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Wilma Young Transcript of interview by Ina Bertrand 4th December 2000, Tape 2
Wilma Young, 4th December 2000, Tape 2. So go ahead. All right. My maiden name was Oram, in case anybody wants to know what name I was under when I was in the army. Right. Oram, O-R-A-M. Yes, we had to work in the theatre under very trying conditions, eh, and we had to work almost around the clock, we were so busy. The beds were all upstairs, which meant the patients had to be carried up and down stairs on stretchers, eh. The orderlies would do that? We didn’t have enough orderlies, we helped ourselves to do that. It was nothing to be on one end of a stretcher to carry them up and down, eh, but yes, we kept working and a bomb hit our hospital one night. Eh, fortunately it was very late and it hit the kitchen and there was nobody injured, but of course we were always worried that something would fall on the hospital and kill some of our already wounded patients, but fortunately that one missed us. Well then word came that we were to evacuate, so the nurses were to go and the orderlies were to stay. So, I went off and grabbed as many clothes as I could get hold of, of my clothes, and although it was hot I put them all on, it was the only way to carry them and just got … we had just organised for that and word came through that we were all to stay, we weren't going after all. So … back again to work em and eh then the next thing was that half were to go and half were to stay. No, the first thing happened, six were to stay and the rest were to go. And then half were to go and half were to stay. So eh half, matron just said, that half go and that half stay and that half went and they got on the Empire Star and had a pretty bad trip home. They … they were bombed and … but they managed to get through eh and all those nurses eventually came back to Australia. The other half, we left the next day on the small ship, heavily overcrowded called the Viner Brook - it was only a little yacht type of thing and it was overcrowded with mainly women and children - a few men. These were refugees as well as nurses then? Yes, there were 65 nurses, the rest were civilian people trying to run away from Singapore, eh, but they had left it too late. What nationalities? English, and the mixed, mixed race, Eurasian people and yeah, a lot of English. So they were people who had been business people in Singapore? Oh, living on plantations and living in Singapore and em … had opportunities to get out many times before, but had elected to stay. Eh we drove … we went in ambulances to St Andrews Cathedral in Singapore, where ADGMS, the Assistant Director General of Medical Services ticked off all our names that we were all present and em then we were taken down to board this ship; we had been taken out in little boats to it and em there was bombing … the troops were holding, holding the line long enough for us to get there. There were bombs, it was very dangerous. Right. Guns and things going off. Anyway, we eventually got on the ship. What did you carry with you? Practically nothing. Did you have a case? No. Did you wear several layers of clothing? No, I didn’t have a chance to put all my clothes on again. That was the end of that. No, just got away with what I stood up in. And em … What about medical supplies, were any of those … ? Well some of the girls did manage to have eh a little bit of morphia in their pockets, but no, we were just … all of a sudden we just had to go. Right. So we had, just what we stood up in and eh there was very little food and water on this ship. We had taken on a little bit of food for ourselves, but when we got on there was practically nothing for anybody to eat and of course there was nowhere, hardly room to sit down, it was just so crowded, unbelievable. And em … so we were up on deck and there were searchlights. We sailed over a minefield that night. It was unchartered, so the captain didn’t know where he was, but anyway, nothing happened, we got across it. And then all night long the searchlights just swept the seas, swept backwards and forwards, so you really couldn’t do anything or move, because you would be picked up in the searchlight and em … we sailed the next day and hid behind an island. Japanese planes were flying around. I think we were one day and then the next day we were flying … we were going along again, trying to get through, we were in the Banka Straight, but the Japanese planes came over and em they dropped bombs on us. We got … the first lot missed us I think and then the planes came back again and they got three direct hits. One went down the funnel, people in the engine room were very badly burned. Mona Wilton and myself and some of the other nurses, we had gone down from the deck down below, down a ladder and we were lying flat on the floor to protect ourselves as much as possible and eh the whole side of the ship where I was was blown out and there was glass flying everywhere. I thought my legs had been cut off, but when I had a look they were still there. They were just cut down the back, nothing very serious, but one man eh had been badly wounded in his abdomen, we couldn’t do anything for him. One of our girls had a bad injury in her buttock so we carried her up this ladder, which of course they’re vertical in a ship, and we got her up on deck. We couldn’t go back for anybody because the ship was sinking and eh we got