The death toll is underestimated?
Most massacre accounts have come directly from victims who escaped
seaside execution lines. There were however a limited number of
eyewitness descriptions from bystanders. Some of these are
contained in a forgotten file of statutory declarations from British
troops on Blakang Mati. The reports reveal new dimensions to the
killings at sea, which, like the rest of the Singapore massacres, were
intended to be hidden forever from history's prying eyes. They
detai, for instance, how British troops buried at least 300 massacre
victims along the southern shorefront of what is now Singapore's
acclaimed resort island. This is a figure far larger than the
post-war official investigators conceded. The investigators
placed the entire death toll from killings at sea off Blakang Mati at
less than 300.
In one of the statutory declarations, Major Alfred Smith who had been
commanding officer, made the following observation: "At the time, we
estimated that the total number executed was over 500 and this, based
on the number of bodies which came ashore on our very narrow front,
was almost certainly an underestimate". The Major Smith spoke
about appears to have been a comparatively small central sector of
Blakang Mati's south-eastern coast. Marine authorities confirm
that the waters off Blakang Mati in the area where the massacres took
place are subject to extremely swift tidal races. There, the
inescapable conclusion, given that the killings generally took place
between 300 to 1,000 metres off shore, is that the overwhelming
majority of bodies of those machine-gunned in the water were swept out
to sea by the currents. In short, the actual death toll in the
waters off Blakang Mati was substantially more than 500; probably in
the region of thousands.
Why did the British investigators underplay the extent of the
killings off Blakang Mati?
Part of the answer is that the Japanese Military Colonel Tusji's
obsession with secrecy obscured their access to the facts. Then,
after the war, the investigators became victims of the colonel's
allies in Tokyo. Threatened by the possibility of being linked
to the Singapore slaughter, several officers close to Tsuji worked on
a successful smoke screen to divert enquiries. Further details
can be found from a book called "The Killer They Called a God - by Ian
Ward". In the book, Tusji who was believed to be responsible for
the Chinese massacre, but got protected by the Americans and later
emerged as one of the most popularly elected parliamentarians!
Escalating the kill-rate
By as early as February 21, the second day of the massacres, Tsuji
realised the executions were running well behind schedule.
Reports he was receiving at his Fort Canning headquarters,
indicated both the screening and execution squads were functioning
below operational capacities he considered efficient. He
ordered a full-force and speedy on-the-spot inspections to ensure
a substantial stepping up of the kill-rate. He wanted more
deaths in less time! But the kempeitai officers were
overwhelmed; short of interpreters and lack of comprehension of
the subject matters involved in the screening process. The
pressure brought by Tsuji forced the kempeitai into adopting even
more outlandish short-cut solutions. There was less time to
survey isolated areas as possible massacre grounds. There
was also less time to clear chosen execution areas of local
population before the killings began. More and more people
have witnessed the massacre that originally was planned to be
secret.
Cleaning up the mess
Soon after the massacre started, complaints were lodged with the
Health Department of the Singapore Rural Board. Many bodies
were lying around the beachfront at the Punggol Road terminus and
were posing a health hazard. A burial party was immediately
organized. The Punggol grave-diggers abandoned efforts for
burials on high ground. Instead, shallow graves were dug at
low tide in wet sand near the water's edge. Many corpses
were buried this way in the immediate bus terminus region over a
three-day period.
While burial work was still in progress on the fourth day, the
grave-digging party was suddenly fired upon from concealed
positions in the hilly terrain directly west of the terminus.
The grave diggers ran for shelter and the firing stopped. As
soon as the burial party resumed work, the firing also resumed.
The foremen had no choice but to abandoned the task. On the
same day, the military had proclaimed the Punggol foreshore a
"restricted area". All civilians were prohibited from
entering it. All burials, therefore, had to cease despite
that the foreshore to the east and west of the bus terminus
remained littered with bodies as far as the eye could see.
The sudden "restricted area" proclamation seemed to be a
conspiracy in order to maintain execution site secrecy.
Since then, nobody was able to have an actual count of the bodies.
The deserted corpses were allowed to decomposed naturally, be
taken as wild dogs' meals or washed away by high tides.
Evidences of the Massacre
Case 1.
On 27 April, 1974, a workman laying pipes for an aquarium on then
renamed Sentosa island, drove his changkol into a human skull some
18 inches below the sandy foreshore surface. Before the day
was over, another skull and a collection of bones had been
unearthed. Over the next four days a total of 12 more skulls
and more bones were exhumed, all from shallow foreshore graves.
Furthermore, they were in the same general area that the British
soldiers had been digging 32 years ago. Most of the skulls
and skeletons had come from males between the ages of 20 - 40
years. The youngest was probably 16 years, the oldest 60.
One of the skulls had been shot through the head. All this
ties in closely with descriptions of the victims of the seaborne
massacres.
Case 2.
In Punggol Beach, a volunteered grave-digging party was organized
soon after the massacre had started. There were too many
corpses both in the inland and jammed at the seashore, decomposing
and posing hygienic hazard. For the first three days, the
grave-digging party managed to dig a big but shallow burial hole,
ready to start burying corpses in.
While burial work was still in progress on the fourth day, the
grave-digging party was suddenly fired upon from concealed
positions in the hilly terrain directly west of the terminus.
The grave diggers ran for shelter and the firing stopped. As
soon as the burial party resumed work, the firing also resumed.
The foremen had no choice but to abandoned the task. On the
same day, the military had proclaimed the Punggol foreshore a
"restricted area". All civilians were prohibited from
entering it. All burials, therefore, had to cease despite
that the foreshore to the east and west of the bus terminus
remained littered with bodies as far as the eye could see.
The sudden "restricted area" proclamation seemed to be a
conspiracy in order to maintain execution site secrecy.
Since then, nobody was able to have an actual count of the bodies.
The deserted corpses were allowed to decomposed naturally, be
taken as wild dogs' meals or washed away by high tides.
Case 3.
Singapore's
Massacre Beach
Case 4.
The Alexandra
Massacre
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