Exclusive
- Warning: graphic descriptions of war, rape and violence
JAPANESE SOLDIERS RAPED AND MURDERED OUR NURSES IN WW11 ON BANGKA ISLAND –
WHAT IS JAPAN’S PM SANAE TAKAICHI AND AUSTRALIA’S ANTHONY ALBANESE GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS WAR CRIME?
Dear Prime Ministers Sanae Takaichi and Anthony Albanese, hoping this finds you both well and fighting for world peace and justice regardless of the American way.
Stay with me, if you will, whilst I forage and meander amongst the dusty sepia fragments of our conjoined wartime history and discuss an unbearably grotesque atrocity that both Japan and Australia have shamelessly been in denial about for decades.
Lest You Both Forgot, Japanese Troops Raped and Murdered Australian Nurses on Radji Beach, Bangka Island
Lest you both forgot, in what was an indisputable war crime, on February 16, 1942, soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army raped and murdered 21 Australian nurses and a civilian woman, on Bangka Island’s Radji Beach, east of Sumatra, in World War 11.
We must also acknowledge the other survivors from the Japanese bombing of the SS Vyner Brooke. fleeing Singapore’s inevitable and inglorious fall, who were also executed on that day of infamy.
Not only do women bleed.
Men (British soldiers/patients) were also killed by bayonet and bullet, taken behind a Bluff, out of sight from the women. The sands of Radji Beach must have turned red with the spillage of blood that on that awful day of so many awful days.
Bullwinkel Sole Survivor of Radji Beach Rapes and Massacre
The sole and wounded survivor of these atrocities upon the nurses was Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. Shot in the back, the bullet slammed through her body, miraculously exiting without damaging her organs.
Bullwinkel is a name now rightly synonymous with courage, emblematic of the wartime dedication of nurses, so often relegated to the marginalia of military records.
How many of us are aware of the role, or even the very participation of nurses at Gallipoli, a bookend to the fall of Singapore; yet another dismal, blistering cruel military failure camouflaged in the enduring hagiography that shrouds several military blunders involving Australia and allies.
Britain’s Winston Churchill said the fall of Singapore was the largest capitulation in British history. Certainly, the orders to evacuate Singapore were too late. Whose fault was that?
Japan Apology for Bangka Island Rapes and Murders Overdue
The time is well overdue for a formal apology from the Japanese Government for the specific heinous rape and execution of the unarmed and uniformed nurses, all clearly badged with the instantly recognisable red cross brassard.
The seemingly singular cruelty of Japan’s militia is immediately encapsulated by the mere mention of Outram Road Gaol, Changi,the Burma-Thai Railway ( the Death Railway where about 20 POWs died daily ) the Sandakan Death Marches, Kakoda, the Hell Ships, Ambon, Hainan, Bangka and more, still haunt part of the Australian psyche; ghostly inherited memories trickling down from one generation to another; thousands upon thousands of names of the dead, whisperings in the winds and gumleaves.
It is so difficult to grasp the staggering statistics cited in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website that 60,000 or so Allied prisoners of war, including British, Australian, Dutch and some US troops, worked alongside more than 200,000 civilian labourers.
About 16,000 allied POWs died during the construction of the Death Railway and yet this horrible number was eclipsed by the 90,000 deaths of civilians who were forced into slave labour to build the railway.
Still Residue of Bitterness of Japan’s Lack of Accountability tablity Reality of Australia’s Political Cowardice
There is still a residue of bitterness in relation to those times and those places; the lack of Japan’s accountability for the atrocities.
Often Australian soldiers and others who surrendered would simply be slaughtered.
The Australian War Memorial cites that about 22,000 Australian service men and 40 nurses were captured by the Japanese but by the war’s end, one in three of these prisoners perished – about 8000 people.
“Most were captured early in 1942 when Japanese forces captured Malaya, Singapore, New Britain, and the Netherlands East Indies. Hundreds of Australian civilians were also interned…”
Allies Subs Torpedoed Our POWs On Unmarked Japanese Ships
Cruelly, more than a thousand died as a result of collateral damage. Submarines manned by the Allies unwittingly torpedoed unmarked Japanese ships carrying prisoners of war.
