.
It was an excruciatingly painful procedure, of course, and there
were virtually no anesthetics. It it doesn't work, the leg
had to be amputated. Most patients died, not so much of the
painful operation without any anesthetic, but from the shock of
the operation.
Some of the bad cases had the shin-bone exposed. You could
see their tendons clearly. Sometimes the bone would go black
and start to break down and rot. Then the flies would get in
and lay their eggs, and the maggots would actually be in there,
feeding on the bone marrow. They would start to work up, all
the way up the leg. That would be the worst thing that could
happen in the POW camps, bloody maggots gnawing at the marrow in
your bones... They would beg the medical officer, 'For
Christ's sake cut me leg off .. I can't stand this any more'.
That was why a lot had to have their legs amputated during war
time, they were not just bombed off.
1. On every floor of the
barrack one or two rooms are mysteriously sealed up. You see
how narrow the corridor is.
The door will be bricked up to a wall leaving the room inside
tightly contained.
2. If those rooms that are not sealed up, it would have a similar
layout like this one.
3. And the rooms facing the other side have this typical layout.
4. The stair that connects the three levels at one side of the
building.
Bloody Satanic face in sealed
chambers
(Source: SPI Investigation Team)
For a long time, we have had information telling us that unusual
things happened in those Changi barracks. A most stunning
one is that the wall has a Satan face in red blood appeared at
night, scared a NS man to death. The face that resembles a
devil Satan just appear on the wall from nowhere, with red
blood-like color. It alert the whole platoon as they were
ordered out to investigate and clean up the face drawing.
The death is classified of course. After the drawing was
cleaned, on the next day, the face drawing appeared again as
though it was a curse! That was the ultimate horror to
everyone. The officers were ordered to clean the drawing,
then it reappear, again and again day after day. Every time
when it appeared a life was claimed mysteriously. Somebody
in the barrack would just had died during the sleep at night.
At the end, a decision is made to just seal up the room which had
that Satanic face drawing.
Initially SPI thought of it as a pure rumor. On day in late
2001, SPI ventured into the barrack for investigation. We
found that the sealed room really did exist. Along the
corridor in the barrack there are two rows of rooms. Each
has about the same layout, a window and a door, except there was
one room, totally sealed off. It was too strange indeed.
That was clearly a room but the door side had made into a wall,
leaving no access into it. We tried to climb in from a
window from the next room, but operation was failed because the
window of the seal room was locked (from inside). We almost
fell to death. Only if we had some explosive or a X-ray
camera then we may be able to reveal the truth. After all,
the mystery still remains as a mystery till today.
Here we have some related information to this case from other SPI
club members:
(Source: Winston Ng on Sunday, October 20, 2002 7:12 PM)
Back when i was doing my BMT at Tekong, my P.C. (Platoon
Commander) brought us on a little tour of the old SISPEC training
ground. After walking through the barracks that were lined neatly
in rows, there was one particular area that stood empty among the
rows of barracks. My P.C. told us that that empty area used to be
a barrack once, but was demolished due to ‘reasons’ unexplainable.
Rumour was that in the past, trainees who slept in that particular
barrack were disturbed by sounds of ‘people’ walking in their
barrack in the middle of the night.
After much complains from the trainees, a priest was invited to
exorcise the barrack. After inspecting the barrack, the priest
said that this barrack is not suitable for humans to stay in as a
portal to the otherworld was situated inside it, which explains
the spirits wandering about the barrack in the middle of the
night. The priest also said that a particular area of the barrack
should not be blocked by any physical objects as that particular
area was the opening of the portal.
The trainees were transferred to another barrack and the haunted
one was used as a storeroom.
Unfortunately, one day a trainee was assigned to put a box inside
the haunted storeroom and as luck would have it, he placed the box
in that particular area which contains the portal. When he went
back to his bunk to sleep that night, he was suddenly awakened by
a presence beside him. The next day he was ill with high fever and
was admitted into hospital. When questioned about his previous
day’s activities, he told his officers about the box which he
placed in the storeroom. When they removed the box from that area
in the haunted barrack, the trainee’s fever had gotten better.
In order to prevent such ‘mistakes’ from happening again, the
barrack was soon torn down.
