Saint John's Island

Saint John's Island ( ), also known as St John's, is an island in the Straits of Singapore located 6.5 km off the southern coast of Singapore. With an area of , it is the largest of the Marine Park islands which also include the Sisters' Islands and Pulau Tekukor. St John's was colonised by the British along with mainland Singapore in the 19th century and was the site of a colonial quarantine centre. In the 20th century, the island served as a detention centre, drug rehabilitation centre and refugee settlement. Singapore gained independence under the Government of Singapore in the mid-20th century and maintained sovereignty over St John's. In the present day, the island has doubled as grounds for recreational facilities and aquaculture research and development facilities.

The island is part of the Jurong Rock Formation and contains both tropical rainforest and coastal habitats, and is one of the wetlands of Singapore. According to a member of the Stamford Raffles British delegation, John Crawfurd, they had misinterpreted the island's local name as 'St John' during their attempt to establish a port in the neighboring island of Singapore in 1819. In other maps like 1872 British Possessions In The Indian Seas, St John's was named 'Sikajang Island' and Lazarus Island was labelled 'St John's Island'. Eventually, St John's Island's Malay name became , with the term meaning flag in Malay, which is attributed to a flagstaff that existed on the island from 1823 to 1833. Lazarus Island is now known as in Malay, with meaning 'palm leaves'. After the port was established that year, a signal station was constructed on St John's Island, along with a signal flagstaff.

By 1830, the facilities on St John's Island, including the flagstaff, were reported by the officer in charge of public works to be in a dilapidated state. They were not repaired because the government did not plan to continue the St John's signal station.

Quarantine centre

thumb|Watercolour painting of St John's Island Quarantine Centre by John Edmund Taylor in 1879

As the number of immigrants to Singapore increased from the late 19th century onwards, the risk of epidemics heightened, leading to the establishment of a Quarantine Centre on St John's. Initially, the Quarantine Ordinance (No. 7 of 1868) was implemented to prohibit all infected ships from docking at port. However, in July 1873, a boat from Bangkok caused a cholera epidemic that lasted two months and resulted in 857 infections and 448 deaths, despite the orders of Governor Harry Ord to quarantine all ships from Siam.

The St John's Island quarantine station opened in November 1874 and served not just immigrants to Singapore but also Muslims returning to Malaya after their pilgrimage to Mecca. Although Ellis had plans for a police ship, a hospital on St John's, a steam cutter, and a cemetery on Kusu Island to support the quarantine station, it consisted largely of attap huts when first completed. The month it opened, the station quarantined more than 1,000 Chinese passengers on the cholera-infected SS Milton which was travelling from Swatow to the British colonies Penang and Province Wellesley. In 1890, Muslims on the Queen Margaret who were returning after their Hajj pilgrimage were quarantined on St John's. In 1894, the Hong Kong outbreak of bubonic plague prompted the Quarantine Station to prepare to receive bubonic plague victims. A plague hospital was constructed and ships were inspected, with one case of bubonic plague caught in March 1896. From 1903 onwards, more than 300,000 dollars was spent on the station's development. New facilities included muster sheds for passengers to disinfect and change clothes, and boiler houses for disinfecting belongings.

thumb|Photograph of disinfection buildings at the Quarantine Centre on St John's Island, Singapore, in 1930.

thumb|Photo of vaccination of male passengers at the Quarantine Centre on St John's Island, Singapore.

In the early 20th century, the quarantine centre was further equipped and had become one of the largest quarantine operations in the British Empire.

Despite the quarantine laws and the island's treatment facilities, not all passengers were quarantined nor received the same level of care due to classism. Unlike steerage class passengers, cabin class (first and second-class) passengers were not required to undergo quarantine. Health examinations for sailors were also less demanding. By contrast, Chinese coolies were allegedly provided insufficient food, no bedding and used as forced labour. Complaints were made to no avail.

The St John's quarantine station officially closed on 14 January 1976 because the popularisation of air travel had drastically reduced the number of arrivals by boat.

Detention centre

thumb|Custom barriers where six-hundred Japanese leave Singapore in WWII

St John's Island served as a World War I and World War II internment camp. In August 1914, right after World War I began, most German men in Singapore were interned on St John's Island and Tanglin Barracks while women and children were detained in Kuala Lumpur. By 1916, a total of 296 enemy nationals had been transferred from St John's to Australia . During World War II (1939–1945), enemy foreign nationals—some of whom were fleeing Nazism—were interned at St John's Island in 1940. Of these, the Germans who were to be removed from the war were interned in Ceylon. As for the rest, some were deported to neutral grounds like Shanghai. Others were transported to Australia, including German-Jewish and his family. When the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II began, Allied prisoners of war were detained on St John's. In 1947, the Communist Party of Malaya initiated a guerilla war against the British colonial government in hopes that it would be more effective in turning the Federation of Malaya and the Crown Colony of Singapore communist. This granted the government the authority to arrest and detain anyone without trial. Expecting an influx of political prisoners, St John's Island was officially announced as the site of the new detention centre on 3 July 1948 and became a protected area from 10 September onward.