Successive Australian governments have been reluctant to even broach the subject of an apology from Japan. Political cowardice is endemic. Why open old wounds?
Oblique Japan Apologies. Oblique PM Responses
Various Autralian Prime Ministers have welcomed Japan’s oblique apologies similarly extended to other countries. And Australia has made oblique mouthings of acknowledgment and nothingness in return. Gutless. Unworthy of our dead. Unworthy of the Bangka nurses. Unworthy of Bullwinkel.
Japan PM Shinzo Abe Merely Expressed Condolences Mentioned Kokoda and Sandakan. Not Bangka
In 2014, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became its first leader to address Australia’s Parliament during which he expressed his “sincere condolences” for what had happened during the Second World War.
Abe merely mentioned Kokoda and Sandakan but there was no apology for anything, and of course, no reference to the Bangka Massacre.
Japan’s PM Sanae Takaichi On Both Knees in Mark of Respect At Tomb of The Unkown Soldier, Australian War Memorial
Last month Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi visited us for the Australia–Japan Annual Leaders’ Meeting. As usual, there was much talk of our strategic and enduring partnership as per the United States and the UK et al.
One of the thoughtful quotes attributed to PM Albanese in his official press release was:
“50 years ago, our nations laid the foundation for a partnership based on trust, shared values and mutual respect by signing the Basic Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation…”
The next day, Prime Minister Takaichi visited The Tomb of the UnknownSoldier at the Australian War Memorial for the traditional wreath-laying ceremony where she knelt on both knees, signifying great respect.
The gesture surprised some people. Takaichi, a hardline right-wing ultra conservative however, remains unbowed and off her knees when it comes to the subject of war crimes and ‘comfort women.’ She is firmly of the view that Japan’s war crimes have been exaggerated. She is a revisionist.
Her views should not be a deterrent to seeking an official apology from Japan for the rapes and murders of Australian nurses on Radji Beach and subsequently, those who were incarcerated in POW camps on Bangka Island.
Japan’s Personal Apology to 96 Year Old POW Nurse Lorna Whyte
Japan has made several generic apologies to the world for its war crimes and as far as I know, the only Australian nurse to receive anything slightly resembling an apology was when the extraordinary feisty Lieutenant Lorna Whyte (later Johnston) travelled to Japan at 96 years of age, as part of a POW project in 2011 to receive an apology from the government.
Whyte was certainly the first, and possibly the only Australian female POW and nurse to receive a “heartfelt” official apology from a senior official, Japan’s Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba.
Whyte kept an open heart for the Japanese people and viewed the cruelty of their troops as part of the army culture.
The year before, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation produced a telemovie based on the friendship between Whyte later transported by ship to Yokohama, Japan – and a Catholic nun, Sister Berenice Twohill, both POWs in Rabaul
Nun Forced to Watch as Digger’s Heart Cut Out Whilst Still Alive
Amongst the many horrors she endured (let us include diggers forsaken by their own government) Sister Berenice was forced to watch as an Australian major was tortured, his heart cut our whilst he was still alive.
After the converted hospital ship AHS Centaur, clearly marked with the Red Cross, was attacked and sunk by a Japanese submarine off the Queensland Coast, killing 268 of the 322 people on board, including patients, this poster (above) was one of many produced to encourage enlistment and avenge the nurses and the war crime of attacking an hospital ship.
The sinking of the Centaur of course escalated public anger not only against Japan but also against the dithering government.
WWII nurse Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel’s incredible tale of survival.
Australian Army Nurses Service Pledge
It is moving to contemplate the AANS Pledge of Service, especially compared with the horrors they endured.
AANS PLEDGE OF SERVICE
I pledge myself loyally
to service King and Country
and to maintain the honour and efficiency
of the Australian Army Nursing Service.
I will do all in my power
to alleviate the suffering of
the sick and wounded, sparing no
effort to bring them comfort of body
and peace of mind.
I will work in unity and
comradeship with my fellow nurses.
