Singapore

With only a week to go until #VJDay75, a wreath was laid at #CWGC’s Kranji Memorial in Singapore.

It commemorates the 24,300 British and Commonwealth personnel who fell in Malaysia and Singapore but have no known grave.

#Singapore #Malaysia #VJ75 #Commonwealth

History

Before 1939, the Kranji area was a military camp and at the time of the Japanese invasion of Malaya, it was the site of a large ammunition magazine. On 8 February 1942, the Japanese crossed the Johore Straits in strength, landing at the mouth of the Kranji River

within two miles of the place where the war cemetery now stands. On the evening of 9 February, they launched an attack between the river and the causeway. During the next few days fierce fighting ensued, in many cases hand to hand, until their greatly superior numbers and air

strength necessitated a withdrawal.

After the fall of the island, the Japanese established a prisoner of war camp at Kranji and eventually a hospital was organised nearby at Woodlands.

After the reoccupation of Singapore, the small cemetery started by the prisoners at

Kranji was developed into a permanent war cemetery by the Army Graves Service when it became evident that a larger cemetery at Changi could not remain undisturbed. Changi had been the site of the main prisoner of war camp in Singapore and a large hospital had been set up there

by the Australian Infantry Force. In 1946, the graves were moved from Changi to Kranji, as were those from the Buona Vista Military Cemetery. Many other graves from all parts of the island were transferred to Kranji together with all Second World War graves from Saigon

Military Cemetery in French Indo-China (now Vietnam), another site where permanent maintenance could not be assured.

The Commission later brought in graves of both World Wars from Bidadari Christian Cemetery, Singapore, where again permanent maintenance was not possible.

There are now 4,461 Commonwealth casualties of the Second World War buried or commemorated at KRANJI WAR CEMETERY. More than 850 of the burials are unidentified. The Chinese Memorial in Plot 44 marks a collective grave for 69 Chinese servicemen,

all members of the Commonwealth forces, who were killed by the Japanese during the occupation in February 1942.

Within Kranji War Cemetery stands the SINGAPORE MEMORIAL, bearing the names of over 24,000 casualties of the Commonwealth land and air forces who have no known grave. Many of these have no known date of death and are accorded within the records the date or period from when

they were known to be missing or captured. The land forces commemorated by the memorial died during the campaigns in Malaya and Indonesia or in subsequent captivity, many of them during the construction of the Burma-Thailand railway, or at sea while being transported .

into imprisonment elsewhere.

The memorial also commemorates airmen who died during operations over the whole of southern and eastern Asia and the surrounding seas and oceans