In Honour of War Heroes

Athanasios Tsakonas

Description

At the end of World War II, a young British architect was appointed to design a series of cemeteries and memorials across Asia for the war dead. Colin St Clair Oakes, who had fought in the brutal Burma campaign, was the only veteran of the recent war among the five principal architects of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Completed in 1957, Kranji War Cemetery and Memorial in Singapore is a masterwork of Modernist architecture - a culmination of Oakes' experiences in war and his evolution as an architect. Richly illustrated with photographs, maps and architectural plans, and drawing on extensive archival research and interviews in Europe, Australia and Asia, this is a riveting account of a world shattered by war, and man's heroic efforts to recover, remember and rebuild.

Sujets

• Lettres et linguistique
• Singapore
• Singapour

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 02 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789814928090
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

2020 Athanasios Tsakonas
Published in 2020 by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Name(s): Tsakonas, Athanasios.
Title: In Honour of War Heroes : Colin St Clair Oakes and the Design of Kranji War Memorial / Athanasios Tsakonas.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2020 Includes bibliographic references.
Identifier(s): OCN 1175571771 eISBN 978 981 4928 09 0
Subject(s): LCSH: Oakes, Colin St. Clair. Kranji War Memorial (Singapore) War memorials-Singapore-Design and construction. War cemeteries-Singapore- Design and construction.
Classification: DDC 725.94095957-dc23
Printed in Singapore
Contents
Foreword
Preface
CHAPTER 1 Introduction
CHAPTER 2 Writings
CHAPTER 3 The Architects
CHAPTER 4 Architecture
CHAPTER 5 Colin St Clair Oakes
CHAPTER 6 Singapore
CHAPTER 7 Kranji
CHAPTER 8 Building a War Cemetery
CHAPTER 9 Post-War
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Mrs Victoria Wallace, DL
Director General
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
During my time as Director General of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), an organisation dedicated to the commemoration of the 1.7 million men and women of the British, Imperial and Commonwealth forces who died in the two world wars, I have visited many of the cemeteries and memorials around the world where their bodies lie buried or where their names are engraved. I have always been struck by the uniformity of purpose and design that is displayed at these places of remembrance and pilgrimage - regardless of where you are in the world, you immediately know when you are standing in a CWGC cemetery. And yet, if this is not too much of a contradiction, each and every cemetery and memorial is also unique and intrinsically different from any other. Each has its own character and sense of place which differentiates it.
A change in the horticultural treatment and types of plants in the headstone borders; a subtle shift in the alignment and layout of the graves; the differences in the positioning and placement of various features and structures, such as the Stone of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice; and the location of the cemetery or memorial in its surrounding landscape, all ensure that no two cemeteries or memorials are the same.
None of this is down to chance. It is the work of various architects, designers, horticulturists, planners and builders who have worked collaboratively over the years to create these special places.
I was delighted to be asked to write the foreword for this study on one of these architects, Colin St Clair Oakes. While much has been written about the original architects who were engaged by the Imperial War Graves Commission (as it was then) after the end of the First World War to bring the vision of the Commission to life, very little has been written about the second wave of architects who picked up the mantle from their illustrious predecessors, and embarked on a new phase of design and construction after the Second World War.
The template for the cemeteries and memorials had already been established, but rather than restricting this new generation of architects, it in some ways liberated them to develop those ideas further from a sound and solid base. Freed from the need to start from scratch , they could take the ideas of their predecessors and expand and develop them. Nowhere is this more evident than in Oakes s design for the Singapore Memorial, which sits within the surrounding Kranji War Cemetery. Its clear, simple, sweeping lines, its nod to modernism, could not be more different from Lutyens s mathematically complex series of intersecting arches which form the Thiepval Memorial, or Blomfield s Menin Gate in Ieper, adorned as it is with various embellishments and decorations, two of the most celebrated memorials created by the Commission after the First World War.
It is particularly timely to look at the creation of the Singapore Memorial and Kranji War Cemetery now, in this 75th anniversary year of the end of the Second World War, and I hope you will enjoy this fascinating insight into this magnificent site and its no longer overlooked architect.
Preface
On the Australian Government s Office of Australian War Graves (OAWG) website, their definition of those physical sites designed to commemorate the fallen is as follows:

A war memorial is a commemorative object intended to remind us of the people who served in and died as a result of war. War memorials may take many forms, but common to all of them is the intention that they remind us of those we have lost to war. 1
The OAWG then proceeds to highlight the various forms such memorials could take, from the simple mounted plaque through to grand museums and monuments . These memorials are subsequently categorised by where they are, by whom they are dedicated , and to whom they are dedicated . Interestingly, at this juncture, only the categorisation where is expounded: Battle exploit or battlefield memorials are sited near where those they commemorate fell in given battles. Prisoner of War (POW) memorials may be at the site of the former POW camps. War memorials can sometimes be found where units were or are based. 2 In the case of Australia, this is a salient point as most if not all the significant sites of commemoration are found outside the country, in fields both close and afar, underlining the nation s imperial origins and history of overseas engagements.
After listing the principal war memorials for each State and Territory, OAWG then lists numerous overseas memorials under their remit. Among the Second World War memorials situated in Southeast Asia, three are in Malaysia, namely Parit Sulong Memorial in Johore, Sandakan Memorial Park, Sabah, and the Surrender Point Memorial on Labuan Island; Indonesia hosts the Nurses Memorial (Vyner Brooke Memorial), on Bangka Island; in Thailand, the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum Walking Trail and the Siam-Burma Railway; and ten sites in Papua New Guinea, including Kokoda, Milne Bay, Rabaul.
Interestingly, not a single war memorial is identified for Singapore, a significant site of memory that otherwise should be dedicated to the almost 15,000 troops of the Australian Imperial Forces who were captured by the Japanese upon the fall of Britain s impregnable fortress and rendered prisoners of war. This omission of arguably one of Australia s great military catastrophes speaks volumes about the uneasy relationship the country continues to exhibit with this significant wartime memory, almost 80 years after the event. Australia s inability to suitably address the commemoration of an ultimately failed defensive campaign to prevent the Japanese onslaught through Malaya ending in the fall of Singapore, commensurate only to the tragic events on the Gallipoli Peninsula during the First World War, leaves an unfinished chapter in its military history. 3
Changi Prison, on the other hand, site of incarceration for most of the Australian servicemen and staging post for the thousands transported to the notorious Siam-Burma Railway, many of whom would not return, has over the years been the subject of numerous scholarly articles, books, television and film productions, and museum exhibitions. Intermittent government-to-government discussions with the Singapore authorities on preserving parts of the former gaol site as some form of memorial, have yielded little result, the occasional artefact transfer aside. The reticence of both nations in finding common ground and conclusively accepting and acknowledging this episode with its own dedication, renders the symbolism of hosting annual commemorative events at Singapore s Kranji War Cemetery and Memorial, under the authority and management of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, all the more uncomfortable by them not being at Changi.
Singapore s reluctance to amplify through commemoration this doomed British imperial cause stemmed in part from its need to embrace the economic and social-cultural realities of its new-found post-independence position. This was compounded by the role its former occupier Japan would go on to play in the development of its industries and the sensitivities such regional relationships offered. The official opening of Kranji and unveiling of its memorial in 1957 did not greatly figure in the collective imagination, neither resonating with the growing population, the majority of whom trace their roots from further afield, nor representing the suffering t