I will be ready to give assistance
to those in need of my help
and will abstain from any action
which may bring sorrow
and suffering to others.
At all times I will endeavour
to uphold the highest traditions of
Womanhood and of the Professions
of which I am Part.
Not only were they evacuated from Singapore too late, the Australian government and military seemed to have abandoned any attempt to find out what had happened to those on the Vyner Brooke.
It was left to ABC war correspondent Haydon Lennard who used his nouse and initiative, secured a plane, tracked down the nurses to Bangka POW camps – and rescued them!
Recollections of Conversations/Interviews with Bullwinkel
Decades later Bullwinkel told me the machine-gunning ( they also used rifles ) by the Japanese troops was relentless and she later saw floating corpses of her friends and colleagues seemingly almost cut in two, their entrails and semi-detached limbs floating alongside them; the wounded nurse was bumping into body parts of her friends and colleagues as the currents eased her – along with the copses – back to the shores of Radji Beach.
And yet my recollection of Bullwinkel’s words are in direct contrast to a witness statement she gave on oath in 1945 in Melbourne to a war crimes investigator. Bullwinkel cited a single machine gun.
What Bullwinkel Told Me In Direct Contrast to War Crimes Statement Made in Oz BEFORE Tokyo Crimes Tribunal
My reading of the Bullwinkel (later Statham) statement is that it appears to be a dress rehearsal for her impending appearance at the International Military Tribunal (Far East) Tokyo, the following year.
The interviewer seems to be leading the witness and Vivian’s tutored responses are surprisingly comparatively benign about mistreatment by the Japanese.
If I recall rightly, she talks of face slapping by the guards and deprivation.
This rare photo (above) of two of the POW nurses, possibly at Muntok Camp was published in an article the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation website and Bullwinkel is said to be one of the nurses, possibly the tall emaciated figure on the right?
To me, that Bullwinkel statement in 1945 seems contrived and her testimony in Tokyo in 1946 was certainly made under duress. If you think that’s too harsh a word, try ‘pressure.’ She was obeying orders.
Bullwinkel Abused Twice First By Captors, Then By Australian Government
Bullwinkel had been ordered by the Australian government/military not to disclose that she and the other women had been raped; an outrageous order for so many reasons.
She was told that to reveal the rapes by Japanese soldiers of ‘white women’ in service at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal would not only damage public morale back home but it would also bring personal shame to the legacy of the nurses as well as upon their families and be a stain on our history. Sound familiar?
There would be finger pointing at all nurses and all white women who were held prisoners of war by the Japanese. There’s more, but you get the drift.
There was also the stigma attached to those who ‘entertained’ Japanese troops and/or who were ‘ comfort women.’ Even within the camps at times. They were regarded by some as traitors. There wasn’t much discussion given to the notions of coercive control or power imbalance.
Bullwinkel complied and as well as obeying orders, consoled herself with keeping the sacred pact the women in the camp had made not to disclose any sexual abuse by the Japanese and she justified the non-disclosure more on that basis, I felt, more than obeying orders. Her first duty was to her sisters, including those who were killed and drowned.
The women too, had reasons for making their pact and vow of silence about the rapes, not wishing to cause distress to their families and other loved ones was foremost. That was their decision to make.
Let us not pretend that even in war and conflict, victims of rape are not stigmatised.
Bullwinkel Placed In Insidious Position By Government
Vivian Bullwinkel was placed in an insidious position by the government. As the sole survivor who could speak for the dead, she felt she would cope with the public and media fallout of telling the Tribunal that she was raped – without mentioning that others had been raped as well. But that was also unacceptable to the government.
Vivian Bullwinkel was thus abused twice. Once by her Japanese captors and again by the Australian government that gagged her from telling the truth in Tokyo.
The entire business caused her angst and grief. It was a horrible dilemma and a matter of unfinished business for her.
Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal Flawed From Inception, America’s General Douglas MacArthur Lays Down the Law
The tribunal lasted from April 29 1946 to November 12, 1948. It was a controversial instrument itself.
