At a glance: What: The Battle Box Where: Fort Canning Hill When: Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm How much: S$8 per adult; S$5 per child (under 12 years old)

Back Track Boom! The room shook, the dim yellow lights flickered, the siren wailed. I jumped. A cool draft wafted across my skin. Telephone exchange room I was some nine metres underground, in one of the bunkers somewhere in Fort Canning Hill. In one corner of the small room, a Caucasian man in uniform spoke urgently into the phone. It might have been the morning of Feb 15, 1942, the day the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese. But no, I am in 1997 And yes, the boom and the setting were real but the Caucasian man was made of silicon. Blame the other effects on a fertile imagination. But the draft was real, I think... The making of the Battle Box The Battle Box bunkers were the British Army’s underground command centre during World War II. When the British came back after the Japanese Occupation in 1945, they sealed up the bunkers. The complex was re-opened in 1989, but work to refurbish the Battle Box began only in 1995. Two years later, on Feb 15, 1997, 55 years after the fall of Singapore, it was officially opened. The complex is now managed by the Fort Canning Country Club Investment. Ms Tan Teng Teng, Battle Box's curator Said Ms Tan Teng Teng, 27, Battle Box’s curator: "Two of my colleagues and I started from scratch. When we first went into the Battle Box, there was nothing. The rooms were empty. We didn’t know which room was for what. "So we started by looking for people who used to work here and interviewed them, probed them, asked them to try and remember things. "We also had to do a lot of research work, and slowly pieced things together, with the help of a few historians. I went to London twice for research and to get video clips from the Imperial War Museum." Local institutions such as the National Archives of Singapore and museums also helped Ms Tan and her team. The team started buying items for the bunkers from 1992. Even now, if they spot something suitable, they buy it to add to the collection. Many items have been bought locally, such as from antique shops and shops selling second-hand goods. "A few weeks ago, we bought some brass hooks from a karang guni (rag-and-bone man) for about $10 each," said Ms Tan. "It took us five long years of work and at least $3 million before the Battle Box could get going and be opened to the public," said Ms Tan. A propaganda poster in the gun operations room Battle Box - Today Without a time machine, we can still ‘travel’ back to the day when the British Malaya command, headed by Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, decided to give Singapore up to the Japanese. Today, the complex, occupying more than 1,300 sq m of land, is bigger than 11 five-room HDB flats (at about 120 sq m per unit). There are 22 rooms and other smaller sections, linked by a main corridor. The place is air conditioned, and visitors can walk through the rooms, where the British, and later the Japanese, worked during the war. The rooms include: - the telephone exchange room, which controlled all incoming and outgoing calls within the Battle Box The cipher room - the cipher room, a high-security room where staff worked to encode and decode messages and - Fortress Command, where Lt-Gen Percival discussed the progress of the British defence of Malaya with Fortress Commander, Major-General Keith Simmons, the highest ranking person in the Battle Box. Air raid sirens and bomb blasts resound through the rooms as visitors walk through, giving a feel of what it was like working and living there then. Much has been kept in its original condition, including metal doors, the walls and ceiling with rusted steel plates. The 24 wax figures of British soldiers were made in the United Kingdom, said Ms Tan, and their clothes were made by the people who worked in Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London. Those figures stationed at the corridors are made of hard and durable fibre glass. The rest are made of either silicon or wax. Said Ms Tan: "New imaging technology was used so that the wax figures look as real as possible, right down to the colour of the person’s eyes and hair. "The animatronics are controlled by computers." Battle Box command headquarters Historically, the battle box is considered one of the most extensive underground operations complexes built by the British in Singapore. It is a bomb-proof structure capable of recycling its own air supply if all the doors had to be shut during gas attacks. The British completed the bunkers in October 1939. The British soldiers occupied the Battle Box bunkers from 1939 to Feb 15, 1942, when Singapore was given up to the Japanese. It served as an operations and command centre for the Malaya Command Headquarters headed by the General Officer Commanding, Malaya (GOC), Lt-Gen Arthur Percival. This was where the top British officers gathered to make decisions regarding the defence of Singapore. More than 100 soldiers worked in shifts, round the clock. Next Moses' start page Copyright © 1998 Singapore Press Holdings. All Rights Reserved.