Shoe Horn Sonata: - miss heron



[pic] “Shoe Horn Sonata is an impressive story of courage, hope, horror and friendship. This play is a tribute to commemorate the bravery of the women and to make their story of survival widely known. The historical context that the story has enables us to learn about the past events and to understand the true meaning of war and its consequences. The play draws on real events, the Massacre of the 21 Australian Nurses on Banka Island with only one Survivor.

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The focus for our study of “The Shoe Horn Sonata” is distinctively visual. This resource contains many visual images similar to images that could be used in a production of the play. Also there are several YouTube links which contain the music referred to in the play. Hover you mouse pointer over the link and follow the instructions that appear to access the link.

Making drama out of reality

John Misto, a well-known writer of documentaries, did not wish to present the story of the imprisoned Australian nurses as a documentary, but as a drama. He had to craft the story so as to manipulate the emotions of his audience, and to keep their interest to the end. Out of so much material, he had to make a deliberate choice, to achieve a narrative arc with elements of suspense, surprise, confrontation and a final resolution. There had to be tension to grip the audience.

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The basic story is a grim one of a fight for survival, and of the traumatic consequences of such suffering to the victims’ later lives. To hold an audience. however, he needed to have elements of humour. Misto found that humour and music were two of the main ways the nurses and their fellow internees helped themselves to survive. Another was strong supportive friendships, based on the Australian value of mateship. All these elements Misto used in his playscript.

To care about the fate of the nurses, the audience has to come to know them and feel empathy for them.

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The play uses language effectively to engage the audience e.g. descriptive detail in the monologues, imagery e.g. “on four wobbly legs we walk down to the village”; this provides a visual image of the scene and the efforts of both Sheila and Bridie.

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Resources

Misto has written this play for the requirements of contemporary theatrical productions.

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The Shoe-Horn Sonata, with only two characters on stage and an off-stage ‘voice’, is an attractive script for a professional theatre to produce, and it has been seen in a number of productions in Australian cities and in London.

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It requires only two sets: a rudimentary television studio, indicated by the “On Air” sign

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and a microphone, and a hotel room, with a bed and mini bar. Misto keeps the play affordable for theatre by casting only two actors, and using a simple set. Minimal props are needed, including

a suitcase,

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the shoe-horn,

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some photographs and embroidery.

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Keeping the audience interested

Misto keeps the audience entertained and interested for the whole performance while they are watching only two characters on stage. He does this by using a wide variety of modern dramatic techniques.

Misto writes extensively for television and in this stage play he has used his familiarity with the use of photographic images and voice-over to support the actors’ dialogue. He also uses the power of music to support his script. The images and music provide constantly changing focuses for the audience’s attention. They support the highly emotional material that surfaces from the memories of the central characters.

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(Pre War Singapore)

The use of song and of instrumental music has several purposes. First, it shows in actuality to the audience the soothing and uplifting power of music. Music was a crucial feature of the ‘life support’ system in the camps. It also adds variety and emotional sub-text to many of the play’s scenes. It places them also in their historical context. On some occasions it suggests the irony of the situations the two women faced.

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(The Vyner Brooke)

No photographs exist of these women in the prison camps, but a wide variety of other images appear on screen as background to the dialogue.

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(Australian Army Nurse)

These include:

• photographs taken of male P.O.W.s when they were liberated

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• photographs of the nurses arriving in Singapore from Belalau

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• contrasting images of Singapore: the affluent, confident imperial city before its fall,

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(Australian and British Soldiers captured by the Japanese)

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and the bombed and burning city afterwards…

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• the famous scenes of crowds in Martin Place, Sydney, when the war was declared over [while the audience knows the women in Belalau were still prisoners, destined for death]

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Misto incorporates the contrasts of slides of the evacuation of the women and children from Singapore to show panic and fear when compared to the peaceful and happy slides of the women before they went to war. He also incorporates the contrasts of nostalgic music of the 1940’s to show life before the war where as when compared to the music played “Fall in Brother”, it has an up beat tempo that reveals the anticipation in which the men join into the war effort. Through the use of contrasts it provides a striking experience for the audience as both positive and negative aspects of the story are portrayed.

Credibility

Such images are credibly part of the script because the central situation Misto sets up is the making of a television documentary. The unseen presenter-interviewer, Rick, has brought together to share their experiences a group of women survivors of the camps. It is credible that the producer of such a program will have done extensive research and assembled an archive of images.

WW2 Navy LIFE JACKET

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Sometimes as backing to the photographic images, at other times to support some of the women’s spoken memories, Misto uses excerpts from more than a dozen songs from the period, and such orchestral items as The Blue Danube Waltz and Danny Boy. Particularly moving for the two characters and for the audience is the recreation of the Captives’ Hymn, written in the camp by Margaret Dryburgh and sung every Sunday by the women, and the playing of Ravel’s Bolero, one of the items the voice orchestra presented at camp concerts.

Bolero



PRISONER OF WAR CAMP LATRINES

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Glenn Miller Orchestra - Danny Boy



There is a range of sounds that establish the reality of the past - the singing of the crickets or the lapping of the waves. Misto uses flashbacks to convey the drama that is conveyed within the story e.g. “lapping waves” convey the fear and terror of being lost at sea. This helps significantly to portray the themes within the play of horror, courage, hope and emotional impact of characters. Though there is doom and gloom there still is humour and hope. Misto maintains a balance of this within the play e.g. hope by being in a choir that made a “glorious sound that rose above the camp “allowing the women to forget about the Jap’s and their hunger.

The male voice of Rick adds variety to the sound texture of the play. The use of spotlights, linking the use of harsh lighting by the prison guards and the strong lighting of the television studio, is another effective dramatic technique used.

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The action of the play moves between the television studio where recollections of the past are fairly formally presented by the women as Rick interviews them, and the hotel, where the tensions between them appear in their outwardly casual conversations and are eventually resolved. This resolution is eventually made public in the cathartic last interview.

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Making it bearable

A major problem that Misto faced, is how to make bearable for a modern audience a play about suffering, cruelty, deprivation and death. This same problem has been faced by writers and filmmakers dealing with such overwhelming tragedies as the Nazi holocaust.

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(Holocaust Survivors)

Humour is used, as indeed many victims have used it , as a defence mechanism against despair and hopelessness. We see this when the Prime Minister’s message finally reaches the Australian nurses: “Keep smiling!” and, facing death in appalling conditions, their reaction is to break up in helpless laughter at the irony of the message. The contrast between the prim British schoolgirl Sheila, and the more practical Sydney nurse Bridie provides another source of humour.

When You’re Smiling



The other method used is the device of distancing. The characters and their audience are distanced in time from the events recalled and presented in the play. The women in the play have not only survived the camps, they have lived through the subsequent years and have in some ways dealt with the trauma. Now as survivors they can look back.

Misto makes no attempt to reproduce on stage the appalling brutalities carried out in the camps. We the audience do not see the rotten food or the beatings or the women left to die on the forced marches. We do not see the graves or the grave-diggers. Instead Misto presents these as reports remembered by Bridie and Sheila.

He treats them as the classical Greek dramatists did: as ‘obscene’ --literally to be ‘off-stage’-- and therefore reported to the audience in eloquent words, not shown. The Shoe-Horn Sonata uses words, reinforced with pictures and music, to establish these horrors in the imaginations of the audience.

Structure and characterisation

The structure of the play

The Shoe-Horn Sonata is divided into two acts: the longer Act One, with eight scenes, and a shorter Act Two, with six scenes.

It follows theatrical custom by providing a major climax before the final curtain of Act One, which resolves some of the suspense and mystery, but leaves the audience to wonder what direction the play will take after the interval. The action cuts between two settings: a television studio and a Melbourne motel room.

Tension creates drama. There is also the contrasts of the TV studio and the motel room, where In the motel room we see the build up of tension between Bridie and Sheila is on edge and picky. Bridie says “we shouldn’t be wasting our time together fighting we never did in camp”. Unlike the studio where the women are both forced to open up about their horrific experiences the motel room provides a deeper insight into the emotional impact that the separation has impacted upon them through the years. The action of the play moves between the television studio where recollections of the past are fairly formally presented by the women as Rick interviews them, and the hotel, where the tensions between them appear in their outwardly casual conversations and are eventually resolved. The Motel Room was also a place where private revelation and growing tension between Bridie and Sheila took place.