a dressing on her wound and eh, she didn’t want to go over the side of her lifeboat there, and she didn’t want to go over. But anyway, we put her over the side, down the ladder into the lifeboat eh and em that lifeboat got away. There were other lifeboats. Well, Mona and I, neither of us could swim, so we went down into another lifeboat - mind you the ship was tipping over on the side we were on all the time and eh … this lifeboat of course was just so crowded with people, and it was attached to the ship, and nobody had anything to cut the rope and the Viner Brook was tipping over rapidly, so Mona and I jumped out of the lifeboat to try and get away from the ship and everybody else, it was just a case of try for yourself and Jean Ashton, she got out from under the ship, she was in it too. Well Mona and I went along parallel with the ship thinking we’d get away from it, but it came over on top of us. I put my hands up and caught hold of the rails and em … dragged myself out from under the ship, but Mona, I never saw her again. Yeah. I suppose she went down … somebody did say they saw her body floating later, but I didn’t and em … but as I came up I looked up and there was a raft falling over from the high side of the ship and it hit me on the head and as I came up there was another one and I was hit on the head by six of these rafts and pushed under each time and eventually when I came up I managed to struggle away. What were these rafts made of? Wood. And you weren't knocked out? No, I was knocked under. If I had been on concrete I would have been killed, but I was in water so it hit me on the head and I just went further down every time and then the ship … I struggled away from it and then it just tipped right over and just went under - disappeared altogether and there was another lady that had evacuated from Singapore and she was in the water too and eh so even under those circumstances she said to me, "Do you mind if I get on your raft with you?" So em … we got on, both got on the same raft and that was about … just after 2.00 in the afternoon. Well, we got ashore next morning at about 6 o’clock. During the night the Japanese, all these Japanese ships were all around us and they had taken the island. The soldiers had landed and taken the island. Eh … so in the morning when it came daylight, there were Japanese in motor boats going round and round, but they wouldn’t pick us up, so we just kept on paddling ourselves along and we eventually got to shore ourselves. You could see the island all the time? Banka Island we are talking about aren’t we? Banka, yes. And you could see it in the distance? We saw it in the distance because the people who had got ashore in lifeboats, three lifeboats got ashore, and they had lit a fire. Right. So we had aimed for that, but with the currents we’d never got to that spot. Now those people were the ones that were massacred by the Japanese some days later - 80 men were bayoneted and em 22 of the nurses and 1 civilian woman was shot by the Japanese and Vivian Bullwinkle, although shot, managed to survive and em she got into the jungle and she came across one of the men that had been bayoneted and they were in the jungle for about 12 days. Vivian was em … they found fresh water and she was getting a bit of food from the women in the village close by, but the men were not helpful at all and em … eventually Vivian and Private Kingsley eh … decided that they would have to give themselves up again, thinking they would be shot. But they were picked up by some naval officers in a car and brought into our camp and Private Kingsley died a few days later, but Vivian survived, she joined us in the camp and em she survived and lived until she was 84, only dying this year and eh … So what about you, you were in the water for 16 hours? Yes, I was in the water for 16 hours and em … as soon as we landed we were taken prison by the Japanese straight away. There were Japanese guards there … they took us … we ran to the Customs House, there was a plane flying overhead and we ran there to take a bit of shelter, but of course the Japanese were there too and we were simply prisoners from then on. They em … we were thirsty so we just picked up their water bottles off their hips and had a drink and they didn’t really take any notice, they didn’t do anything to us, but eh … they wanted to know what happened. The lady I was with could speak Malay and in Malay and our sign language, we conveyed to them that we had been bombed by them and so forth and they thought it was a great joke. They thought that was, you know, quite funny, they hadn’t don’t anything at all to help us and they took our lifebelts from us, we had lifebelts and they looked down the front of my uniform to see whether I was a man or a woman because I had very short hair and of course I had a lot of blood and so forth and em … eh … we just eh … we were just there in this spot and then gradually more and more people came in and were taken prisoner and in the end, this little area was very, very overcrowded and there was no food or water. Eventually there was a small glass of water handed around and everybody had a sip and the Jap … Japanese eh gave us 3 grains of rice each for our, to eat, that’s all we had, we hadn’t had anything to eat for quite a long time. Why do you think you survived and they massacred the people on the beach? What was the difference? I think where we were, it was a kind of place