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.
Prime Minister Sanae Taikichi goes down on both knees as a mark of utmost respect as she lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, at Canberra’s Australian War Memorial.
Photo by: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Australian War Memorial …
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 (above), 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.
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 of two of the POW nurses, possibly at Muntok Camp was published in an article on 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 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:
Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, the Bangka Island massacre and the guilt of the survivor
NURSE VIVIAN BULLWINKEL’S survivor guilt gnawed at her brain and heart even more than the Japanese bullet that shot right through her body.
How does one dress such an invisible wound? Where is the bandage that can bind a broken heart?
Where is the key that will lock away memories and tame the unwelcome and haunting flashbacks of the horrors she witnessed and experienced?
How can one unsee such inhumanity. How can the brain unthink it?
I’ve seen that look in Vivian Bullwinkel’s eyes mirrored in the eyes of other survivors of man-made and natural catastrophes – Holocaust survivors, survivors of famine, car crashes, sexual abuse, bushfires, bombings, veterans, whistleblowers, bank victims, refugees and more.
SURVIVOR POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS NOT FULLY UNDERSTOOD
The post-traumatic stress of the survivor is still not fully understood. It remains difficult to treat.
Different things may work for different people. Or not work at all.
Whilst for some speaking about the actual trauma may be beneficial and therapeutic, for others, recalling and retelling the “incident”, whether in public or private, even to oneself, causes such cruel vivid reliving of the horror that further and serious mental injury is sustained.
This week’s commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the Malayan Campaign and the Fall of Singapore, and today’s 74th anniversary of the first Japanese bombings of Darwin have brought back memories of meeting this sole survivor of the cowardly and notorious massacre by Japanese soldiers of a group of 21 nurses from the Australian Army Nursing Service, and a civilian woman, in the waters just off Radji Beach on Bangka Island, near Indonesia’s Sumatra.
The Japanese occupied the island and operated several prisoner of war camps, including at Muntok.
Despite being in their nurses’ uniforms, all with the Red Cross emblem on their sleeves, no mercy was shown to the women.
BULLWINKEL COULD TASTE THE BLOOD OF HER SISTER NURSES
They were directed to walk forward into the sea only to be mercilessly gunned down from behind by their captors, who paddled into the Bangka Strait to bayonet to death any women still alive.
Bullwinkel told me the surrounding sea was inked with blood leaking from her own body and that of her companions. She felt she could taste the blood in the water; was swallowing it.
Astonished to find she was still alive despite being shot, Bullwinkel feigned death, trying to float, trying to stay still, trying not to drown. She tried desperately not to cough or vomit. She so wanted to do both. She wanted to live, not die.
As it was, she said that part of her did die that day, February 16, 1942.
The nurses had already endured tragedy, as had all the other 181 passengers and 47 crew onboard the Scottish built SS Vyner Brooke (named for the third and last White Rajah of Sarawak) who were evacuated from Singapore on February 12.
The next day, not long after it had crossed into the Bangka Strait and on a flat sea, the steamer was bombed by Japanese aircraft, taking just under half an hour to sink.
After long hours in the water, some clinging to wreckage, some clinging to life alone, about 150 passengers finally made it to the shores of Bangka Island, Bullwinkel and her sister nurses among them.
Later, whilst at the Muntok prison camp, Bullwinkel and the other nurses kept quiet about her sole survival of that particular massacre (there were several) otherwise it would have meant certain death for her.
But all agreed that those who survived this hell to make it back home, would cherish and keep alive the memories of those who had been murdered.
Bullwinkel herself felt an onerous responsibility on several levels as a sole survivor. Firstly, to give their families and friends every snippet of information she could to honour her dead sisters.
She was unstinting in this.
Secondly, to give an official account to the authorities – and to the world, so that these war crimes would not go unnoticed even if not punished.
VIVIAN BULLWINKEL TORTURED BY TWO AWFUL SECRETS
She went on to testify to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, convened in Tokyo in 1946. The tribunal was a less than honest affair and was ‘adjourned’ in 1948.
