A Case of
Japanese Military Violence against Women
This is the English version of my Zoom lecture notes for seminar organised
by the Hiroshima Network for the Solution of Japan’s Military
‘Comfort Women’ Issue, which was conducted on May 15, 2021. Georgina Banks and
Judy Campbell – the kin of victims of the Japanese atrocities on Banka Island –
also spoke at this seminar. Their speeches are available at the following site:
http://yjtanaka.blogspot.com/2021/09/speeches-of-georgina-banks-and-judy.html
これは今年５月１５日に、日本軍「慰安婦」問題解決ひろしまネットワークの主催で行ったZOOM勉強会のために用意した私の講演概要の英語版です。同じ勉強会ではバンカ島における日本軍残虐行為の犠牲者のご遺族のお二人がスピーチをされましたが、そのオリジナル英語版も、このブログに掲載いたしました。
（なお、講演概要とご遺族スピーチの日本語版はすでに６月３０日にこのブログに掲載しました。）英語圏に友人、知人がおられる方は、この情報を拡散していただければ光栄です。
Lecture Notes (15 May 2021)
Yuki Tanaka
(1) Historical Background of Japanese
Military Occupation of Banka Island
At around 2:00 a.m. on
December 8 (Japanese time) 1941 advance troops of the 25th Army of the Japanese
Imperial Forces led by Lieutenant General Yamashita Tomoyuki landed on the
beaches of Kota Bharu in British Malaya and on the southeast coast of Thailand
at Pattani and Songkhla. From there they proceeded toward their final
destination, Singapore. At 3:25 a.m. (7:55 a.m. on December 7 Hawaii time), the
U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii were hit by a stunning surprise attack by
the first wave of Japanese torpedo bombers, dispatched from six aircraft
carriers of the First Air Fleet of the Japanese Imperial Navy commanded by Vice
Admiral Nagumo Chuichi. Following this attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese
forces invaded Hong Kong and the Philippines.
On the Malay Peninsula, troops of the 25th
Army entered Kuala Lumpur on January 11, and by the end of January they had
captured Johor Bahru on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. However, due
to the strong opposition of the British Commonwealth Forces (BCOF) backed by
Chinese volunteer corps, it took the Japanese until February 15 to capture
Singapore and rename it Shōnan-tō.
About 80,000 troops of the BCOF (specifically British, British Indian, and Australian
forces) in Singapore and a further 50,000 troops in Malaya became prisoners of
war (POWs).
The 16th Army commanded by Lieutenant General
Imamura Hitoshi invaded the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where oil
resources were a vital attraction for the Japanese. Between December 16, 1941
and February 10, 1942, the Japanese captured all the important strategic points
on the island of Borneo. On February 14 Japanese paratroopers landed at
Palembang on the south Sumatra coast where Royal Dutch Shell had refineries,
and then the main force of invading Japanese troops quickly occupied the entire
island of Sumatra.
On February 20 the Japanese seized
the island of Timor. West Timor was Dutch colony, and East Timor was a colony
of a neutral nation, Portugal. By occupying the three islands of Borneo,
Sumatra, and Timor, the 16th Army was planning to send forces to Java from
three different directions. Attempting to impede this Japanese move, the Allied
forces sent a Dutch–British–Australian–American joint fleet into battle against
the Japanese navy force in the Java Sea on February 27. But the Allied joint
fleet was completely destroyed by the Japanese off the coast of Batavia on
March 1. On the same day, Japan’s 16th Army landed on Java, and on March 9, the
Dutch forces offered unconditional surrender to the Japanese. In Java alone,
about 83,000 Allied (Dutch, Australian, British and American) troops became
POWs.
The Japanese had never
anticipated capturing such a large number of Allied POWs, and therefore did not
have enough food, medicines or supplies for them. In addition, they had never
expected having to deal with a large number of the Allied civilians living in many
parts of Southeast Asia, which were then colonies of the Allied nations, in
particular Britain and Holland. Such complete unpreparedness on the part of the
Japanese for dealing with POWs and civilians was one of the factors that
contributed to the high POW death toll at the hands of the Japanese during this
war.
At around 1:00 p.m. on
February 15 local time, the 1st Battalion (consisting of two companies)
together with a ship engineer corps of the 229th Infantry Regiment of the 38th Division
landed at Muntok, the largest town of Banka Island (11,910 square kilometers in
area) which lies east of Sumatra, separated by the Banka Strait. Because no
enemy forces were stationed there, the Japanese forces occupied the entire
island without any fighting. In mid-December 1941, the 229th Infantry Regiment
was part of the Japanese forces that invaded Hong Kong. Having seized Hong
Kong, this regiment was sent to southern Sumatra via French Indochina
(presently Vietnam) in February 1942. Their task was to occupy south Sumatra
including Palembang, around which Dutch oil refineries were located. The 1st Battalion led
by Captain Orita Masaru was, however, separated for the purpose of occupying
Banka Island. According to the investigation conducted by the British forces
after the war, it is almost certain that it was the troops of this Orita
Battalion who gang raped British and Chinese nurses as well as Chinese
volunteers at the emergency hospital set up at Stanley College in Hong Kong throughout
the night of December 25, 1941.[1]
(2) Sequence of Events up to the Landing at Banka Island of the
Australian Army Nurses
When the Japanese forces
invaded the Malay Peninsula in December 1941, 15,000 Australian soldiers of the
8th Division of the Australian military forces were stationed there, mainly in
the role of defending the southwest coastal area between Johore Bahru and
Malacca. At the same time, there were 140 Australian military nurses in this
region who were divided into three groups working for the 2/10th Australian
General Hospital in Malacca, the 2/4th Casualty Clearing Section in Kluang, and
the 2/13th Australian General Hospital in Tamping. Because of the rapid advance
of the Japanese forces, all the nurses, together with hospital materials and
patients, were evacuated to Singapore on January 10, 1942, and divided into two
groups. One group was moved into St. Patrick’s School on the southeast coast of
Singapore; the other was moved to Oldham Hall, a school in the northern suburbs
of Singapore city. The two schools were converted into hospitals as an
emergency measure. Six hundred beds were brought into St. Patrick’s and 1,200 beds
to Oldham. The nurses were divided between these two emergency hospitals.
Between December 8, when the Japanese invasion began, and February 15, the day
Singapore fell, 1,789 Australian soldiers died on the battlefield and 1,306
were nonfatally injured. As a result, the nurses were fully occupied.[2]
When the New Year came, the nurses were in the dangerous
situation of having to tend to injured soldiers throughout daily air raids.
