Premier’s Westfield History Scholarship

Australian Army Nurses in the Pacific Region during World War IIIan McGregor Narrabri High School

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Introduction:Australian Army Nurses played a part of this country’s involvement in the war against the Japanese in World War II. Army units assigned to parts of South East Asia had medical units attached to them as Australian General Hospitals (AGH) and Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS). This report covers my research on the following three medical units: 2/10th Australian General Hospital, 2/13th Australian General Hospital, 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station and the six nurses of the 2/10th Field Ambulance based in Rabaul on the island of New Britain. Other nursing units were attached to Airforce and Naval bases in South East Asia and northern Australia. Some of these were onboard hospital ships such as the Wanganella, Centaur and the Manunda. The nursing units also played an important role in Japan as part of the Occupation Forces providing much needed medical attention to civilians and military personnel alike.

Focus of the StudyThese nursing units were part of the 8th Division of the Australian Imperial Force which was sent to Malaya. The 2/10th AGH and the 2/4th CCS left Sydney on the 6th February 1941 aboard the Queen Mary and arrived in Singapore on the 18th February. The 2/4th CCS were stationed at Port Dickson on the coast near Kuala Lumpur and set up a 50 bed hospital. The 2/10th were transferred to the general hospital in Malacca (Malaya). The hospital had full facilities for medical and surgical treatment with wards well set up to cater for two hundred beds and in an emergency this could be expanded to sixteen hundred.

The hospital provided medical and surgical services for all Australians in Malaya. The patients mainly suffered from skin complaints, malaria, common colds and accidents. There was a shortage of medical equipment and supplies as the unit did not bring their own. Some of the doctors and nurses had their own equipment which was used until supplies arrived later. The civilian hospital in Malacca was able to assist with the shortage of equipment. The port at Malacca was not particularly suitable as it could not cater for large vessels because of the shallow water. This required the patients to be moved a considerable distance to Johore Bahru by road or rail transport or to Singapore to be evacuated to Australia.

In July 1941 the AIF in Malaya was given the role of defending the area comprising Malacca and Johore. The village of Mersing on the north east coast of Johore was expected to be a point of Japanese entry into the Australian defence area. With the demand for medical services and the expansion of the hospital size to twelve hundred, another General Hospital unit was required.

Until the war threatened Malaya the nurses had plenty of time to enjoy the pleasures of living in the tropics. The Red Cross supplied them with a range of equipment such as sewing machines, gramophones, records and books. The nurses were looked after by amahs (female house servants) that did all their cooking, cleaning, ironing and washing. The nurses were granted leave to visit tourist sites and had honorary membership to the European clubs with their excellent sport facilities. Leave in Singapore was very popular with the excellent shopping facilities and they were able to visit the famous Raffles Hotel, the swimming club, yacht club, night clubs and the popular Tiger Balm Gardens. The nurses also visited places in Kuala Lumpur such as tin and gold mines, rubber plantations and scenic sites such as the Hindu shrine at the Batu Caves. The mountain resort of Frazer’s Hill provided the nurses with relief from the humid conditions in Malacca.

The 2/13th was formed on the 11th August 1941 in Melbourne to assist with medical services in Malaya. The unit consisted of 20 officers, 51 Australian Army Nursing Sisters, 3 Masseuses, 21 Warrant Officers and Sergeants and 128 Rank and File. They departed from Melbourne on 2nd September 1941 aboard the Wanganella and arrived in Singapore on the 15th September. The nurses were accommodated in buildings at St. Patrick’s School. In November 1941 the 2/13th AGH took over an unfinished mental hospital at Tampoi, seven miles from Johore Bahru. By the 8th December the hospital was set up with 1 183 beds. The Sultan of Johore provided a large amount of the equipment used in this facility. The nurses spent a lot of time training orderlies on surgical theatre techniques, bandaging and nursing.

War was declared on the Japanese at 5.00 p.m. on the 8th of December after the attacks on Pearl Harbour and British territories in South East Asia. The Japanese troops landed in Khota Bahru, Patani and Singora and reached the Straits of Johore in less than two months. Australian, British and Indian troops could not hold their advance and suffered heavy casualties. On the 10th December the two British Battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese aircraft off the east coast of Malaya. The staff and patients in the hospital in Malacca were evacuated to Tampoi and 2/4th CCS to the Oldham Hall School. The day after they left the hospital it was bombed. On the 16th December the 2/13th AGH moved their 1 200 bed hospital (staff and patients) 25 miles to the new site at the St. Patrick’s School on the southern side of Singapore in 38 hours.

