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One may wonder how the Japanese may have treated our women and children had they invaded Australia. This story about how they murdered the nurses of our 10th Australian General Hospital should enlighten them.
The story is related by Sister Betty Jeffrey in her book ‘White Coolies’ and tells of the experience of Sister Bullwinkle, sole survivor of the massacre of 20 nurses by the Japanese at Bangka Island in Sumatra.
Aware of the atrocious behaviour of the Japanese toward nurses during their invasion of Hong Kong, our Military Authorities feared what might happen to the AGH nurses, on the fall of Singapore, and decided it was safest to evacuate them before final surrender.
Wounded men, women and children lay everywhere, the hospitals were overcrowded and the wounded kept pouring in. With so much to be done, loyal to their calling, the nurses unanimously refused to abandon their duties. However their refusal was useless and they were ordered to leave.
65 members of the Australian Army Nursing Corps were taken to Singapore Harbour, where they boarded a small Malay vessel the ‘Vyner Brooke,’ which once belonged to the Rajah of Sarawak. It headed for Sumatra, hopeful of making it safely to Australia. The ship proceeded stealthily during the night to avoid attack from the hundreds of Japanese planes that hovered over Singapore, bombing ships as they tried to leave the harbour.
As the ‘Vyner Brooke’ neared the islands surrounding Sumatra, it was spotted by Japanese planes and promptly dive –bombed. After avoiding several near misses, a bomb blasted it amidships. Holed and badly battered, she began to list and slowly go down. Lifeboats and rafts loaded with women and children were lowered and many of the nurses took to the sea in lifejackets while others clung to the rafts.
A little later the planes returned, this time machine gunning and killing many of the defenceless women and children as they struggled in the water.
Clinging to rafts and wreckage, the nurses drifted to the beach of a nearby island. It happened to be Bangka Island, which was already in Japanese hands. It wasn’t long before truckloads of Japanese soldiers arrived, armed with rifles with fixed bayonets. Angrily thrusting their bayonets at the nurses and yelling at them, they herded them onto trucks and drove them to their new barracks.
Betty Jeffrey’s observations
We wondered what had happened to the other nurses we had seen in one of the lifeboats drifting toward the shore.
A week later another Australian Nurse arrived at out billet. It was Sister Vivian Bullwinkle. We were overjoyed to see her, and had high hopes that the other nurses who were with her might follow. That was not to be. They didn’t
Sister Bullwinkle provided us with the answer.
When Sister Bullwinkle first arrived, she had an army water bottle slung over her shoulder and was clasping it to her side. The strap was covering a bullet tear in her uniform and we wondered why she was trying to hide it. She told us what had happened.
Vivian was with a group of civilian women and children, several servicemen and twenty-one Australian Army Nursing Sisters who had gathered together on a sandy beach near Muntok. They looked around, hoping to find someone to help them take care of several women who had been seriously injured. They came across a lone Japanese soldier and managed to explain their predicament to him.
Not long after, a Naval Officer arrived with a party of Japanese soldiers, and to their astonishment, the men were separated from them. The nurses were taken away behind a bluff, well out of sight. Shortly after, the Japanese returned wiping blood off their bayonets.
The nurses, including those who had been wounded were taken further along the beach and made to line up along the shore. The Naval Officer then ordered them to walk into the sea. As they did, the soldiers opened fire, machine- gunning them from behind. All were killed outright except Vivian. A bullet passed through her side and sent her sprawling headlong into the water. She floated for some time, feigning death until the Japanese, convinced all the nurses had been killed, left the scene of their murder.
When she was sure the coast was clear, Vivian struggled ashore into the cover of the jungle. She realised she was the only survivor left to tell of the Japanese’ heinous crime.
She came across a wounded Englishman and with the help of natives cared for him in the jungle until he died. The natives told her that there were women wearing Red Cross badges in Muntok. Vivian gave herself up and was taken to the quarters, where she rejoined the rest of the nurses.
From thereon to the duration, it was no bed of roses for the nurses. They were compelled to use all their womanly wiles to escape Japanese demands to perform as geishas for the entertainment of officers and sex crazed guards. They lived on the lowest of rations, and in a male free environment, performed all the basic mundane chores necessary to survive, Of the 65 nurses who reached Sumatra, 24 managed to return home.
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