Therefore, on January 20, the senior Australian medical officer, Colonel Alfred
Durham, requested that the Australian forces withdraw all military nurses from
Singapore. However, probably because of the large number of injured soldiers,
the order for all nurses to evacuate Singapore was not issued until just before
the city fell. On February 11, four days before the fall, the first group of
Australian nurses left Singapore for Australia on a refrigerated cargo ship,
the Empire Star. The Empire Star managed to evade Japanese air
attack and reached Australia via Batavia. However, 14 of the 15 other ships of
various sizes and types which left Singapore on the same day carrying a large
number of evacuees (mainly women and children), were attacked and sunk by the
Japanese forces. The following day, the remaining 65 nurses departed on a small
cargo ship of 1,669 tons, the Vyner Brooke.[3]
In fact, many British and
Australian civilians living in and around Singapore were not evacuated until as
late as February 11 to 14 because of mismanagement on the part of British and
Australian authorities. Even in early February, neither the British nor Australian
governments issued evacuation orders to their citizens because of their policy
that the evacuation of public workers, nurses and other non-combatants would break
down morale of the BCOF. This was despite repeated requests telegraphed from the
people in Singapore to London and Canberra. Indeed, this lack of governmental consideration
for the safety of their civilians delayed the evacuation, which eventually threw
the people into confusion at the harbor. Suddenly, in the last 48 hours between
February 11 and 13, 50 or 60 various sizes of cargo ship were hastily gathered at
the harbor, and many people crowded on board any ship available. By February
14, all of these ships hurriedly left Singapore, but because of the chaos at the
wharf, many ships left without making passenger lists. Among those passengers were
many citizens of the families of British and Australian merchants, traders, industrialists
and the like living in British Malaya and Singapore.[4]
Most of these ships sailed down south along
the seacoast of Sumatra, then trying to pass through Banka Strait and to reach
Australia via Java Island. However, about 40 of these ships were attacked and
sunk by Japanese bomber planes, navy ships or submarines near Banka Island. As
a result, between 4,000 and 5,000 passengers were presumed to be dead. It is
said that many dead bodies washed up on the shore of Banka Island. The Japanese
forces left the dead bodies on the beaches and did not bury them. Eventually
about 1,000 people survived and managed to swim to the beaches of Banka Island.[5]
Indeed, the Vyner Brook departed too
late because the nurses had to take shelter frequently from air attacks on
their way to the wharf and were late in arriving. When they reached the wharf,
they were put aboard the small ship (which already held 300 civilian
passengers). The overcrowding meant that many women and children were forced to
camp on the deck. Because it was dangerous to travel in daylight, the ship
departed Singapore at 8:00 p.m. and sailed throughout the night, anchoring
early each morning near a small island and thus avoiding detection. However,
even during the night, progress was impeded by the need to avoid Japanese naval
searchlights. On the morning of February 14, while the ship was anchored near
tiny Tojon Island, Japanese planes flew within sight several times. Assuming
the ship had been detected, the captain of the Vyner Brooke decided it would be wise to sail at
full speed toward Banka Island rather than wait to be attacked.
The ship departed Tojon Island at
10:00 a.m. but was bombed by nine Japanese planes just after 1:00 p.m. and sank
about 40 minutes later. There were six lifeboats on board with a combined
capacity for 140 people, but only two were serviceable. The rest had been
destroyed by the bombing. Therefore most of the passengers were forced to take
to the water and save themselves by whatever means they could. The ship went
down between Sumatra and Banka Island at a spot relatively near Banka Island
(approximately 16 kilometers away) but in the treacherous northern opening to
the Banka Strait. As a result, many people drowned, including 12 of the 65 Australian
nurses. One group of women floated all day in the sea and were eventually
rescued by a Japanese landing boat. But most of the passengers had to swim to
shore, and some floated for three or four days until they reached Banka.[6]
On the night of February 14, the two
lifeboats landed on Radjik beach. Aboard were 22 Australian nurses and about 30
civilian passengers (most of them women and children), some of whom were
injured. A group of the nurses went to a village nearby and asked for help, but
the villagers, afraid of punishment by the Japanese forces, refused. Because
the whole island was occupied by the Japanese, the villagers suggested the
women should surrender.
That night, the women observed ships
under attack by the Japanese in Banka Strait and built a signal fire to help
survivors find their way to shore. Approximately two hours later, about 20
British soldiers landed in a lifeboat and joined the group. Some of these
soldiers were injured, and it was necessary to treat them as soon as possible.
Early the following morning (February 16) they considered their situation and
concluded that, because it was virtually impossible to escape from the island
because of the number of children and injured, they should surrender. To this
end, one of the crew of the Vyner Brooke set out to walk to Muntok, the
island’s center, and inform the Japanese forces of their intention. Not long
after the crew member had left, Matron Drummond suggested that the civilian
women and children start walking toward Muntok while the nurses stay with the
injured soldiers. So a group of civilians, led by a Chinese doctor, departed,
leaving behind the British soldiers, 10 of whom were on stretchers, and the
Australian nurses. At about 10:00 a.m., the crew member who had walked to Muntok
returned with a troop of 15 Japanese soldiers led by an officer. The nurses and
the British soldiers were no doubt relieved to see them, as they anticipated
that medical treatment, food, and water would be provided.[7]
(3) The Massacre of the British
Soldiers and Australian Nurses
The details of what
followed have been gathered from the account given by Vivian Bullwinkel (the
sole survivor of the 22 nurses) and official documents produced by the
Australian Army after the war. It is clear that the Japanese soldiers separated
men from women and abled from the disabled, further dividing the able men into
two groups. The crew member who had brought the Japanese soldiers from Muntok
complained to the Japanese officer that they should be treated fairly as POWs,
but he was completely ignored. One group of British soldiers was taken behind
the cliff—about 100 meters away from the beach and out of sight of the
remaining prisoners. They were apparently bayoneted. About 10 minutes later,
these Japanese soldiers returned and took another group of men to the same
place. This time, the nurses heard a few gunshots that were the result of two
or three British soldiers’ attempts to escape. After the second group was
bayoneted, the Japanese returned to the nurses. Vivian Bullwinkel gave the
following account:
They came back and we knew what had
happened ... they came back wiping their bayonets. We realized what was going
to happen. I can remember one of the girls saying, “Two things that I hate
most, the sea and the Japs, and I’ve got them both.” We were all sitting down
and we were ordered up, and then told to march into the sea. Which we did. As
we got to about waist level they started machine-gunning from behind. I was hit
just at the side of the back. The bullet came through, but I wasn’t aware of it
at the time. I thought that once you were shot you’d had it. What with the
force of the bullet and the waves I was knocked over into the water. And in
doing so, I swallowed a lot of water. I became violently ill, and as I stood I
realized I was very much alive. Next thing I thought, they will see me heaving.
So I tried to stop and I just lay there. I wouldn’t know how long. When I did
venture to sit up, there was nothing. All my colleagues had been swept away and
there were no Japs on the beach. There was nothing. Just me. I got up, crossed
the beach, and went into the jungle.[8]
Bullwinkel was the only
nurse to survive this massacre. Afterwards, the injured British on the stretchers were also bayoneted. One
soldier, Private Kingsley, miraculously survived, although he was severely
wounded. As Bullwinkel made her way up the beach, she failed to notice he was still
alive. A few days later the two, both hiding in the jungle, eventually met up.
