Royal Commonwealth Society : The Whistle

Clark, Adrian

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'>The RCS holds the archives of two Second World War civilian internment camps established by the Japanese at Singapore, Changi Gaol and Sime Road. The collection also includes material relating to prisoners of war. These records are of immense significance to the families of internees and a wide range of researchers, since few survivors ever spoke of their traumatic ordeal. The library has digitised an incredibly poignant recent donation, the only copy ever produced of the magazine ‘The Whistle’, created by the POWs of Changi Gaol’s D Workshop towards the end of 1942. It was inspired and edited by Adrian Clark, a pre-war legal advisor to the Federated Malay States government, who tragically died during internment. ‘The Whistle’ was secretly printed and bound in the Gaol Printing Shop and carefully hidden. Almost miraculously it survived the war and was presented to Clark’s widow Marguerite, ‘showing you something of how he lived and worked in Changi… for all its squalor and beastliness, there was often fun and always good companionship and the healing qualities of hard work.’</p>