Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to ask that we remember the 21 Australian service nurses who were killed 66 years ago in an event that would become known as the Banka Island massacre. This Saturday, 16 February, will mark the 66th anniversary of this horrific event. One nurse, Sister Lieutenant Vivian Bullwinkel, was the sole survivor of the massacre. Her story is one of tragedy, triumph and, above all, compassion. Vivian Bullwinkel was one of 65 Australian service nurses who escaped a besieged Singapore on the merchant ship the SS Vyner Brooke. The ship, built to carry fewer than 15 passengers, was carrying more than 300. Two days later the ship was hit by Japanese fire, sinking in less than 20 minutes. Together with the women and children who survived the attack on the ship, 22 Australian service nurses made it to shore on the nearby Banka Island.

A day later, about 100 British soldiers, whose ship had also been attacked, landed on the island. The women and children left for the nearest village for help. The Australian nurses stayed behind to take care of the wounded British soldiers. It was decided that the best bet for survival was to surrender to the Japanese army on the island. A small group left to find the Japanese troops. When they returned, the Japanese soldiers marched the men out of sight. The nurses heard gunfire and moments later the Japanese returned, wiping clean their bayonets. They ordered the nurses to stand in a line and walk into the sea. When the nurses were waist high in water the Japanese troops opened fire. Sister Vivian Bullwinkel was shot but not killed. She lay silently in the water until the Japanese soldiers had left the beach, later meeting up with a wounded British soldier, Private Pat Kingsley. She tended his wounds for 12 days before surrendering again to the Japanese. Both were taken to prisoner of war camps. Vivian was sent to the Sumatra prisoner of war camp, where she was reunited with 31 of her fellow nurses who had survived the sinking of the Vyner Brooke. Eight of them would die in the camp. Vivian would also later find out that Private Pat Kingsley died of his wounds in captivity. Determined to tell her story, Vivian survived 3½ years as a prisoner of war. In 1947, she was able to give evidence of the massacre at a war crimes tribunal in Tokyo. Only 24 nurses survived the events following the sinking of the SS Vyner Brooke. Fifty years later, Vivian returned to the island, officially opening a memorial to the 41 nurses who did not return home.

During my years as veterans’ affairs minister, I had the incredible honour to get to know Sister Vivian Bullwinkel. Her strength of character, compassion and her amazing emotional capacity to forgive her captors cannot truly be expressed in words. Until her death almost eight years ago, she endlessly devoted herself to honouring the service and lives of her fellow nurses. She received the Florence Nightingale Medal, an MBE and an AM. As well as opening a memorial on Banka Island, the year before her death Vivian attended the opening of the Australian Service Nurses Memorial on Anzac Parade, which honours all past and present Australian service nurses.

In the Hall of Memory in the Australian War Memorial a stained glass window of a nurse stands above our unknown Australian solder. Accompanied by the Red Cross symbol, the Australian Coat of Arms and the sign of charity, the nurse symbolises ‘devotion’. Sister Vivian Bullwinkel embodied this quality. She is a role model. Dedicated to her patients, her fellow nurses and their enduring legacy, she was the living example of that stained glass symbol of charity and devotion.

It is important that this Saturday all of us take the time to remember Vivian, her fallen comrades and the many Australians who sacrificed so much to give us what we often take for granted today. Indeed, it is Vivian herself who put it best—and I quote:

I would like people to appreciate that the lives, opportunities, sports and freedom for our young were bought at a price.