Double Tenth Incident

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.

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