they had set up with a temporary headquarters and eh perhaps there were more senior officers there. I think the people on the beach, they were more of a marauding group of Japanese who were probably eh … well, a bit undisciplined and eh … it was undisciplined behaviour, wasn’t it, it was just sheer massacre. Uhu. And eh there was no particular reason for it at all, but em … you would have to get into the Japanese mind really to understand it. Very hard. Amongst the sisters, were any of your superior officers amongst you? Were you all? Yes, we had our chief matron, Matron Paschke, eh … a very senior nurse and very well loved person. Well she was, we assume, drowned, but we don’t know. Eh Matron Drummond was shot eh Sister Kinsella, drowned, we assume. She was in the water, I talked to her in the water, but she never, that was the end, she never appeared. So amongst those who survived to go to the camp, were any of them higher ranks? Eh, not really, no. Nesta James, I suppose, she was the 2 IC of the 10th AGH and Sister Ashton was the most senior nurse of the 13th AGH and Mavis Hanna was the most senior of the CCS. Did they take charge of … when they, or did you find that those systems had broken down and you just worked things out amongst yourselves? Well, we tried to em retain ourselves as an army unit. The 13th AGH and the 2nd 4th CCS yes, and we regarded Sister Ashton as our senior sister and the 10th AGH decided … recognised Nesta James as their senior sister, but em … eh Nesta James spoke mostly I suppose on behalf of all of us, but we remained a little conclave of our own, we were still … we still considered ourselves in the army, although we were prisoners. So, Sister James spoke for you to the Japanese? Well, not so much to the Japanese. See we were in a camp with about 700 women and children of all nationalities and the Dutch people had a spokeswoman for them and she could speak a bit of Japanese, but … and the British, we were regarded with the British, and there was a spokeswoman spoke for all the British, so we never really spoke much to the Japanese, it was done through these two women. Right, well I have distracted you a little bit now because you were talking about gathering, before you moved to the camp, weren't you, gathering on the beach and … Oh. How did you get from there to the camp where the 700 people were? I see, yes. Eh … we were in this Customs House, we spent a night there and eh … when I … we lied down on the bricks, there was an overflowing toilet in the corner, which was a bit of a mess. One of our girls got ashore with her shoes, how she did it, I don’t know, but we all borrowed them to go to this toilet and we just had to lie down on the bricks the best we could. When I went to sleep, as I did, there was a man one side of me and a boy on the other side, well I woke in the middle of the night, there was a Japanese soldier crouched down beside me dragging me by the shoulder and em … of course they always had their fixed bayonet and so forth, and the man had disappeared and so I … I thought, goodness they are taking us all out one by one and shooting us. And so Sister Muir was just there and I said to her, "Hang to me, I am not going. He wants to take me away". So he kept, most persistently. In the end I sat up and called out "help". Well, woke everybody up and the Japs came running from everywhere, and that was the end of that, they just disappeared. But I found out in the morning that they were segregating in the middle of the night the men from the women and because I had … my hair was short and I had this scalp wound... Oh they thought you were … … they thought I was a man you see. But I was determined I wasn’t going, or if I was going there was going to be somebody come with me, you know, but … 'cos you never know what was going to happen. But they allowed young boys to stay with the women? Oh at that stage, at that stage, yes. This young boy was shipwrecked and had been separated from his mother, but eh all next day we were there, no food or water and at 5 o’clock in the night we had to walk over to the cinema, which was some distance away, and that was full of more prisoners and we met up there with quite a few of our nurses who had got ashore at different spots on the island and eh had been brought in to the cinema and eh well we had some rice that night and eh … that’s all we had, just a bit of rice, but the cinema was so crowded that you really couldn’t lie down. They dug a trench outside and that was supposed to be the toilet and you went out and used the toilet and then you came back and they locked and barred all the doors, so you couldn’t get outside at all for anything. And they had set up a machine gun right at the gate, right at the very front of this place eh … so there were a lot of wounded there too, people that had been wounded I think when they, probably when they were shipwrecked really eh, anyhow there were quite a few wounded. Did you nurses attend to them? Yes, some of the nurses eh did the best they could, but you can't do much because you haven't got anything to work with and em … very difficult. Anyhow, next morning we went on a long hike. Mind you we had no shoes, or only what we stood up in to wear and no hats and it is the tropics. Em, we went on this long hike and we came to what were referred to as the "coolie lines." They were … they were places that had been built where the coolies came in that worked the tin