The Japanese army’s advance down the Malayan Peninsula was carried out with the aid of bicycles. The causeway connecting Singapore to Johore Bahru was blown up to prevent the Japanese

troops using it as a point of access. Major-General Gordon Bennett was the commander of the 8 Division A.I.F. in Malaya. He expressed concern for the safety of the nurses in Singapore if it was overrun by the Japanese. His concerns were based on reports of the treatment meted out to the British nurses at St. Stephen’s College Emergency Hospital in Hong Kong. One British officer suggested that the nurses be shot to avoid a similar fate.

The first group of nurses (six) to be evacuated from Singapore were

notified on the 10th February to board a Chinese coastal steamer the Wah Sui with 350 men including 127 sick and wounded AIF soldiers. The ship was painted white with red crosses to identify it as a hospital ship. It sailed on the 12th February after the Japanese signalled they would attack if it remained in Major-General Gordon Bennett

Singapore. The ship departed and arrived in Batavia on 15th February. The nurses evacuated their wounded from the ship and then helped set up a hospital in a convent in Batavia until 18 February when they were moved to Bandung, in the hills inland from Batavia, to assist the Australian 2/2nd CCS. The precarious military position necessitated their returning to Batavia and on 21 February 1942 they all sailed for Australia in the troopship Orcades.

By the 11th February the Japanese were infiltrating on to Singapore Island. Bombing of the island had continued since the first attacks in early December with damage to the infrastructure and to civilians alike. On the 11th February the nursing sisters at St Patrick’s Hospital (School) were assembled in the grounds and informed by Matron Irene Drummond that they were to be evacuated that afternoon. Thirty of the nurses were named as those to be evacuated on the first convoy. They were taken to St Andrew’s Cathedral were they were joined by 30 nurses from the 2/10th AGH. The Cathedral was used as a Dressing Station for wounded military and civilian personnel. The nurses were then transported to the dock area and embarked on the S.S. Empire Star. This ship was designed to accommodate 16 passengers and was used to carry frozen meat from Fremantle to Singapore. Onto

this ship were 60 Australian nurses, British nurses, some RAAF personnel and civilians totalling 2 154 passengers.

The nurses were down in the “hold” with the only ventilation available was by leaving the hatch cover open. The ship left the wharf on the night of the 11th February and anchored in a mine field. The next morning the Empire Star sailed for Batavia and not long after it was attacked by Japanese planes dropping bombs and machine gunning the decks. These attacks over a 4 hour period resulted in 17 men killed and 32 injured. The ship limped into Batavia on the 14th February where the nurses were transferred to a Dutch vessel while temporary repairs were made to the Empire Star. After the repairs were carried out the nurses were transferred back and the ship continued on the Fremantle. It arrived there on the 23rd February. Two of the nurses from the 2/13th AGH received awards for their bravery during the bombing, Margaret Anderson (George Medal) and Veronica Torney (MBE).

The remaining 65 nurses from the 2/4th C.C.S., 2/10th AGH and 2/13th AGH on the afternoon of the 12th February were taken by ambulance from St. Patrick’s Hospital (School) to St. Andrews Cathedral and then to the wharf where they embarked on the Vyner Brooke. There were 300 men women and children on board as well. The ship departed Singapore harbour late on the evening of the 12th or February. On the 13th February the ship made its way through the islands south of Singapore using them as cover from the Japanese aircraft. That night an attack was made on the Vyner Brooke with little damage to the vessel. At 2.00 pm on the 14th

February off the North West tip of the Bangka Island the ship was attacked again causing it to sink

within 20 minutes of the order to “abandon ship”. The Japanese planes machine gunned the survivors who were in the water on life rafts, life boats or floating debris. Twelve nurses were presumed drowned as a result of the attack. The bodies of two nurses were found three weeks later on a raft in the Indian Ocean.

(left)The Vyner Brooke moored at a wharf in the city of Kuching Sarawak 1930.

The currents in Bangka Strait were very strong and this made it very difficult for survivors to reach shore on Bangka Island or Sumatra. The life boats were able to reach the shore in about seven hours whereas those on rafts had to endure up to 72 hours in the water. The survivors who managed to get into the life boats (non swimmers, wounded, women and children) were able to reach the shore 10 miles north- west of Muntok on Bangka Island. The civilian women and children left the group and made their way to a village and then to Muntok.

The 22 nurses remained behind with the wounded and 20 British soldiers and sailors (survivors of another ship sunk by the Japanese). A Japanese patrol which had passed earlier, returned and separated the soldiers and sailors, marched them around a headland and massacred them. They then returned and marched the nurses into the water at Radji Beach and machined-gunned them. The only survivor of this group was Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. Sister Bullwinkel and a Private Kingsley (an Englishman who was bayoneted by the Japanese) lived in the jungle for 12 days with the help of local villagers. The Japanese soldiers found them when they were making their way to Muntok to give themselves up. Kingsley died of his wounds a couple of days later. Sister Bullwinkel was able to conceal her wounds from the Japanese for the remainder of the war.

