On either side of the road were banks of long 'godowns' as the rough sheds were called.

But for the men, the road west ended a hundred yards from the main gate.Įast, the road followed the wall, then turned south and again followed the wall. Past the barrier the road ran merrily onward, and in the course of time lost itself in the sprawling city of Singapore. A hundred yards west this road was crossed by a tangle of barbed gates, and outside these gates was a guardhouse peopled with the armed offal of the conquering hordes. Outside the gate was a skirting tarmac road. But still there was a closeness, a claustrophobic smell. The cell doors were open and the cellblock doors were open and the monstrous gate which slashed the walls was open and the men could move in and out - almost freely. English and Australian mostly - a few New Zealanders and Canadians - the remnants of the armed forces of the Far East campaign. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men. Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Cellblocks surrounded by sunbaked courtyards surrounded by towering walls. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.Ĭloser, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was - an obscene forbidding prison. Obviously the rest of this story is fiction, and no similarity to anyone living or dead exists or is intended.Ĭhangi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. Changi and Utram Road jails in Singapore do - or did - exist.

King Rat by James Clavell