mines and they had dormitories that were … with cement … platforms each side, with a path down the middle and these cement platforms were at an angle of about 45 degrees which we had to sleep on. We had no bedding and at the end, if you went down, walked down to the end, there was a drain that was the toilet and there was a cement, like a trough really, called a tong ... eh … which had a bit of water in it, which you could use a little bit of water out of that to have a bit of a wash, but em … the conditions there, eh … we had very little room, you would lie down, you were right against the next person, all the way through. And there were one lot at one side and then there was this path and then there was another lot the other side and the Jap guard went up and down all night. Were you lying parallel with the path up and down, or at right angles to it? At right angles to it. And so what stopped you from just sliding straight down into the middle? Well, nothing, you had to be careful you didn’t do it. Yes, it was most unpleasant sleeping on that. Em … and of course there were women and children and we were in one of these dormitories, but then there were a line of dormitories, there were a lot of people, and then there was a quadrangle, I suppose you would call it, of cement in the middle and then there were … eh … there was another lot of these dormitories, where the men were. Well the men were so crowded that if one man turned over, in that row of men, the whole lot had to turn over. It was dreadful, people were, you know, sleeping sort of everywhere, trying to get away from that and there was a bit of … oh the cooks were very poor in that spot. The rice was not at all edible, but we had to eat it and then we got a drink - you wouldn’t know what it was, it was just brown water, you wouldn’t know whether it was tea or coffee or what it was, it was just drink and just … we got this rice twice a day. Trouble is they used to burn it, it wasn’t very good. Em … I met up in that camp with some men I had know in Singapore, they were the anti espionage squad and eh they had been taken prisoner. They had been intercepted and their boat, their yacht had been commandeered and they had been brought in and they said we would be there for at least 3 months and I said, "Well don’t worry, I won't be here because I won't last 3 months." And eh, so they had a few clothes because they hadn’t been shipwrecked, they had got ashore with a bit of luggage so they gave me one or two things to wear, which was very kind of them and eh … eh … they gave me … Colonel Wynn a New Zealand man, a lovely man, he died anyway, but he gave me a pair of silk pyjamas, blue silk pyjamas and eh … I was looking forward to wearing these because I had nothing to wear at night and Vivian came in that day, and of course with her bullet wound, although that was quite clean, it was healing up, so I … but we had to cover up the bullet wound, so I gave these silk pyjamas to Vivian. Were they torn up for bandages, or were they just worn? Just worn, she wore those for a long, long time and eh … yeah, well they were beautiful pyjamas, they lasted very well, but it was lucky I had them at that particular time because we could give them to Vivian and then of course she could get around without the bullet hole being seen, because we didn’t want the Japs to know that she had been shot, we didn’t want them to know that there was a survivor of that massacre. That would have been death to all of us as we knew. So we never said a word about that any more. Once Vivian came in and told us. Yes, well we got to the coolie lines and there were sailors’ clothes lying about and so this was wonderful, we thought, you know, clothes! 'cos not having any and eh so I didn’t, but quite a few of the girls commandeered these sailors’ clothes and em … anyhow, late that night a working party came back and of course they wanted their clothes back. But anyhow we … Australian sailors? Oh, they were probably English sailors. Right. Ok. Yes and em … we had a compromise. Some of the girls kept some of the clothes, but a lot of the nurses had gone down a rope ladder, a rope … instead of a rope ladder, and burnt all their hands. Yes, that’s what Betty Jeffrey talks … she was one of them. … taking the skin off and they were in a bad way, so I hadn’t done that, my hands were all right, so I had the job of helping these girls get dressed and to try and get them into these sailors trousers was a work of art because … They were a different shape. Men and women are a different shape and these trousers - I don’t know if you - they button up the front vertically and then there is a flap comes up and they button again across. It was a work of art trying to get these girls into sailors trousers, in fact it was almost impossible, but still they had a few clothes to wear. Well now, we were in that em … the coolie lines … for about a fortnight or so, a bit longer perhaps eh … there was nothing to do, but people would be taken out of the camp and disappear and we would never see them again and we never knew what happened to them. And there was one Jap had a horse, he used to ride around and we were sitting out in this quadrangle and he would ride around with his riding whip, you know, terrible, but anyway, we weren't there that long, em … Then we had to take another long walk and get on a boat, we had some rice wrapped in a banana leaf that we took with us, and we got