Collectively known as The Rabaul Nurses, the story of this small group comprising seventeen civilian and army nurses and Mrs Bignell, a New Guinea plantation owner, is related by Alice M Bowman, their colleague from the Australian Government Hospital in Rabaul, New Guinea. Alice M Bowman pictured below, waving, second from the left.

The Rabaul Nurses 1945
AWM Neg. 19146

The nurses were captured and imprisoned with those who could not escape: the greater part of the Australian Battalion and its support units, men of the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Australian Airforce and New Guinea Volunteer Rifles together with 208 civilian men of Rabaul. This small Australian garrison was overwhelmed by a vastly outnumbered invasion force and an impossible task was valiantly faced in defence of Australia's centre of Administration in New Guinea. The questionable fate — yet to be established beyond doubt — of 1053 unsung heroes who are presumed to have died on 1st July 1942 in the hold of their unmarked prison ship, still haunts the lives of those left to grieve.

In the hold of the Naruto Maru (another unmarked prison ship) the nurses from New Guinea and the officers of Lark Force were transported safely to Japan. The Rabaul Nurses were the only Australian nurses to be sent to Japan and held in isolation on the remote Japanese homeland for the duration of the war. Their little known story is told, intimately, for the first time in Not Now Tomorrow.