Rabaul 1939

Rabaul is situated within a vast, active volcanic caldera
and boasts the most beautiful harbour in the islands.

Personal  Narrative

An Australian Civilian Nurse

The story begins in the late thirties when Alice M Bowman was posted to the Department of Health in Rabaul. At that time Rabaul was the administrative centre of the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea; also at that time, Rabaul was peaceful and secure.

In far away Japan in the late thirties militarist extremists were planning the strategy of the Pacific War. On the 7th December 1941 the Japanese launched massive attacks in Malaya and Thailand, coinciding that same day with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour. America immediately declared war on Japan, followed by Australia and the United Kingdom.

Evacuation of all women and children from New Guinea was compulsory, although the Administration and Missionary nurses were allowed to remain if they wished. Honouring their profession, Bowie (as Alice M Bowman preferred to be known) and her six colleagues from Namanula Hospital elected to stay; their duty clearly lay with the task ahead. Four Methodist Missionary nurses also chose to remain.

Territories in the South-West Pacific Area fell to the Japanese in quick succession. After Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941, Rabaul was next to fall on the 23rd January 1942. On the 14th February the impregnable fortress of Singapore, so heavily fortified, surrendered to the Japanese — a shattering blow to Australia. Three weeks earlier the devastating defeat of the all Australian garrison at Rabaul had passed, almost, without notice.

Defending Rabaul

A place of honour in history was hard won by a token force of Australian units entrusted with the defence of Australian protected soil. Their encounter at Rabaul, against the then invincible Japanese, was the first in the New Guinea campaign. On 12th December 1941, when a Japanese invasion was obvious it had been decreed, in Australia, that no strengthening support of the battalion would be forthcoming; all the fine young men of this small garrison were to be regarded as hostages to fortune. America, at this time, was busy establishing its bases further east in the Pacific and could not be called on for support in Rabaul in the event of an invasion.

The Rabaul Nurses 1945 AWM Neg. 19146

The Rabaul Nurses were captured and interned, along with most of the civilian men of Rabaul (who were never offered evacuation) and the greater part of the 2/22nd Battalion, Lark Force, and many support members of the garrison who could not escape. Eleven civilian nurses and their six Australian Army Nursing Service colleagues — known collectively as The Rabaul Nurses — were held in captivity at the Vunapope Sacred Heart Catholic Mission.

The Australian army nurses were stationed at Rabaul as a detachment of the 2/10th Field Ambulance and were also included among those destined to be sacrificed as hostages to fortune.

The Rabaul Nurses' number increased to eighteen with the capture of Mrs Bignell, not a nurse by profession, but a Red Cross worker who had remained on her plantation on the outskirts of Rabaul.

Vunapope Sacred Heart Catholic Mission became an internment camp for all at the mission. The missionaries were men and women of many nationalities from Europe where the Sacred Heart movement was founded. Strengthening their number were several Australian nuns and two Australian priests. Their saga under Japanese occupation and the Mission's three and a half years internment is an incredible, heartfelt story touched on briefly in Not Now Tomorrow.

Transportation to Japan

At the end of six months at the Mission, on Bowie's 30th birthday in July, The Rabaul Nurses were transported to Japan along with the officers of Lark Force aboard the Naruto Maru, an unmarked Japanese merchant ship. That the Australian Catholic nuns were not sent with them was solely due to the strong intervention and delicate persuasion of the Bishop of Rabaul! The Bishop, Leo Scharmach, was Polish by birth and as a very young man had fought with the German Army in the First World War (many years before his posting to New Guinea). He was regarded as German by the Japanese. He came to Rabaul in 1925 and his appointment to Bishop of the Diocese in 1939 proved a wise, if not somewhat political decision. The Bishop's influence with his captors, however, could not extend to rendering him the saviour of the Australian Catholic priests. They met their fate with the captured civilians of Rabaul (including members of the Methodist and Seventh Day Adventist Missions) and the enlisted men of the Australian garrison, those would-be hostages to fortune. With the sinking of the Japanese prison ship Montevideo Maru enroute to Japan, all prisoners on board perished.

No information regarding transportation of the Rabaul prisoners-of-war was ever conveyed to Australian Authorities. In Japan, the nurses were kept in isolation; letters posted to them were never received — no communication by mail was permitted. In April, 1942, all prisoners in Rabaul were actually requested to write one letter home giving credence to the understanding in Australia that all captives were being held in Rabaul!

Hope for The Rabaul Nurses, that they were not entirely lost and forgotten, was revitalised each Christmas with the receipt of parcels from the International Red Cross.

The Rabaul Nurses tending vegetable gardens
Japan - 1945

Throughout their ordeal of ongoing stress and indignity in a foreign land, courage to endure was never abandoned. The wretchedness of starvation was further aggravated by the tortuous cold of northern hemisphere winters. Yet always, their undeniable faith rested in tomorrow, when they would be free.

Dawning of Tomorrow

The New Guinea nurses were a unique group in a unique situation in Japan. They were held for two years at Yokohama (near Tokyo) before being sent further south to a small, abandoned Tuberculosis Hospital in the country. Bowie's perceptive account into the life of the peasants in the near-by village and the nurses' interaction with them — for their own survival — gives unusual insight into life in wartime, rural Japan.

Not Now Tomorrow presents a first hand glimpse of how the Second World War crept upon Rabaul; how The Rabaul Nurses fared in captivity in the Japanese homeland and how, not far from Tokyo, the last dramatic stages of the war were viewed. Finally their faith in tomorrow, Victory for the Allies, found them free at last.

Review Excerpts

Further Reading