Vivian Bullwinkle survived one of the most brutal massacres in Australian history. On 16th February 1942, along with 22 other unarmed women, she was told to wade into the water on Radji Beach in modern Indonesia and was then fired on with a machine gun by Japanese soldiers. Vivian was a nurse with the Australian army stationed in Singapore and Malaya when the Japanese army invaded the Malay peninsula, and she was on one of the final boats to evacuate Singapore. She managed to survive the sinking of her ship, the brutal massacre and then 3 and a half years as a POW. Her story is one of bravery and determination.
Sources/Further reading:
Kieza, Grantlee: Sister Viv
Banks, Georgina - Back to Bangka, Searching For the Truth About A Wartime Massacre
Burgess, Colin - Sisters in Captivity
Australian War Memorial https://www.awm.gov.au/vyner-brooke-and-banka-island
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivian_Bullwinkel
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