on this boat, it was very crowded and went to Palembang on Sumatra. We eventually got off that boat eh … and they put us on trucks, open tray trucks we had to stand up on and drove us around Palembang., with the natives all … or some of them were jeering at us, as you could imagine. Well they took us to a Chinese school and Air Commodore Modine, who had gone ahead of us was an Air Force officer and he had gone ahead of us from Banka and he had prepared a meal for us. That was all very well, but we hadn’t had anything to eat and things weren't too good and of course you … he had a soup there for us … it was very nice, but it just went straight through you, that was the trouble and eh … you had to go quick if you … and you had to ask the Japanese guards for permission to go. Otherwise they would fire a shot after you. So eh … but anyway we had something to eat and then … How did you communicate if you knew no Japanese? Sign language and what - clutch your belly? Oh well, you learnt a few words pretty quick - either Malay or Japanese, yeah. So em … You had nothing at all with you, what about things like combing your hair? What if some of the women were menstruating, how did you cope with those ordinary, normal sort of things that you couldn’t do any more. Well, we had absolutely nothing. I happened to have a little comb in my pocket as it happened, but we had no combs, toothbrushes, handkerchiefs and em … somebody found a few old rags that were used if anybody was menstruating, but we would all use the same rag over and over, but we stopped menstruating after a bit. That was an effect of starvation? Starvation and shock. Uha. And we stopped, and we didn’t start again till we got out and eh … yes, nature looked after us there, strangely enough. What about things like when you went to the toilet, I am assuming there wouldn’t be toilet paper. Certainly not! So you just had to get used to dealing with this, with whatever was to hand? Well, there was nothing to hand, if you could you would get a bit of water and eh pour it over yourself if you could, but em … yes … em So did you develop strategies like the Muslims? That one hand is for eating and the other hand is for dealing with toileting? No, no, we didn’t do that. I don’t know how we … we endeavoured to use a bit of water, but it was very awkward because … As water was scarce too? Water was scarce yes, yes. Yes, it is very difficult living under those conditions. All those things have to be thought about and em … What sort of medical problems arose out of those conditions? For instance, were there lice and … ? Oh yes, head lice and body lice and bugs, bed bugs and eh all those skin troubles, tinea and em … well of course we had beriberi and em dysentery and malaria and pelagra. With no facilities to deal with them? No. So, did you develop strategies, did you find any local remedies or anything that helped? Well we got a bit of quinine, somehow a bit of quinine came into the camp … eh and then quinine bark, we had that, but really we had absolutely nothing. No, and we were locked up behind barbed wire, we had no access to anything. The only … if the Japs brought in a little bit of medicine, there were doctors in the camp and em … they would get a bit from the Japanese, but medicine was … practically non existent. If you had malaria you just suffered it until you recovered and then it recurs again every so often and eh … eh dengue and dysentery -you just had dysentery all the time. Beriberi is one that … does that come back or does that? Oh, you just have it all the time, yes, yes, yes. And that is dietary deficiency isn't it? Yes, vitamin B, if we had had … No wonder Australians love Vegemite. Yes, I know, if we had had a bit of Vegemite we would have been all right, but eh … no beriberi, they swell up, they look like monsters, and your legs are so heavy, you had to lift your leg, put your hand under your knee and lift your leg, you can't lift your legs up and … people were so blown up that their tummies were just huge and eh … arms … one of the nuns … we had what we called "hospitals" in the camps where we put people and one of the nuns, her arms were so blown up she couldn’t feed herself and her skin She couldn’t bend her arm? No, and eh if she rubbed, her skin would rub off. She was a marvellous woman. She died of course, Sister … Is there … is beriberi one of those things that you carry with you the rest of your life or once the diet came back, it was all right? Once your diet comes back, I think you pretty well get on top of it, yes, but it doesn’t seem to worry you once your diet comes good. But malaria is one that does keep coming back? Malaria comes back and dysentery is very difficult to eradicate. See Betty Jeffrey never recovered from dysentery and some of the other girls had it too. In fact it is a disease that seems to just do something to your bowels that they never really quite recover. Well, when you think that you would go perhaps 15 times in a night, eh … but, you know, your bowels were very badly treated weren't they? It must have been particularly frustrating for you as nurses to not be able to do what you could see needed doing. Yes. Well, it was heartbreaking. We lost 8 nurses after they were taken prisoner. We lost all the ones that drowned and the ones that were shot, but then there were 8 more that died in the camp and eh … just a little bit of medicine would have saved all of them, even just a bit of