Now and then: Singapore's abandoned haunts

#1: A military fort

Built in the early 1880s and powered by an underground electricity generator, Fort Serapong was necessary to defend the coast of Sentosa as trade flourished in Singapore. Armed with military guns, it also served as a PoW camp during the Japanese occupation. After Japan surrendered in 1945, Fort Serapong was also used as a Protestant church.

#2: A lone Japanese headstone

Marking the resting place of a Japanese naval officer, this 60-year-old tomb is located at the foot of Mount Faber and stands at a majestic 2m tall. According to the chiselled inscriptions, the tomb belongs to a soldier who was part of the navy’s engineering unit and was buried in 1943. Due to the differences between kanji (Japanese characters) and hanzi (Chinese characters), the soldier’s surname could be Omoto or Komoto, and his first name may be Egasa or Kouryu.

Lone Japanese headstone

#3: An empty bunker

Hidden by thick foliage behind a car park along Seah Im Road, this 30 sq m bunker – roughly the size of three carpark lots – was built in 1859 to serve the operations (ie, ship repairs) for Singapore’s primary deep-water harbour. At the time it was known as New Harbour, and later renamed Keppel Harbour in 1900.

#4: The original ‘Singapore Zoo’

Located off Punggol Road, this neglected forest used to be the site of a busy animal-trading operation in the 1950s owned by Chan Kim Suan. He enjoyed having animals around so much that he decided to turn the farming land into a private zoo by building a wall around it, made from earth and stacked clay urns. Besides shipping the rhesus monkey to America for polio research, he also kept elephants, panthers and crocodiles as pets.

The original Singapore Zoo