I believe that the sealed rooms in Changi Barracks could be
related to this case. Maybe there are similar portals found inside
them and in order to prevent the living from disturbing the
entrance of the otherworld, the only logical thing was to seal the
entire room from public. To explain to people that there are
spirits and other hauntings happening around will make a mockery
out of the Army. So I guess denial is the only way rather than
through education of the public...
1 & 2. A very quiet and spooky road leading up to the Robert's
barrack that is on the hill top. The whole place is in
absolutely darkness.
3. The back view of the barrack with some compound like structure;
4. That is the other side of the barrack.
Close up.
1 & 2. To get close you need to climb a small stair; 3. Once you
got up on the left hand side you will see the backyard of the
barrack;
There are rumors that the access to the secret underground bunker
is from one of those compounds.
4. On the other side there was the post of the security guard who
was murdered.
Night guard died mysteriously at
barrack
(Source: a Singapore Newspaper)
It was mid-2001 or may be earlier. An ex-SPI member showed
me a newspaper cutting. The news was about a security guard
died mysteriously along Cranwell road. The story was roughly
like this. The guard was appointed to jaga a Changi Commando
Barrack (think it was Robert's Barrack) on top of a hill.
The place was very ulu and was out of the way because the barrack
was sited on top of hill. The footpath slope leading up to
the compound round the hill were quite long and very quiet.
No electricity was available to that hill area and even the street
lamps on the slope were not lit. One morning, the poor
security was found lying dead just at the foot of the hill along
Cranwell road. He died with a very scared facial expression.
He got stab wounds all over his body. Streaks of blood were
found all the way from the hill top to the road along the
footpath. Strangely no lost of property or any money from
the victim. The wounds were result of stabbing of sharp
object, may be a knife or a metal stick. The very strange
thing is; it looks like a murder attack from the compound within.
That is, he was believed to get attacked when he was in the
hilltop compound, struggled, and ran for life down the slope to
the road. But at the end he fell down on the road and died
of blood lost.
That was indeed a horrible murder case with a touch of
mysteriousness. It sparked off our determination to go in to
the barrack and checked out the truth... though we knew it
was very dangerous.
Pictorial Tour |
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(Part A - The Hilltop Barrack)
1. This is the commando barrack clusters near
Selarang; they are lit up at night that shows they are in use and in
operational
2. A little further up there is a bulldozer parked at the roadside.
When we looked around we didn't see any road construction.
The bulldozer looks as if put there to block off something, very
suspicious. We walked over it and checked what was behind.
3. Wow, a hidden road was found. It was totally covered in darkness
and, in front it got a 'mound' road block hastily built up one.
4. We believed have found the entrance of the road to the secret
barrack that was said to have a security guard murdered.
With a fast thumping heart we quietly walked up, without using any
torch light. We guessed the road will take us to hilltop
barrack.
The army camp was just some yards away parallel to the road and surely
we didn't want to catch any attention.
This is one of the scariest paths we ever walked.
Ahead is unknown but rumored to have a hostile force (a guard was
murdered),
on the left there were active army camps, and the atmosphere around
(as can be seen in the picture) was full of orbs! It was pitch
dark.
1. A short cut sprang out from the road to the
backyard of the barrack; 2. The barrack is standing on top of the hill
when the road ends.
3. This is a very eerie picture - a fierce ghost apparition was
accidentally captured at the bottom left.
4. Along the dark road winding up the hill, a streak of blood red
light appeared on film. It wasn't a camera strap or any
reflection.
It was nothing in front when the picture was taken.
We closed in to the barrack; it looked grand and the
doors are refined. At the corner an oil lamp that belongs to a
security guard was lit.
1. From another view you can see that a bottle
of material water is there; 2. With our eavesdropping device, we
heard no activity;
So we moved further in and took this picture; 3. You can see it was
like a small home with all the cooking utensils.
4. Strong evidence that shows a guard is staying at this place.
We didn't want to mess with him especially after the previous guard's
death.
Who knows he may be armed and will shoot at us! The last photo
is believed to be a bedroom - we heard snoring from inside.
1. Our whole team retreated, and detoured to
another way bypassing the guard. The front door was wide open.
