The story of 488 RNZAF Squadron during the fall of Singapore early in 1942. This gripping history has been written using the diaries, letters, photographs and personal reminiscences of members of 488 Squadron, who were based just outside Singapore City and valiantly kept planes in the air against Japanese attacks until just before the city was overwhelmed. The story of their day-to-day life at a time of crisis, their hard work and their valour is eye-opening. The remaining ground crew were granted passage on one of the last ships to leave the island, when the Japanese were just 1 kilometre from the city centre. The ship had accommodation for 23 passengers, yet there were approximately 3000 people crammed on board. The overcrowding was the least of their worries...

Churchill's description of the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942, after Lt-Gen Percival's surrender led to over 100,000 British, Australian and Indian troops falling into the hands of the Japanese, was no wartime exaggeration. The Japanese had promised that there would be no Dunkirk in Singapore, and its fall led to imprisonment, torture and death for thousands of allied men and women. With much new material from British, Australian, Indian and Japanese sources, Colin Smith has woven together the full and terrifying story of the fall of Singapore and its aftermath. Here, alongside cowardice and incompetence, are forgotten acts of enormous heroism; treachery yet heart-rending loyalty; Japanese compassion as well as brutality from the bravest and most capricious enemy the British ever had to face.

Don Tweedie, Fighting Bandsman’s Last Stand is a story of courage, determination, heroism, faith, love, and mateship throughout World War II. Don Tweedtie’s last stand against the Japanese was in 1942 at Holland Hill, Singapore where he was severely wounded. Most stories that have been written have been more of a historical sense, whereas this is a more personal story. This book is written in three parts, and outlines his childhood/teenage years and leads into World War II, and then how he dealt with the images of war when he returned home in 1945. Part 2 is written from the heart, as it was told to his son about his war experience. Don Tweedie grew up throughout the Depression years, leading into WWII. He worked in a clothing warehouse in Sydney, and always wanted to play in a brass band. He joined the militia in 1937, and then enlisted in the infantry in 1940 to fight for his country. Don Tweedie was posted with the 2/20th Battalion in the Australian 8th Division to Malaya. It was while he was in the infantry that he became a bass drummer for the 2/20th Battalion band. However, he was severely wounded and captured in the fall of Singapore and was placed in captivity in Changi, Burma Railway, Saigon, Singapore, and Japan for the rest of the war.

First time all the factors concerning the Fall of Singapore have been examined in one place Churchill's controversial role in the surrender is also examined

"The twenty-first century is the age of science and technology. It will also be the age when humanity confronts, for the first time, a challenge that may overwhelm and destroy the human species itself in as little as 12 to 20 years from now. This is the challenge of artificial intelligence (AI) Deployed properly, AI will confer tremendous benefits to society. It is already doing this. Deployed inappropriately or mistakenly, AI will undermine human civilization, as it is also starting to do, and could then lead to the extinction of humanity. Scientists, philosophers, and engineers call this latter possibility the 'existential risk' of AI. The fate of our future is literally in our hands." --Nicanor Perlas (from the preface) Although still in its earliest stages, artificial intelligence is radically transforming all aspects of society. With the immanent emergence of Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) and the illusory temptations of "transhumanism," humankind stands at a crossroads. Nicanor Perlas makes an urgent plea in this book. It is imperative, he says, that we take immediate steps to ensure that digitized technology is aligned to human values and priorities. Otherwise, ASI will kill the essence of our humanity. Furthermore, if we do not master it now, ASI will transform humanity into its own image--ultimately, it will destroy the human race. AI experts have not offered a single cogent solution to this existential threat. Rudolf Steiner, however, not only foresaw these developments, but also provided clear alternatives. Steiner--who developed a contemporary scientific approach to spirituality--provided philosophical, ontological, and social innovations to save humanity from this technological abyss. It is the task of the global anthroposophic movement to pioneer this civilization-saving work--to establish spiritual-scientific ideas in mainstream culture that would allow AI to emerge in a healthier societal context. Perlas offers an overview of the AI phenomenon, together with its related transhuman concepts of "perfecting humanity," outlining the critical internal and external responses needed to meet them consciously. In particular, the author addresses the movement connected to the work of Rudolf Steiner, indicating its all-important tasks to cooperate with progressive individuals and movements, including scientists and civil society activists; to mobilize its "daughter" movements for action; and, ultimately, to cooperate with the spiritual powers that have guided and served humanity since the dawn of time. This, says Perlas, is humanity's last stand. Failure is not an option.