The opening scene, with Bridie demonstrating the deep, subservient bow, the kow-tow, demanded of the prisoners by their Japanese guards during tenko, takes the audience straight into the action. As the interviewer, Rick, poses questions, music and images from the war period flash on the screen behind Bridie, and the audience realises they are watching the filming of a television documentary. The time is now, and Bridie is being asked to recall the events of fifty years earlier.

Rule Brittania



This scene establishes who Bridie is, and introduces the audience to the situation: the recall and in a sense the re-living of memories of the years of imprisonment. This and the following scene carry out the function of exposition.

The extreme danger the prisoners faced is indicated by Bridie during this exposition: over-crowded ships sailing towards an enemy fleet, the unpreparedness of the British garrison in Singapore for the invasion, the fear of rape for the women. Misto thus sets up some of the issues to be confronted during the course of the play between the Australian Bridie and the former English schoolgirl Sheila. Sheila appears in Scene Two, and the major conflict of the play begins to simmer.

Something To Remember You By



Sheila’s arrival at the motel from Perth introduces immediately one source of friction between the two: they clearly have not been in touch with one another for many decades. Each is just finding out such basic information as whether the other ever married or had children. The audience sees, too, that the warmth of Bridie’s greeting: “Gee it’s good to see you” is not reciprocated by Sheila. The audience wonders why not. The revelations by the end of Act One will finally show the reason. The body language described on page 26 indicates the deep underlying tension between the two--yet the scene ends with their lifting the suitcase as they used to lift the coffins of the dead: to the cries of Ichi, ni, san---Ya-ta! Their shared experiences are a strong bond.

Journey through memory

For the rest of Act One, the shared memories of Bridie and Sheila become those of the audience, through the dramatic techniques Misto uses.

In Scene Three, the audience is reminded of how young Sheila was when she was taken prisoner. The voice of a teenage girl sings part of ‘Jerusalem’, the stirring and visionary song with words by English poet William Blake, and the mature Sheila joins in. (Later Bridie and Sheila sing it together.)

Jerusalem



Bridie’s attitude from their first meeting as shipwreck survivors drifting in the sea is protective of Sheila. She sees her as “another stuck-up Pom”, and hits her with her Shoe-Horn to keep her awake. Sheila has been taught by her snobbish mother to look down on the Irish, the label she puts on the Sydney nurse from Chatswood because of her surname.

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(World War 2 – Hospital Ship)

Further differences between the two surface in Scene Five, when the “officers’ club” set up by the Japanese is described. But by the end of this scene they are recalling the choir and “orchestra” of women’s voices set up by Miss Dryburgh. Scene Six opens with Bridie and Sheila in a conga line singing the parodies of well-known songs they’d used to taunt their captors and keep their spirits up.

(Conga Line)

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Happy Times



Pain and tension

Soon they are arguing, focusing on their differing attitudes to the British women who in Bridie’s view were “selling themselves for food” to the Japanese. The tension rises as more and more is revealed about the deteriorating conditions for the prisoners and the relentless number of deaths, especially in the Belalau camp.

We’ll Meet Again



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Australian Prime Minister – John Curtin

At the end of the Act, in a dramatic gesture, Sheila returns the Shoe-Horn.

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She had claimed to sell it for quinine to save Bridie’s life--but in fact as she now reveals she had been forced to sleep with the enemy to buy the medicine.

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She extorts from Bridie the implicit admission that she would not have made that sacrifice for her. Bridie says nothing, but cannot face Sheila. Sheila is shattered by the realisation:

“All these years I’ve told myself that you’d have done the same for me. [Calmly] I was wrong, though, wasn’t I?”

After the Ball Is Over



Act Two opens back in the studio, where Bridie and Sheila explain on the documentary the appalling conditions in the death camp of Belalau. Suspense is built by the revelation that orders had been given that no prisoners were to survive to the end of the war. The audience wants to know how there could have been survivors.

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(Belalau Hut)

Epitaph to War



They also want to know how or if the tension in the relationship between the two women can be resolved. It becomes clear that the traumatised Sheila cannot in civilian life face any sexual relationship; nor has she felt able to return to Britain or to face remaining with her family in Singapore. She has led a quiet life as a librarian in Perth. Her nights are filled with nightmarish recollections about Lipstick Larry, and she drinks rather too much.

In contrast, Bridie had been happily married for years to the cheeky Australian soldier who had waved and winked at her at Christmas behind the wire. She is now widowed and childless.

