Singapore - This was one of Singapore smallest museum but worth the visit as I am able to link up this former WW2 Changi prison and my prior trip to Kanchanaburi. It took me about an 1hr walking around the museum and chapel, small but most importantly was air-conditioned. It was a hot and humid day @ Changi.
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| Entrance to this museum |
This a thought provoking museum, an important remembrance to avoid war and the hardship it caause on human lives and families lost. It was touching to see families of Australian and UK soldiers sharing part of their lost ones in this museum and tell of their experiences as a POW during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.
It was in appalling conditions this POW lived and how their kept it together through songs, worship and performances.
Many POWs were sent to Kanchanaburi from Changi prison camp; 12,000 Allied soldiers lost their lives building the Burma railway.
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| Changi as a Fortress |
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| an actual door of the POW prison |
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| morse code device |
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| Organ of the old chapel |
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| Murals of Changi Prison |
The chapel which occupies a room in what was Barrack Block 151 in Roberts Barracks, which together with the neighbouring barracks and nearby Changi Prison became an extended prison that the Japanese forces used to hold the large numbers of POWs they held.
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| Changi chapel |
The Changi Cross is a small brass wartime cross made by prisoners-of-war of the Japanese during WWII when they and 50,000 allied prisoners were held captive in Changi, Singapore.
The POWs took the cross up country with them to Kanchanaburi close to the River Kwai where they were used as slave labour to construct the Thai-Burma Railway. They struggled to keep faith and hope alive under the most appalling conditions. The survivors then brought it back to Changi gaol for their final year of imprisonment.
When the war ended in 1945, the cross was taken home to the UK but it was returned to Changi Museum in 1992.
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