When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese, most of the people in the armed forces in Singapore were taken as prisoners of war and held at a camp at Changi Prison.
It was really interesting (and moving) to go the the museum and see the way that the POWs were treated by the Japanese. Japanese soldiers believed it was more honourable to die/commit suicide than be taken as a prisoner of war and so they treated their own POWs very badly. Thousands were sent to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway. It's known as the Death Railway because half of the 180,000 Aisian workers sent their died while constructing it, along with 16,000 Allied soldiers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma_Railway
When I go to Thailand, I want to go on the railway. Some of it has been relaid and there is another museum there.
The prisoners (while they stayed there) were left to govern themselves and they set up "factories" and produced shoes and other items for them to use. Very impressive! They also set up schooling systems to carry on the education of their children: the "Changi University." Hard to imagine.
It's easy to start disliking the Japanese during a visit to the museum but that stops as soon as you see the many "thousand paper crates" left there by Japanese school children that visit the museum on school trips. I had wondered if Japanese people might have wanted burry it all in the past and never speak of it, but it seems that they are keen to tell their children about what happened.
Definitely pay for the audio tour if you go and make sure you listen to the 3rd to last bit about the forgotten women of the war.
