Minnie Vautrin: American Hero at the Nanking Massacre

"Minnie spent most of her time running from one end of the campus to another, trying to stay one step ahead of the raping, looting soldiers. Her commanding presence was enough to make some of them quit, but others, she wrote, would look at her “with a dagger in their eyes and some times a dagger in their hands.” One Japanese soldier became so angry with Minnie when she tried to prevent a looting, he pointed a gun at her. Another slapped her.

Meanwhile, the refugees continued to flood into Ginling, “with horror written on their faces,” wrote Minnie, and relating “stories of tragedies such as I have never heard before.”

Minnie was desperate. She decided to visit the Japanese embassy in Nanking to see if anyone there would help her.

A sympathetic embassy clerk wrote two official letters ordering the soldiers to leave the women of Ginling alone. He also gave Minnie some official “proclamations” to post on the outside of Ginling’s walls, declaring the campus off-limits to Japanese soldiers.

He even arranged for Minnie to be driven home in the embassy car. The driver told Minnie, “the only thing that had saved the Chinese people from utter destruction” were the “handful of foreigners” running Nanking’s safety zone. Minnie was glad to be making a difference, of course, but the driver’s words filled her with a certain despair: “What would it be like,” she wrote, “if there were no check on this terrible devastation and cruelty?”

On the following day, she tested the power of the letters..."


From "Minnie Vautrin: American Hero at the Nanking Massacre" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Claire Phillips learns of Phil's death at Cabanatuan

Claire Phillips

On October 17, 1942, Claire opened a nightclub located near Manila’s busy harbor. She named it the Tsubaki Club after a rare Japanese flower. Her opening night was a huge success, and she looked forward to earning more Japanese money to fund resistance efforts. But her mind was always on Phil.

The following day, Claire felt the time was right to get an update on him. She called on Father Theodore Buttenbruch, a fellow resister and German priest who the Japanese were allowing to visit Cabanatuan under careful supervision. She asked Father Buttenbruch if he would carry a message to Phil.

Two weeks later, the priest called Claire to his office. He had lists of POWs who had died at Cabanatuan. Phil had died, he said, on July 26, 1942.

Sketch made by a survivor of Cabanatuan

Library of Congress

A few days later, she received a sympathy note from Chaplain Frank Tiffany, who lived at Cabanatuan. Although Phil’s death certificate stated that he had died of malaria, Chaplain Tiffany told Claire the underlying reason for Phil’s death was malnutrition.

'But I beg of you,' he continued, 'not to forget the ones that are left. They are dying by the hundreds.'

Cabanatuan survivors, 1945

National Archives

Claire was heartbroken. It took her several days to recover enough to return to work. But when she did, the circumstances of Phil’s death gave her an additional motivation to keep the Tsubaki Club successful. She also became more motivated to engage in her own form of espionage.

The Tsubaki Club regularly entertained powerful Japanese civilians and military men who passed through Manila..."

From "Claire Phillips: Manila Agent" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Vivian Bullwinkel and Private Kinsley: Surrender at Muntok

Vivian Bullwinkel shortly before she left for Singapore

"Vivian decided they should take a chance and surrender to the Japanese at Muntok headquarters, a few miles away. Kinsley immediately agreed, saying 'If it comes to the worst I hope the Japs do a better job of it this time.'

"They began the long, exhausting trip to Muntok, Kinsley dividing his weight between Vivian and a cane.

When they reached the headquarters, they had a few moments to say good-bye.
'I want you to know that I admire you very much,' Vivian whispered to Kinsley, 'and I feel a great pride in having had you as a companion.'

'I would never have made it thus far,” Kinsley replied, 'if it hadn’t been for you. I used to look at you and wonder, what with everything that happened to you, where you got your strength from to go on. You set the example, you made me determined to be like you.'

A car pulled up to take Kinsley away..."


From "Vivian Bullwinkel: Sole Survivor" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Vivian Bullwinkel: Banka Island

Vivian Bullwinkel shortly before she left Australia for Singapore

National Library of Australia

Copyright: Bruce Howard

"The Japanese soldiers came back, each of them cleaning his bayonet with a cloth. The British servicemen were not with them.

“Bully,” one nurse said, addressing Vivian, “They’ve murdered them all!”

Vivian was silent.

“It’s true then, they aren’t taking prisoners,” said another nurse.

The Japanese officer said something to his soldiers. They surrounded the 22 Australian nurses. They prodded the nurses with their bayonets until the women had formed a line into the water. Two wounded nurses had to be half carried there by their companions.

It seemed impossible to Vivian that a mass slaughter was about to occur in this beautiful setting. She kept asking herself why. And what right did the Japanese have to kill them?

