Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

'Marched into the water at Bangka to be machine-gunned in the back': there are many details in the Sydney Morning Herald original report on the Bangka massacre, but it is perhaps this line, unvarnished, unadorned, that jars the most. The brutal murder of 22 Australian nurses and a civilian woman on Radji Beach 80 years ago still shocks us.

They were fleeing the Fall of Singapore with British servicemen only for their ship to be sunk by Japanese bombers. Washed up on the Indonesian island of Bangka, they were at the mercy of a ruthless enemy. Japanese soldiers took away the men and killed them, and then they murdered the women. These were not troops who had taken up arms against them but members of the most selfless, humane profession that we can imagine. As they waded into the surf and the fate that they knew awaited them, matron Irene Melville Drummond called out, 'Cheer up, girls. I'm proud of you, and I love you all.' Their courage is beyond imagining. They stood tall until the moment in which they fell, and yet one survived.

Shot but alive, Vivian Bullwinkel played dead among those from whom life had just been so savagely torn. She eventually surrendered to a Japanese patrol because even after all that had happened Ms Bullwinkel knew that was her one chance of survival. She spent over three years in a prison camp, but survive she did. Vivian Bullwinkel then took the truth to the world. She took it to the families. She took it to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. As she explained:

I have tried so hard all this time to drive these scenes from my mind.

And yet she was resolute:

This story is one that must be told everywhere …

She was the only one who could, even when it must have been just so difficult. When Holocaust survivor Primo Levi performed his final weighing up of the burden of the witness, he turned to 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner':

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns;

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

Historians would later say that Ms Bullwinkel wasn't able to tell her full story—that the nurses were raped before they were killed. Ms Bullwinkel was directed by the military to not reveal that detail in order to protect the families of those victims. But Vivian Bullwinkel kept bearing witness, and she kept honouring the profession that they had all served together. Indeed, as Vivian Statham, she became the matron of Melbourne's Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital and helped turn it into a teaching hospital.

Today we think of the brave nurses working with this dreadful infectious disease that the world is dealing with at the moment and their bravery on all of our behalf.

Through her survival, so many more lives would be saved through her ongoing contribution as a nurse. Throughout it all, she made sure her friends who didn't come home would never be forgotten, a great Australian who we once again honour here today. Lest we forget.

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