The Second Map: 1. Bonnie Laddie

Summary

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The History Podcast: The Second Map

Episode 1 – Bonnie Laddie

Original Air Date: August 22, 2025
Host: Kavita Puri (BBC Radio 4)

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Episode Overview

This episode launches "The Second Map," a new series exploring Britain’s lesser-known campaign against Japan during World War II. Marking the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, the series examines how the war in Asia unfolded, why it’s been overshadowed in British memory, and its profound consequences for families across Britain and the former Empire. Through voices of veterans, civilians, and their descendants, host Kavita Puri uncovers stories of heroism, shock, disillusion, humiliation, and legacy—including the fall of Singapore and its reverberations from a London living room to the jungles of Burma.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Two Maps and a Schoolboy’s Perspective (01:01–03:15)

• Peter Knight’s living room in wartime London: As a teenager in December 1941, Peter adds a new map of Asia-Pacific next to his ongoing map of Europe, tracking the expanding scope of World War II.
• The Pearl Harbor attack and the rapid succession of Japanese strikes on British colonies—especially Singapore and Malaya—mark a new, alarming front in the war, personally visualized on his wall maps.

Quote:
“We've got one side to dress. So it was this map of Northern Europe…One day in December 1941, when I was 14, I put up a second map on the right hand side of the dresser.”
—Peter Knight, (01:21–01:44)

• Peter and his family’s disbelief that the Empire could be so quickly threatened:
  “The Japanese have been and invaded part of the British Empire. This can't be happening.” (02:29)

2. The "Forgotten Army" and Overlooked Histories (03:30–06:01)

• Kavita Puri addresses the enduring British focus on the Nazi front and explores why the Asian war remains so obscure in national memory, despite being fought by almost a million British and colonial troops.
• She notes the sense of secrecy or even shame for families with relatives who served or suffered on the Asian front.

Quote:
“When I tell people I'm making a series about it, they nearly all say the same thing. Wasn't that the American War? They didn’t really know why we were fighting Japan.”
—Kavita Puri, (03:30–03:46)

• Lucy Noakes emphasizes the importance of this history for understanding Britain’s identity today:
  “We owe it to the people who fought and often died on the Asian front to remember them as much as everybody else.” (05:39–06:01)

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3. Hidden Stories: Civilian Testimony from Singapore (06:42–12:55)

• Margie Caldecott reveals her mother Sheila Brown’s archived cassette recordings, unbroadcast until now—giving voice to British civilian experiences in pre-war, then besieged, Singapore.
• Sheila’s life as the daughter of a colonial family: privilege, tennis courts, colonial luxury (“We were terribly spoiled.”, 09:58)
• The sudden “shattering” of that world: Japanese air raids just two hours after Pearl Harbor.

Quote:
“Well, here we go. I'm Sheila. I was born in 23rd of March 1916 in Singapore.”
—Sheila Brown, (09:35)

• The city’s transformation from “charmed existence” to chaos and fear, as the Japanese assault closes in.

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4. The Fall of Singapore: Defeat, Chaos, and Humiliation (12:55–21:27)

• British arrogance and racial misconceptions: British troops drastically underestimated Japanese soldiers (“very poorly equipped, can’t see at night, wear rubber plimsoles…” — miscalculations that proved disastrous, 13:58)
• The rapid advance: Japanese troops used bicycles and moved swiftly through the jungle, outflanking British and Commonwealth forces.
• Emotional descriptions of chaos, retreat, and the iconic crossing over the causeway as Scottish troops played “Highland Laddie” before blowing up the bridge (15:47–16:36).
• Morris Naylor recounts confusion and panic: “The whole army seemed to be in disarray.” (17:22)
• Sheila Brown’s perilous civilian escape—her ship bombed, days at sea, then capture by Japanese forces.

Quote:
“If I still smell [crude oil] it all comes back again.” —Sheila Brown on the trauma of the bombing and sea ordeal (19:35)

• British surrender:
  On February 15, 1942, Singapore falls—over 130,000 Allied troops become prisoners of war; women, children, and civilians are interned or killed. Churchill calls it the “worst defeat in British military history." (21:27–21:46)

• For many Britons, the shock is deeply personal and hard to process:
  “We couldn’t believe our ears.” (23:45)

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5. Empire, Race, and Complicated Alliances (24:39–31:47)

• The series reframes the Asian campaign as a struggle between empires—Britain and Japan—rather than a simple fight against fascism.

• Dr. Diya Gupta (City St George’s University of London) reflects:
  “…It reveals what the war really was, which is a battle against different types of imperialisms.” (26:34)

• Yavar Abbas’s dilemma:
  As an Indian nationalist who joined the British Indian Army, he wrestles with fighting for an empire he hopes to see dismantled, against a new imperial aggressor. “When the push comes to shove, these Brits, they're not going to defend my country. I was very angry at what happened in Singapore.” (28:31) “I didn’t want Hitler to win. ...I had to choose and hope that if I joined the army after the end of the war, as they had been promising, I’d get independence.” (29:22–29:38)

• The irony and tensions for colonial subjects fighting for imperial freedom they lack themselves.

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6. The Fall of Burma and Refugee Crisis (31:47–37:09)

• Burma (today Myanmar) is the next British colony to fall; retreat across treacherous terrain begins.

• Marginalization in evacuation:
  Dr. Diya Gupta underlines that British refugees were privileged with transport and safety, while thousands of Indian and Burmese civilians had to walk for months under dire conditions.
  “If you were an Indian expatriate…you might find that you had to walk across very dangerous terrain…” (35:14)

• The scale:
  “At that point in 1942, this was the largest human refugee crisis in history.” —Dr. Diya Gupta, (34:55)

• These humiliations expose the empire’s frailty and hasten the postwar drive for independence across Asia.

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7. Memory, Shame, and Intergenerational Conversation (37:31–41:40)

• Why is this history less remembered?
  Professor Lucy Noakes:
  “There is a good part of [the war] story which is about Britain standing firm and standing against fascism…That is a really good and a really seductive story.” (38:23–38:59)

• In contrast, the Asian front is messier: “a far more complex story to tell…and harder for it to really gain a purchase in our shared contemporary memory.” (39:05)

• Personal silence and shame:
  Tony Knight explains how his father-in-law, despite being sent to fight, went straight into captivity and spoke little of the experience due to trauma, shame, and stigma for being a POW.

Quote:
“He had nightmares, yes, when he first returned, and I don’t think they ever went away and nor indeed did the malaria that he caught.”
—Tony Knight, (40:43)

• Peter Knight reflects:
  “We've felt ashamed…that so many of our men had been captured, but at the same time we had to sympathise with them.” (41:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the overlooked Asian campaign:
  “This is not and cannot be a definitive account…but what the testimonies in this series reveal are surprising, unexpected, disturbing and moving. It’s the other story of the Second World War, One that is still often overlooked.”
  —Kavita Puri, (05:17–05:39)

• On colonial hierarchy in evacuation:
  “There was very much a racialized view of evacuation from Burma…if you were doing the land route, you might be given a mode of transport like an elephant. On the other hand…[Indian] you might find that you had to walk across very dangerous terrain…”
  —Dr. Diya Gupta, (35:14)

• On shame and memory:
  “It was extremely normal that people that came home from Japanese war camps just didn't want to talk. Took a lot of persuasion to get them back into the idea that they could hold a conversation about it.”
  —Peter Knight, (40:56)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:01 – The living room with two maps: Peter Knight’s perspective
• 03:30 – Why is the Asian front the "forgotten war"?
• 07:54 – Hearing Sheila Brown’s 1980 cassettes—firsthand memories from Singapore
• 12:11 – Japanese bombing of Singapore begins
• 13:58 – British misconception and underestimation of Japanese forces
• 15:47 – Retreat over the causeway, Highland Laddie played by Scottish regiment
• 19:35 – Sheila Brown describes chaos, evacuation, and bombing at sea
• 21:27 – Churchill announces Singapore’s fall: "a British and imperial defeat"
• 26:34 – Dr. Diya Gupta: "a battle against different types of imperialisms"
• 29:22 – Yavar Abbas's reflections on fighting for imperial ‘freedom’
• 34:55 – Refugee crisis after the fall of Burma—the largest in history (at the time)
• 38:23 – Professor Lucy Noakes: The power of national myth and selective memory
• 41:25 – Peter Knight: Shame, sympathy, and the complexity of POW experience

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Tone and Style

Echoing the podcast’s voice, the episode is empathetic, reflective, and personal, blending historical analysis with poignant oral histories. Stories are told with humility and honesty, often questioning national myths and inviting listeners to confront the discomforts and complexities of imperial legacy and war memory.

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Conclusion & Looking Ahead

Episode 1 sets the stage for the rest of the series, putting personal testimony and neglected history at its center. Kavita Puri closes by teasing the next episode—featuring a British woman leading tribal groups in the jungles of India, pivotal to a turning point in the Asian campaign.

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This summary covers the major themes, voices, and emotional core of Episode 1 – "Bonnie Laddie," providing both narrative flow and key timestamped details for listeners new to the story.

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Alex von Tunzelman]

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[Kavita Puri]

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Join me, Alex von Tanzelman for History's.

[Kavita Puri]

Heroes.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Subscrib to History's Heroes. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kavita Puri]

BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts. You're about to listen to the History podcast. The Second map. Episodes of this series will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the uk, the whole series is available right now, first on BBC Sounds.

[Peter Knight]

Our living room. That wall used to have a built in dresser. There was space each side of that dresser for a map to go up.

[Kavita Puri]

Peter Knight was a teenager during World War II. He followed its progress from his living room on the outskirts of London.

[Peter Knight]

So you've got one side to dress. So it was this map of Northern Europe. I'd been following the Royal Air Force sweeps over France.

[Narrator]

Here is another enemy raid over Northern France. Our Hurricanes and Spitfires go up to meet the Messerschmitts and Heinkels and I.

