Australia Bangka Island Massacre of Australian Army Nurses, February 1942,Indonesia

[Richard]

80 years ago, the Japanese Army committed a major war crime by murdering two groups of captured Australian prisoners of war during World War II...

Bangka Island: The WW2 massacre and a 'truth too awful to speak'...

In 1942, a group of Australian nurses were murdered by Japanese soldiers in what came to be known as the Bangka Island massacre. Now, a historian has collated evidence indicating they were sexually assaulted beforehand - and that Australian authorities allegedly hushed it up.

"It took a group of women to uncover this truth - and to finally speak it."

Military historian Lynette Silver is discussing what happened to 22 Australian nurses who were marched into the sea at Bangka Island, Indonesia, and shot with machine guns in February 1942. All except one were killed.

"That was a jolt to the senses enough. But to have been raped beforehand was just too awful a truth to speak," Ms Silver says, speaking of claims she details in a new book.

"Senior Australian army officers wanted to protect grieving families from the stigma of rape. It was seen as shameful. Rape was known as a fate worse than death, and was still a hangable offence [for perpetrators] in New South Wales until 1955."...

The survivors
The Japanese soldiers had separated men and women on Bangka Island before shooting both groups out of sight of the other.

Nurse Vivian Bullwinkel was shot in the massacre but survived by playing dead. She hid in the jungle and was taken as a prisoner of war, before eventually returning to Australia. Of the small group of men who were massacred, two are known to have survived: Ernest Lloyd and Eric Germann...

Ms Bullwinkel was "gagged" from speaking about the rapes at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal in the aftermath of World War Two, according to Ms Silver, who researched an account Ms Bullwinkel gave to a broadcaster before she died in 2000.

"She was following orders," Ms Silver says. "In addition to the taboo, there was probably some guilt from the Australian government - senior officers knew Japanese troops had raped and murdered British nurses when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in 1942, but were tardy in calls to evacuate the Australian nurses from Singapore."

According to the Australian government, the perpetrators of the massacre remain unknown and "escaped any punishment for their crime".

An Australian Defence Force spokesperson says a decision on whether a new investigation into these sexual assault claims will commence is up to the government, but that "new historic allegations can be reported by family" to a unit which investigates such crimes...

Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole female survivor of the Bangka Island massacre.
IMAGE SOURCE, LYNETTE SILVER

LINK:

Bangka Island: The WW2 massacre and a 'truth too awful to speak'

 

[Richard]

Group portrait of the nursing staff of 2/13th Australian General Hospital in Singapore, September 1941. Six of these nurses, including Vivian Bullwinkel, were in the group which was massacred. Bullwinkel is standing sixth from the left.

The Bangka Island massacre (also spelled Banka Island massacre) was committed during World War II in the Pacific...

LINK:

Bangka Island massacre - Wikipedia

 

[Richard]

Studio portrait of Vivian Bullwinkel, taken in May 1941
Sole Survivor of the massacre of Nurses on Bangka Island

Sister Vivian Bullwinkel's Story​

On 12 February 1942, with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese imminent, sixty-five Australian Army nurses, including Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, were evacuated from the besieged city on the small coastal steamer Vyner Brooke. In addition to the Australian nurses, the ship was crammed with over two hundred civilian evacuees and English military personnel. As the Vyner Brooke was passing between Sumatra and Borneo, Japanese aircraft bombed and strafed the overloaded ship and it sank quickly. The survivors in lifeboats were strafed by Japanese aircraft but some reached Bangka Island off the coast of Sumatra. Twelve Australian nurses were either killed in the attack on the ship or drowned in the sea. The remaining fifty-three nurses reached Bangka Island in lifeboats, on rafts, or by drifting with the tide.

Wearing their Red Cross armbands, and having protected status as non-combatants by convention of civilised nations, the nurses expected to be treated in a civilised manner by the Japanese when they reached shore. Their expectations were short lived. The lucky survivors were rounded up at gunpoint by the Japanese and herded into a building that was filthy and overcrowded. All of the survivors were tired, thirsty, and hungry. Some were suffering from exposure to the sun after many hours immersed in the sea, and some had been wounded in the attacks on the ship and the lifeboats. The Japanese were unsympathetic to their plight and only offered the survivors a bucket of water and a bucket of rice.

The unlucky survivors, including twenty-two Australian nurses, landed in lifeboats on the northern coast of Bangka Island and lit a bonfire to guide other survivors to them. Sister Vivian Bullwinkel was in this group of nurses. When the number of survivors at the bonfire reached about one hundred, it was decided that they should surrender to the Japanese. A party of male survivors went off to find Japanese. They were accompanied by civilian women and their children. The twenty-two Australian nurses stayed to look after the injured, and they made and erected a red cross to indicate to the Japanese that they were non-combatants.

A patrol of about fifteen Japanese soldiers arrived from the coastal township of Muntok. While some guarded the Australian nurses, the rest herded the male survivors, about fifty in number, down the beach and around a headland. The nurses heard gunfire from this direction, and shortly afterwards, the Japanese soldiers returned alone. Some were wiping blood from their bayonets.

The twenty-two Australian nurses were then ordered by the Japanese to form a line and walk into the sea. The women knew what was going to happen to them, but none panicked or pleaded for mercy. When the water had reached the nurses' waists, the Japanese opened fire on them. Sister Bullwinkel was hit in the back by a bullet and knocked off her feet. Upon discovering that she was only wounded, she pretended to be dead. After some time had passed, she risked a glance at the beach and saw that the Japanese soldiers had gone. She looked around for the other twenty-one nurses and saw none. She was the only nurse who had survived the massacre.

When she reached the beach, she was joined by an English soldier who had survived the massacre behind the headland. Private Kingsley had been bayoneted by the Japanese and left for dead. They were given food by the local village women, but after two weeks, they realised that their position was hopeless, and they decided to walk to Muntok and give themselves up. Shortly afterwards, Private Kingsley died from the bayonet wound.

Realising that the lives of all survivors of the Vyner Brooke would be at risk if the Japanese discovered what she had seen, Sister Bullwinkel concealed her wound from the Japanese and treated it herself. She survived harsh imprisonment to give evidence of the massacre at a war crimes trial in Tokyo in 1947.

LINKS:

Vivian Bullwinkel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Part Of World War II's Bangka Island Massacre That Remained Hidden For Decades - Grunge

For decades, a key part of the story of a massacre that took place during Word War II on the island of Bangka was kept hidden from the public. What happened?

www.grunge.com

THE BANKA ISLAND MASSACRE (1942)