Sentosa

This guide to Sentosa in Singapore opens on a beach in early 1942, just after Singapore's fall to Japan, when bodies washed ashore and British and Australian prisoners of war, held in a camp on the island, were ordered to bury them. It traces the island's older name, Pulau Blakang Mati, recorded by mapmakers since the 1600s, and the competing stories locals told about why the island behind which death lies earned that name. Fort Siloso, the British coastal fort at the western tip, still has its guns aimed out to sea.