[Peter Knight]

Could pinpoint all of these raids on my map.

[Kavita Puri]

One day in December 1941, when he was 14, he put up a second map on the right hand side of the dresser.

[Peter Knight]

What we hoped is that we'd be able to follow the war on the other map.

[Kavita Puri]

That other map was of lands far away, places the schoolboy had never heard of.

[Narrator]

The Japanese smash and grab raid in the Far East.

[Kavita Puri]

Japan had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. But of more concern to Peter was what happened hours later.

[Narrator]

There have also been reports of enemy attacks on Hong Kong. Just over 300 miles to the south of the Japanese landing in Malaya. Singapore has had its first air raid.

[Kavita Puri]

These places were British territory.

[Peter Knight]

The Japanese have been an invaded part of the British Empire. This can't be happening. I says to my mum, can you see it on the map? And she would go to the map and point out to me where it was.

[Kavita Puri]

All around the country, people like Peter were coming to terms with this new enemy, as well as the shock of how the war now touched their empire in Southeast Asia. Peter tried to make sense of it all by following what was happening on his second map.

[Peter Knight]

This is in the first few weeks of the Japanese sending these huge convoys from Japan spreading Out all across the Pacific and going westwards towards India. Oh, my God, Peter.

[Kavita Puri]

A schoolboy couldn't have imagined that in a few years he would be part of the war against Japan.

[Peter Knight]

There's a feeling of disbelief. We've got to go and defend our territory.

[Kavita Puri]

When we think of World War II, it's often our heroic fight against fascism and the Nazis, the D Day landings and Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill's rallying speeches, our endurance in the Blitz. In popular memory, we don't immediately think of the other war we fought, the one far, far away. It's 80 years now since that war ended, and when I tell people I'm making a series about it, they nearly all say the same thing. Wasn't that the American War? They didn't really know why we were fighting Japan. But there are others who do know, and they tell me, like a confession, they had a family member who'd been over there. In this series, I speak to some of the last remaining veterans and unearth from the archives voices of soldiers and civilians who were there.

[Peter Knight]

Well, I never thought that a box of grenades could look beautiful, but it did.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

The battle was gun battle, really big guns and bombs from the air, and kept on pounding them, pounding them, pounding them. Oh, didn't talk about being a prisoner until I retired at the age of 61.

[Kavita Puri]

Rare voices from the other side.

[Narrator]

I decided the only solution was to go ahead and take the enemy by surprise and launch an infiltration operation.

[Kavita Puri]

I hear stories that are being uncovered by children and grandchildren today, many of whom regret never asking about that time.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

I wasn't aware till very late stages of my life that India played a.

[Kavita Puri]

Big, big part and my dad was one of them. I wish he's here and I can.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

Grab hold of him and just say.

[Kavita Puri]

To him, dad, I love you. This is not and cannot be a definitive account of Britain's war against Japan on the Asian front. But what the testimonies in this series reveal are surprising, unexpected, disturbing and moving. It's the other story of the Second World War, One that is still often overlooked.

[Lucy Noakes]

We are a multicultural, post imperial society. If we're going to understand how we got to who we are today, that is a really important part of the story that deserves and needs to be better known. I think we owe it to the people who fought and often died on the Asian front to remember them as much as everybody else.

[Kavita Puri]

It's a history that touched so many homes in Britain and its former empire. So why don't we remember the war on the second map as well, as we should. Hi, I'm Kavita Puri. You're listening to the History podcast and from BBC Radio 4 in the World Service, this is the second map. Episode one. Bonnie Laddie.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

There's Mum's diary and some sort of pictures.

[Kavita Puri]

In homes across Britain, there are so many stories and histories that we don't often hear about. Inside an ordinary looking bungalow in a nice street in Chichester is a room that looks like a museum.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

She had a hat box. It's in the corner over there.

[Kavita Puri]

Margie Caldecott is the keeper of the museum. It's actually more like an extensive archive and it's dedicated to one person. Her mother, Sheila Brown.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Mummy, when she was moving into a care home, she handed it on to me and she said, have fun with it. I don't know if it's been fun or not.

[Kavita Puri]

I'm in Margie's conservatory as unexpected winter sunshine warms us up. And I'm looking through photographs, piles and piles of documents, sketches, books, including the contents of that hat box. And then Margie pops off into another room and comes back holding a small cardboard box.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

This is Mummy's writing. So this one says DSL.

[Kavita Puri]

It contains eight cassette tapes, carefully labelled. One has a date 1980. It's got BBC on it. These are interviews her mother gave to historians about her wartime experiences. They've never been broadcast before. After her mother died in 2005, Margie played the tapes again. I just wondered what it was like for you to listen to the tapes and hear your mum's voice again.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Lovely, lovely. Especially when she laughs, because she's got a good sense of humor.

[Kavita Puri]

But the tapes also contain a difficult history, one that Margie had a sense of from her mother when she was younger.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

When I ate bananas, she'd say, we used to eat the banana skins. So I couldn't believe it. So I had inklings from quite early on that things had happened.