Ambush and resolution

Misto is preparing an ambush for the audience. By Scene Twelve, Bridie’s “disgrace” is revealed. Spooked when she is surrounded by a group of chattering Japanese tourists in David Jones Food Hall, she runs away with a tin of shortbread and later pleads guilty in court to shoplifting. “I still lie awake cringing with shame” she tells Sheila. She could not explain the truth about her phobia to the court or to her family and friends.

The effect on Sheila is more than Bridie expected. She now decides that she can be at peace only if she faces the truth in public. She explains:

“There are probably thousands of survivors like us--still trapped in the war--too ashamed to tell anyone.”

You'll Never Know How Much I Love You

Bridie urges her not to.

But in Scene Thirteen after they have recounted how they were eventually discovered and rescued, days after the end of the war, it is in fact Bridie who reveals the truth of Sheila’s heroism and self-sacrifice. She then finds the courage to ask Sheila to explain about her shoplifting arrest The scene ends with the declaration Bridie has waited fifty years for:

“And I’d do it all over again if I had to....’cause Bridie’s my friend...”

The use of emotive impact is significant in moving the audience into feeling a dramatic feeling of mixed emotions that convey within particular scenes. During the public revelations of Shelia and Bridie's secrets in Act 2, Bridie mentions “that isn’t the truth…she went to the Jap's to a Japanese guard and sold herself for him for tablets”.

The contrast between Bridie’s loud angry tone and silence of Sheila proved that. This was very effective in resolving the tension in the play, as the silence aroused a great sense of drama, This quote is an example of Misto’s use of emotive power over the audience, it also contrasts the themes of pity and admiration of both Bridie and Sheila; they are influenced into feeling pity and admiration.

Misto’s use of emotive power moves the audience into feeling sadness, pity and admiration that women have endured so much suffering however they are brave enough to tell the whole world of their horrific experiences.

The tensions between the two have now been resolved: the secrets are out, both the personal ones and the long-hidden information about the experiences of the women prisoners and internees. The brief and cheerful last scene shows their friendship restored, the Shoe-Horn returned to its rightful owner, plans made for a Christmas reunion, and, finally, the peacetime dance they had promised one another in the camp. The Blue Danube plays: “It is the music of joy and triumph and survival.”

Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz



Characterisation

The play’s structure is based on the differences in character and temperament between Bridie and Sheila which are gradually revealed to the audience. The action of the play revisits their past hardships and terrors, but the final focus is on the trauma they have suffered afterwards.

Conflict is the essence of characterisation . It can contrasts both inner e.g. when Sheila is deciding on whether to sell herself to the Jap’s. It can also be physical, an example of this is within the mal-treatment of the women when the guards beat the women e.g. Lipstick Larry “if they were seen wearing lipstick”.

The characters portrayed within the novel are seen as realistic and authentic, this is because Misto uses certain language techniques such as humour, when Bridie stitched a rusty pin into Lipstick Larry’s Loin Cloth.

Also when the Australian Nurses were pretending to have tuberculoses, Bridie mentions with humour “that night turned me off blind dates forever”.

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(Japanese men in loincloths)

The revelation of the crises they have each faced is presented as a healing action, which leads to the resolution of their differences and a satisfying closure to the play.

Misto’s own motivations for researching these events and writing the play is made clear in his Author’s Note (p.16). His perceptions of Australia’s neglect to honour such women as Bridie is suggested when she says:

“In 1951 we were each sent thirty pounds. The Japanese said it was compensation. That’s sixpence a day for each day of imprisonment.”

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(Japanese Imperial War Flag)

The contrast between the main characters, the prim British schoolgirl Sheila, and the more practical Sydney nurse Bridie provides another source of humour. Through the use of a combination of contrasts “lightning, songs and voice overs” telling the audience what Sheila did, reveals Sheila’s secret in a very dramatic and emotional way.

I’ll Walk Alone



Themes and concerns

The healing power of truth

Every drama takes its audience on a journey. The ending of the play’s action not only gives a sense of closure and completion, but also usually indicates what for the playwright is of major importance.

Throughout The Shoe-Horn Sonata Bridie and Sheila have uncovered events and emotions they have kept hidden for half a century: Sheila’s desperate gesture of swapping herself for the medicine to save Bridie’s life. Bridie’s constant but hidden terror of the guards, which is shown when she runs from the shop when she is surrounded by the harmless Japanese-speaking tourists.