The Americans did not want to overly antagonise Japan and jeopardise political, strategic and economic opportunities. The Wikipedia account gives a more accurate picture than some official histories.
The bullying and belligerent influence of the infamous General Douglas MacArthur, who would have been a dead cert for a job in President Trump’s administration had be lived in less interesting times, saw that at least he – if not the United States – got its way.
Each time Bullwinkel exhumed her memories about the massacre, she willingly tore out another piece of her heart – exacerbating her own recovery. She never begrudged a second of it. She felt it was her vocation. That she was allowed to live so that she could be a messenger.
She told the truth, but not the whole truth about events leading up to the massacre. She didn’t lie.
I met Vivian Bullwinkel in Melbourne on several occasions, at least twice at the now defunct Naval and Military Club in Little Collins St, that once entertained Earl Mountbatten and whose presidents boasted General John Monash and Field Marshall Thomas Blamey.
We mused about the different course her life may have taken, if she didn’t have flat feet and hadn’t been rejected by the Royal Australian Air Force.
I can’t recall if it was there or at the nearby Windsor Hotel when she told me in confidence about two things she was keeping secret for the time being – but said there would be a time when she would speak publicly about both.
She was tortured by these secrets and her sense of justice was offended by keeping them locked in.
BEFORE THE MASSACRE ON BANGKA ISLAND, JAPANESE RAPED NURSES
The first matter was that she confirmed the ill-kept secret that most “of us” – meaning she and the women who had been gunned down – had been “violated” by the Japanese soldiers beforehand.
The second matter related to this violation and it more than irked her. It caused her great mental and emotional anguish and distress.
BULLWINKEL ORDERED BY GOVERNMENT NOT TO SAY ANYTHING ABOUT RAPES
She wanted to put this in her statement before the war crimes tribunal but was ordered not to by the Australian Government.
This is yet another outrageous example of the merging of political and military expediency concerning rape as a weapon of war and rape as the recreational right of militia, sanctioned by nation states and warmongers.
Japan’s longstanding denials and relunctance to concede the wholesale rape of prisoners of war and even the existence of so-called “comfort women” has, in fact, been further nurtured through the decades by the reluctance of countries, including Australia, to back up calls for justice and to hold Japan’s Government to account.
Remember the anger, propaganda and denials when the Reverend Bill Crews featured the memorial dedicated to comfort women, at his Ashfield Uniting Church?
Where were our dissenting politicians of all hues when Japan’s Prime Minsiter Shinzo Abe was here the other day? Where is our political courage and sense of justice?
WHY THE DISCOMFORT ABOUT OUR OWN ABUSED COMFORT WOMEN?
Here we surely must salute the courage of Australian Jan Ruff-O’Herne, imprisoned as a “comfort woman” by the Japanese.
At 94 years of age, she is still fighting for justice and acknowledgement not only for the South Korean women, but also women of other nationalities who were kept as sex slaves.
It is often through the persistence of family members that war atrocities are acknowledged, let alone owned by perpetrators.
Consider Fairfax correspondent Jewel Topsfield’s moving article about the families honouring nurse Kath Neuss and the other nurses of the 8th Division Australian Imperial Force, gunned down in the massacre.
In what was a voyage of discovery in more ways than one for Kath’s nephew, Michael Noyce, Topsfield writes:
When Sister Bullwinkel returned to Australia she contacted all the families of the nurses who died. She conveyed some of their remarkable final words before they were slaughtered. Mr Noyce will read these on Radji beach on Thursday.
“Girls, take it, don’t squeal,” said Sister Esther Sarah Jean Stewart.
Those may well have been the last words uttered by any of her sisters that Vivian Bullwinkel heard that day and that, for her, reverberated through the decades.
TIME TO SCREAM FOR JUSTICE AND THE TRUTH
Bullwinkel went on to have a magnificent nursing career back home in Australia, collecting a swag of honours that I know she graciously and always accepted on behalf of her dead comrades.