But she said nothing aloud. None of the nurses did. Except for the sound of the water hitting their thighs, the beach was silent. Vivian, sad to think her mother would never learn what happened to her, suddenly felt peaceful when she realized she would soon see her deceased father. She wanted to communicate her new emotion to the other nurses. She turned and smiled at them. They returned her smile 'in a strange and beautiful way.'

They had obviously found their own ways to cope during these last terrible moments.
Then Vivian heard the whispered voice of their matron, Irene Drummond, 'Chin up girls, I’m proud of you and I love you all.'

Irene Drummond

From "Vivian Bullwinkel: Sole Survivor" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

The Kempeitai visit Elizabeth Choy

"The Kempeitai mistakenly suspected that this successful sabotage—code-named Operation Jaywick by the special forces—was somehow connected to the British prisoners in the Changi prison. They made a thorough search and discovered multiple radio sets hidden carefully under prison chairs. The British prisoners had not only been physically hungry but were also starved for news outside of Japanese-controlled propaganda.

Fifty-seven civilians were taken into Kempeitai custody, interrogated, and brutally tortured. Fifteen were tortured to death. These arrests and interrogations would forever be remembered in Singapore as the Double Tenth Incident, so named because they began on October 10, an important date in the founding of China’s Republic.

Where had the prisoners obtained their radio sets? The Kempeitai were determined to find out. During one particularly brutal interrogation, one of the internees who had been found with a radio admitted he had obtained its parts from the Choys. While passing notes and food, Elizabeth and her husband had also passed radio parts. They rarely knew exactly what was in each package. And they never asked.

On the following day, a car stopped outside the tuck shop. A Kempeitai officer asked Elizabeth’s husband, Khun Heng, if he would get into the car: he wasn’t familiar with the area, the officer said, and needed help with directions.

Khun Heng agreed to help. He didn’t return.

Alarmed, Elizabeth traveled to Kempeitai headquarters with a blanket and extra clothing, pleading with the officers to give the items to her husband.

The officers told Elizabeth they didn’t know where he was.

But three weeks later, some Kempeitai officers unexpectedly visited the tuck shop and offered to take Elizabeth to see Khun Heng..."


From "Elizabeth Choy: Justice Will Triumph" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Maria Rosa Henson: Guerrilla Courier

"One day Pinatubo asked Maria Rosa if she wanted to join the Huk. She was glad to be offered a chance to fight back against the Japanese. After joining, she was assigned to carry messages and collect food, medicine, and clothing from people sympathetic to the Huk guerrillas.

Once, while on her way to collect medicine and deliver a message, Maria Rosa saw some Japanese soldiers a long way off. She quickly ate the message. The soldiers suspected nothing and let her pass. But Maria Rosa knew she’d had a close call. Those suspected of working with the Huk were always taken to the local Japanese garrison, where they were tortured for information before being killed. So the Huk held their meetings in different neighborhoods in order to avoid detection. And as Maria Rosa went from village to village for the Huk, she was careful to never disclose her real identity: her code name was Bayang.

Maria Rosa’s work gave her a deep sense of purpose. Yet she was continually haunted by the memory of the rapes, especially when she sang the following lines of a song with her comrades:

They should be vanquished, the fascist Japanese,
The scourge of our race.
They seized our possessions and raped our women.

After singing those words, Maria Rosa would always whisper to herself, 'I am one of those women.'"


Excerpt from "Maria Rosa Henson: Rape Survivor" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Denny Williams: The Surrender at Corregidor

A portion of the bedsheet signed by the nurses at Corregidor on May 6, 1942. 

Denny Williams’s name is in the middle of the third column.

AMEDD Center of History and Heritage, Archival Repository

"IT WAS THE MORNING of May 6, 1942. In a few hours, the US Army stationed on the Philippine island of Corregidor would surrender to the army of Imperial Japan.

But the fighting men would not be the only ones involved in this surrender. Along with them were female nurses, some of them civilians but most of them official members of the US Army. None of these women had been trained in combat nursing and yet they had endured months of just that. Now they awaited their fate. They were all too aware of the horrors the Japanese army inflicted on Chinese women four and a half years earlier during the Nanking Massacre. Tomorrow they would be facing the same enemy. Were they now living their last hours? If so, would anyone ever know what they had endured during the past grueling months?

They wanted to leave proof that they had been alive before meeting the Japanese face-to-face. One of them tore a large square from a bedsheet. Another wrote the following words at the top: “Members of the Army Nurse Corps and Civilian women who were in the Malinta Tunnel when Corregidor fell.” Then 69 women signed their names. One of them was Denny Williams."

Opening paragraphs from "Denny Williams: Nurse under Fire" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Bataan/Corregidor nurses leaving Santo Tomas prison in 1945

AMEDD Center of History and Heritage, Archival Repository