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In 1942, a group of Australian nurses were murdered by Japanese soldiers in what came to be known as the Bangka Island massacre


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Black and white photo of nurse Vivian Bullwinkle

In 1942, a group of Australian nurses were murdered by Japanese soldiers in what came to be known as the Bangka Island massacre. Now, a historian has collated evidence indicating they were sexually assaulted beforehand - and that Australian authorities allegedly hushed it up. "It took a group of women to uncover this truth - and to finally speak it."

Military historian Lynette Silver is discussing what happened to 22 Australian nurses who were marched into the sea at Bangka Island, Indonesia, and shot with machine guns in February 1942. All except one were killed. "That was a jolt to the senses enough. But to have been raped beforehand was just too awful a truth to speak," Ms Silver says, speaking of claims she details in a new book. "Senior Australian army officers wanted to protect grieving families from the stigma of rape. It was seen as shameful. Rape was known as a fate worse than death, and was still a hangable offence [for perpetrators] in New South Wales until 1955." The survivor The Japanese soldiers had separated men and women on Bangka Island before shooting both groups out of sight of the other. Nurse Vivian Bullwinkel was shot in the massacre but survived by playing dead. She hid in the jungle and was taken as a prisoner of war, before eventually returning to Australia. Of the small group of men who were massacred, two are known to have survived: Ernest Lloyd and Eric Germann.Ms Bullwinkel was "gagged" from speaking about the rapes at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal in the aftermath of World War Two, according to Ms Silver, who researched an account Ms Bullwinkel gave to a broadcaster before she died in 2000. "She was following orders," Ms Silver says. "In addition to the taboo, there was probably some guilt from the Australian government - senior officers knew Japanese troops had raped and murdered British nurses when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in 1942, but were tardy in calls to evacuate the Australian nurses from Singapore." According to the Australian government, the perpetrators of the massacre remain unknown and "escaped any punishment for their crime". An Australian Defence Force spokesperson says a decision on whether a new investigation into these sexual assault claims will commence is up to the government, but that "new historic allegations can be reported by family" to a unit which investigates such crimes.Investigating what happened The other women whose work has revealed evidence of these alleged sexual assaults are broadcaster Tess Lawrence and biographer Barbara Angell. Ms Angell did forensic work into the mismatching thread and bullet holes in Ms Bullwinkel's nurse's uniform. It indicated that buttons had been ripped off her bodice and sewn on in a different colour thread (after her death, when it was put on display), and the only way the bullet entry and exit holes lined up was if her bodice was open at the waist and down at the front. Ms Lawrence reported in 2017 that, before she died, Ms Bullwinkel confided in her that "most of" the nurses were "violated" before being shot, and that she'd wanted to reveal this but couldn't - a secret, she said, that "tortured" her.

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