Bangka Island massacre facts for kids
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The Bangka Island massacre (also spelled Banka Island massacre) was committed during World War II in the Pacific, on Bangka Island, east of Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago. On 16 February 1942, Imperial Japanese soldiers machine-gunned 22 Australian Army nurses and 60 Australian and British soldiers and crew members who had survived the sinking of Vyner Brooke by Japanese bombers. South Australian nurse Sister Lt Vivian Bullwinkel, an American Eric Germann and Stoker Ernest Lloyd RN were the only survivors.
Massacre
On 12 February 1942 the royal yacht of Sarawak Vyner Brooke left Singapore just before the city fell to the Imperial Japanese Army. The ship carried many injured service personnel and 65 nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service from the 2/13th Australian General Hospital, as well as civilian men, women and children. The ship was bombed by Japanese aircraft and sank. About 100 survivors reunited near Radji Beach at Bangka Island in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), including 22 of the original 65 nurses. Once it was discovered the Japanese held the island, an officer of the Vyner Brooke went to surrender the group to the authorities in Muntok. While he was away army matron Irene Melville Drummond, the most senior of the nurses, suggested the civilian women and children should leave for Muntok, which they did. The nurses stayed to care for the wounded. They set up a shelter with a large Red Cross sign on it.
At mid-morning the ship's officer returned with about 20 Japanese soldiers. They ordered all the wounded men capable of walking to travel around a headland.
The men were lined up by the Japanese and killed. Only Lloyd who, realising what was going to happen, ran into the sea and managed to get away. He lost consciousness and later was washed up on the other side of the beach.
A Japanese officer ordered the remaining 22 nurses and one civilian woman to walk into the surf. A machine gun was set up on the beach and all but Bullwinkel were killed.
When Lloyd regained consciousness he made his way back to the scene of the massacre.
When Bullwinkel awoke, she encountered Private Patrick Kingsley, a wounded British soldier from the ship who had survived the massacre. She dressed his wounds and her own and met Stoker Lloyd. They both agreed it would be better to surrender as they couldn't survive much longer in such harsh condition. 12 days later Bullwinkel and Kingsley surrendered to the Japanese. Kingsley died before reaching a POW camp, but Bullwinkel spent three years in one. Lloyd surrendered after them and spent the rest of the war as a POW. When his camp was liberated he ensured that the authorities knew of the surviving nurses and kept looking for them. This was instrumental in them being found as the Japanese denied any knowledge of them and their camp was deep in the jungle.
Bullwinkel survived the war and gave evidence of the massacre at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal) in 1947.
Commemoration
In South Australia an annual commemoration known as the Bangka Day Memorial Service has been held at the Women's Memorial Playing Fields, St Mary's on the Sunday closest to 16 February since 1955. A plaque commemorating the South Australian Army Nursing Sisters who died, including Drummond and six others was erected at the site.