It was a war crimes tribunal that excluded leaders. The United States (read General Douglas MacArthur) divined that Emperor Hirohito and the royal household of the Chrysanthemum Throne would not be summoned or implicated in any way and not mentioned by any of the witnesses either.
Obviously this meant there was judicial, military and political collusion insofar as witnesses and their testimonies were concerned. So the entire process was flawed from the get go.
Key Witness in Bangka Island Massacre Case Suicides 48 hours before Due to Testify at Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
One of the alleged Bangka Island massacre leaders was a Major Masaru Orita, who was tracked down in Siberia and extradited to Tokyo in 1948. He apparently suicided whilst in prison, 48 hours before he was due to testify.
There is still conjecture about whether Orita, a key witness to the Radji Beach Massacre – and rapes – suicided or was murdered.
Bullwinkel Visited Each Family of 21 Massacred Nurses
There are so many extraordinary facets to Vivian Bullwinkel. She took it upon herself to visit all the families of the 21 nurses who were murdered on Radji Beach. Imagine. She was a keeper of the flame for her fallen sisters and she said their names, as we do today.
And we also show their faces, usually out of view in archival and online files, save for family mantelpieces and walls, perhaps now placed in ribboned boxes.
Theirs are the faces of all women raped and murdered in war, surely.
Their names are: Elaine Balfour-Ogilvy, Alma May Beard, Florence Rebecca Casson, Irene Melville Drummond, Minnie Ivy Hodgson, Kathleen Margaret Neuss, Bessie Wilmott, Dorothy Gwendoline Howard Elmes, Rosetta Joan Wight, Florence Aubin Salmon, Clarice Isobel Halligan, Ellen Louisa Keats, Eleanor McGlade, Peggy Everett Farmaner, Esther Sarah Jean Stewart, Nancy Harris, Ada Joyce Bridge, Lorna Florence Fairweather, Mona Margaret Anderson Tait, Mary Beth Cuthbertson and Janet Kerr.
The Sinking of SS Vyner Brooke and the Banka Island Massacre
Public Discussion of Radji Beach Rapes Fairly Recent
Public discussion of the rapes is relatively recent, partly as a result of an article I wrote that was first published in Independent Australia on February 19th 2017 in which I disclosed that Vivian Bullwinkel confided to me during an interview that she and other nurses were raped by the Japanese patrol troops before they were ordered into the sea and shot in the back.
Bullwinkel’s journey remains a sometimes speculative work in progress. She has been understandably defined as the sole survivor of the Radji Beach Massacre. And she was at peace with that because she had determined to forever honour the memory of her sisters and sing their praises.
Today there are statues, scholarships, memorials and visual and performing arts dedicated to Bullwinkel and the nurses.
She went onto establish a distinguished career steeped in advocacy work and health management. In 1949, Vivian and her bestie and POW campmate, Nurse Betty Jeffrey fundraised for and founded the Australia Nurses Memorial Centre in Melbourne, a “living memorial’ to the heroism and sacrifice of Australian nurses who gave their lives or spent years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps during the Second World War.”
Without a sense of irony, her government called upon her once again in 1975 during the still controversial ‘Operation Babylift’ – the evacuation of Vietnamese orphans to Melbourne on a Qantas 747, during the time of the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese.
Despite her harrowing war experiences and perhaps because of them, Vivian was an ebullient, happy and utterly uplifting, warm, funny, incisive, cheeky and energetic presence with quite extraordinary and compelling leadership qualities. She was impressive and gregarious,regardless of what may have been going on in her head, at times.
I first met her at the Naval and Military Club in Melbourne, not far from the famed Windsor Hotel ( where we also used to meet ). She was with her husband, Frank Statham, whose own life https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/statham-francis-west-frank-31825
journey and war experiences were intriguing. Like Vivian, his life was one of community and public service.
They had married in 1977. Frank’s first wife Hazel had died earlier from cancer the same year. Vivian and Frank had been friends for years.
When they walked into the club, they made such an interesting couple, both tall and upright in that military fashion fashion. Both elegantly dressed, both joyful and beaming.
