Women’s History Month: Vivian Bullwinkel

I suspect no one reading this has heard of Bullwinkel, mostly because Americans only learn about Americans–and also because a great deal of history is sanitized for general consumption. There’s a quote attributed to Stalin that’s relevant, I think–one death is a tragedy, 10,000 is a statistic. Bullwinkel doesn’t die in the story–but hers is lost now as one story of thousands.

Bullwinkel was Australian and when she grew up, she because a nurse, working happily in Melbourne. And then came World War Two, sending Australian men abroad to fight in places like Tobruk and Crete. At the time, Australia viewed its politics as the same as Britain’s, taking their lead from London. Women answered the call to arms–just as men did.

Initially Bullwinkel tried to volunteer as a nurse for the Air Force but was rejected, and as is stereotypical, she then volunteered for Army duty and was quickly accepted into the service and immediately shipped off to Singapore and Malaysia. And then Japan attacked. Americans think of this only in terms of Pearl Harbor, but that was only one part of the initial Japanese onslaught as the Japanese proceeded to invade the Philippines, multiple Pacific islands, and the Dutch and British possessions of the southwest Pacific–including the Malay peninsula. This caught the British by surprise (and they never thought to fortify Singapore from landward–only against naval attack) and within two months, they were evacuating their most important Pacific base, an unexpected panicked retreat.

On February 12, 1942, Bullwinkel boarded the SS Vyner Brooke along with 65 other nurses. En route, with no air cover, the ship was sunk by Japanese aircraft. 22 survived to make it to the nearest beach where they were joined over the next 24 hours by 100 others from other evacuating ships sunk–civilians and soldiers. The senior leaders present decided the group should surrender to the Japanese for the sake of the women.

When the Japanese returned from the nearest village on February 16, 1942, they began what became known as the Banka Island Massacre, immediately executing all of the men and ordering the 22 nurses to wade into the shallows where they were immediately machine-gunned, to either die from the bullets or drowning after suffering severe wounds.

NOTE: This is where declassifying documents now decades later becomes important–the nurses were not just shot, they were sexually assaulted first–including Bullwinkel. Bullwinkel never said anything about this when she gave witness–she had been ‘gagged’ by the Australian government and prevented from testifying in Tokyo, eager to have the Tokyo War Tribunal over quickly…and also to hide the fact that the government had been aware of atrocities going on such as the one at Banka Island.

Bullwinkel faked death until the Japanese left, taking care of a British soldier who later died of his wounds. Bullwinkel’s wound grew worse so she made her way to town and surrendered. There was no execution here and so she became a prisoner of war.

In the camp, she was reunited with other survivors of the Vyner Brooke’s sinking. She told them the story and then they all remained silent–aware that if word reached the Japanese that there were witnesses to a massacre, that the Japanese would kill every prisoner there to make sure word never got out. It didn’t. The four nurses that were captured elsewhere spent the next forty months as POWs.

For context–this is not like being a prisoner of the Germans and Hogan’s Heroes–against the Western Allies, the Germans generally treated prisoners humanely and properly. The Japanese culturally had no respect for anyone who surrendered. They considered prisoners lower than human–and treated them as such. You can see this in books such as “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “King Rat”. As far as hell on Earth, Japanese prison camps are as close as you’re likely to get.

After the war, Bullwinkel was eventually permitted to testify–though to little effect, sadly. Professionally, she became Director of Nursing for an internationally-renowned infectious disease institute and eventually as president of the Australian College of Nursing. She then spent the remainder of her career and life working to make sure massacre victims were not forgotten and that Australia’s war dead were always remembered.

*** So, I knew some of the above and it makes a good story, but it isn’t everything with her. While serving at the Fairfield Infectious Disease Hospital, she took part in ‘Operation Babylift’, the evacuation of orphans from Vietnam to the US and Australia (she was part of the Australian side of things). Her efforts helped make sure those children grew up safe and healthy–and almost all of them did.

Not only did she survive to tell her story of horror, but she went on to help people the rest of her life–Australians and kids from other countries. It’s a powerful story–but because she was Australian, we don’t hear about her when we mention nurses like Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton.

–If you go looking for information on her, it may be under the name Vivian Statham, her married name–though she didn’t get married until she was in her 60s.

For more info regarding women in the Australian war effort: