The Changi Chapel has a very long history. It used to be in Changi Prison but has now relocated to the present location (Upper Changi Road North) and it has a musuem beside it.
It was a source of comfort and focal point of social activities for Allied prisoners-of-war in Changi during the Second World War. Today the changi chapel is a point of pilgrimage for veterans and families of ex-POWs.
To read more about it, you can view the source from
Infopedia.
I took these pictures from outside the musuem. Too bad, I could not take photos inside the musuem but you can view it at the
official website of the changi museum.
This is a notice board where remembrance notes were pinned there. It is quite sad to read some of the notes.
I am thankful for these brave soldiers who fought for us and help protect Singapore during WW2.
These cranes were folded by visitors to the chapel. You can read the above photo on the origins of the cranes.
On a funnier note, my late mom told me during the Japanese Occupation when the siren sounded, my late grandmother told everyone to grab their stuff and run out of the house. My mom was about 12 or 14 years old back then and she was so happy and put on some face powder as she thought they were going on an outing. It was when grandma scolded her that she realised it was "run for your life situation".
They hid in trenches, covered with some banana leaves, built around the villages in Geylang and my youngest aunt who was a baby then, almost died of suffocation, because grandma covered her mouth to prevent her from crying so that the low flying Japanese plane would not be able to know their whereabouts.
After the planes left and it was safe to come out of the trenches. They could not go back to their homes incase the planes come back for them again. So they have to sleep in the outdoors. My mom was clever enough to grab a cooking pot before she run out of the house while most people (including my grandma) grabbed a sack of rice but they do not have a pot to cook. So everyone had to queue to borrow the "precious" cooking pot from mom. There are more horror stories of the war that mom told us. It would take me a long time to type them here.