Bullwinkel collected abandoned water canteens from the beach, made a bed for
Kingsley from life jackets also left there, and bound his original wound and
that made by the bayonet with coconut fibers. Her own wound was less serious
and healed as time passed. Bullwinkel and Kingsley hid in the jungle for about
10 days but realized they could not stay hidden indefinitely. They decided to
contact the Japanese forces again, hoping they would not be killed. They went
out to the road and were picked up by a Japanese naval officer and a soldier in
a car, and this time they were safely taken to the detention camp in Muntok.
Bullwinkel hid her injury with canteens and Kingsley wore a less damaged shirt
taken from a dead comrade so they would not be suspected of having survived the
massacre on the beach. Both Bullwinkel and Kingsley were very careful not to
talk about the incident, even to fellow prisoners in the detention camp, because
they believed they would be in danger if the Japanese discovered they had
witnessed the massacre. Therefore, very few people among the POWs knew of this
incident during the war.[9]
In my book, Hidden Horrors:
Japanese War Crimes in World War II published in 1996 (the Japanese edition
was published in 1993), I suggested the possibility that the nurses had been
raped by the Japanese before being massacred. Although I had no conclusive
evidence, I implied this possibility in the following manner, having examined
various relevant documents available at the Australian War Memorial and the
Australian National Archives:
The second possible answer is that
the Japanese soldiers separated men and women because from the beginning they
intended to rape and kill the women after they had massacred the men. Is it
possible that Bullwinkel, in her account, glossed over the fact that the women
had been raped, in order to protect her dead colleagues from the shame of being
known as victims of rape? It seems, from the various documents associated with
the investigation of this incident, that such an interpretation is not
impossible.[10]
As previously mentioned, it was the 1st Battalion (Orita Unit) of the 229th Infantry Regiment that invaded and occupied Banka Island.
Undoubtedly, therefore, those who committed the massacre on Radjik beach were the troops from Orita Unit. (The exact total number of Orita Unit is unknown, but a battalion usually consisted of between 500
and 1,000 combatants.) It is unlikely that the officer who led 15 Japanese
soldiers to Radjik beach was Orita himself. Immediately after
the war, the Australian military tried to find the perpetrators through a
thorough investigation of Japanese activities on Banka Island at that time. For
this aim, the Australian military requested that the war crimes committee of
the Allied forces in Tokyo locate Orita. It was discovered that he had been in
Manchuria when the war ended and had become a POW of the Soviet Union and was
still in a Siberian prison camp. Quite separately, the British forces were
investigating the massacre of nurses in Hong Kong by Japanese soldiers and
found that the same battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Orita, had
participated in the invasion of Hong Kong before heading to Banka Island.
British forces were also trying to locate him, believing he was one of the
perpetrators of the atrocity.
Lieutenant
Orita. was released and returned to Japan in June 1948, but he was arrested by
the representative of the Australian forces in Tokyo and detained in Sugamo
prison. However, on September 13, before the interrogation had begun, he
committed suicide by slashing a blood vessel in his neck with a glass-cutting
tool he had smuggled into his cell from the prisoners’ workshop. Because of his
death and because most of the soldiers of the 229th
Infantry Regiment had died in the Battle of Guadalcanal during the war,
the Australian forces were unable to build a sufficient case around the
incident and did not prosecute anyone over it. However, according to the data
provided by the 229th Infantry Regiment Veterans
Association, it seems that some troops of that regiment
were sent to New Britain Island and survived there until the end of the war. It
requires further investigation, therefore, in order to find out if all the soldiers
who committed the massacre on Radjik beach, were indeed killed in the
Battle of Guadalcanal.[11]
(4) Review of Argument on the Issue of the Rape
of the Australian Nurses on Banka Island
In April 2019, the book Angels of Mercy: Far West Far East by
Lynette Silver was published.[12] The
book mainly focuses on the activities of two different Australian nurses in the
1930s and ’40s Yet, in the last 15 pages of this book, the author discusses the
possibility of the rape of 22 nurses on Radjik beach before being massacred, and
the sexual exploitation of other Australian nurses captured on Banka Island as
the so-called “comfort women” (military sex slaves) by the Japanese forces. It
seems that the author is an amateur historian and therefore does not provide
detailed and precise information on various archival and other sources she uses.
In addition, she makes use of many anecdotal stories without providing concrete
evidence to support them. (In fact, she does not provide any footnotes on
sources of information at all throughout the book.) Therefore, the information
provided in this book needs to be regarded with care. Nonetheless, some of the
stories are quite helpful for re-examining the fate of the Australian nurses on
Banka Island.
In this book, Silver
criticizes my writing, saying that without being unaware of “various male
eyewitnesses,” I claimed the possibility that the nurses on Radjik beach were
raped.[13] Although
she uses the term “various,” she cites only two “eyewitness” accounts in her
book. One of them is a statement made by Stoker Lloyd, who was one of three
English men who escaped into the seawater just before the second group of men
were massacred by the Japanese on Radjik beach. It seems that two other men were
shot and died in the seawater. Hiding behind the rocks for a few days, Lloyd
walked back along the beach “to see if any of the others had survived.” He
stated that “all the male bodies had been piled on top of one another in one
big heap. Then I went to further along and found the bodies of the Australian
nurses and other women. They lay at intervals of a few yards – in different
positions and in various stages of undress. They had been shot and then
bayoneted.” Lloyd eventually walked to Muntok and gave himself up to the
Japanese, concealing that he was a survivor of the massacre on Radjik beach.
Silver provides no information concerning
the source of this statement of Lloyd. It was actually cited by Sir John Smyth
in his book, The Will to Live: The Story of Dame Margot Turner D.B.E.,
R.C.C. (Ulverscroft, 1986).[14]
Sir John Smyth served as Commander of 17th Indian Infantry Division
during the war. Although Lloyd’s
statement strongly implies the possibility of the rape of the Australian nurses
by the Japanese, it cannot be called an “eyewitness” account of the incident.
Strictly speaking, it is circumstantial evidence.