St John's housed not only communists but also political suspects and detainees of other political leanings, from both Malaya and Singapore, who sought to overthrow the colonial government. St John's received its first batch of detainees on 20 September 1948, comprising 200 political prisoners from Johore Bahru. Travellers via ship suspected of communist inclinations were also detained at St John's under the Emergency Travel Restrictions Regulations until they were cleared of suspicion. Within two years, more than 600 were detained under the Emergency Regulations, most of whom were held on St John's. Singaporean political prisoners detained on St John's Island were university students, teachers, newspaper editors, several future politicians of Singapore, and others. Among the detainees were Devan Nair, Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong, all People's Action Party (PAP) members.

The state's fear of communism did not abide, resulting in St John's being used as a detention centre for most of the detainees arrested during the anti-communist Operation Coldstore. On 2 February 1963, the Internal Security Council of the Singapore Government executed Operation Coldstore, which detained those charged as political extremists under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance. Arrestees were detained without trial, some for being a "suspected communist" or for associating with them. Prior to the move to St John's, the detainees were held in Outram Prison. On 6 February, it was announced that 99 of the 113 Operation Coldstore detainees were to be moved to the island. The following year, the Opium and Chandu Proclamation further restricted drug activity by banning opium smoking and the possession of opium-smoking devices. Despite these regulations, there were still more than 1,400 opium dens in 1949.

In the 1950s, the government tackled drug activity more aggressively through legal means, vice operations, and the establishment of an Opium Treatment Centre on St John's. They revised the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance of 1951 in 1953 to increase their authority to prosecute opium-related crimes, and initiated vice operations, such as the major opium crackdown of 1952. The Opium Treatment Centre was established under an amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance in 1954, marking the colonial government's first attempt to rehabilitate addicts. Formerly, addicts were simply imprisoned. During the centre's opening, the Commissioner of Prisons Major Sochon claimed that the United Nations Organisation had taken note. By 1966, more than 4,000 opium addicts had been rehabilitated at the centre. However, the apparent success of the centre must be prefaced by their denial of treatment to long-time addicts whom they evaluated to be incurable. Despite the decline in opium addiction specifically, the number of arrests due to drug offences, in general, had increased between 1971 and 1973.

Temporary settlement for refugees

St John's Island was also a temporary settlement for refugees in the 20th century. In 1955, the quarantine station housed residents of Lazarus Island, after a rare high tide destroyed their homes. In the mid-1970s, the rehabilitating drug addicts were temporarily moved out when eighty-four Vietnam War (1955–1975) refugees were settled on the island. From January to July 1998, there was an increase of almost 2000 illegal immigrants and 1000 overstayers arrested compared to the whole of last year. However, this may be due to more police raids and patrols targeting illegal immigrants. However, the expected influx of Indonesian refugees did not occur, and the temporary detention centre stands abandoned.

Holiday camp and aquaculture research centres

thumb|St John's Island Pier in 2023

In the mid-1970s, the Sentosa Development Corporation planned to redevelop Singapore's offshore islands into resort centres. However, proposals to redevelop St John's as a holiday island with restaurants, golf courses and an integrated resort-casino fell through. The Marine Aquaculture Centre (MAC) is a hatchery completed in June 2003, and the National Marine Laboratory was established in 2002. The two long-term residents on the island were evacuated and were assessed to be healthy.

Biodiversity

The island's tropical forest and marine habitats are home to crustaceans and cetaceans in the Singapore Strait and land animals. The island is also surrounded by coral reefs.

St John's Island is covered by natural vegetation (32.0%), the majority of which is managed coastal vegetation (60.6%). More than 258 species of vascular plants have been recorded on the island, including several nationally critically endangered species such as the Podocarpus Polystachyus R Br (Sea Teak) and the Xylocarpus rumphii (Meliaceae).

The Sentosa Development Regulations (1997) were implemented to protect the biodiversity of Singapore's offshore islands. Among other regulations, it prohibits killing or capturing any animal, bird, insect, or plant.

Demographics

thumb|right|View of Singapore from St John's Island in 2023

From 1962 to 1963, there were more than 400 islanders. Between 1976 and 1977, the residents of St John's Island, Lazarus Island and Seringat Island were relocated to the mainland, and the remaining four permanent islanders on St John's left in 2017. St John's Island English Primary School, the only school on the island, was shut down in 1976. St John's Island currently has no permanent residents.

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

St John's Island management (Singapore Land Authority)
The Last People of St. John's Island (documentary about former residents), by Our Grandfather Story