Since Percival sought out the best terms with the Japanese, thereby refusing to participate in any “last stand” heroics, he failed to meet Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s standard as a military commander.Īlthough Percival was humiliated in both the surrender ceremony and as a prisoner of war, analysis of his prewar assessment and plans for the defense of Singapore demonstrates that he was not entirely culpable for the Singapore garrison’s defeat. Lieutenant General Arthur Percival’s surrender to the invading Japanese Army permanently destroyed Britain’s military and colonial prestige in the Far East. On February 15, 1942, the island fortress of Singapore surrendered with 130,000 men, thus ending the defense of Malaya as one of the largest military disasters in the history of British arms since Cornwallis’s capitulation to Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781 during America’s Revolutionary War.
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