[Kavita Puri]

Margie is on a mission to keep the memory alive of what happened to her mother and women like her. She feels that what they went through hasn't been well recognised. But we're jumping ahead. Margie lends us these precious cassettes to listen to. I take them back to the office and listen to hours of her mother, Sheila, speaking. It's one thing to read a diary or see photographs, but quite different to hear a voice. It's Tambra. The pauses. And Sheila has a cut glass way of speaking that you rarely hear these days. It takes you back to another world.

[Sheila Brown]

Well, here we go. I'm Sheila. I was born in 23rd of March 1916 in Singapore.

[Kavita Puri]

Sheila Brown had always lived on the island of Singapore. It had been part of the British Empire for around a century and like many of the colonial British families there, the Sheila had a grand life.

[Sheila Brown]

We lived in a beautiful house, we had two tennis courts, we had lots of servants, Malays for the garden and their little children would be the ball boys for tennis. I think in those days Singapore was. There was a boom. We were terribly spoiled.

[Narrator]

Singapore, on the tip of the Malayan peninsula, is a thriving cosmopolitan city, vividly painted with the color of the Orient.

[Kavita Puri]

Although Singapore was Britain's major military base in Southeast Asia, it has been largely undisturbed by the war in Europe. In fact, while Britain was enduring the Blitz, colonial families like Sheila's continue to live a charmed existence.

[Sheila Brown]

I always like to think of Singapore as a sort of real solid life for us. It wasn't this sort of drinking gin in clubs, things like that.

[Kavita Puri]

Maybe not for Sheila. Among colonials and Europeans, Singapore was well known for its high life and partying. And there's one place everyone talked about. These former residents.

[Narrator]

Remember you went to Raffles for dinner and for the cabaret and for dancing.

[Lucy Noakes]

In those days people went along to Raffles Hotel spending evening dancing and usually get home about 10 o' clock in the morning.

[Kavita Puri]

The Raffles Hotel, you couldn't miss it. A grand colonial building with whitewashed walls. Walking through the impressive entrance, onto the marble floors, past the ballroom and up to the long bar famed for its Singapore Sling cocktails, it was a world of decadence. In the first days of December 1941, the city was thick with heat. Early one morning, 25 year old Sheila was preparing for the festive season. The turkey was ordered and she was about to make a Christmas pudding. But her peaceful idyll was shattered in an instant when Singapore was bombed by Japan. Two hours after the attacks at Pearl Harbor.

[Sheila Brown]

I think a bomb dropped somewhere in Mer's Place and that strange noise of those airplanes which we learned to listen for.

[Kavita Puri]

Other British colonies, were attacked on that day too, while Singapore was hit by air Malaya. Now Malaysia was invaded by land, which was particularly worrying for Sheila and others on the island because Singapore was connected to the Malay Peninsula to its north by a causeway like a raised road across the sea. When Sheila Woke up on 8 December 1941, Singapore was beginning to look like cities in England during the Blitz and.

[Sheila Brown]

Blackouts and friends were manning air raid shelters and there were canteens. Everybody was doing their bit.

[Narrator]

Meanwhile, to Singapore. Britain is Sending reinforcements as tension mounts. Every strategic area on a war footing ready for any thrust by the Axis partner in the Pacific.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

It was an exciting time and although the journey itself was a bit monotonous, we were quite glad to get to Singapore.

[Kavita Puri]

Morris Naylor was 21, and this was his first time abroad. After Pearl Harbour, naval ships en route to Europe and North Africa were diverted to Singapore for reinforcements. Morris was on one of them. My BBC colleague Monica Whitlock interviewed him in 2013, a few years before he died. She dug out the full interview from her old hard drive. Most of it has never been broadcast. Before he docked Morris. Morris was told the Japanese soldiers would be no trouble for the British.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

Well, we were told by our battery commander, oh, we have nothing to worry about with these Japanese. They're very poorly equipped, they can't see at night, they wear rubber plimsoles and they often go around on bicycles.

[Kavita Puri]

When we think About World War II, there's a word that rarely comes up empire. Britain was one of the most powerful nations in the world, but they'd completely underestimated Japan and its imperial ambitions. The British couldn't imagine that a people many of them thought of as racially inferior could be such a devastating threat to their colonies. During the journey to Singapore, the British officer kept reassuring Morris and the others.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

We'Ll have no trouble, we'll be all right. That was the attitude.

[Kavita Puri]

But this was a serious miscalculation. The Japanese forces were prepared. They used light tanks, superior aircraft and naval fleets to gain ground. And the bicycles Morris commanders had scoffed at allowed the Japanese troops to move deftly and quickly through the difficult terrain. They'd already made a speedy advance from northern Malaya, but and were now moving south towards Singapore.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

We had to go into action as quickly as possible. I mean, the Japanese were advancing down the Malayan peninsula.