This book overviews Singapore's fascinating history from the precolonial era to the present, examining this wealthy island nation from economic, political, cultural, and social perspectives. Singapore is a dominant player in the global economy, serving both as an essential business hub for international finance and home to some of the world's most important ports. It is also one of the world's smallest and most resource-poor countries. This book offers an engaging examination of Singapore using a theme of globalization to explain how the country's worldwide interactions across centuries have resulted in an ethnically diverse society and allowed it to ascend to a position of being an economic powerhouse. Every significant historic event and era—from its status as a meeting point for traders in the 600s to its colonization by the British in 1819, and from Japanese occupation during World War II to the 2002 arrest of a group of Islamic terrorists—is covered.

In 2015, Singapore celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence. This book covers the complex historical forces and circumstances that shaped this nation. It tells of Britain's imperial visions and schemes, and of how their failure cast a shadow on the story of Singapore's incorporation into the Federation of Malaysia and expulsion from it.

Now a major motion picture starring Robert Carlyle and Kiefer Sutherland "Waking from a dream, I suddenly realized where I was: in the Death House--in a prison camp by the River Kwai. I was a prisoner of war, lying among the dead, waiting for the bodies to be carried away so that I might have more room." When Ernest Gordon was twenty-four he was captured by the Japanese and forced, with other British prisoners, to build the notorious "Railroad of Death," where nearly 16,000 prisoners of war gave their life. Faced with the appalling conditions of the prisoners' camp and the brutality of the captors, he survived to become an inspiring example of the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. To End All Wars is Ernest Gordon's gripping true story behind both the Academy Award-winning film The Bridge on the River Kwai, starring Alec Guinness, and the new film To End All Wars, directed by David Cunningham.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From a bestselling graphic novelist comes “a hugely ambitious, stylistically acrobatic work” (The New York Times Book Review) that brings us on a uniquely moving, funny, and thought-provoking journey through the life of an artist and the history of a nation. Meet Charlie Chan Hock Chye. Now in his early 70s, Chan has been making comics in his native Singapore since 1954, when he was a boy of 16. As he looks back on his career over five decades, we see his stories unfold before us in a dazzling array of art styles and forms, their development mirroring the evolution in the political and social landscape of his homeland and of the comic book medium itself. With The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, Sonny Liew has drawn together a myriad of genres to create a thoroughly ingenious and engaging work, where the line between truth and construct may sometimes be blurred, but where the story told is always enthralling.

Early on the morning of 7 December 1941, 360 Japanese carrier-borne aircraft made a surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, and laid waste to the American Far East Fleet. They sank four battleships, crippled three cruisers and three destroyers, and seriously damaged two other battleships. One hundred and sixty-four planes were destroyed and 2,403 servicemen and civilians were killed. All for the loss of twenty-nine Japanese aircraft and fifty-five men. Two days later, the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse, were sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers as they raced north to intercept an enemy invasion force heading for Malaya. In these two bold forays, the Japanese had successfully emasculated Allied naval power in the East. There now remained no big guns afloat anywhere in the Pacific and Indian oceans capable of opposing Admiral Yamamoto's ships. So began Japan's blitzkrieg. The Malay peninsular was rapidly overwhelmed, Hong Kong surrendered on Christmas Day, Manila went the same way on the 31st, and on 15 February 1942, in one of the most ignominious defeats in modern warfare, 85,000 British troops laid down their arms, and the vital base of Singapore was in Japanese hands. Thereafter, the rays of the Rising Sun spread ever outwards, overrunning island after island, until even Australia was threatened. The book tells how the Dutch Spice Islands, Java and Sumatra, became a last refuge for those fleeing before the Japanese whirlwind advance, and it was from here that the remaining Allied merchant ships in the area made their bid for freedom carrying hundreds of refugees. For many of these ships it was to be their last voyage