Her entry in the Australian War Memorial website is inadequate and the lack of information and detail needs to be addressed.
Ironically, in view of the order “not to squeal” about the rapes at the war crimes tribunal, she was appointed the first female trustee on the Australian War Memorial Council.
It’s time to revisit the Bangka Island Massacre. Time for a real investigation.
Time to squeal and scream for justice as well as the truth.
It is often through the persistence of family members that war atrocities are acknowledged, let alone owned by perpetrators.
Consider Fairfax correspondent Jewel Topsfield’s moving article about the families honouring nurse Kath Neuss and the other nurses of the 8th Division Australian Imperial Force, gunned down in the massacre.
In what was a voyage of discovery in more ways than one for Kath’s nephew, Michael Noyce, Topsfield writes:
When Sister Bullwinkel returned to Australia she contacted all the families of the nurses who died. She conveyed some of their remarkable final words before they were slaughtered. Mr Noyce will read these on Radji beach on Thursday.
“Girls, take it, don’t squeal,” said Sister Esther Sarah Jean Stewart.
Those may well have been the last words uttered by any of her sisters that Vivian Bullwinkel heard that day and that, for her, reverberated through the decades.
TIME TO SCREAM FOR JUSTICE AND THE TRUTH
Bullwinkel went on to have a magnificent nursing career back home in Australia, collecting a swag of honours that I know she graciously and always accepted on behalf of her dead comrades.
Her entry in the Australian War Memorial website is inadequate and the lack of information and detail needs to be addressed.
Ironically, in view of the order “not to squeal” about the rapes at the war crimes tribunal, she was appointed the first female trustee on the Australian War Memorial Council.
It’s time to revisit the Bangka Island Massacre. Time for a real investigation.
Time to squeal and scream for justice as well as the truth.
*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
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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?”
My sincere apologies to Tess and our readers: this article was inadvertently published during the editing process, and I was unaware this had happened.
The editing has been completed, but my embarrassment might linger for a while longer.
This story needs to be told widely so that Australians understand that in all trade matters, CSG particularly at the moment, the Japanese consider Australians are inferior European interlopers in their Asian world. Such is a consequence of the English instilled ”cultural cringe” that too many Australians believe, until they read the cricket scores, or the swimming results. However, the time for an Australian Republic having an Australian borne Head of State is nigh.
Then WWII was fought by men and the history was written by men when social opinions were strongly paternalistic ….. but that is no excuse.
Michael, you are forgiven.
LEST.WE.FORGET
Dear Jack, thank you so very much for your comment and important contribution to this discussion and for recounting your Grandmother’s words. There is no doubt that not all Japanese troops in the Second World War behaved so cruelly. You clearly had such a wonderful relationship with your grandmother, that she could speak so freely with you and let you know she was not harmed in this way.
Dear Cool Pete, yes, you make some salient and important points.
Thank you.
As a general observation, successive Japanese governments have not demonstrated an appropriate level of acknowledgement of the role of the IJA and government bureaucrats in war crimes and other atrocities, whether committed in China, Korea, Formosa (Taiwan) and down into south-east Asia in their expansionist endeavours during WWII. The annual pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo continues to draw heavy criticism from near neighbours who suffered deeply under Japanese colonisation, and who note the lack of apology from Japan.
Similar observations could be made of all other countries where Japan conducted warfare on scale during the 1940s. The rationale that their outlook was influenced by traditional bushido, that to be taken prisoner was anathema and a mortal shame, that to die in fighting was an honour, that their emperor was akin to a god and so on clearly enabled their behaviour and it might well be argued that they had no comprehension of the ethical and legal aspects of conducting warfare, let alone any real working experience of dealing with westerners… people they viewed as barbarians. None of this is to suggest that they were correct, to the contrary, the culture clashes and misunderstandings led directly to crimes of massive scale.