The other “eyewitness” account Silver
introduces in her book is a statement made by a Japanese soldier by the name of
Tanemura Kiyoshi (or Hiyoshi), a member of Orita Unit. Silver explains that
Tanemura’s statement was among a large number of private documents produced by
James Godwin. Godwin was a New Zealander, who was a POW of the Japanese during
the war, and became a Japanese war crimes investigator of the Australian Army
in Tokyo after the war. After Godwin passed away in 1995, these private
documents were given to an Australian writer, James MacKay. Silver wrote the
following passages in her book relying on MacKay’s book, although yet again she
failed to mention the title of MacKay’s book, Betrayal of High Places
(Lane Publisher, 1996).[15]
When
MacKay’s book was published, it included an “unofficial” account of Tanemura’s
interrogation, conducted by Godwin …
Tanemura,
who had not fully recovered from a malaria attack, claimed that he had obtained
permission from Sergeant Furakawa (believed to be Sergeant Fukagawa Shintaro)
to rest in the shade of some trees. As he lay there, he heard screams and was
told that some officers and NCOs were “pleasuring themselves” (raping) the
nurses and that it would soon be the platoon’s turn. Claiming that he took no
part in the proceedings, he went on to say that he had heard that nurses were
herded down to the beach and ostensibly forced to bathe, whereupon a
machine-gun had opened fire. … but there is one detail mentioned by Tanemura
that seems to be rather odd—his assertion that “pleasuring” took place in the
house of a nearby village. As the nearest village, Mendjelang, was about four kilometers
away, it has been suggested that this account, if true, could refer to another
group of men and nurses.[16]
Indeed, Tanemura’s statement cannot be treated as that of an
“eyewitness” either. Yet, Silver claims that “a villager, interviewed in 2018,
stated that there were huts near the beach, used by village people when tending
their gardens,” implying that one of those huts might have been used as a place
of criminal conduct. However, it seems implausible that 22 nurses were cast
into a small hut and raped. Even if it was true, it should still be treated as circumstantial evidence, for Tanemura did not really see the acts
of sexual violence that his fellow soldiers were supposed to have committed.
However,
Silver’s reference to Barbara Angel’s close examination of the uniform that Bullwinkel was wearing at
the time the nurses were machine-gunned is indeed worth being seriously considered.
Although, here again, Silver failed to name the title of the book written by Barbara Angel, it is A Woman’s War: The Exceptional Life Wilma Oram Young AM (New Holland Publishers,
2003).[17] Considering
the bullet holes made in Bullwinkel’s uniform, according to Barbara Angel, the
bullet would have entered her body “just below the left kidney, and would have
then passed through the stomach cavity.” The exit hole was “almost in the
center of the bodice.” In other words, she would have been seriously injured
and could not have survived without receiving proper medical treatment
immediately.
This is clear to any visitor to the Australian
War Memorial (AWM), because her uniform is now one of the permanent exhibits in
the AWM. Yet, Bullwinkel claimed that her wound on the left side of her waist was
less serious and healed quickly. Angel also noticed that two of seven buttons
of the uniform were missing. This indicates that Bullwinkel’s uniform “bodice
was ripped open so forcefully that the buttons were torn off and lost,” and she
“had entered the water with her bodice undone and open to the waist.” In other
words, the condition of Bullwinkel’s uniform is a convincing piece of circumstantial evidence to support the plausibility that the nurses including
Bullwinkel were raped before being forced to walk into the water.[18]
The most convincing circumstantial evidence that has so far become available is a press
report written by Tess Lawrence. That report: “Vivian Bullwinkel, the
Bangka Island massacre and the guilt of the survivor” was published in Independent
Australia (February 19, 2017), 17 years after the death of Bullwinkel.
Lawrence conducted a number of interviews with Bullwinkel over many years, and based
on one of those interviews, Lawrence wrote as follows:
She [Bullwinkel] told me in
confidence about two things she was keeping secret for the time being—but said
there would be a time when she would speak publicly about both.
The first matter was that she
confirmed the ill-kept secret that most “of us”—meaning she and the women who
had been gunned down—had been “violated” by the Japanese soldiers beforehand.
The second matter related to this
violation and it more than irked her. It caused her great mental and emotional
anguish and distress.
She wanted to put this in her
statement before the war crimes tribunal but was ordered not to by the
Australian Government.
This is yet another outrageous
example of the merging of political and military expediency concerning rape as
a weapon of war and rape as the recreational right of militia, sanctioned by
nation states and warmongers.
Japan’s longstanding denials and
reluctance to concede the wholesale rape of prisoners of war and even the
existence of so-called “comfort women” has, in fact, been further nurtured
through the decades by the reluctance of countries, including Australia, to
back up calls for justice and to hold Japan’s Government to account.[19]
Returning to Australia in September 1945, Bullwinkel reported to the Australian
Army authorities and explained her ordeals as a POW including the incident of
rape and massacre on Banka Island. Yet, her statement concerning the rape on
Radjik beach was deleted from the official report, and she was instructed by
her senior officers not to say anything about the rape issue. In 1946, she was summoned
to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal to testify to the massacre on Banka Island.
However, as she was ordered, she did not mention anything about the rape issue
at all in the court room.[20]
 |
Vivian Bullwinkel at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal
|
(5) The Gap Between the Bereaved Families and the Australian War
Memorial (AWM) Concerning the Official Acknowledgment of Rape
When Silver’s book, published in 2019, was widely reported by the
media, the issue of the rape of the nurses on Radjik beach suddenly became hot
news in Australia. Consequently, many members of the bereaved families were
shocked by the news. Although their initial reaction to that unpleasant
revelation had been that “it was out of respect for the people who didn’t want
to know their [relatives] have been raped,”[21]
they now realized that stories they had been told might have been sanitized for
eight decades, and that the truth should be finally known. It seems that many
relatives are now requesting the AWM to officially acknowledge the historical
fact by changing the way in which the AWM documents the event on its website and
in its gallery. However, according to the AWM Director, Matt Anderson, the AWM “does
not currently have records that provide a clear picture of what took place.” Accordingly,
the official account of the Banka Island massacre remains as it is—the nurses
were forced to march into the sea and were killed, being machine-gunned from behind;
yet they were not sexually assaulted.
Why is the AWM reluctant to admit even the
feasibility of the rape of the Australian nurses, if not the indisputable
historical fact? A number of reasons can be assumed including “protection of
the honor of the victims,” but the most persuasive motive seems to be preservation
of the patriotic myth that the military nurses are pure and caring women
with strong loyalty to their nation, devoting themselves to attending the sick and
wounded soldiers in the front line. In other words, in order to preserve this
attractive myth, an abominable historical fact such as “gang rape” should not
be officially admitted. For men, in particular military leaders, politicians
and bureaucrats, it is regarded a wise policy to defend and conserve this sacred
and nationalistic myth. It should be noted that the past and present directors
of the AWM are all male—being retired high-ranking military officers, or politicians,
or bureaucrats.
For
men in general, the power over female members of their own nation or racial
group by the enemy force is emblematic of invasion of their nation or group by
the foreign enemy. Therefore, sexual exploitation of women of an invaded nation
by the conquering force affects the psyche of a people, in particular men, of
that nation; it becomes de-masculinized, feminized and subjugated. In order to
avoid such humiliation, all women of their nation must be “pure and innocent”
and could not be victims of rape. In other words, the bodies of women of their
own racial group should not be penetrated by foreigners—an act symbolizing the
invasion and deprivation of the motherland.[22]
The AWM’s
reaction to the new revelation of the rape of the Austrian nurses on Banka
Island seems to be deeply rooted in such nationalistic and male chauvinistic
ideas.
