Image copyrightLYNETTE SILVERImage captionVivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre
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 sole survivor
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.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionBangka Island lies off Sumatra in the Indonesian archipelago
She 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.
Image copyrightLYNETEE SILVER Image captionNurses who were not on Bangka Island arrive back in Singapore after evacuation from Sumatra in 1942
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.
The Australian historian also cites an account of a Japanese soldier who was being treated for malaria nearby on Bangka Island, which is off Sumatra. He told an Australian investigating officer that he heard screams and was told soldiers were "pleasuring themselves on the beach and it'd be the turn of platoon next".
In addition, Ms Silver discovered that part of a page detailing what happened to the nurses in a key account had been ripped out, in what she believes was an act of censorship.
The account was by Jean Williams, wife of Major Harold Williams, about investigations he conducted for the Australian War Crimes Section.
Image copyrightLYNETTE SILVER Image captionA passage of Jean Williams' historical account was removed
Peter Stanley, a military history professor at University of New South Wales, says Ms Silver's account doesn't surprise him: "I've been waiting for this story to come out - it has been alleged for years, including by ex-servicewomen who knew Vivian Bullwinkel and told me. It correlates with on-the-record sexual assaults by Japanese WW2 soldiers in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore."
The army's 'darlings'
Before the massacre, Ms Silver says the Australian nurses had "a carefree, happy life" in Singapore until the end of 1941.
"They were wined and dined - the darlings of the army," she says. "They were just dealing with the usual complaints you get in army peacetime - accidents in training, car accidents, malaria."
When the Japanese attacked on 8 December 1941 - a few hours before Pearl Harbor - their lives changed, she says: "They were overwhelmed with battle casualties. Even houses in Singapore were transformed into hospitals."
Ms Silver says she sees it as important to speak the "unsanitised truth" that Vivian Bullwinkel had wanted to tell in 1945 and 1946.
"If I didn't tell this secret, I'd be part of the culture of silence and the government clampdown, and protecting the perpetrators," she says. "These nurses deserve to have their story told - that's their justice."
She has recently received emails from people who personally knew the nurses. "I was slightly concerned people might say I should let sleeping dogs lie, but I haven't received a single derogatory remark," she says.
Ms Silver now wants the Australian War Memorial (AWM), which already includes the story of the massacre, to tailor its tours to include this account of the alleged sexual assaults.
AWM director Dr Brendan Nelson tells the BBC: "We don't deny or downplay these allegations; indeed, it's known rape and sexual assault are used as weapons in war. Nevertheless, as the sole survivor the incident, Lt Col Bullwinkel, passed away nearly 20 years ago, we do not, nor can ever categorically know what took place."
#MeToo comparison
Ms Silver draws parallels with the #MeToo movement: "The same social mores are at play - whereby women felt compelled to wait before they could say anything. As victims, they're made to feel responsible. I think #MeToo would've given Vivian Bullwinkel the confidence to finally speak up."
Image copyrightLYNETTE SILVERImage captionLynette Silver has won awards for her work as a "historical detective"
"Female history writers are generally more interested in the human element than how many guns there were. As a female, you have empathy."
She said it was revealing that it was three female historians who uncovered the evidence for this story: "I've heard of history being told as 'his-story'. This was the opposite of that."
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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