In 1940, when Lee took his final high school exams, he scored first among all students of his age across Singapore and Malaya. By then, war was tearing Europe apart and creeping toward Singapore. On Dec. 8, 1941, Singapore, along with Pearl Harbor, was bombed in a predawn raid. Not one bomb shelter was dug or one city light extinguished, although Singapore’s British colonial governor knew of the Japanese landing in the Malayan peninsula bordering Singapore several hours earlier. Less than three months later, the teenage Lee watched British army soldiers—“an endless stream of bewildered men”—¬escorted by their Japanese captors to prison camps. Recalling the blunders that led to the island’s defeat in early 1942, he wrote, “In 70 days of surprises, upsets and stupidities, British colonial society was shattered, and with it all the assumptions of the Englishman’s superiority.”