Nurses bombed, sunk and kept in a Japanese POW camp for three years: A side of history you may not have heard

It was one of the last ships carrying evacuees to escape Singapore.

Two days later, on February 14, the boat was shot by Japanese aircraft and sunk. Approximately 150 passengers made it to shore.

Land, however, did not mean safety. Days later, 21 of those nurses were murdered in the Banka Island massacre on 16 February 1942.

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The remaining 32 nurses became Japanese prisoners of war, moved from Banka Island to Palembang in Sumatra, Indonesia, where they were kept in camps for more than three years.

Long Beach resident Margaret Turner's mother, Veronica Clancy, was one of those nurses.

She endured years of captivity plagued by tropical disease and malnutrition. She survived, and passed her story on to her children. Of the 32 nurses held captive, only 24 survived to return to Australia in September 1945.

Ms Turner said the massacre was famous in history, but the experience of the nurses held prisoners of war was largely forgotten.

"There is two sides to every story," she said. "There is the massacre, and then there is the three and a half years that women spent in captivity."

"We need to remember because it's a very important part of that war history."

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Ms Turner had planned a trip to Indonesia to commemorate 80 years since the sinking and massacre. Covid, however, prevented this journey.

Instead, Ms Turner, who is involved with U3A Batemans Bay, is kickstarting the U3A Saturday Talk series for 2022 by speaking about the history of the nurses and sharing her mother's story.

"I am going to talk about what it was like in the camps, and how the prisoners were moved, and the things that really sustained them in that time," Ms Turner said.

One such item that helped the nurses survive was the discovery of a piano in one of the prison camp rooms. The nurses lugged the piano into a house and it became the centre of entertainment, where they would sing "songs of survival", sometimes unaccompanied, sometimes with the piano.

In the loungeroom of Ms Turner's childhood home in Robinvale, Victoria, hung a painting more than a metre tall of Ms Clancy in her nursing attire. It was painted in 1941 at Hay Internment camp in NSW by Robert Hofmann.

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When the time finally came for the house to be sold, the painting was donated by Ms Turner to the Australian War Memorial - where Ms Clancy had always wanted it to be given.

The talk is at Malua Bay Community Centre, February 19, from 10am. Anyone from the community is welcome provided they are fully vaccinated. Entry is $2, and anyone interested must email U3A talks coordinator, Ross Thomas, at rossthomas083@gmail.com to book a place. Because of social distancing requirements only the first 50 enrollments will be accepted.