Historical information

Story one - Horror Island
The story retells the story of the Vyner Brooke bombing and the following massacre of twenty one nurses on a Banka Island beach. The Vyner Brooke was carrying almost 300 women, children and elderly men fleeing Singapore for Australia. On the ship were also 65 nurses from the 10th and 13th Australian General Hospital. A few days into their journey they were spotted by the Japanese and subsequently bombed, with three out of the 29 bombs dropped scoring direct hits. Only seventy people survived to make it to the nearby Banka Island. The smaller group, that included twenty two nurses, surrendered to the Japanese, who shot and bayoneted the men, then shot the nurses, with only one surviving. Wilma Young (pictured) was among the larger group who were luckier, only being taken prisoners.

Story two - She saw her friends die around her...
The only survivor of the Banka Island massacre, Vivian Bullwinkel (pictured), testified at the 1946 war crimes trial in Japan. Vivian gave evidence of the massacre, not for revenge, but for the sake of the twenty two nurses who died around her.

Physical description

A large folded newspaper page, folded to show, in the middle, a large title above the main story and associated black and photo, of an older woman holding a cat. At the top is a shorter, related story under a title, with a black and white photo of a woman in uniform, seated next to a man in uniform.