The surviving nurses (32 out of the 65) were placed in an internment camp with 600 people who had survived the shipwrecks in the waters near Bangka Island. They were kept interned in Muntok until March 1942 when they were transferred to Palembang on the island of Sumatra. They were accommodated in camp consisting of houses and bungalows. The nurses were not recognised as Prisoners of War by the Japanese and as a result they were interned in civilian camps with Malays, British and Dutch. The Dutch civilians in these camps had been allowed to bring some of the possessions with them and had financial resources to purchase extra food and provisions whereas the Australian nurses had lost all their possessions in the shipwrecks. To survive the nurses undertook work for some of the Dutch to be able to purchase extra food. Some of this work included house keeping duties and child minding. The money they earned had to be smuggled back into the camp. If they were caught with money or other items to be smuggled into the camp they would expect to be severely beaten. The Japanese stole watches and any valuables the nurses had.

In September 1943 the internees were moved into a camp which was previously occupied by soldiers. This camp was damaged by the men to make it unusable, but the damage had to be fixed. Vermin abounded - rats everywhere and the huts were bug

infested. The conditions in the camp caused the outbreak of dysentery, malaria, dengue fever and more serious tropical ulcers. It took ages to restore the camp to anything reasonable and the girls were hampered by the wet season - rain came down in torrents and the surrounds were horrid mud. The conditions the nurses had to endure are well documented in the books While history Passed by Elisabeth Simons and White Coolies by Betty Jeffreys. To keep themselves occupied the internees organised a range of activities such as lectures, arts and craft activities and musical items with two notable English ladies – Mrs Norah Chambers and Miss Margaret Dryburgh. Their musical activities are recognised in the1997 film Paradise Road directed by Bruce Beresford. A BBC Film Tenko also attempted to portray the camp like experienced in Sumatra.

In October 1944 the nurses were moved by boat back to Bangka Island to a new camp. At this camp the prisoners encountered a new disease called “Bangka Fever” which along with the usual beriberi, malaria and dysentery affected up to 70 percent of the 700 occupants. The Australian and British nurses along with the Dutch nuns set up a hospital in the camp to care for the sick. It was at this camp that the Australians lost their first member since the sinking of the Vyner Brooke. She died from cerebral malaria. In all four nurses died from disease and malnutrition at this camp.

In April 1945 the camp occupants were moved back to Sumatra to a new camp near Loebok Linggau in the interior of the island. The reason for the move was not understood at the time but it was later learned that at the time the war was not going well for the Japanese and it was an attempt to hide the evidence of their barbaric behaviour. On the 21st April 1945 Miss Margaret Dryburgh died. Five more of the nurses were to die in this camp with the last loss occurring three days after VJ day.

On the 24th August the Japanese announced to the internees that the “war was over” and that “we are now all friends”. After the announcement the nurses discussed the situation and pondered over who had won.

This camp at Loebok Linggau took a bit of finding. The authorities knew that some nurses had survived and sent search planes out to locate the well-concealed camp Three weeks passed before paratroopers landed and organised the removal of the survivors. The 24 Australian nurses were entrained 100 miles to the aerodrome at Lahat and flown into Singapore in an R.A.A.F. Dakota on Sunday the 16th September, 1945.

S.E.A.C., the all-Services Newspaper of South East Asia Command in its Singapore Edition of Wednesday 19th September 1945 carried this report by Noel Monks, Daily Mail Reporter.

Singapore Tues. "Twenty four Australian nurses, so thin that the combined weight equalled only that of six normal passengers were flown to Singapore on Sunday from Sumatra and rushed to an Australian army hospital for immediate attention. They are the survivors of a party of 65 Australian nurses whose ship was sunk off Banka Point, E. Sumatra as they were escaping from Singapore in 1942, and the sight of them and the story they told of inhuman Japanese treatment is as bad as anything I saw or heard in Nazi horror camps.

The nurses were returned to the hospital they had set up in the St Patrick’s school to recover from their ordeal. Following an improvement in their physical conditions the 24 nurses left Singapore on 5th October and sailed to Perth on the Hospital ship Manunda. A leisurely cruise to Melbourne and Sydney aided the general health of all and, so, dressed in new uniforms, the sisters appeared nearly back to normal. The surviving nurses suffered long term medical conditions as a result of their captivity. Most were admitted to hospitals at the earliest opportunity to be treated for the ravages of malaria, amoebic dysentery, beriberi, skin complaints and anxiety neurosis.