A similar phenomenon can be found in the Japanese attitude toward the
issue of sexual exploitation of Japanese women by the invading Russian forces
in the final stage of the Asia-Pacific War. On August 9, 1945, five days before
the official surrender of Japan, a staggering 1.5 million Soviet troops began advancing
toward a five-thousand-kilometer partition between the southern border of the Mongolian
People’s Republic and the Soviet border at Sakhalin, through many miles of
coastal areas. Japan’s Kwantung Army in Manchukuo deserted all the front lines,
and consequently, all of a sudden, Manchukuo collapsed. Under the bombardment
of Soviet forces, women, children and old people who were left behind
frantically ran around from place to place. Many became victims of atrocities
committed by Soviet soldiers —looting, violence, sexual assault and killing.
Eventually 176,000 of 1.55 million Japanese residents in Manchukuo died. In order
to protect themselves against Russian military violence, many Japanese farming
villages “voluntarily” provided young women as “comfort women” to Russian
troops.
Until recently, this tragic
historical fact has been long excluded from Japan’s official history of the
war. It was in 2017 that one of the very few living victims was finally allowed
to publicly testify in the Memorial Museum for
Agricultural Emigrants to Manchuria in Nagano Prefecture in Japan. The
statement acknowledging this sexual exploitation was clearly engraved on the
cenotaph for the victims in Manchukuo erected in the town of Shirakawa in Gifu
Prefecture, Japan.[23]
(6) Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence Committed Against the
Australian Nurses in Detention Camps
Thirty-two Australian Army nurses who reached various beaches of Banka
Island, were moved into the detention camp set up in the middle of the town of
Muntok. Here, there were many civilian women and children who had also managed
to survive the Japanese bombing and get to the island. From then, they had to
endure living in the harsh conditions of the camp for three and a half years
until the end of August 1945. Food rations were extremely meager, basically small
amounts of rice and vegetables provided two times a day, at noon and 4:00 p.m. Hardly
any medicine was available, and the living conditions of the houses made of
bamboo and palm leaves were unhealthy and unsanitary. It was not surprising,
therefore, that many detainees suffered from various sickness caused by malnutrition
on top of tropical diseases such as malaria and dysentery.
They were initially detained
in Muntok for about one month. In the middle of March 1942, however, they were
moved to the former Dutch settlement of Bukit Besar, a suburb of Palembang in southern
Sumatra, and then to a different camp which had been a slum area in Palembang.
There they were held for two and a half years until September 1944, when they
were moved back to Muntok and detained until March 1945. Then they were taken
to Belau Camp on a remote mountainside in southern
Sumatra, to a place called Loebok Linggau, far away from any major town, and
detained there until the end of the war. Four nurses died during the second
internment in Muntok, and four more nurses died at Belau Camp, all from various
illnesses caused by malnutrition or tropical diseases. One of those nurses,
Pearl Mittelheuser, died on August 18, 1945, three days after the Japanese
surrender. Eventually 24 of 32 nurses survived the three-and-a-half-year ordeal.[24]
 |
One of the nurses who returned to Australia and was hospitalized after the war
|
One of the serious problems that nurses constantly
confronted apart from food shortage was sexual harassment committed by the
Japanese soldiers. The nurses had difficulty protecting their privacy because
the camp houses were poorly made of bamboo and palm leaves. The
most degrading experience for the women was using the toilet facilities, which
consisted of nothing but a concrete pit in the open, around which Japanese
guards would suddenly appear and stare and laugh at the women. At night the
Japanese guards wandered around the camp and prevented sleep by bashing the
women’s legs with their torches. Because of the danger of being raped by the
guards, they had to take turns to be awake during the night to warn their
inmates in case the guards intruded into the houses. Throughout their long detention
period, they were always being treated as sexual objects.[25]
Shortly after they were moved to Bukit Besar near Palembang, the Japanese tried to recruit some nurses as
“comfort women” working at the Japanese officers’ club, in other words, the “comfort
station” for the officers. Yet, according to the testimonies given by
some surviving nurses after the war, they managed to refuse the repeated and persistent demands
of the Japanese. At the time I was writing the book Hidden Horrors in the
mid-1990s, there were hardly any other information sources on this issue.
Accordingly, I wrote that none of the nurses became “comfort women” for the
Japanese officers, although I was skeptical about the nurses’ testimonies at
that time.[26]
However, according to Ian Shaw who wrote the
book On Radji Beach: The Story of the Australian
Nurses after the Fall of Singapore (Macmillan Australia,
2012), four women who were relatively senior among the nurses “volunteered” to
become “comfort women” in order to protect younger nurses. The source of this
information was one of the 24 surviving nurses, who was in hospital with
terminal breast cancer in the mid-1990s. Neither her name nor the location of
the hospital is revealed in the book. According to Shaw, a postgraduate student
had been conducting interviews with this former nurse to write her thesis. One
day, the woman said to this postgraduate student that she wanted to tell the
truth about what had happened at the Japanese officers’ club in Palembang while
she was still alive.
The following is what she told the
postgraduate student. Shortly after the opening of the officers’ club, the
Japanese camp commandant had called for the two senior nurses and told them:
No
rations would be issued to either of the Australian houses until they had
supplied four hostesses to the club. When the Australians mentioned the Dutch
Red Cross, his response was to laugh and to ask them precisely what the Red
Cross was in a position to do. If there were a Dutch Red Cross, the commandant
observed, they were now a very long way away and besides, compared to the
Imperial Japanese Army, exactly what kind of power did the Red Cross wield? The
choice they had was a simple one, he continued: provide the hostesses or starve
to death.
Back
at one of the Australians’ houses, a meeting of all the nurses was held. The
Japanese demand was explained to them and the meeting was thrown open to
suggestions and discussion. No one present doubted that the Japanese were
perfectly capable of acts of cruelty—Radji beach was too recent—and the senior
nurses were convinced that the Japanese commandant was serious and would carry
out the threats he had delivered if his demands were not met. There was a lot
of discussion and a decision was eventually taken: the Australian nurses would
provide four hostesses for the club, knowing those hostesses would be required to provide
sexual services for the Japanese officers. However, the nurses provided would
not be the young women already identified by the Japanese but four volunteer
nurses, older women who said they were prepared to work at the club because
they knew their profession was their life, and they would probably never marry
or raise a family.
A
Bible was produced and all nurses present swore an oath upon it. No one would
ever reveal the names of the four nurses who volunteered to become comfort
women to save their sisters from that fate. This decision was conveyed to the
Japanese and for several weeks, four Australian nurses worked as hostesses at
the officers’ club.[27]
According to Ellen Hannah, one of the senior nurses, the Japanese camp
commandant had threatened: “If you don’t [supply four nurses], I will take
every child out of the camp and I will starve them until you do.” In 1981, in an
interview conducted by Australian author Amy McGrath, Hannah confessed that she
was one of the four who “volunteered,” but she claimed that she and the other three
nurses somehow managed to escape becoming “comfort women.” Clearly Hannah’s statement
does not tally with the abovementioned statement by the dying former nurse that
“for several weeks, four Australian nurses worked as hostesses at the officers’
club.”[28]
(7) War, Rape, and Patriarchy
It is clear from the
preceding accounts that mass rape, and rape by enforced prostitution, were
practiced by forces of many nations and were not unique to the Japanese forces
of the Asia-Pacific War. Although it is necessary for Japanese to critically examine
the conduct of the Japanese military during World War II—especially given the
huge scale of the “comfort women” operation and the massive number of women who
suffered as a result of it—it is also necessary to examine the widespread
occurrence of rape in wartime and the general features of this phenomenon.
