360 paratroopers of Japanese...

history · 14 February 1942 · 82 years ago

360 paratroopers of Japanese 1st Airborne Division landed at Pangkalanbenteng airfield near Palembang, Sumatra, Dutch East Indies; in response, ABDA command sent 5 cruisers and 11 destroyers to transport troops to Palembang; Dutch destroyer HNLMS Van Ghent in this force ran aground on the next day and would be scuttled. Meanwhile, the British ship Vyner Brooke, escaping from Singapore with 300 on board, was bombed off Sumatra; around 100 survivors, including 22 Australian nurses, reach shore on Banka island; the men were marched away by the Japanese and bayoneted and shot, the wounded were bayoneted where they laid, and the nurses were herded into the sea and machine gunned; one, Sister Vivian Bulwinkel, was wounded but survived to tell of the atrocity; she died in 2000, aged 85. 

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