My mother Sister Sylvia Jessie Mimmie Muir (see photo below) QFX22816 (24/8/1915-18/2/1996) was a member of the 2/13th AGH and was one of the surviving 24 nurses. My father, Colin Leslie McGregor (13/8/1910-29/6/1974), was a soldier who fought in Malaya in 1941. He was hospitalised on two occasions in Malacca and Tampoi (Johore Bahru) and was placed in wards on each occasion supervised by Sister Muir. They struck up a friendship and agreed to meet after the war. He was repatriated from Singapore before the Fall of Singapore. On his return to Australia he was involved in army training in jungle warfare and was involved in the campaigns in New Guinea.My mother eventually returned to Queensland in late November 1945 where she was to find out her mother had died in 1942. My

parents were married in Brisbane on the 13th December 1945 and moved to Bega NSW. My mother suffered from a range of medical conditions resulting from her captivity which prevented her from working. She was placed on a TPI war pension in 1958. She raised 3 children.

Itinerary

SINGAPORE:Kranji War Cemeteryi) I visited Kranji War Cemetery as part of a World War 2 tour of the Island of Singapore. The names of the nurses killed or died as POW’s during the war are listed on the memorial.ii) As part of the Australian High Commissions commemorative wreath laying to remember the 65th Anniversary of the Fall of Singapore. Australian Government representatives were Colonel Don Freeman, his wife Gabriella, W.O.F.F. Keith Pepper and Mrs Michelle Dwyer.St Andrews CathedralThe Cathedral was used as a Dressing Station for wounded military and civilian personnel and it was used as a staging point by the Australian Army Nurses and patients to be evacuated on the Wah Sui, Empire Star and the ill-fated Vyner Brooke. The Cathedral has a plaque commemorating the nurses killed (41) from the Vyner Brooke. There are two silver candle sticks on the altar commemorating the naval personnel killed as a result of the sinking of the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse.Changi War MuseumSingapore War Memorial (Chinese)A Memorial service conducted by the Chinese community commemorating the Fall of Singapore and the loss of lives suffered by the Chinese during the Japanese occupation.Fort Canning Allied Headquarters - Battle BoxSt Patrick’s SchoolSet up as a hospital by the 2/13th AGH. Taken over by the Japanese and set up as a hospital – allied patients and nursing staff also massacred.The Australian nurses who survived as prisoners of war were rehabilitated at the school after being found on the 16th Sept. 1945.Alexandra HospitalMassacre of British doctors and nursing staff by the JapaneseOld Ford Motor Company MuseumPlace where the British commanding officers signed the surrender documents for the Fall of Singapore Feb 1942.Raffles Hotel and MuseumReflects the life style under British Colonial rule in Singapore.

MALAYSIA

Johore BahruHospital site set up by 2/10th and 2/13th AGH.Kuala LumpurMelaka (Malacca)2/10th AGH and 2/4th CCS Hospital.Batu CavesAbdul Rahaman War Museum

AUSTRALIATed Flower President of the Victorian POW Assoc, 2/10th AGH Changi PrisonerAustralian Nurses Memorial Centre, MelbourneAustralian POW Memorial BallaratMemorial to Australian POW’s from Boer War to Vietnam.Names of 60 nurses are on the memorialIntroduced to Mrs Joan Charles whose sister was one of the nurses shot on Radji Beach on Bangka Island.Australian War Memorial, Canberra.Japanese POW section contains a range of memorabilia related to the nurses, includes Vivian Bullwinkel’s uniform with the bullet hole, diaries, etc.

Experiences and research material gathered as a result of the travel.

1. Experience of the heat and humidity that the nurses would have had to endure.

2. Collection of photographs, video, audio and documents related to this story.

3. Additional details about the material on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra (as a tour guide).

4. Relatives of the nurses have provided me with copies of letters, newspaper articles, etc. which they are willing to have included in material to be made available to students for research purposes.

5. Details of the diseases suffered during their internment.6. Types of foods provided to the prisoners and methods used to

secure additional food.7. A list of names of the nurses who died carrying out their

duties during world conflicts (Boer War to Vietnam).8. An account of a Dutch child who was interned in a Japanese

civilian camp in Java during the war.9. A range of web sites relevant to the study of the role of

nurses and Prisoners of War in WW2.10. I gave a power point presentation of my trip and

research at the Nurses Scholarship Awards ceremony at the Nurses Memorial Centre in Melbourne in April 2007.

ReferencesArthurson. Lex The Story of the 13th Australian General Hospital – 8th Division A.I.F. Malaya Bassett. Jan Guns and Broaches – Australian Army Nursing from the Boer War to the Gulf War - Oxford University Press 1992Jacobs. G. F. Prelude to the Monsoon - George Mann Books 1979Jeffrey. Betty White Coolies. Angus and Robertson 1954Nelson. Hank P.O.W. Prisoners of War – Australian Under Nippon ABC Enterprises 1985Simons. Jessie Elisabeth While History Passed. William Heinemann Ltd. 1954Photograph of the Vyner Brooke from the Sarawak Steamship Company Museum.Photograph of Major General Gordon Bennett from the Australian War MemorialPhotograph of Sylvia Jessie Mimmie Muir (McGregor) from the author.