The Battle Box
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Battle Box is the name of a historical location in Singapore that is now a tourist attraction managed by The Legends Fort Canning Park. It is a bunker located within Fort Canning, and was the headquarters of the British forces during the Battle of Singapore.
The Battle Box is located in Fort Canning, considered as the hub of history in Singapore. Traces of the country's past dating back to the 14th and 19th Century accompany this historical site form the Second World War. The underground bunker was where General Arthur Ernest Percival and his officers had their headquarters before the Japanese Occupation of Singapore began.
[edit] The Guided Tour
For a price of S$5 for children and S$8 for adults, visitors can attend a guided tour of the location. The tickets are designed to look like security passes issued during the Second world War. The tour begins with the screening of a historical filmstrip-style video about the events leading up to the Japanese invasion of Singapore, held in the ticketing office pictured above.
From there, visitors are led by the tour guide to the actual bunker located about a hundred metres away from the ticketing office. A wax figure of a British soldier, one of many in the bunker, points the way.
The underground bunker has been refurbished with an air-conditioning system installed, though with the historical value still greatly preserved. Besides a tour guide, the tour is also facilitated by an audio tour program with wireless headsets issued to the participants that can be carried out in seven different languages.
The participants are lead to the switchboard room where the communications centre was located during the time. Notes scrawled in chalk are still faintly visible on the bunker door. Participants are then treated to an audio presentation through the headset, with a synchronised animatronics display (the animatronic switchboard operator plugs and unplugs switches).
The rooms where the other communications methods such as morse code and telegram are carried out are next on the tour, where participants watch a short video presentation of the operators hard at work through individual viewing posts, accompanied by another audio track.
Paperwork posts later used by the Japanese are visited next, with plastic coverings protecting actual Japanese script written by the soldiers and translation texts pasted above.
After that, participants visit General Percival's actual office where a meeting between him and an Official Simmons is in progress, with the impending surrender as the topic. The two are actually animatronic figures whose mouth movements are synchronised with the audio tour segment.
A planning room with a simulated military strategy table and maps pasted on the walls follows. This was where the British would plan sea and air operations around the Asia-Pacific area. Wall charts depict developments in other parts of the world at that time.
The last room is the bunker where the final decision to surrender unconditionally to the Japanese is made by Percival and all the major officials with him at the time. The crucial final command conference is portrayed as accurately as possible with wax figures combined with a video presentation of Percival projected behind his wax figure.
The tour ends, and participants are free to explore the small museum and the gift shop at the end of the underground bunker.
