Uncovering the Past: The Story of the Battle Box Bunker

Linh Nguyen
Jul 18, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Jul 20, 2024

History and culture are always the first things to attract travellers' attention while exploring a foreign country. These two definitions always co-exist and support each other, as history is the main part that helps forming a country's culture, and culture is formed in the past, in which we can say, culture belongs to history. Therefore, it is undoubtable that foreign travellers always check-in in and outside BattleBox in Fort Canning Park- a famous tourist attraction in Singapore.

The story of BattleBox Bunker:

Battlebox used to be a command bunker that belonged to the English army during the second World War, which is located inside Fort Canning in the center of Singapore. It is also a part of High Command of Malaya, and Malaya & Singapore's security guard during WWII. Right inside Battlebox, English army decided to surrender Singapore to the Japanese army in February 15, 1942.

Nowadays, BattleBox is an underground museum revealing the real cause behind "the most awful tragedy and the biggest surrender in the English history".

Battlebox museum's history:

BattleBox is the common name of Fort Canning Bunker, previously Malaya Command Operations Bunker, which was built under Fort Canning Hill (now Fort Canning Park), Singapore. This can be considered as an urgent command centre, prevented bomb during Malayan Campaign and Singapore War.

After the war, the English used Fort Canning Hill to build Singapore Base Headquarter. They handed over Fort Canning Hill to Singapore Armed Force in 1968-1969, and there were some times Fort Canning Hill's building served as Singapore Command and Staff College. At that time, the bunker had been still empty and not in used since the post-war era, and was blocked at the end of 1960s due to concern about safety and being unable to find the exact location.

Fort Canning Bunker came into light when being discovered by a journalist in 1988, who was following the clue about the existence of an underground complex in Fort Canning Hill. Being developed into a museum describing the last days of the Singapore War, it was officially opened in February 15, 1997.

(Translated from vi.alongwalker.co)

My personal experience:

This museum is totally free for visitors, you only need to register at the counter and there will be a guide leading you inside. For me, this is an interesting place to learn about history, that is considered an ideal place for history lovers. However, this place is really scary, because it is underground, the inside area is dark, cold and quiet that sometimes you can clearly hear the steps from previous visitors. BattleBox is quite small, so it just takes you about a half hour to visit the whole museum. My advice is to visit in the morning or early afternoon, as the large number of tourists will decrease the creepy atmosphere of the area.