# Alexandra Hospital massacre (14 February 1942)

URL: https://allhistories.com/singapore/timeline/1942-alexandra-hospital-massacre
Location: Alexandra, Singapore
Themes: main-event

On 14 February 1942, one day before the surrender, Japanese soldiers entered the Alexandra Barracks Hospital on the western edge of the city and killed medical staff and patients. Wikipedia's account of the Occupation puts the dead at more than 200 staff and patients. The hospital was part of a military complex that also held ammunition depots. The hospital lay behind the Pasir Panjang ridge, and the fall of Bukit Chandu on 13–15 February opened the approach to it. By then the defenders had been compressed into a small perimeter, about a million civilians were crowded into roughly one per cent of the island, and the Japanese advance was moving through the western suburbs against collapsing resistance. The killings were among the first of the atrocities that marked the Japanese conquest and were followed within days by the Sook Ching massacre. The Alexandra killings are recalled in memorials and in the post-war war crimes record, and they form part of the account of the occupation's first days, when staff and patients were among the earliest civilians and non-combatants to suffer. At this point in the timeline (1942), Shenton Thomas, Governor of the Straits Settlements (1934 – 1942), was in charge of the Straits Settlements, a British Crown colony governed from Singapore.

## Why it matters
The attack on a hospital was an early sign of the brutality of the Occupation and remains a central episode in Singapore's war memory.

Ruler at the Time: [Shenton Thomas](https://allhistories.com/singapore/rulers/shenton-thomas)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Alexandra Hospital massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Hospital_massacre)
- [Wikipedia — Battle of Pasir Panjang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pasir_Panjang)
- [Wikipedia — Japanese occupation of Singapore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_occupation_of_Singapore)