On the afternoon of Sunday, 15 February 1942, General Sir Arthur Percival walked up Bukit Timah Road in Singapore and surrendered to General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Percival surrendered 86,000 well-fed, well-supplied British troops on their fortified island base with supplies, vehicles, planes, and weapons to 22,000 exhausted Japanese troops at the end of long supply lines. He surrendered his troops into brutal captivity of which only about 25% survived. It was the largest surrender of British troops in history and was one of the most significant but little remembered events of World War II. It drove a stake into the heart of colonialism.