On 12 February 1942 the royal yacht of Sarawak 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. Two nurses were killed in the bombing; the rest were scattered among the rescue boats to wash up on different parts of Bangka Island. About 100 survivors reunited near Radji Beach at Bangka Island in the Dutch East Indies, 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 matronIrene 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 nurses heard a quick succession of shots before the Japanese soldiers came back, sat down in front of the women and cleaned their bayonets and rifles. 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 when the women were waist deep, they were machine-gunned. All but Bullwinkel were killed. Wounded soldiers left on stretchers were then bayoneted and killed. Shot in the diaphragm, Bullwinkel lay motionless in the water until the sound of troops had disappeared. She crawled into the bush and lay unconscious for several days. When she awoke, she encountered Private Patrick Kingsley, a wounded British soldier from the ship who had survived being bayoneted by the Japanese soldiers. She dressed his wounds and her own, then 12 days later they surrendered to the Japanese. Kingsley died before reaching a POW camp, but Bullwinkel spent three years in one. Bullwinkel survived the war and gave evidence of the massacre at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1947.
Evidence of sexual assault
Recent evidence collected by historian Lynette Silver, broadcaster Tess Lawrence and biographer Barbara Angell, indicates that most of the nurses were raped before they were murdered. However, Bullwinkel was not permitted to speak about the rapes after the war, saying that she had been "gagged" by the Australian government. According to the Australian government, the perpetrators of the massacre remain unknown and "escaped any punishment for their crime".
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.