He was tall and distinguished looking and personable. When he discreetly later excused himself to give us time alone for a chat, Vivian said he was a wonderful and undertstanding, supportive companion and she felt blessed and safe and secure.
And so, Sanae Takaichi and Anthone Albanese, what about cranking the diplomatic wheels into motion for an official and specific apology for the Radji Beach Massacre ?
If our two countries really have a special relationship that goes beyond
political mouthings, we can do this. And in such a way as to show mutual respect and support.It is a difficult but honourable aspiration, surely.
And we know that our relationship has historical faultlines but I am a great apostle of the wonderful Japanese tradition of Wabi-Sabi and there will be beauty in the repairs we make to that faultline.
Likewise, I know I am not alone in considering the 1945 dropping of the deadly and the merciless payload of the bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, blatant war crimes and crueloth murderous atrocities that warrant apologies from the United States and involved Allies.
For years Australia and the United States have been grooming Japan as an economic, strategic and military bulwark against China.
Wabi-Sabi is a noble concept. In any language. Any culture. And in this matter of seeking an official apology from Japan for what happened on Radji Beach, in1942, the Chrysathemum Throne could show how the long march for global peace and the slow dismantling of historical hatreds can at least be partly ameliorated and repaired without firing a single shot.
Today we republish the original article that first revealed Bullwinkel
and her sister nurses were raped before being callously dispensed with and executed:
Dearest Michael, please publish the article in full xxx
Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, the Bangka Island massacre and the guilt of the survivor
- On Sunday June 21, the ABC flagship multi-award winning program, Compass, devotes their program to a special documentary about the nurses an Bangka Island. It is not to be missed. The key is in the title.
Here are the details.
*
The Myth of the Nurses on the Beach
Georgina Banks and her daughters travel to Bangka Island, off Indonesia, to uncover the truth of what happened to their Great Aunt ‘Bud’, one of 21 Australian WW2 nurses massacred on a remote beach. Compass brings new voices and perspectives to this story – highlighting the unrelenting bravery of nurses , and the silencing of women’s wartime experiences throughout our history.
COMPASS, ABC TV
Sunday June 21 6.30pm and iview + youtube
- If this article has triggered any distress, please reach out and contact
Lifeline Call 13 11 14
Also by Tess:
F’King Oath! Swearing allegiance to accused rapist
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My grandparents fled Europe ahead of the Nazis and went to then Batavia and were there a year or so when the Japanese invaded and took them POW. My mother was a few months old and spent most part of the first 4 years of her life in a camp. A lot of atrocities were committed and a lot of people died. But I remember my grandmother said that the one thing the Japanese men didn’t do was rape the female prisoners because they found white women ‘disgusting.’ I am not doubting the story here it is just curious that culturally they had no interest in defiling the women captives because of cultural reason so it seems a bit weird they just dived right in and raped all these nurses if Westerners were so repellent to them. I’m also aware of the sexual slavery history of ‘comfort women.’ I’m not casting doubt it is just strange to me; my grandmother was a truth teller and wouldn’t be ‘inventive’, plus I know there are a lot of things she never talked about that happened like the tortures which were as bad if not worse. She said that’s when she stopped believing in God. Make of that what you will, that is what she testified to.
When it came to Vivian Statham (nee Bullwinkel) she deserved an apology from not just the Japanese Government but also the Australian Government, but at the time, rape was viewed vastly differently to how it is now. I remember reading an article where Vivian Statham said that she was not bitter and had visited Singapore many times since the end of the war, and she was grateful for things like having a full cake of soap.
What we are dealing with here is misogyny and not viewing women as equals.
I have read numerous accounts by former POWs (mostly males) who said that they had at least one Japanese guard who treated them humanely if not decently, a fact that should be acknowledged but not celebrated. We should also bear in mind that there were many factors that determined how you were treated. Captain Rowley Richards was a POW in Japan, and while there, found two Japanese Army doctors with whom he could work, and they became good friends after the war, and he visited Japan numerous times.