My father and his cousin were POWs, captured in the invasion of the Malay Peninsula. One spent the rest of the war in Changi, working in the kitchen, the other was sent to Burma to build a railroad. Their fates thus decided, and their futures determined. One prospered, post WWII, the other spent years in internal hell, mentally and emotionally destroyed.
Personally, I do find it surprising that we have such rapprochement with a country that was once determined to destroy us, but I guess that’s pragmatism in the context of ‘letting bygones be bygones and getting on with business.’
As CoolPete said, it was a different time when the nurses were raped, it was a far more paternalistic time and rape was approached differently then than now. That does not excuse the government of the day’s behavour but gives context and explains what is atrocious behavour by today’s standards.
So, when a government behaves in that fashion today there is not a leg for that government to stand on.
Labor, the Australian government, is beneath contempt.
Juliet Lamont in an interview with OnePath Network has laid out for all to see how Labor, in particular Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, has treated the Global flotilla rape victims on their arrival in Canberra.
Albanese refused to see them when they first arrived in Canberra.
They were initially treated like criminals on arrival, they had so much security around them she said.
Escorted into estimates chamber by David Shoebridge’s chief of staff, within 10 minutes of them sitting up the front, the session was stopped and they were told to leave because they supposedly didn’t have the right passes. They then asked to go the press gallery and they had their phones taken away, which apparently is not normal.
Contrast that with the highly performative act Wong used in bullying and gaslighting David Shoebridge to avoid accountability in estimates questioning.
They were all given a letter written by Penny Wong at 10.39 (am.?), described as a duplicitous (I think that was the word Juliet used) letter not saying let’s meet, but basically saying that it sounds like we had a bit of a bad time and in the future lets work out what we can do. After 3 of the female Global flotilla members gave a press conference, Wong rang and asked if they would meet but it would have to be after 11pm at night. Yeah, who is going to go and meet at 11pm; but it gives Wong an out.
Juliet raised earlier in the interview, why did Penny Wong want to finally meet with her and talk to her about what happened to her at the hands of the Isrealis, rather than the Palestinian people; how racist has Australian society become that white people’s bodies are given more value and more presence.
Juliet said that the Turkish government was amazing, and the Turkish stewards on the flight were all volunteers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm4wOnZujXM
She also said the victim blaming feels like another crime.
How many times must we witness Labor value Israeli and white lives over Arab lives?
Dearest Michael Taylor, no apology is needed cobber. I’m embarrassed that you’re embarrassed ! You’ve got it sorted.
We all know that you and Carol pour your hearts into this wonderful site and that you have a loyal AIMN team. Congratulations to you all for this brave and courageous haven for independent journalists.
Tess, I want to thank you for this heartbreaking article.
When I first read “On Radji Beach” I was profoundly moved by the contribution our nurses made in WW2. The massacre of these women (and their rape, which has only been acknowledged in the past decade or so) is only part of the story.
Vivian Bullwinkel was indeed the only survivor of this gross atrocity. But she and her colleagues continued to provide help and sustenance (and hope!) to fellow prisoners of war, even as their friends and colleagues died around them.
Almost unbelievable sacrifice and humility.
Dear Thommo, thanks so much for your kind words, and for your comment – and your timely reminders of more contemporary horrors that I have to say haunted me whilst I was writing this article.
The fine young men lying under the runway of the Changi Airport would be smiling knowing that this story of Japanese horrors was finally exposed to the light.
Japan starved and starvation marched Australian soldiers at different times throughout the war. The Burma Railway was a horror for Australians and an estimated 90,000 Asian coolies, who were reported by Aussies as being treated worse than themselves (if that were possible).
There are too many similarities between present day TACO Trumpery policies in the USA (Undemocratic Sewer of Apartheid) and Imperial Japan of the 1930s.
Thank you Tess, a very important article.
Lest.We.Forget.