Why do soldiers rape? Further, why
does mass rape routinely occur in large-scale military campaigns? Serious
analysis of the phenomenon of military mass rape is rare, yet there is ample
documentary evidence of it, both from World War II and from conflicts that have
occurred since. In the early stages of the Vietnam War, while the Algerians
were battling for independence, the French Army brought Algerian women into the
battle zone and forced them to work as prostitutes.[29] U.S.
forces in Vietnam also established military brothels inside a number of their
camps.[30]
Yet this did not prevent the rape of large numbers of Vietnamese women, most
hideously in incidents such as the My Lai massacre.[31] In the
Balkans conflict in 1993, Serbian soldiers used mass rape as a terror tactic in
their campaign of “ethnic cleansing.” It is estimated that between 30,000 and
50,000 Muslim women were raped and many of them subsequently murdered in this
war.[32]
It is perfectly understandable that
soldiers should want to have sex, if only as a temporary escape from the
horrors they encounter daily. That such a respite is positive is reflected in
the following comment by a Vietnam veteran:
A man and a woman holding
each other tight for one moment, finding in sex some escape from the terrible
reality of the war. The intensity that war brings to sex, the “let us love now
because there may be no tomorrow,” is based on death. No matter what our weapons
on the battlefield, love is finally our only weapon against death. Sex is the
weapon of life, the shooting sperms sent like an army of guerrillas to
penetrate the egg’s defences—the only victory that really matters. Sex is a
grappling hook that pulls you out, ends your isolation, makes you one with life
again.[33]
However, it must be
remembered that consensual sex and rape are dramatically different undertakings
(even if the boundary is blurred in some people’s accounts of their actions),
and it would be very wide of the mark to account for an act of rape as a
distorted outlet for an individual’s sex drive. Wartime rape is a collective
act on a number of levels. As another returned soldier from Vietnam put it,
“They only do it when there are a lot of guys around. You know, it makes them
feel good. They show each other what they can do—‘I can do it,’ you know. They
won’t do it by themselves.”[34]
Indeed, the majority of rapes in war
are gang rapes. They serve as a sharing of the spoils of war and a strengthening
of the exclusively male bonds among soldiers. Fierce combat forms strong and
intimate links among soldiers, and gang rape is both a by-product of this and a
means by which such bonds are maintained in noncombat situations. There is also
strong psychological pressure on soldiers to be brave and to be prepared for
immediate physical combat, and this is especially so in the presence of other
soldiers. The need to dominate the “other,” the enemy, is imperative in battle
with other men. In a noncombat situation women readily become the “other” and
the target of the desire for domination by groups of tightly bonded men. The
violation of the bodies of women becomes the means by which such a sense of
domination is affirmed and reaffirmed. In an extreme situation such as war, in
which the killing of the enemy is regarded as an act worthy of praise, the
moral basis for the condemnation of crimes such as rape falls away, and the
moral codes adhered to by soldiers in peacetime lose their validity.[35]
The internal power relations of
armies work on a strict class system, and enlisted soldiers are always subject
to the orders of officers. This creates a contradiction whereby soldiers whose
principal task is to dominate and subjugate the enemy must subordinate themselves
to the unquestionable authority of their officers. This contradiction is
intensified in the battlefield where, for the individual soldier, the
imperative to dominate the enemy is literally a matter of life or death, and
the need for the officer class to dominate and have unquestioned authority over
groups of soldiers becomes strategically vital. Such a contradiction creates
both a high degree of tension and a context in which violence is the standard way
to release tension. Consequently the rape of women perceived as the “enemy” or
“belonging to the enemy” becomes a frequently used form of release—a
reprehensible behavior, escaping the disciplinary matrix, that is really the
underbelly of the disciplinary system. Incidents in which women are raped in front
of their families—especially in front of their fathers, husbands, or
brothers—are common because the violence enacted on the women also serves to
humiliate enemy men and to reinforce their subjection to the occupying force.
The more absolute the relation of domination between officers and enlisted men
within an army, the more heightened is the contradiction between their
relations to the subjugated enemy and their situation within their own force.
Consequently their behavior toward the enemy—soldiers, male civilians, and
women—becomes more violent. This is one explanation for the comparatively large
number of rapes committed by the Japanese and German armies in World War II.
Rape in war has a number of
different effects. During periods of heavy fighting, it serves to perpetuate
and intensify the aggressiveness of soldiers. After victory or in noncombat
periods, it serves to maintain the sense of dominance and victory and is often
viewed by soldiers as the legitimate spoils of war. The Japanese army is not the
only force to have used or condoned rape as a device for maintaining the group
aggressiveness of soldiers. In the Falklands War of 1982, British soldiers
being transported to the war zone by ship were shown violent pornographic films
as a way of stimulating their aggressiveness prior to battle. As seen in the
Bosnian conflict, rape can be employed on the front line as one of a range of
strategies. War and rape are fundamentally related. It is foolish to imagine
that the provision of large numbers of involuntary prostitutes (which is itself
a form of rape) could prevent the mass or gang rape that is a general feature
of modern war.
Moreover, soldiers in battle cannot
avoid a further—and irresolvable—contradiction. War is usually presented as an
exclusively male activity, a masculine bonding ritual, an activity in which
women have no place.[36]
Yet this is a fantasy of war. The reality is that war and battles frequently
occur in areas occupied by civilians and that women are usually present as
civilians near the front line. War is presented as an activity that demands
physical strength and toughness and is seen as an occasion for the celebration
of these attributes as exclusively masculine virtues. Therefore the very
existence of military forces is regarded as a living symbol of masculine
dominance over the “weaker” sex. In such a patriarchal ideology, it is strongly
believed that a woman’s place is on the home front and not in battle. This
ideology demands that women be absent from battle, but its maintenance also
requires that such dominance be repeatedly reinforced, especially when women
are in fact present in the male domain of the battlefield, either as implicated
civilians or as military nurses. Therefore women must be both present and
absent at the same time. War as a masculine activity is a continuing attempt to
resolve such a contradiction, and yet its very existence is founded on this
contradiction. The final recourse in the face of such a contradiction is to
eliminate women altogether—hence the frequency with which women are massacred
after being raped.
Historically, military nurses have
been major victims of such violence, not only because they are in close
proximity to the front line but also because their military status—signified
most graphically by their presence in uniform—marks them as boundary-crossers:
women who are partially but not fully integrated into a male activity. This
contradiction becomes particularly apparent and acute in noncombat periods or
in periods after a military victory. This may explain the massacre of the
nurses on Banka Island, which can be seen as an attempt by Japanese soldiers to
resolve the contradiction of being brought face to face with women in uniform.
