Bangka Massacre

Seventy-two years ago today, the SS Viner Brooke and a convoy of ships were sunk by Mitsubishi Zeros in the Bangka Strait. The survivors, evacuated from Singapore, washed up on Bangka Island, east of Sumatra. Australian women, children, wounded soldiers, and army nurses found themselves without shelter, food, or protection.

With few choices, the civilian women and children set off to find the invading Japanese so that they could surrender. Left behind were the wounded, 100 British troops from another bombed ship, 22 Australian nurses, and an elderly lady.

On February 16, Japanese troops discovered these survivors on Radji Beach. The soldiers immediately rounded up the men and took them over a bluff. After hearing several bursts of machine gun fire, the women on the beach knew the men were gone. The Japanese detachment returned, cleaned their bloody bayonets, and reloaded their guns.

They then ordered the 22 Army nurses, two of them wounded, together with the elderly civilian, to march into the sea, line abreast, and face the sea. It was about noon; the sea was tranquil, a light breeze played, palms lined the tropical shore. The nurses wore their grey dresses and Red Cross armbands. The Japanese soldiers then machine-gunned the women and left their bodies to float as so much debris onto the shore.

One survived.

Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, struck by a bullet that pierced her thigh, floated on the sea in shock. She gathered her wits and pretended to be dead until the Japanese left. She hid with a wounded British private for 12 days before deciding once again to surrender. They were taken into captivity, but the private died soon after. Bullwinkel was reunited with survivors of the Vyner Brooke. She told them of the massacre, but none spoke of it again until after the war lest it put Bullwinkel, as witness to the massacre, in danger. Bullwinkel spent three and half years in captivity; she was one of just 24 of the 65 nurses who had been on the Vyner Brooke to survive the war.

In captivity, the nurses and civilian women recall that their Japanese captors tried to "coerce" them into becoming Comfort Women in brothels set up by their military. Refusing meant that they faced starvation and other deprivations. Few felt that there was a choice. One nurse, Elizabeth Simmons records in her book, While History Passed that “I think all the girls would agree that this club [brothel] experience was the most repulsive and unpleasant in our whole imprisonment. I know it stands out grimly in our memory.” 

Another nurse, Betty Jeffrey in White Coolies notes that “Somebody suggested that we should all swear never to mention it, or tell any tales about anyone if and when we were released.” And nobody ever broke that promise. Simmons' book was the basis of the movie Paradise Road.

Nurses Memorial on Bangka

On March 2, 1993, in the presence of seven of the surviving nurses, including Sister Vivian Bullwinkel, the Nurses Memorial was dedicated on Bangka Island.

It is situated near, Radji Beach, the spot where survivors of the sinking of SS Vyner Brooke came ashore and where 21 Australian Army nurses were massacred.

The memorial incorporates stone from the: 'Women's Camp' which the Australian Army nurses occupied for a time as Prisoners of War. A bronze plaque records the names of all 65 nurses who were aboard the SS Vyner Brooke. 

Sister Bulwinkel died July 17, 2000 at 84.

Bangka Island is reputedly the setting for Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

Wake Island Massacre Anniversary

In the late afternoon of October 7, 1943, 98 civilian American POWs were lined up and seated along the ditch facing the sea. They were blindfolded with their hands and feet bound. Three platoons of Japanese troops then mowed them down with machine gun and rifle fire.

The Americans, all civilian contractors for Morrison-Knudson captured after the historic defense of Wake Island in December 1941, were dumped into the ditch and covered with coral sand. The following day, a report from an enlisted man that he saw one of the prisoners escape during the confusion of the massacre prompted the disinterment of the bodies. The corpses were dug up and counted, then hastily reburied.

The sailor had been correct; one American was missing. That man, whose identity has not been discovered, was re-captured and beheaded personally by the island's commander, Admiral Sakaibara, three weeks later.

On a large coral rock near where the victims were buried is carved 98 US PW 5-10-43 [pictured above]. It is believed that the lone escapee of the massacre returned to the site to carve this lonely memorial before he was recaptured.

The 98 men were what was left of the 1,150 civilian contractors on Wake Island employed by the Morrison-Knudsen Company, to build an airfield, seaplane base, and submarine base and to dredge a channel into the lagoon to allow access for U.S. submarines. Combat, disease, and shipment to Japan and China for slave labor had reduced the group to those unlucky few.  They toiled, for the Japanese, in violation of the Geneva Convention at various military projects on all three islands of the atoll.

The Wake Island Massacre was not the worst nor the most infamous of Imperial Japan's military's tendency to favor the expediency of a mass killing over a humane plan for those suddenly put into their care. Nanking and Manila may be the most well-known for the number of non-combatants killed, but Palawan (which I will soon write about), Bangka Island, and Sandakan have well-documented histories.

On the beach at Bangka in 1942, Japanese soldiers machine gunned 22 shipwrecked Australian military nurses. There was only one survivor, Vivian Bullwinkle. The Sandakan Death Marches were a series of forced marches in Borneo from Sandakan to Ranau which resulted in the deaths of more than 3,600 Indonesian civilian slave laborers and 2,400 Allied prisoners of war. The 38 prisoners left alive at Ranau were shot by their guards, possibly 12 days after the War's end.

Good Sources:

A Magnificent Fight: Marines in the Battle for Wake Island by Robert J. Cressman

The Seige of Wake Island: Facing Fearful Odds by Gregory Urwin

Massacre on Wake Island By Major Mark E. Hubbs, U.S. Army Reserve (Retired)Naval History Magazine - February 2001 Vol. 15 Number 1