[Kavita Puri]

Not long after, Morris was shocked to see streams of British, Indian, Malayan and Commonwealth soldiers retreating from mainland Malaya over the causeway into Singapore. One of the last soldiers to cross was from a Scottish regiment. He described the surreal moment in the BBC documentary Singapore 1942. End of an Empire.

[Narrator]

They struck up the pipes and we were going across the causeway into Singapore itself.

[Kavita Puri]

And the tunes that was getting played Highland Laddie where have you been o.

[Peter Knight]

The day Hieland lady bonnie laddie I don't, I don't know much more.

[Kavita Puri]

Once.

[Peter Knight]

These drums get up and the pipes.

[Kavita Puri]

Are playing and oh, there's something. After the Scottish regiment walked over, the causeway connecting Singapore to Malaya was blown up by Allied troops in an attempt to slow down the Japanese advance from the mainland.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

There was absolute chaos. All these troops that had been in Malaya, concentrated in this little island, and nobody knew where the units were.

[Kavita Puri]

Thousands of soldiers had crossed over Japan, was now in control of Malaya. Days later, Morris saw Japanese troops and boats approaching Singapore.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

The Japanese actually invaded on the night of the 7th and 8th of February, and so we directed our fire as far as we could towards them onto the. The causeway, which had been partly blown up. So we kept firing on that to prevent troops coming across.

[Kavita Puri]

It didn't work. The Japanese troops crossed and now the British were on the defensive.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

We were constantly being moved from one gun position to another. The whole army seemed to be in disarray.

[Kavita Puri]

After so many years in Southeast Asia, the British had become complacent. They were unprepared and had completely underestimated the Japanese troops and believed Singapore was impenetrable. Morris, who'd only just arrived in Singapore, was exhausted and bewildered, stuck in a shallow trench by a Ford factory.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

We were shelled almost continuously. We had no air cover. The Japanese had complete control of the skies.

[Kavita Puri]

In a few days, he would witness a seismic moment which would deal a humiliating blow to Britain and its empire. Around the same time, Morris was in the shallow trench, Sheila, the young woman on the cassette tapes, and her mother made plans to evacuate. They'd left it late. Her family hadn't believed the island could possibly be taken by Japan.

[Sheila Brown]

It was chaotic at the very end. We took just, very little. We just walked out of our house. We took the dog to the vet and said if we weren't back in three days, that was very sad.

[Kavita Puri]

They went to Raffles Hotel, but it was unrecognizable. Walking through the grand entrance, she saw people taking shelter or sleeping on the marble floor or wherever there was space. In the ballroom were no longer partygoers, but Allied troops. Outside Raffles, the city was on fire. The next day, Sheila and her mother somehow managed to make it to the dock. They were hoping to end up in Australia.

[Sheila Brown]

Seen at the wharf was women, children, old men, and somehow we got on up this gangway and a little sailor gave us life jackets.

[Kavita Puri]

The ship was small. They squeezed together on deck with what little belongings they had. As there were no cabins, they were hungry and thirsty, but there were no rations on board. They set off relieved at least to have escaped in time.

[Sheila Brown]

About sort of midday, we were spotted by a Japanese plane. The first bomb missed us, but the ships shook terribly and the second bomb hit and we went up. Everything seemed to be a Sort of cloud of plaster and dust and dirt. Everything was stank of oil, crude oil. If I still smell and it all comes back again.

[Kavita Puri]

She managed to get into a dinghy with her mother and a few others. They were at Sea for 19 hours before being captured by a Japanese boat and taken ashore.

[Sheila Brown]

And then this Japanese officer drew his sword and I thought, well, you know, sent up my pride. And he cut open the top of a coconut and handed it to us. But our Mars was so swollen with salt water that we really couldn't take anything.

[Kavita Puri]

Sheila didn't know it then, but while she'd been marooned at sea, Singapore, her home and where her father had chosen to stay, had fallen to Japan. The gunner Maurice Naylor, was there when it fell.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

And on the 15th of February, we saw our little jeep going up pastors up the Bukit Tima road that were carrying a white flag and we realized that we were going to capitulate and that was the end of it for us.

[Kavita Puri]

Days later, he too was captured. He would be one of around 130,000 British, Indian, Malayan and Commonwealth soldiers to be taken by Japan as prisoners of war following the fall of Malaya and Singapore. On 16 February 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced to the nation and Empire the catastrophic news of the fate of the island.

[Narrator]

I speak to you all under the shadow of a heavy and far reaching military defeat. It is a British and imperial defeat. Singapore has fallen. All the Malay Peninsula has been overrun.