food would have saved them, but there was simply nothing we could do, we had to stand by and watch them die and eh … eh … just nothing at all. Tell me what a day would be like living in the Palembang camp. When you would get up and what you would do during the day. Well, it depends on which camp you were in. Well, we have only got to the first one so far, the coolie line camp Coolie lines, yes, well you got up and sat around and just sat around and talked and there was nothing you could do, you couldn’t go out of the camp and there was nothing you could do in the camp. But, yes, well, after we had been in the Chinese school we spent the night there, then we went for a long walk - again. I don’t know if you have seen those trailers on the eh … pictures, on the film that we used to see of Polish refugees trailing along. Well, that is exactly what we were like and em there were Japanese along beside us taking pictures of us all the time. Goodness knows what happened to the pictures, I wouldn’t mind seeing them now, but we were taken then and put into houses that had been evacuated by the Dutch and em … eh … but the houses were not very big. Once again of course we were crowded into them without much room to spare and eh we had to do … we cooked for ourselves there. Was this like a little village, a township, the houses close together? Yes, the houses were fairly close together and there were native houses close handy too, eh and one of the native women … Gladys Hughes that was also a prisoner, she and I used to go over every morning to see this native woman and she was marvellous, she used to give us, always had something for us to eat and a nice hot cup of tea and so forth. Her mother-in-law had a very bad ulcer on her leg so we were able to give her husband the name of what to get to treat her leg, so he managed to get … so we were able to help her treat that leg. But she was wonderful she … she would em always have a bit of food for us, so … I know one day she mixed up flour and onion, you know, and deep fried it, and gosh, they were absolutely magnificent, beautiful. I suppose you wouldn’t eat them now, but they were marvellous that day. So there was no fence between your houses and the native houses? No, there were no fences around us at that stage. So how were you kept there, just by fear? Oh, well, where was there to go? There was nowhere to go. We couldn’t go amongst the natives, we would stand out and they couldn’t keep us. This little woman, Indonesian lady, she always walked back with us when we went back to the house because of the bad … bad people that were around, so eh … I lost track of her 'cos we moved from there. I never saw her again, had no way of contacting her. So in that camp then, life was different from the coolie line camp? Oh yes, well … How was it different? Well, we were in a house, we were in one house and the 10th were in the next door house and we cooked for ourselves and we could walk around. The only trouble was the Japs used to come into the house and sit down and eh … em sort of make fun of us really. But as well as that, they moved us out of those two houses and set up a club in one of those houses and demanded that four of our girls go as geisha girls … you know, go there. Well, we had a … we fought that and refused to go. They said they would starve us, so we said we didn’t mind that and eventually … eh … one of the Englishmen came and said we would have to go because eh … you know, couldn’t risk what would happen to the whole camp. So all the girls went. When you say the girls, do you mean the nurses? The nurses. There were 32 nurses. Right. And all but four of us went. Four of us stayed back and the rest of the girls went. They only wanted four, but you see they had all these 20 girls and eh … they offered them drink and all sorts of things and the girls said they only drank milk, and em they offered them to go to the town and get lipstick and so forth. And anyway, you know, the girls just said they weren't interested, they were virtually pocketing everything they possibly could - sugar and food and everything they could lay their hands on there. And eventually the Japanese officer said four of them had to stay back and the rest could go. So four stayed back and the rest came home and eh … those four girls … well one of the girls said this Jap wanted to go for a walk, so when they went for the walk he went to kiss her and she pushed him and knocked him over and ran off back to the house, to where we were and expected to be shot, or anything might have happened to her, but nothing did. I don’t know whether Japs are the same as everybody else, but I don’t think any man would like to admit to his cobbers that he had been pushed over by a woman. But anyway, nothing happened and the other girls turned on … well one of them I think had … she had a terrible cough anyway, but they turned on terrible coughing fits and said they had TB and the Japs were terribly frightened of disease and eventually the girls just came home and nothing happened. Well somehow word was got to the Japanese higher command eh and em it all finished, the whole thing. They didn’t try it again. No, the whole thing, that was the end of that. But then, they came one day and got us all out of these houses and took us into a big padang, well that is an empty paddock actually. And men, women and children. Hot in the sun, we were out there in the sun for hours and they took the