The Japanese had imprisoned some 75,000 commonwealth soldiers in war camps on the swampy island of Singapore in the spring of 1942. One young Indian prisoner with a Bengaluru connection was determined to escape.
Second Lieutenant Markandan “Mark” Pillai of the Bombay Sappers and Miners, a native of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu and a graduate of St Joseph’s College in Bengaluru, had joined the army in 1938. Within months, World War II broke out. In four weeks, starting in December 1941, the relentless but numerically inferior Japanese Imperial forces had driven the Allied divisions 1,000 km down the Malayan peninsula and pinned them down at Singapore, their backs to the sea.
