Known as The Rabaul Nurses, the story of this small group of seventeen Australian nurses — seven from the Australian Government Hospital in Rabaul, New Guinea, six from the Australian Army Nursing Service, four from the Methodist Mission together with Mrs Bignell, a New Guinea plantation owner — is related by Alice M Bowman, their civilian colleague from the Government Hospital. Alice M Bowman is pictured below, waving, second from the left.

The Rabaul Nurses 1945
AWM Neg. 19146

The nurses were imprisoned with those who could not escape: the greater part of the Australian Battalion, Lark Force with its many, valuable support units and men of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles, the Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force together with 208 civilian men of Rabaul, including the crew of the Norwegian Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship Herstein. The small Australian garrison at Rabaul 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 held in isolation on the remote Japanese homeland for the duration of the war. They were the only Australian nurses to be sent to Japan and their whereabouts remained a mystery for the duration of the war. Their little known story is told, intimately, for the first time in Not Now Tomorrow.