[Kavita Puri]

He would later describe it as the worst defeat in British military history. The Japanese forces now in control of Singapore began what they termed purification by elimination. Thousands of Chinese civilians were killed as well as others they believed held what they called anti Japanese sentiments. Women were raped. European and Australian civilians who hadn't been evacuated were rounded up and sent to internment camps. In just weeks, British colonies, including Malaya and now Singapore had been taken by Japan. This wasn't just a military defeat, this was a loss of British territory. But it was something else too. The British Empire was no longer seen to be impregnable. That sense of humiliation explains why when we think of our war, defeats like this aren't how we choose to remember it. But for Japan, the occupation of Singapore was a prized victory and a significant extension of its empire. Japanese newsreels from the time show showed civilians celebrating at a shrine in Tokyo. Here's a song with the words, this morning I'm marching into Singapore. On the outskirts of London, schoolboy Peter Knight was sitting in his living room by the dresser with his two maps. Either side of it. He was, he was listening to the evening BBC bulletin like people in homes all across Britain.

[Peter Knight]

I mean, the loss of Singapore was the biggest tragedy I think we'd ever suffered.

[Kavita Puri]

And were people in Britain shocked by the Japanese takeover of Singapore?

[Peter Knight]

Yes. We couldn't believe our ears.

[Kavita Puri]

Its empire weakened Britain, and allegiance to it was about to be tested in a completely different and unexpected way.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

This is history's heroes, people with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[Kavita Puri]

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kavita Puri]

While the rise of the Nazis in Europe is widely taught, in Britain, the reasons behind the Japanese threats are less well known. But its importance shouldn't be underestimated. In fact, some historians pinpoint the start of World War II not with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, but far earlier in the 1930s, when Japan invaded China to expand its empire.

[Narrator]

The city is ringed by the glow of a hundred flames that seem funeral pyres. In honor of the heroic or the helpless dead.

[Kavita Puri]

Japanese forces committed mass atrocities, including rape. News reports from Nanking in 1937 reported on some of the tens of thousands of civilians who were massacred.

[Narrator]

That man carries the body of his child, clinging dumbly to the forlorn hope that life still inhabits its shattered little body.

[Kavita Puri]

Their aim was to subjugate and dehumanize their enemy.

[Narrator]

We called the Chinese chankoro, changkoro. That meant below, human, like bugs or animals.

[Kavita Puri]

This was a Japanese military policeman in Manchuria speaking in a BBC documentary in 2000.

[Narrator]

Whereas the Japanese are a superior race, which had been in existence for 2,600 years, the Chinese were inferior. The Chinese didn't belong to the human race. That was the way we looked at it.

[Kavita Puri]

China would end up fighting Japan alongside Britain and the Allies.

[Diya Gupta]

Often the Second World War, particularly in the uk, is reduced to being the fight against Nazism, against Fascism.

[Kavita Puri]

Dr. Diya Gupta researches the Second World War at City St George's University of London.

[Diya Gupta]

But the battle with the Japanese is quite murky and interesting because it's not so clear cut. So clearly the Japanese joined the Axis forces, but were they Nazis? Were they fascists? They had problematic racial prototyping of the Chinese People and clearly they were a very aggressive imperial power. But really, I think if we consider the fight against the Japanese in this war, I think it reveals what the war really was, which is a battle against different types of imperialisms.

[Kavita Puri]

The war against the Nazis and our role in liberation was more clear cut. We were the good guys. Perhaps that's easier to build our national story around, but the part Britain played in the war against Japan in, it's much more complicated. At the heart of that war were two competing empires, Britain and Japan, vying for control of territory and vital resources, even men. Japan deliberately exploited. Growing frustration with Britain's centuries long colonisation of India, which had gathered momentum in the years leading up to the Second World War. Japanese forces trying to persuade Indians, including tens of thousands of prisoners of war held in Japanese camps, to join their side against the Imperial British. Yavar Abbas is 104 years old. He was born in British India. He desperately wanted Indian independence, but had to decide whether to fight alongside the British. He was shocked the British hadn't put up more of a fight in Singapore, allowing it to fall to the Japanese.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

When the push comes to shove, these Brits, they're not going to defend my country. I was very angry at what happened in Singapore.

[Kavita Puri]

I've interviewed many elderly people, but Yavar is the oldest. He's disarmingly youthful and has a sharp memory. We meet at his home in South West London and he looks dapper in a velvet navy blazer and matching cream cravat and trousers.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

Anyone for a glass of wine?

[Kavita Puri]

It's a cold day and when I arrive that morning, he offers me a glass of red wine to warm me up. I have a tea and he takes me back to 1942, a few months after the fall of Singapore. Was it a struggle for you to decide whether to join the British Indian Army?

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

Yes.

[Kavita Puri]

So why did you? In the end?

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

I didn't want Hitler to win. I didn't want Nazism and fascism to win. I had to choose and hope that if I joined the army after the end of the war, as they had been promising, I'd get independence.

[Kavita Puri]

He was one of two and a half million Indians who fought with the British, many of whom fought on the Asian front. But it wasn't always a straightforward decision. Do you think a lot of Indians fighting in the British Indian army felt like you did?

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. Young people, I mean, at least nationalist minded.

