Rod Miller - Lost Women of Rabaul

Copyright Roderick Miller

First published 2022

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission.

All inquiries should be made to the publishers.

Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd
PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia
Phone: 1300 364 611
Fax: (61 2) 9918 2396
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Web: www.bigskypublishing.com.au

Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions

Author: Rod Miller
Title: Lost Women of Rabaul
ISBN: 978-1-922615-93-0

Cover image: Four of the Army nurses in Rabaul 1941. Left to right rear row: Eileen Callaghan, Lorna Whyte, Kay Parker. Front row: Mavis Cullen

Back cover image: Lorna Johnston and Sister Berenice Twohill at OLSH convent, Kensington in 2007.

Lost
Women
of Rabaul

The inspirational true story behind the ABC television drama Sisters of War

Lost
Women
of Rabaul

The inspirational true story behind the ABC television drama Sisters of War

Rod Miller

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Preface

I never had the chance to meet Grace Kruger, but her writing became central to the creation of this book. Grace was one of 18 Australian women taken prisoner by the Japanese at Rabaul on the island of New Britain in January 1942, early in the Pacific War. Rabaul had been the administrative capital of the Australian Territory of New Guinea since 1922. This disparate group of nurses and civilians were the only women captured on Australian soil to be transported to the heart of the Japanese Empire during the course of the war. Along with the officers of the Australian 2/22nd Battalion (Lark Force), these 18 women were shipped to Japan and spent the remainder of the war, three years and nine months, as prisoners.

It was quite by chance that I purchased the diary of Graces wartime internment, saving it from the rubbish tip at a time when I was involved in auctioning her deceased estate. She kept her diary in an old school exercise book; the first page was titled GKs Nonsense. She wrote her diary in a cryptic prose, using nicknames, Pidgin English, shorthand and the language of the day, to hide its meaning from the Japanese and any casual readers who may have chanced upon it. Not being a trained historian or writer, I had no idea of the story this exercise book concealed, nor the people to whom I would be subsequently introduced.

I first showed it to an old friend, Albert Speer. I knew Albert had been in Papua and New Guinea during the war and had been part of the postwar New Guinea administration. I asked him if he had any idea of its meaning, but he was unable to explain it. He suggested I send it to Professor Hank Nelson at the Australian National University. Hank confirmed that Grace had been one of the Rabaul nurses taken to Japan, but was also unable to explain the meaning of its cryptic prose. It seemed that the little book would forever hold its secrets. Maybe its meaning had gone to the grave with its owner.

I decided to transcribe the diary into a form that could be easily read. This is where I had my first stroke of luck. I had a visit from Professor Bill Gammage, a Professor of History at the Australian National University. Knowing Bill had also been in New Guinea, I showed him the first draft of the diary. He spotted the word barloose which he explained is Pidgin English for aeroplane. This led me to believe that the diary was written in code. Lines like, White sauce on the table hows your sister, or, But there youre a little LBW, had me totally confused. I spent many hours reading the faint handwriting, over and over again, trying to make sure that I had the spelling correct and trying at the same time to decode its meaning. It proved to be a difficult task.

Being interned by the Japanese for over three years, Grace eventually ran out of space in her diary. She then selected pieces of Japanese paper that were blank on one side and sewed them together into the centre of the exercise book to increase its size. These pieces of paper probably came from the Japanese paper that the women had used to make into thousands of envelopes; a task that gave them a small wage that helped supplement their daily living. The fact that the women were transported to Japan and were at first very well treated, staying in a modest hotel (more like tourists than prisoners of war) had me completely intrigued.

It was again by chance that the diary started to yield its secrets. I happened to mention to some clients that I was transcribing Graces diary. One of them was Geoffrey Smith who informed me that his father Mick had been part of the 2/22nd Battalion and had escaped from Rabaul when the Japanese invaded. I rang Mick and he suggested I talk to Sister Berenice Twohill at the Sacred Heart Convent, as she had spent time with the nurses at Rabaul.

I contacted Sister Berenice and she explained that she was travelling to the dedication of the National Nurses Memorial in Canberra that very weekend and one of the surviving Rabaul nurses was being flown out from New Zealand for the event. I informed Albert Speer about the event and he decided to attend. There he met Lorna Johnston, one of the surviving Army nurses. Albert gave her a copy of the transcribed diary, which was in an unedited form. Grace had tried to write everyday Japanese words phonetically in English. This took a huge amount of effort to transcribe correctly and the assistance of James and Tomoko Oglethorpe in its translation is greatly appreciated.

There were still a few words so faint and illegible that I thought they would never be understood. Lorna read the diary on her return to New Zealand and kindly wrote to me, explaining that it was the daily talk of the Rabaul women during their internment. On her return to Australia later that year, I met with Lorna and heard her story about their time in Japan. She dictated the diary onto tape on her return home, along with her interpretation of what Grace had written and its meaning. This unlocked most of the contents mysteries, but some even Lorna couldnt explain, 60 years on.