Greetings all, CHP listeners, old and new.

Laszl Montgomery here warmly welcoming you to the China History Podcast,

Part 6 today in our little dime store overview of the history of Singapore.

We started off in the 14th century with the legendary founding of Timasek,

and we followed many of the historical milestones over six centuries up to the

1900s. And as we closed out part five last time, the Japanese had just invaded. And I welcome you all to

check out Ray Harris's history of World War II podcast to get a deeper dive on all the details

of Japan's takeover of Malaya and Singapore. Quite a story.

I only introduced the bullet points. Great Britain's efforts to fortify the island and turn it into

Fortress Singapore, their Gibraltar of the East and a bastion of British might, didn't go well.

Despite all the belated efforts and exorbitant expense, the Japanese army came in and took the place

over in a week. On December 16th, 1941, after the shocking events of December 7th and 8th, days that forever live in infamy,

the British had to abandon Penang to the Japanese and commence their retreats southward.

On Boxing Day, December 26th, the Japanese army took the city of Ipo.

17 days later, they took Kuala Lumpur,

forcing the British even further south to Johor. And by the end of January, all of British Malaya fell to Japan. And like I said last time, the Japanese army crossed into Singapore on

February 8th and on the 15th came

the surrender. And today, we'll look at what happened after that. Anyone in Singapore, born 1930 or

before, who survived those weeks that followed the British surrender surrender would be hard pressed to forget the

chamber of horrors that followed right after. To set the tone for what was in store for

Singapore's mostly Chinese residents, let's take a look at what happened at the British Military

Hospital there. Today, known as Alexandra Hospital, 378, Alexandra Road. It's one of several

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