Fall of Rabaul: 'hungry and ... cold'

We were losing weight and we were hungry and it was cold. And we were all sick. I escaped malaria, but we all had dysentery, beriberi and tapeworm.

[Sister Mavis Cullen describing their last winter in captivity in Yokohama in Hank Nelson, Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, Adelaide, 1985]

In mid-1941 a detachment of six nurses led by Sister Kay Parker arrived in Rabaul, New Britain, to assist in looking after the medical care of the Australian garrison - Lark Force. By the night of 22-23 January 1942 it was clear that a Japanese invasion force was moving towards the island. Sister Parker and her nurses remained on duty at the hospital with its 100 or so patients. At 11 am on 23 January, as Rabaul fell, Sister Parker and the Anglican chaplain, John May, surrendered the hospital to the enemy.

In July 1942 the women were transported to Japan on the Naruto Maru with a small group of civilian and Methodist Mission nurses and the officers from Lark Force at Rabaul. They suffered very basic living conditions, with little food and negligible medical treatment. They had few clothes and no shoes in the freezing winters.

Sister Eileen Callaghan knitted this jumper during her imprisonment in Yokohama.

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During their imprisonment in Yokohama the women were so hungry that they ate the glue they were given to make envelopes. The six sisters were held there as POWs until their liberation in August 1945. Together with the few surviving members of Lark Force (all officers) they spent more time in Japanese captivity than any other member of the Second AIF. Both Captain Parker and Sister Anderson were made Associates of the Royal Red Cross (ARRC) for their bravery in the face of an enemy.

Sister Callaghan, who had enlisted from the Yass District Hospital with Sisters Cullen and Parker, never recovered from the tuberculosis she contracted during her imprisonment and she died prematurely in 1954.