[Kavita Puri]

To defend its empire, Britain needed Indian soldiers. But Indian nationalism was complicating the British war effort. There was a widespread movement demanding the British quit India, which colonial authorities often brutally tried to suppress. At that time, there was an existential tension for men like Yava in deciding whether to join a war alongside their imperial ruler, Britain. The irony was it was a war fought in the name of freedom. But colonial subjects like him weren't yet free themselves. Empire is still a difficult subject to talk about in Britain. Maybe that's part of why this story isn't as well remembered. It's not straightforward even for Javar today. We'll hear more from him throughout the series. By mid-1942, Britain's empire in Southeast Asia had changed in a matter of weeks. Malaya and Singapore were among British territories that had been taken. And now Japan was targeting another British colony, resource rich Burma, today called Myanmar. The capital Rangoon, now Yangon, was in its sights. If they got there, they could cut off the Allied supply lines to China on the Burma Road.

[Narrator]

The vital Burma road and rail links that reach out from Rangoon are the immediate Japanese objectives. The Burmese capital is suffering heavy aerial bombardment.

[Kavita Puri]

Back in England, Peter Knight stood in front of the dresser, touching the place marked Rangoon on his second map.

[Peter Knight]

I know my finger would have gone straight to find out where Rangoon was, which. That's all we could do.

[Kavita Puri]

The terrain around Rangoon was dense jungle. The British, Indian and Commonwealth troops were poorly trained for it. Morale was low and their equipment outdated. They couldn't withstand a superior military force. By early March, Rangoon had fallen to Japan too.

[Peter Knight]

I can't say it hurt because we became almost immune to these setbacks after.

[Kavita Puri]

A few weeks because there were so many.

[Peter Knight]

There were so many of them. Yeah.

[Narrator]

This attack was a result of the British forces lack of awareness. Its racing their lack of awareness that caused them trouble.

[Kavita Puri]

Renya Mutaguchi was an Imperial Japanese army officer. This is an interview he gave in the 1960s for a BBC documentary, but it was never broadcast. We found it in our archives. Renya had been part of the invading army in Singapore when it fell and was then part of the campaign to take Burma. He explains how his forces took Rangoon and then move northwards to occupy the rest of the country.

[Narrator]

I must mention that there weren't any roads. So the 5th and 33rd Division ended up expanding. The roads made for elephants.

[Kavita Puri]

Not only was the Imperial Japanese army nimble, but it had a powerful air force and highly trained soldiers, a couple accustomed to heat and inhospitable conditions.

[Narrator]

Because the Japanese military had control of the air and we had great cooperation from those on the ground. The operation was carried out without any regrets. Eventually, they retreated.

[Kavita Puri]

The surviving British, Indian and Commonwealth troops, together with Chinese army units, had to retreat to India across hundreds and hundreds of miles of difficult terrain. This is a story I didn't know well. It's often only a few lines in history books, but when you dig into it, it's shocking. And much like the national humiliation of those earlier defeats, I'm not surprised. It's something we wouldn't want to remember as part of our war story. And it wasn't only soldiers retreating.

[Diya Gupta]

You have this whole stream of refugees going from Burma to escape the Japanese forces.

[Kavita Puri]

Fearing Japanese reprisals, British civilians, Burmese, and many Indians who were working in Burma fled too. In time, around 600,000.

[Diya Gupta]

I think. At that point in 1942, this was the largest human refugee crisis in history.

[Kavita Puri]

But tellingly, the British evacuation experience was very different from the Indian and Burmese, starkly revealing colonial British hierarchies.

[Diya Gupta]

There was very much a racialized view of evacuation from Burma. So in general, if you happen to be white and you happen to be British, you were prioritized as a refugee. If you were really privileged, you got to go by sea. Otherwise, if you were doing the land route, you might be given a mode of transport, like an elephant. On the other hand, if you were an Indian expatriate who happened to find himself or herself in Burma during the Japanese takeover, you might find that you had to walk across very dangerous terrain, across mountainous country, across jungles, to reach safety in India.

[Kavita Puri]

Accounts of Indian and Burmese people who fled are difficult to find, but we tracked one down. The story of Clarence Gomes. He wrote this testimony of how he escaped From Burma in 1942, much later on in his life, and it was given to me by a relative. I've never seen testimony like this before. When he left rangoon, he was 10. His family took valuables like a portable typewriter, his aunt's violin, and they made this epic journey, trekking through mountains and jungles, passing crocodiles, white elephants. And it took them months, really, before they crossed the border into India. I had no idea it would take that long to get from Rangoon to India. And they did this without any help at all. And to think that's just one of possibly hundreds of thousands of stories like that. The disparity of treatment towards South Asian and British refugees further fueled calls for independence from British rule. So, too, did the shock of seeing their imperial masters defeated.

[Diya Gupta]

And that to kind of Indian subjects of the British Empire is a hugely shocking thing, because that's showing them in quite visceral terms that the masters of the world are no longer the masters of the world. They've fallen and are human and vulnerable and fragile, just like anybody else.