It may also be the case that nurses were regarded by the victors as spoils of
war, much more than would be the case with civilian women. Nurses may have been
regarded as women who had belonged to the army of their nationality but who now
belonged to the victors—hence the assumption on the part of the Japanese
officers that such women would be easily persuaded to become prostitutes. This
can also explain the attitude of the British officer in Singapore who expressed
the view that nurses would be better off being shot by soldiers of their own
nationality if the only alternative was to fall into the hands of the Japanese.
Nowadays nurses are not the only
women in uniform. The armed forces of many countries recruit women into all
branches of the military and claim they are the equals of their male comrades.
One might think that this development would undermine the kind of male society
I have described and consequently would work against those social forces that
produce wartime rapists. That may indeed be the case. But strongly in evidence
is a backlash from many military men against what they perceive as an invasion
of their domain by women. Many men want to maintain all-male workplaces, and
they often respond to the “threat” of women being present by sexual harassment
of those women. This seems to be a particularly common phenomenon in the
military, and the kinds of sexual harassment that occur seem to be more extreme
than in other workplaces. There have been many rape cases reported in the armed
forces of a number of countries in recent times.[37]
War is an inherently patriarchal
activity, and rape is the most extreme expression of the patriarchal drive
toward dominance of the “other.” In peacetime, such tendencies are held in
check by the rule of law and internalized moral codes. In war, the rule of law
is often absent, internalized moral codes disintegrate, and these normal checks
on such activities are largely replaced by incentives. Rape is unique to human
beings; it does not form part of animal behavior. Despite the fact that it is
often characterized as an “animal” activity, rape is profoundly cultural and
patriarchal. As Virginia Woolf indicated in her treatise Three Guineas
(1938), war is not just a military problem but is a problem created by a
male-dominated society, and therefore war is closely related to other
traditionally male activities such as law and organized religion.[38]
To prevent war requires first destroying the male-dominated culture that
creates war and then creating a new culture that ensures real equality between
men and women. The same could be said of rape in war.
The 11 (male) judges at the Tokyo
War Crimes Tribunal who heard the cases of mass rapes by Japanese soldiers
probably never thought that the crimes they were investigating were closely
related to their own status in the preeminently patriarchal world of the law.
Just as Freud failed to see male sexuality as a weapon against women,[39]
the judges of the tribunal failed to see these crimes committed by Japanese
forces as a general characteristic of patriarchy.
(8) Sexual Violence During the Armed Conflicts and the #MeToo
Movement
It is said that the “Me Too” movement against sexual abuse and sexual
harassment was initiated by an African American, Tarana Burke, in 2006 in the
U.S. But from 2017, it suddenly became a strong social movement through social networking
services in the U.S. and in many nations of the world, using the recognizable signature
#MeToo. Thanks to this worldwide social movement, many women victims became
able to openly raise their voices against sexual violence. This movement can be
seen as a kind of cultural revolution which is now rapidly breaking and changing
the male-dominated patriarchal culture.
The civil movement demanding
justice for the victims of Japan’s military sex slavery (the so-called “comfort
women” system which operated during the Asia-Pacific War) is indeed an early
model for the #MeToo movement, which began in 1991, 15 years before Tarana Burke
took her action. This is because the movement began when one of the Korean
victims, Kim Hak-sun (1924–1997) sought an official apology and compensation
from the Japanese government on August 14, 1991. Indeed, Kim was the first
person who came out, revealing that she was a victim. Her action persuaded many
other victims not only in Korea but also from many parts of the Asia-Pacific
region such as China, the Philippines, Indonesia, East Timor, and Australia to
come forward to join her action.[40]
Jun Ruff O’Herne (1923–2019),
who migrated to Australia in 1960, was one of many Dutch women victims in the
Dutch East Indies, what is now Indonesia. She was also inspired by the actions
of Kim Hak-sun and a few other Korean victims who followed Kim, and decided to
speak out in 1992. Her two daughters and granddaughter strongly supported her tenacious
struggle for
the plight of the comfort women and for the protection of women in war until
her death in 2019.[41]
In
Japan, Matsui Yayori (1934–2002), journalist and feminist activist, set up a
civil group called “Japan Network on War and Military Violence Against Women”
in 1998 in order to support many former comfort women who came out from various
parts of the Asia-Pacific. In 2000, she organized a people’s tribunal called “the Women’s International War
Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery” in Tokyo to condemn Japan’s
wartime criminal conducts committed against numerous women and demanded the
Japanese government to offer official apologies and proper compensations.[42]
Similarly, victims of sexual
violence are able to raise their voices when they have the popular support of the
#MeToo movement. Japan’s civil movement of supporting the victims of Japan’s
military sexual slavery clearly verifies this fact. At the same time this
movement has considerably improved Japanese women’s awareness (and to some
extent men’s awareness) of sexual violence, not only military violence but also
sexual violence in peacetime including domestic violence. In this sense, this
ongoing movement additionally has a dimension of social and cultural reformation.
Sadly,
Vivian Bullwinkel did
not have supporters to assist and encourage her to reveal herself as a victim
of military sexual violence. This fact is still closely related to the present
situation of causing friction between some surviving families and the AWM. Yet, the recent sudden
popular resurge of attention to this historical rape issue is undoubtedly
interrelated with the current rapid upsurge of the #MeToo movement in Australia, in
particular continuing revelations of sexual harassment in the world of legal
professions and politicians. It seems almost certain, partly because of this
strong popular movement, that relatives of the victims of the rape and massacre
on Banka Island strongly feel that they must voice their intention to seek
justice on behalf of the nurses.
However, it is exactly because of this dimension of social and
cultural reformation assumed by the movement to support victims of Japan’s
military sexual slavery, that many Japanese men, in particular conservative
politicians, have long regarded and still deem the movement to be an influential
and defiant challenger of their patriarchal culture. The political campaign of
“comfort women-bashing”—labeling the victims as “prostitutes” and “liars”—has
been vigorously promoted in Japan by jingoistic politicians such as former
prime minister Abe Shinzō for the last few decades, manipulating media reports and smearing images
of the victims and their supporters. It can be said that such odious actions
are nothing but clear evidence of how desperately they feel that they must
protect and maintain Japan’s traditional patriarchal culture.
Considering the current situation
in which the number of surviving victims of Japan’s military sexual slavery is
rapidly diminishing, we need to develop new strategies for pursuing Japan’s
responsibility not only for the victims of the military sexual slavery but for all
the victims of sexual violence committed by Japanese troops during the war,
closely collaborating with the #MeToo movement. In other words, we need to expand
the #MeToo
movement into one that engages not only in current problems but also in historical
issues, demanding justice for all the victims including those in the past. This
is because, as Theodor Adorno said, “Above all, enlightenment about what has happened
must work against a forgetfulness that all too easily turns up together with
the justification of what has been forgotten.”
