Double Tenth Incident (10 Oct 1943)

The "Double Tenth Incident" or "Double Tenth Massacre" occurred on 10 October 1943, during the Second World War Japanese occupation of Singapore. The Kempeitai – Japanese Military Police – arrested and tortured fifty-seven civilians and civilian internees on suspicion of their involvement in a raid on Singapore Harbour that had been carried out by Anglo–Australian commandos from Operation Jaywick. Seven Japanese ships were sunk, but none of those arrested and tortured had participated in the raid, nor had any knowledge of it. Fifteen of them died in Singapore's Changi Prison.
After the war ended, twenty-one of the Kempeitai involved were charged with war crimes. Eight received the death sentence, seven were acquitted, and the remainder were given prison sentences varying from one year to life.

In 1943, a special branch of the Kempeitai under Lieutenant Colonel Haruzo Sumida was charged with finding the culprits responsible for acts of sabotage in Singapore, mainly the cutting of telephone lines and the burning of warehouses. Sumida strongly suspected that the saboteurs were being organised by internees in Changi Prison, and made preparations for a raid on the prison to catch the ringleaders. Sumida's chief suspect was British barrister Rob Heeley Scott, a prominent Foreign Office employee who had previously been detained for his anti-Japanese propaganda, released by the Kempeitai, and then later sent to Changi Prison.
However, neither Scott nor anyone else in Changi was involved in the sabotage, or with the raid that led to serious repercussions on 10 October – 'The double tenth'. On 28 September, Scott received a message from one of his contacts in the city, telling him that on the previous morning six Japanese ships had been blown up in Singapore Harbour (now Keppel Harbour). This was the first major sabotage since the Japanese had captured the island. The loss of ships in such an important place was an enormous blow to Japanese prestige. Scott and his fellow internees supposed that the saboteurs must have been Chinese guerrillas who had slipped across the straits from their base in Malaya. Sumida, however, believed that Scott and his associates had planned the operation from Changi Prison.

On the day before the Double Tenth, internees were ordered to parade in the open at nine o'clock the next morning. No explanation was given. When the parade had assembled, the camp commandant came out with a number of Kempeitai and troops, who closed all the exits. While the names of a few men were called out for immediate arrest, the Kempeitai conducted a thorough search of the entire prison. After incriminating evidence including diaries of war news compiled from the BBC's radio broadcasts, self-made radios, and a tin box containing a substantial amount of money belonging to an ex-banker were unearthed, several more arrests were made, mostly of people who had been involved in monitoring news broadcasts and running a secret information service throughout the prison. This started a period of terror that lasted for several months. Suspects were hauled from their homes and places of work. Internees were taken to the Kempeitai interrogation chambers, where they were subjected to torture and starvation to make them confess to acts of sabotage and treason. As none of the suspects had even heard of Operation Jaywick, let alone been part of it, any confessions they made were meaningless, lacking any information about the raid itself, how it had been organised, or where the explosives had been obtained

Innocent victims
Seven days after the Double Tenth, Bishop John Wilson of St Andrew's Cathedral was taken to the YMCA, and placed in the cell next to Elizabeth. He was severely beaten for three days before the Japanese accepted that he was not one of the ringleaders in their imagined conspiracy. One night Elizabeth saw Rob Scott, by then badly disfigured as a result of the beatings and water tortures that he had been subjected to. At the end of one session Scott was told that he had been sentenced to death, and was forced to write a farewell letter to his wife. He was later sentenced to six years' imprisonment in Outram Road Prison instead, the site where convicted sepoy mutineers had been detained and executed by the British Army in 1915.
Elizabeth was held in the YMCA for nearly 200 days, during which time the Kempeitai meticulously followed up every point in her story, cross-examining people she said she had helped. After a huge dossier of interviews had been compiled, the Japanese concluded that she was telling the truth and set her free. Khun Heng, however, was sentenced to 12 years in Outram Road Prison. People avoided Elizabeth following her release, too terrified to speak to her. Fifteen internees died in the Kempeitai's cells during the Double Tenth inquisition. The suffering spread to the entire civilian population of Changi Prison; rations were cut, and games, concerts, plays and school lessons were forbidden for months.

^{Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Tenth_Incident (Source)}