Singapore
Stamford Raffles founded colonial Singapore in 1819 as a trading post of the British East India Company. After the company's collapse in 1858, the islands were ceded to the British Raj as a crown colony. During the Second World War, Singapore was occupied by Japan. It gained independence from the UK in 1963 by federating with other former British territories to form Malaysia, but separated two years later over ideological differences, becoming a sovereign nation in 1965. After early years of turbulence and despite lacking natural resources and a hinterland, the nation developed rapidly as an Asian Tiger economy, based on external trade and its workforce.
Japan–Singapore relations
Japan's earliest notable interaction with Singapore occurred while Singapore was still colonized by the United Kingdom as a part of British Malaya. Coinciding with the December 8th surprise attack on the US naval base Pearl Harbor and the same-day attack of the British colony of Hong Kong, the Japanese empire also launched an attack on British Malaya. Japan, having taken control of French Indochina in 1940, was able to launch multiple attacks and, partly due to an alliance with Thailand, took control of large swathes of Malaya over the next two months, concurrently bombing Singapore with increasing frequency. On the 31st of January 1941, Malaya fell to the Japanese, and the last of the retreating Allied forces destroyed the bridge between Malaya and Singapore and began to prepare for a full attack on Singapore.