[Kavita Puri]

After taking British colonies like Malaya, Singapore and now Burma, all in a matter of months, Japan was now on India's eastern border. The fear was if they invaded India, they would be within reach of Calcutta, which was known as the second city of empire. The fate of British imperialism in Asia was at stake. Why, when we remember our war story, would we want to remember these military humiliations or how British subjects were left to their fate? It's easier to focus on other parts which are more heroic and easier to explain. It's what national foundational myths are built on. Professor Lucy Noakes from Essex University studies Britain's cultural memory and the war.

[Lucy Noakes]

For any kind of large society like a nation state to function, you have to at least imagine that you share things in common with the other members of that nation state. You'll never know them all, but you can. In your imagination, you can share values or you can share, in this case, the past. The war in Europe, for all its complexities that we forget to remember, there is a good part of that story which is about Britain standing firm and standing against fascism. I think that is a really good and a really seductive story and we see it again and again.

[Kavita Puri]

That's something we all understand. But the other war, it's not so neat.

[Lucy Noakes]

It's a far more complex story to tell, which makes it harder for it to really gain a purchase in our shared contemporary memory of the war years.

[Kavita Puri]

And there's something else about this war in Asia that really challenges our foundational national myth.

[Tony Knight]

If you want to take your coats off, it's quite warm.

[Kavita Puri]

This is Tony Knight, the son of Peter, who once had the second map. For the past year I've been spending time with them. He visits his dad every week, taking him out to the local pub for a lunch of scampi and chips.

[Tony Knight]

I never spoke to my father in law about his experiences. It wasn't really a topic for over dinner or anything of that nature.

[Kavita Puri]

While Tony's dad was in London, hearing about the war on the Asian front on the radio and following it on his maps, Tony's father in law was actually out there.

[Tony Knight]

He was sent on a troop ship to fight the Japanese. By the time the troop ship arrived at its destination near Singapore, Singapore had been lost and the ship was simply taken under Japanese as soon as he arrived. So he never shot a single round in anger and went straight into Prison.

[Kavita Puri]

Of war camp to remember that time was hard for those who had to bear the worst. It was often for the descendants to piece together what happened.

[Tony Knight]

He said very little about his encounters, what had happened, probably more importantly how he felt about the whole thing. Being a pow, did he show any.

[Kavita Puri]

Signs of suffering, any kind of trauma?

[Tony Knight]

He had nightmares, yes, when he first returned, and I don't think they ever went away and nor indeed did the malaria that he caught. And I think even his wife was probably left knowing very, very little about what had gone on.

[Peter Knight]

It was extremely normal that people that came home from Japanese war camps just didn't want to talk. Took a lot of persuasion to get them back into the idea that they could hold a conversation about it.

[Kavita Puri]

Peter Knight is 98 now and frail, and his eyesight is failing, but he has a detailed memory of that time. And it was while we were all talking that Peter said something I wasn't expecting.

[Peter Knight]

We've felt ashamed, if you like, that so many of our men had been captured, but at the same time we had to sympathise with them. But that didn't do him any good really.

[Kavita Puri]

He felt ashamed. Maybe it's easier 80 years on to acknowledge the complexity of what you felt, because what happened on the second Map was complicated and that makes remembrance all the more difficult. These are stories of defeat, humiliation, colonial hierarchies and the horrors of war. Painful to tell and hard to hear even today. Next time a North London woman leads a tribal group in the Indian jungle, they their contribution will end up being pivotal at one of the most important battles of World War II, one that would turn defeat into victory. On the second map I sent a.

[Peter Knight]

Cable saying, going forward to look for.

[Kavita Puri]

The enemy, kindly send rifles and ammunition soonest. The Second Map is a BBC long form audio production for the History Podcast. It was presented by me, Kavita Puri. The series producer was Ellie House. Script editor was Ant Addeen. The mix and sound design was by James Beard. The series editor was Matt Willis. The production coordinators were Sabine Sherrick and Maria Ogundele. Original music was composed by Felix Taylor. The archive curator was Tariq Hussain and the commissioners were Dan Clark and John Zylke. Listen to the next episode of the Second Map right now on BBC Sounds. We hope you enjoyed this series from the History Podcast. If you haven't already, listen to previous series including Invisible Hands with David Dimbleby and Half Life. If you want to be notified as soon as a new series drops, make sure you're subscribed to the history podcast on BBC Sounds. I'm David Runciman and from BBC Radio 4. This is Post War from the Cradle.

[Morris Naylor / Yavar Abbas (various veterans)]

To the grave, they said.

[Kavita Puri]

Eighty years on, we're telling the story of the 1945 election and the creation of post war Britain.

[Narrator]

There must be a revolution in our way of living.

[Kavita Puri]

This is the Britain that many of.

[Narrator]

Us grew up in and which still.

[Kavita Puri]

Shapes an idea of who we think we are.

[Sheila Brown]

Even Winston Churchill thrown out. All right, he may have won the war, but here you're going to win.

[Kavita Puri]

The peace post war with me. David Runciman. Listen on BBC Sounds.

[Narrator]

Can we have the Britain we desire?

[Alex von Tunzelman]

This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[Kavita Puri]

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, worries, sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.

[Alex von Tunzelman]

Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.