I agree that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrendous war crimes (a friend of my paternal grandfather’s, who was a POW in Changi, who had a guard who treated him and the others kindly, even said, “Beatings, yeah, they were bad. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were atrocities.”) and they demonstrate that two wrongs do not make a right. I also believe that Paul Tibbetts was sociopathic in his interviews on the topic. Captain Robert Lewis (co-pilot) appeared on This Is Your Life featuring Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, and he was drunk.
One thing that I say, and next Thursday is the 75th Anniversary of this, is that justice must always be meted out to the individual who is guilty, not the country. 75 years ago next Thursday, Lieutenant-General Takuma Nishimura was executed on Manus Island despite an insecure conviction (if Lieutenant Ben Hackney, the sole survivor of the Parit Sulong Massacre, for which he had been executed, had been present in the court, the case would have collapsed, as he could not recognise Nishimura from photos sent from Outram Road Prison, where he was serving time on another crime.
As much as an apology is called for, and as much as justice is required, I think that the best words came from Lesley Clive Hoffmann, who had been a POW in Changi, who was not bitter towards the Japanese, and when his son asked him why, he replied, “I saw those who abused me dealt with. Seven were executed; eight received lengthy prison terms; seven were acquitted. They were individuals, not a people.” Many may have escaped justice, and unfairly so, but despite Japan being a collective society, that is what we must remember.
In relation to the comment that Japan had been groomed by Australia and the USA as a counterweight to China, that requires context. After the Second World War, the USA and Australia differed in their approaches as to how to deal with Japan. If you saw the movie Blood Oath, Admiral Takahashi was acquitted not because he was innocent, but because he had a role to play in the SCAP Reforms of MacArthur.
Australia wanted to keep going until every last war criminal was caught and dealt with, whereas Douglas MacArthur, by 1948, was saying, “No, we have to bring this to an end.”
As Chairman Mao became ascendant in Mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek moved to Taiwan, the USA changed tack and wanted to rebuild Japan as an ally and as a capitalist-democratic counterweight to Communist China. Australia resumed trade with Japan in 1949, and the Korean War proved a boon to both Australia and Japan.
As conditions were changing in Japan, William McMahon-Ball (not to be confused with the PM) entered MacArthur’s office in a panicked state and asked what was occurring, and MacArthur stood up from his chair and stomped around his office, his corncob pipe ablaze as he blew hard on it and almost set off spot fires as McMahon-Ball stomped around after him and yelled at McMahon-Ball, “He’s a Communist! He’s a Communist! Do you want to give this land to the Commies?”
You can’t truly believe in human rights and the dignity of life if you’re not prepared to stand up for the rights and dignity of others.
Thank you, Tess, for a very important article.
Here’s hoping it reaches the attention of these two Prime Ministers.
I fear that if anything was to come of this it would have to come from Prime Minister Takaichi.
The Sumud flotilla survivors who were systematically assaulted and raped by Israeli soldiers, I heard in one report, wanted to speak to Anthony Albanese once they got back to Australia, but he rejected doing so.
To many Chinese, I imagine, this would bring up the rape of Nanjing and Japanese occupation of vast parts of China. It is still a source of amenity towards the Japanese that any apologies have been restricted to merely recognizing that Japan inflicted “damage and suffering” on the peoples of Asia. For many Chinese a genuine apology would acknowledge the heinous crimes, such as rape, slaughter, executions, public beheadings, use of anthrax on whole regions, and imprisonment for the purpose of conducting horrific experiments on humans.
The denial of these atrocities by numerous Japanese officials has only enflamed tensions in this regard.
It also brings to mind actions of Israel and the USA in the Middle East; the use of double and even triple-tap missile strikes to kill and maim first responders, deliberate targeting of hospitals, paramedics, schools and journalists.
We should never forget Zomi Frankcom, Hind Rajab and the paramedics murdered and buried with their ambulances at Al-Hashashin.
Our great-grandchildren will look back on the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, the systematic torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners, and the complicity of Western nations including Australia and ask why we did nothing to save the Gazans, and why we supported kiddy-killing in Iran.
Will there be someone to ask the Prime Minister of the day to apologize for Australia’s complicity?