men off and the women and children, took us in another direction and we eventually came to a row of houses in a street called Irenelaan in Palembang and eh they eh put us into these houses and said we could rest here for a bit. Well we were in those houses for em 18 months or more - nearly 2 years I think - and em once again, you see, we were terribly overcrowded. Houses that are meant to house perhaps 4 or 6 people had up to 30 in them and em we had to adjust. The 13th AGH nurses eh with the Second 4th CCS girls, we had em several civilians in the house with us and the 10th AGH were in the next house and they had several civilians in the house with them as well. Well now that camp, there were 14 houses altogether and full of Dutch, English - see they interned the Dutch and anybody that had Dutch blood in them, so there were Indonesians interned as well eh … There is a mention in "White Coolies" of some Germans as well, I couldn’t understand why that would be so. A German doctor. Why, the Germans were allies of Japan? Well, she was shipwrecked on our ship trying to get away from Singapore and she had a German and an English passport, but she wasn’t actually interned in the same … she told the Germans, that first camp, the very first one, she was there and she said to the Jap guard, "I am ze German, I am ze German," and she did go out. And then she was in our camp again eh, but she was allowed. She said she was a doctor, we never really knew whether she was or not, but she always said she was and em … there was a Dutch … in Palembang, there was a Dutch hospital still functioning with Dutch doctors and the nuns were still running that. And she was allowed to go out and work there, have all the privileges of being out. And then she came back into our camp, but she always seemed to be able to have what she wanted, so it was … yes, well she was the only real German, I don’t know that we had any other German. We had her, but I don’t think we had any other Germans. This is a camp for just women and children? Yes, women and children and em … the bigger boys, later on, eh … the Japs just came and took the bigger boys out of the camp and we didn’t know where they had gone, but they had taken them to the men’s camp. These are the boys that were getting up to the age of puberty really, and they just took them out of the camp. It was heartbreaking for their mothers, but eh … anyway, heartbreaking for the boys too to leave their mothers. But that happened. Was there any sort of schooling set up for the children? Eh yes, we had school teachers in the camp and they tried to … in this Irenelaan … they tried to start a school for the children, but you know they had no teaching aids and paper and pencils and books, but they did the best they could and the children learned a bit and I have letters from some of them now and they say that, you know, they appreciated being taught in camp when they were children, but in Irenelaan that is where Miss Dryburgh wrote the Captives’ Hymn that we used to sing in the camp all the time and eh they had church services there every Sunday. The Missionaries ran a church service. This is missionaries who were interned as well? Yes, they were missionaries from Singapore and they had been in China and they were interned em. The nurses in our house, the 13th AGH nurses, we ran a community singing night on a Saturday night with the songs that we could remember and there was a piano in one of those houses and eh they didn’t … that house didn’t want it, so we took it into our house eh … and pianos are very hard to move, especially lift them over a fence and up steps, but anyway we did it. They’re very heavy. It would be out of tune by the time you did it too. Did you have someone who could tune it for you? No, we had no one to tune it with us, but never mind we had it and people used to play it, you know, play it for our community singing and somebody even slept on top of it because there was not much space, but in that camp we had a hygiene squad and eh … we would try to keep the camp clean and we used to look after the sick in the camp eh and I did … Vivian Bullwinkle and I did night duty with a couple of very sick women for quite a few nights, quite a while and em … the Japs used to bring in our rations and just throw them down on the road - it was a bitumen road - and then they had to be given out in equal shares to the various houses by the number of people they had. Well now, that is not an easy task and we had eh … one of the missionaries, Miss Ann Livingstone, who was an expert mathematician and she worked out all of the … and everyone was pretty satisfied with what she did and then each house took their ration and we had a house captain, that was her job. Jean Ashton was our house captain, she had to then say how much we got, as the group of nurses who all cooked together and how much the civilians would get. She had to try and be fair - and she was very fair - but one civilian woman with 4 children always maintained that she wasn’t getting her fair share. Was very unpleasant really. And then there was a sort of kitchen place where we had to do our bit of cooking. And each house cooked for their own? Yes, yes, well, we nurses in our house cooked for ourselves and eh the civilian people, they cooked for themselves. We never really joined up with those people at all.
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Victorians at War - Oral History Project