She Survived Japan’s Massacre of 22 Nurses… Then Her OWN Government Silenced Her for 58 Years. JJ

She survived a massacre, then her own government ordered her to lie about it. For 58 years, she obeyed. The water was already red when she [music] stopped pretending to be dead. 21 women lay behind her, nurses in uniform, Red Cross armbands still [music] on their sleeves, shot from behind by a machine gun on a beach.

 She was the only one [music] who walked back out, and what she witnessed, her government buried it for [music] 77 years. February 12th, 1942, Singapore [music] is burning. The Japanese Imperial Army has swept through the Malay Peninsula in 70 days, [music] one of the fastest military advances in modern history.

 130,000 Allied soldiers are surrendering. On the docks, 65 Australian Army nurses are ordered to evacuate. Sister Vivian [music] Bullwinkel is 26 years old. She boards the SS Vyner Brooke, already overloaded with wounded soldiers and civilians. Two days later, Japanese bombers find the ship. It sinks in minutes. The survivors wash ashore on Bangka Island, Indonesia.

[music] Vivian reaches Radji Beach with 21 other nurses, wounded [music] soldiers, and a few civilians. They have no food, no weapons, no radio. They make [music] the only decision that seems rational. They will surrender. They are nurses, [music] non-combatants, protected by the Geneva Convention. On February 16th, [music] a Japanese patrol arrives.

 The soldiers separate the men from the women. The wounded, men on stretchers who cannot walk, are taken around a rocky headland. The nurses hear a machine gun, then >> [music] >> silence. Then the soldiers come back. They sit down in front of the women. >> [music] >> They clean their bayonets. What happened next was hidden for nearly eight decades.

I can confirm it myself [music] from a private interview. It was before the year 2000. Forensic evidence confirmed it. A Japanese [music] soldier’s own account confirmed it. The bullet holes in her recovered uniform told the story her [music] government tried to erase. The bodice was open at the waist and down the front when she was shot.

 After the assault, an officer gave the order. The 22 nurses [music] were told to walk into the surf. They walked in a line, in uniform, Red Cross armbands still on, until the water reached [music] their waists. The machine gun opened fire from behind. Vivian was hit. The bullet passed clean through her left side, missing every organ.

She fell forward. She did not move. She did not breathe. She floated among her dead colleagues for over an hour. She crawled back onto the [music] beach alone. She found a wounded British soldier, Private Kingsley, hiding in the jungle. >> [music] >> She treated his wounds with nothing for 12 days.

 When he became [music] too sick to survive, they surrendered together. He died shortly after. [music] Vivian spent the next 3 and 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Sumatra, keeping her survival secret because if the Japanese had known she witnessed the massacre, she would have been [music] executed immediately. In 1947, she stood before the Tokyo [music] War Crimes Tribunal.

 She described the beach. She described the machine gun. She described [music] watching her colleagues die, but she did not mention what happened before the machine gun. She had been ordered not to by her own government. The Australian government’s reasoning, >> [music] >> according to historian Lynette Silver, the stigma of sexual violence >> [music] >> in the 1940s, concern for the families, and guilt.

Because Allied commanders had already known for weeks before [music] the evacuation that Japanese soldiers had raped and murdered British nurses [music] in Hong Kong in December 1941, they knew. They delayed the evacuation anyway. The perpetrators [music] of the Radji Beach massacre were never identified, never charged, never tried.

[music] They escaped justice entirely. Vivian Bullwinkel spent the rest of her life in nursing. She raised funds [music] for a nurse’s memorial. She returned to Bangka Island in 1992 >> [music] >> to unveil a shrine. She accepted every honor on behalf of her dead colleagues, never for [music] herself. Before she died in the year 2000, she told broadcaster [music] Tess Lawrence the full truth.

 She asked her to make sure the [music] world finally heard it. “She was tortured by the secret,” Lawrence said. “She wanted it [music] in her statement at the tribunal. She was ordered not to.” In 2019, 77 [music] years after Radji Beach, historian Lynette Silver published Angels of Mercy. For the first time, all the evidence was assembled.

Forensic proof, witness [music] accounts, a 10-page Army investigators report with several pages removed by someone who didn’t want them read. [music] “It’s taken a long while,” Silver said, “for enough evidence to come together to say, ‘Yes, this happened.’ [music] The perpetrators of the Radji Beach massacre were never identified, never charged, never tried.

They escaped [music] justice entirely. Vivian Bullwinkel spent the rest of her life in nursing. She raised funds for a nurse’s memorial. >> [music] >> She returned to Bangka Island in 1992 to unveil a shrine. She accepted every honor on behalf of her dead [music] colleagues, never for herself. Before she died in the year 2000, she told broadcaster Tess [music] Lawrence the full truth.

She asked her to make sure the world finally heard it. “She was tortured by the secret,” [music] Lawrence said. “She wanted it in her statement at the tribunal. She was ordered not to.” In 2019, 77 years after Radji Beach, historian Lynette [music] Silver published Angels of Mercy.

 For the first time, all the evidence was assembled. [music] Forensic proof, witness accounts, a 10-page [music] Army investigators report with several pages removed by someone who didn’t [music] want them read. “It’s taken a long while,” Silver said, “for enough evidence [music] to come together to say, ‘Yes, this happened.'”