Qualla: Parit Sulong Massacre

Parit Sulong Massacre: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Lieutenant Ben Hackney had two broken legs when the shooting started. He lay among the bodies of his comrades on the muddy ground near a bridge over the Simpang Kiri river, and he did what instinct demanded: he played dead. It was 22 January 1942, and the village of Parit Sulong in British Malaya had just become the site of one of the worst massacres of Australian and Indian prisoners of war in the Pacific theater. Hackney's survival -- crawling through the Malayan countryside for six weeks before recapture -- would eventually make him one of only a handful of witnesses to a crime that took nearly a decade to prosecute.

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Parit Sulong Massacre: A Column Running Out of Everything

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Two days before the massacre, on 20 January 1942, soldiers of the Australian 8th Division and the 45th Indian Infantry Brigade began a fighting withdrawal from Bukit Bakri during the Battle of Muar. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Groves Wright Anderson, the retre...

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Parit Sulong Massacre: What Happened at the Bridge

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Anderson and all soldiers still able to walk departed to attempt a breakout, an officer named Snelling approached the Japanese and surrendered the remaining men -- approximately 150 Australian and Indian soldiers, most of them wounded. What followed was systematic brutality....

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Parit Sulong Massacre: Six Weeks on Broken Legs

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hackney's survival story borders on the unbelievable. After feigning death during the executions, the lieutenant from the 2/29th Battalion crawled through the Malayan countryside for six weeks, dragging himself forward on two broken legs. He was eventually recaptured by the Japan...

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Parit Sulong Massacre: A Complicated Reckoning

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The commander of the Imperial Guards Division, Lieutenant General Takuma Nishimura, had a long trail of atrocities behind him. After Parit Sulong, he oversaw occupation forces in eastern Singapore and was indirectly involved in the Sook Ching massacre there. He later served as mi...

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Parit Sulong Massacre: A Village That Remembers

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Parit Sulong is a quiet place today, a small village in the Malaysian state of Johor. The Simpang Kiri river still flows beneath the bridge where prisoners were forced to stand before being shot into the water. The events of January 1942 are commemorated by Australian veterans' o...

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