The New Yearof 1941began , and the feast days of St loseph and of St Iohn Baptist de La Salle were celebrated in the usual way . The year rolled on , but now the boys must have noticed a change in theatmosphere as more and more troops arrived in the island from India and Australia . The Catholic Club at the corner of Queen Street and Bras Basah Road was crowded with servicemen in the evenings . Air Raid Precautions were introduced and Civil Defence organised . Volunteer units of one kind or another were formed , and a mood of apprehension gripped the city as Japan became more and more belligerent .
Meanwhile school continued as though nothing untoward was happening . The Brothers were keen to promote the new Science Course which was now being followed by boys in St Anthony ' s , St Patrick ' s and St [ oseph ' s . They started a preliminary science course in the lower standards to prepare for the practical course in Standard VI . The boys made occasional visits to the Demonstration Laboratory ' to make their readings realistic ' as the Director noted . In another year or so , he predicted , all the signs were that complete courses in General Science , Chemistry and Physics would be in order . But , in another year or so , things would be utterly different .
The Japanese attacked the US Pacific Fleet as it lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 . They achieved complete surprise . On the next day the invasion of northern Malaya began . That night the first air raid on Singapore took place , under a bright moon .
The following account appears in the History of the House , a manuscript book kept by the Brothers :
' Meanwhile , in an atmosphere of continual preparation in case of trouble , things went on more or less normally . Trade carried on amid the military bustle of quartering troops who were still pouring in . We handed over our fine boarding school six miles from town to the Australians who fitted it up as a hospital . Schools functioned as usual . The final term examinations were in the offing and beginning pupils were being registered for the year 1942 , when on the morning of the 8th December 1941 at 4.00 o ' clock , the sleeping city of Singapore was awakened by a strange volume of sound in the air , approaching the city from the South . I was awakened from peaceful slumber and listened intently . It was the sound of a large flight of airplanes , making a noise quite distinct from British squadrons which we had been accustomed to see and hear for months previously . I jumped out of bed , sensing that this flight of planes was something out of the ordinary , and feeling that all was not well .
' Going out on the balcony , I went over to the direction from which the ever-increasing volume of low-keyed ominous droning came , and decided at once that it must be a flight of Japanese planes . I went a few steps back to an adjoining room where another Brother was sleeping . He too was awake and I hurriedly asked him if they wouldn ' t be [ ap planes . We both peered over the balcony at the huge flight ( dimly outlined by a bright moon , in a sky of white fleecy clouds ), now almost over the extreme south of the sky .
' Suddenly , three or four loud explosions , accompanied by livid reddish-purple flash , confirmed our impressions that the Iaps must now have broken loose . It was my first experience of bombing . The part of the city to get the first baptism of fire was no more than half a mile from where we stood ( gazing in awe ), on the school balcony . The huge flight divided ; one part going North-east , the other North-west over the city , which was ablaze with electric lamps and gas lamps .
' They had not proceeded much further when scores of searchlight beams jumped into being , sweeping the heavens and gradually concentrating on one of the prettiest sights imaginable if the fact could be ignored that the separate groups of silver butterflies , miles up in the air , were messengers of death and destruction .
We watched them moving along slowly and solemnly , in perfect formation , but wreathed about , above , below and on all sides - as it appeared to us - with balls of fire from scores of ack-ack shells .
' On they went , utterly ignoring the fireworks around them . They were raining down death in their apparently silent parade , as was evident from the succession of terrific explosions on the ground beneath them . They had swept over the Naval Base and the airfields , over the city and suburbs , pursued all the time by the relentless gleaming sabres which kept them in full view , and also by shell-bursts which seemed to adorn the picture without spoiling the outline . We watched breathlessly for a break in those beautifully arranged lines of silver wings . There may have been some shot down , but we saw none , to our disappointment .
' That was our first experience of bombing , as I have already stated . Luckily for us , no plane passed near our part of the city that early December morning , otherwise in the light of later experience , not one of us upon that flat roof would have had a chance of escape , had a single bomb fallen on it .' On the following day not many people were in the mood for work but at SJI the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations were under way , under the Presiding Examiner , Or Thio Chan Bee of the Angle-Chinese School . Everything went on as usual , and when a candidate asked what he should do in the event of another air raid he was told to carry on as if nothing unusual had occurred . Or Thio merely wrote a brief report to the Examiners in England describing the difficulties that some of the candidates were experiencing .
Meanwhile , the Japanese advanced with lightning speed down the Malayan peninsula . The His-
34 Memories of 511