[1] Regarding
the movement of the Orita Unit to Banka Island, see Japan Center for Asian
Historical Records Collections:
C14110652500.c1228300003.nansei-malayjava-1611-01.pdf. Concerning the information on sexual violence
committed by the Orita Unit in Hong Kong, see Australian
National Archives (ANA) Collection, MP741/1, 336/1/1976, “Report Prepared by
the British Land Forces, Hong Kong”; ANA Collection Ref No.1876A prepared by HQ
Land Forces, Hong Kong; Catherine Kenny, Captives: Australian Army Nurses in
Japanese Prison Camps (University of Queensland Press, 1989), p.21.
[2] Hank
Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon (Australian Broadcasting
Corporation, 1985), p.71.
[3] ANA
Collection, MP742/1, 336/1/1976-152, and MP742/1, 336/1/1976.
[4] ‘The
Ships: the
Palembang and Muntok Internees of World War 2’ on the website of the Muntok
Memorial Peace Museum < https://muntokpeacemuseum.org/?page_id=27 >
[6] ANA
Collection, MP742/1, 336/1/1976 (Testimony of Major W.A. Tebutt); Nelson, op.
cit., p.74.
[7] International
Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) (Tokyo, 1946), p.13, pp.454–457
(Testimony of Vivian
Bullwinkel).
[8] Interview
with Vivian Bullwinkel in Survival, Tape 3 (Social History Unit, Australian
Broadcasting Corporation); and Nelson, op. cit., pp.74–75.
[9] H.
Nelson, op. cit., p.76.
[10] Yuki
Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Second
edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) p.97.
[11] ANA
Collection, MP742/1, 336/1/1976, No.570 Memo prepared by Australian Mission in
Japan.
[12] Lynette Silver, Angels of Mercy: Far West
Far East (Sally Milner Publishing, 2019).
[14] John Smyth, The Will to Live: The Story of
Dame Margot Turner D.B.E., R.C.C. (Ulverscroft, 1986) pp.59–60.
[15] James MacKay, Betrayal
of High Places (Lane Publisher, 1996).
[16] L. Silver, op. cit.,
pp.355–356.
[17] Barbara Angel, A Woman’s War: The
Exceptional Life Wilma Oram Young AM (New Holland Publishers, 2003).
[18] L.
Silver, op. cit., pp.360–362.
[19] Tess Lawrence, ‘Vivian
Bullwinkel, the Bangka Island massacre and the guilt of the survivor’ published
in Independent Australia (19 February 2017). < https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/vivian-bullwinkel-the-bangka-island-massacre-and-the-guilt-of-the-survivor,10040 >
[20] Ibid.;
IMTFE, p.13, pp.454–457 (Testimony of Vivian Bullwinkel).
[21] Canberra Times, ‘What
Vivian Bullwinkel wanted: Calls to change official WWII Bangka massacre
account’ April 26, 2021.
<https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7220425/what-vivian-bullwinkel-wanted-calls-to-change-official-wwii-bangka-massacre-account/
>
[22] Yuki
Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World
War II and the US Occupation (Routledge, 2002) p.180.
[23] Sawachi
Hisae, 14 sai: Manshu Kaitaku Mura kara no Kikan (Shuei-sha, Tokyo
2015); Sato Masaru, ‘I Learned about the Wretchedness of War: Women
Settlers’ ‘Sexual Entertainment’ of Soviet Red Army Troops in Postwar
Manchuria’ in Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus, Vol. 15, Issue 18, No.3
(September 2017) < https://apjjf.org/2017/18/Masaru.html >; Hirai Miho,
‘Soren Hei no “Sei-settai” o Meijirareta Otome-tachi: 70 nen-go no Kokuhaku’ in
Gendai Bisinesu, July 7, 2019.
[24] Interview
with Vivian Bullwinkel in Survival, Tape 3; C. Kenny, op. cit., p.65; ‘The
Australian Army Nursing Sisters: the Palembang and Muntok Internees of World
War 2’ on the website of the Muntok Memorial Peace Museum <https://muntokpeacemuseum.org/?page_id=1054
>
[25] ANA
Collection, Statement made by VX39347 Sister James, N. and others.
[26] Yuki
Tanaka, Hidden Horrors, pp.98–101. Concerning the life of women and
children of the Allied nations including Australian nurses detained in the
Japanese camps in Muntok and Sumatra, the feature film Paradise Road, produced in 1997, vividly
shows how they tried to avoid the sexual harassment and physical abuse by the
Japanese, and how they survived starvation and mental problems through their
mutual support and communal spirit.
[27] Ian
Shaw, Radji Beach: The Story of the Australian
Nurses after the Fall of Singapore (Macmillan Australia,
2012), Kindle version 4420-4440.
[28] Interview
with Capt. Mavis Hannah, Interviewed by Rr. Amy McGrath, 13 July 1981 for the
Oral History Program of the National Library of Australia, Tape No.TRC 1087/1.
[29] Bernard Fall, Street
Without Joy (Schocken,
1972) pp.132–134
[30] Susan Brownmiller, Against
Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Secker
and Warburg, 1975), pp.94–95.
[31] For details of rape and
massacre in My Lai, see Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Four Hours in My Lai:
A War Crime and Its Aftermath (Viking,
1992), especially Chapter 4.
[32] For details of rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina War, see Beverly Allen, Rape Warfare: The Hidden Genocide in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
1996); Alexander Stiglmayer ed., Mass
Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina (University of Nebraska
Press, Lincoln, 1994).
[33] W. Broyles Jr., “Why Men
Love War,” in Walter Capps (ed.), The Vietnam Reader (Routledge, 1991), p.79.
[34] S. Brownmiller, op.
cit., p.107.
[36] Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of
Women’s Lives (Pluto Press, 1983) p.15.
[37] A number of cases of
rape and sexual harassment within the military have been reported in Australia.
In the U.S., too, there have been reports of this phenomenon, which increased
noticeably during and after the Gulf War. For example, at a U.S. Navy
convention held at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in September 1991 which
celebrated the Gulf War victory, 90 sexual assaults were reported. The victims
in 83 cases were women, either female officers or wives who accompanied their
husbands to the convention. About five percent of 4,000 participants were
female naval officers. Some male officers wore T-shirts with “Women Are
Property” printed on the back and “He-Man Women Haters’ Club” printed on the
front. For details of sexual harassment at this convention, see Tailhook
Report: The Official Inquiry into the Events of Tailhook 1991 (St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
[38] Virginia Woolf, “A
Room of One’s Own” and “Three Guineas” (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp.151–414.
[39] S. Brownmiller, op.
cit.,p.11.
[40] Yuki
Tanaka, ‘In Memory of Jan Ruff-O’Hern’ in Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus,
Vol. 17, Issue 19, No.1 (October 2017) < https://apjjf.org/2019/19/Tanaka.html
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