(19 15-2000)
Nurse who enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) during World War II,the sole survivor of the Banka Island Massacre, when almost ninety nurses and soldiers were shot and bayoneted by the Imperial Japanese Army following the fall of Singapore in 1942.
Vivian Bullwinkel enlisted with the AANS in 1941 and later that year she embarked for Singapore, eventually being assigned to the 13th Australian General Hospital in Johore Bahru, Malaya. Following the invasion by the Japanese in December 1941, the nurses were among those evacuated to Singapore, but this was to provide only temporary safety in the face of the Japanese Imperial Army’s relentless march south. By the third week of January 1942, alarmed at the progress of the enemy, Colonel A. Derham repeatedly requested that Major General H. Gordon Bennett evacuate the AANS. His requests were denied. Finally, a matter of days before the Japanese commenced an aerial assault on Singapore, orders were given to evacuate the nurses (Goodman 1988, 151). Bullwinkel and sixty-four of her colleagues boarded the Vyner Brooke, which was already seriously overloaded prior to their embarkation. When it left the port of Singapore, more than 300 people were on board, mostly civilian women and children. Two days after sailing, the small ship was spotted by Japanese aircraft, which fired on the vessel, eventually sinking it. The seamen and nurses loaded as many of the civilians as they could into the few seaworthy lifeboats. Those who could not be accommodated left the sinking vessel relying on life jackets, makeshift rafts, and their swimming skills to reach land.
Twelve of the nurses drowned. Thirty-one of the nurses who survived the sinking reached the shore and almost immediately became prisoners of war. Bullwinkel and twenty-one of her colleagues, plus scores of the women and children, found themselves on the shore of Banka Island at Radji Beach. British soldiers who had survived the sinking of their ship soon joined them. When it became clear that it was only a matter of time before those who remained on Radji Beach would also be captured, they decided to surrender voluntarily. A naval officer went to contact the Japanese base at Muntok, the civilians began to walk to the nearest village, and the soldiers and nurses waited along with the wounded for the arrival of the Japanese. When the Japanese soldiers arrived at Radji Beach, the British and Australian servicemen and women expected to become POWs. Instead, the Japanese marched half of the British and Australian servicemen further along the beach, out of sight of the remainder of the group, reappearing almost immediately to collect the rest of the men. According to Bullwinkel, the Japanese soldiers "came back and cleaned their rifles and bayonets in front of us" a short while later, leaving no doubt as to what had happened to the servicemen (Bassett 1992, 140). But the fate of the twenty-two members of the AANS was also sealed. The Japanese ordered them to form a line and march into the sea, whereupon the nurses were machinegunned. All but Bullwinkel died; she feigned death until the Japanese left the area and then struggled back to shore to hide. Eventually she met up with a British soldier who had also survived the massacre, although he was later to die of his wounds. They managed to escape detection for more than a week before finally being captured by the Japanese and made POWs. Bullwinkel was reunited with the thirty-one nurses who had survived the original sinking and been captured earlier by the Japanese, although eight died while incarcerated. At war’s end, Bullwinkel and her remaining colleagues returned to Australia. For her wartime bravery and subsequent peacetime work as a nursing professional, Bullwinkel was awarded a number of honors, including the Officer of the Order of Australia, Member of the British Empire, Associate of the Royal Red Cross, Efficiency Decoration, and the Florence Nightingale Medal.