2. Inside the lobby it was quite clean and empty; 3 & 4. All the doors
were open where you can walk from one side to another.
1. Wait, SPI Gate suddenly said.. 'I smell
blood'. A few feet ahead we found the blood stain. Gate was studying
the blood scene.
2. Not far from the blood scene we found a label on the wall '+'
ninja. This place is damn wrong.. consider the guard's murder,
the potential dangers and the fact that all the doors are open,
windows are
not shut - we are in a very vulnerable position.
You would feel that as if at anytime a werewolf may emerge from any
corner, or somebody with weapon attack you from your back.
3. Lets get the hell out of here, now! We swiftly and stealthily
sneaked out of the building and ran down from the hill.
Just before we got out of the whole premise we discovered some
wordings written on the ground - Dogs Inside, Please Don't Enter
4. A little further away, it has an English version too. We
noticed that the yellow paint used was similar to the yellow paint on
the barrack
It must be written by the guard. But then if it were a state
land, why there was no official board of no trespassing?
Anyway that is a very hostile place and it certainly takes a bravo to
be the night guard here.
Recently we have seen a sign board at the entrance of
the road to the barrack. URA is going to sell it to developer
for building a hotel.
This place has a rich history traced back to half century ago during
the war, many secrets yet to be discovered...
(Part B - Barrack Block 33)
1. The commando barrack which we nicked it Block
33 is sited just next to OCH; why is it called Block 33? 2. Here
is the answer!
3. The whole building is locked and metal framed on the windows like a
fortress. This is the barrack that has secret sealed chamber
4. Through the metal gate at the front door we snapped a photo of what
is inside. Gee, on the wall there seem to be bullet holes.
Also on the left panel two large
Chinese
characters are written there as a warning..
1 & 2. These two photos are taken consecutively
one with flash and the other without.
As you can see that in the second photo there was a very bright orb
when no flash was used (hence it was not reflection)
3. The orbs were moving away from the building. We picked up
very strong EMF energy near that area;
4. The exterior of the building looks very aged and eerie
1. This a side view of the barrack 33; in this
photo we have captured one of the most interesting entity - a pink
Caucasian like face orb.
Wouldn't that be spirit died and trapped in this house telling us how
much suffered he had gone thru?
Or it has relation to the secret sealed up room?
Wouldn't the accuse of the Japanese war crimes by the persistent
spirit mistaken as Satanic face? It was reported as a red face
appearing.
2 & 3. You can see that the windows are mesh-wired.
Are they stopping people escaping from the building or preventing
people from going in?
4. The other view of where the pink face spirit orb was captured.
This barrack is rumored to be very haunted.
1 & 2. SPI continued to checked around the
building; 3. At the other end of the barrack we found some rubbish
dumps
4. Particularly we found a Thai statue that wasn't belonged to here.
The spooky statue has another story which will be reported later.
1 & 2. The two blocks of barracks 33 and 35 are
connected
by a footbridge. Of course without any lighting, the bridge
looks very eerie
3 & 4. We found documents and some junk food belong to the
security guard of these barracks.
1, 3 & 4. The top floor is the spookiest one.
This looks like a training ground before but now is empty.
2. In this picture, a mysterious dark shadow somewhat hanging upside
down (inverted) was on the wall.
See a brightened up
version
here which is more prominent. It wasn't any camera trick.
But what is it?
1 & 2. Our fear didn't stop here. You can
see in the photos that 'something' had flashed across. What is
that? Light reflection?
But we know that is a wall and is not shiny. In fact when the
photos were taken one of our members suddenly screamed hysterically.
The fear on his face indicated that he saw something very frightening.
We then held our camera and snapped photos back and forth.
3 & 4. Finally we found the sealed rooms. It was sealed up as if
they never exist. So was the rumor real? What was covered
up inside?
We checked the rooms next door and estimated the missing space in
between - exactly as big as one of the rooms!
1 & 2. Typical interior look inside a commando
barrack; 3. Footpath connecting to buildings;
4. This place is damn haunted, some even swear will never come again
There is actually a very ulu hidden path to the barrack.. but it takes
a whole lot of gut to walk through it at night.
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