Following the liberation of the Japanese Prisoner of War camps in SE Asia legendary AIF medical Dr “Weary” Dunlop was given the opportunity to identify Japanese Imperial Force POW staff who committed atrocities on Allied POWs. With attendant US and UK War Crimes Tribunal staff he walked along a line of accused Japanese, (whom he personally knew to be perpetrators), stopped and stared each one in the face then walked on to the end of the line without officially identifying any of the accused. He made a comment to the effect that he didn’t see any person of human dignity amongst them and walked away. Such was the greatness of “Weary” Dunlop. His decision was the greatest indignity, humiliation and “loss of face” that the Japanese military would endure and apparently lead some to later commit suicide because they would no longer be accepted within their military and social culture.
Denying Vivian Bullwinkle the opportunity to “out” her Japanese military tormentors was a gross mis-understanding of human nature.
The current Prime Minister of Japan was not responsible for the atrocities committed 7 decades ago. She has already acknowledged the tragedy of war in our National War Memorial. That is enough.
Dear Canguro, so interesting to learn about your own family’s experience – and thanks for widening the discussion too.
Dear Keitha, your uncle too ! I have long been aware that the almost palpable ( at times ) hatred of wartime Japanese lingers on the Australian psyche and amongst some Veteran communities. I have Jewish friends who still avoid buying anything made in Germany. It is important, I feel, that we not condemn the whole of the Japanese people or the children and grand children of the JIA, but rather seek apologetic redress from Governments as representatives of individual perpetrators who committed atrocities, whether at the behest of leaders or their own sadomasochistic pathologies. Ergo, we are justified in blaming Netanyahu and his Far Reich colleagues rather than the entire of Israel.
Remember that we know the majority of Australians did not support the invasion of Iraq, despite Howard dragging us into the Coalition of the Willing, based on lies.
Australian War Memorial and ANZAC portal suggest around 23,500 Australians were taken as prisoners of war by Japanese forces in SE Asia. Ramify those numbers through the community at large and you get a sense of the significance of the consequences.
Tess is correct that it’s important not to condemn the descendants of the perpetrators, just as it is to endeavour to understand the whys and wherefores behind the appalling behaviour of the IJA…. one source that delineates the psychology behind the brutality is the book Hidden Horrors – Japanese War Crimes in World War II, by Yuki Tanaka, in which he goes to lengths to explain the transition from a semi-feudal society to a somewhat modern society through the 19th C, and the lingering issues related to traditional bushido, the corruption thereof of that tradition, the overwhelming number of agrarian peasants recruited to armed service, their indoctrination via brutality from their superiors, and their consequent projection of that systemic brutality onto both civilians and armed forces encountered in Japan’s expansionist enterprise throughout Asia. A sobering read, tbh.
Dear Leona, thank you ! You are right, not only did the nurses continue their service in the POW camps, but like many other veterans, continued a life of service when they came home.
Thank you NEC, for your feedback and contribution to the discussion. I too was thinking of the contemporary horrors, the never ending wars and never ending violence. It’s overwhelming at times.
REMINDER OF THIS EVENING’S COMPASS PROGRAM. 6.30PM
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
To understand the nature of some of the Imperial Japanese Army officers and staff who committted horrific war crimes on POWs and civilians (particularly during the “Rape of Nanking”), one needs to research the beliefs of the Bushidō, an ancient Samurai class of warriors. Bushido values emphasised loyalty to the feudal lord, duty, self-control, and acceptance of death and became formalized as a moral philosophy amongst the warrior class who were held as elite in Japanese community.
During the Japanese Imperial Expansion of the 1930s and 1940s, elements of Bushidō philosophy were adapted by Japanese militarists to promote extreme loyalty to the Emperor Hirohito, self-sacrifice, refusal to surrender and “kamikaze” suicide missions. However the frequency and nature of the horrific war crimes committed on captives indicate that historic Samurai values of compassion, mercy, restraint and moral justice were ignored in the quest for Imperial domination and victory.
This is not to discount the horrific suffering of Australian POWs. The perpetrators have long since been dealt with or have now passed. Never-the-less surviving relatives of the Australian POWs who suffered war crimes are themselves carrying elements of those traumas as these things are hard to forget, let alone forgive.