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Up to the time of the play’s action, neither has been able to reveal what has shamed her so deeply. Meeting again eventually allows them to reveal and face the nightmares that have traumatised them since their captivity. They also have to alter some of the attitudes they held when young.

They tell one another the truths they have been suppressing, and then give each other the courage to reveal them to Rick and the world through the television documentary.

The ending is therefore not a ‘false’ upbeat and cheerful scene to leave the audience forgetting the horrors they have learnt about. A ‘sonata’ is a musical piece for two instruments, and during their captivity Bridie and Sheila literally and metaphorically made a musical duo. Now their declarations of friendship and their dancing as the stage darkens shows the audience that they have finally faced, together, the horrors that have given them nightmares. We realise that facing these realities has made them free to live their remaining lives at peace with one another and with themselves.

Whispering Grass



Mateship and resourcefulness

Anecdotal evidence from the memoirs of Australian prisoners-of-war suggests that they had a higher rate of survival than other nationalities taken by the Japanese. [This is to be a theme of the new Australian television drama, Changi, being produced in 2001 discussed in The Sydney Morning Herald, the guide, Feb.5 to11, 2001] Their strong sense of mateship, which involved constantly looking out for one another, is claimed to be one reason for this.

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Another reason given is their ‘can-do’ approach, and their resourcefulness in making the most of whatever they had at hand. They were considered to be more independent and practical than soldiers of other countries, not likely to wait for orders-in fact more likely to challenge authority.

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(Female POW’s line drawings from Sumatra in 1945)

The Shoe-Horn Sonata shows that the Australian nurses and others in camp with them (but not all) also shared these qualities. The play shows that in camp Sheila and Bridie worked together as best mates, and their support for one another was a major reason they survived in circumstances where many didn’t. This involved enormous self-sacrifice on Sheila’s part. Their knowledge of health and best practices to maintain it without any of the resources they were used to also helped them survive.

The stories and events that have been told within this story create a dramatic effect upon the play. The story of the blood spotted handkerchief is used by the Australian nurses pretending to have TB is a great example of the horrific sacrifices that the women had went through. Also how they were forced to be sex slaves so that they would have food and the basic necessities “selling themselves for a hard boiled egg”, Bridie mentions. The brothel known as the lavender street is also a dramatic event that many women have experienced, due to desperation. This incorporates the contrasts of sacrifices and consequences that the women endured throughout the war.

The power of art

The power of music to lift the prisoners’ spirits is made clear from the title of the play. The women’s amazing resourcefulness in creating an ‘orchestra’ consisting entirely of human voices-and one Shoe-Horn-has become one of the great legends of captivity. Bridie and Sheila create their own sonata, a medley of familiar music, when the choir has been disbanded because of deaths and weakness.They recall the surprise and delight one Christmas when the Australian men visited and from the outside of the barbed wire fence sang “O, Come All Ye Faithful”, and the women’s choir sang a carol in return.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful



The power of words is also made clear in the play.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen



The women sing The Captives’ Hymn at the opening of Act Two, but as they tell of their last dreadful months of captivity, they recall the parodies of popular songs they sang in defiance of their captors:

“One day I killed a Jap/Killed a Jap/I hit him on the head/ With a bloody lump of lead...”

The Captives Hymn



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It was sung without any instrumental accompaniment:

Father, in captivity

We would lift our prayer to Thee,

Keep us ever in Thy love,

Grant that daily we may prove

Those who place their trust in Thee,

More than conquerors may be.

Give us patience to endure,

Keep our hearts serene and pure,

Grant us courage, charity,

Greater faith, humility,

Readiness to own Thy will,

Be we free or captive still.

For our country we would pray,

In this hour be Thou her stay,

Pride and selfishness forgive,

Teach her by Thy laws to live,

By Thy grace may all men see

That true greatness comes from Thee.

For our loved ones we would pray,

Be their guardian night and day,

From all dangers keep them free,

Banish all anxiety,

May they trust us to Thy care.

Know that Thou our pains doth share.

May the day of freedom dawn,

Peace and justice be reborn.

Grant that nations loving Thee

O'er the world may brothers be,

Cleansed by suffering, know rebirth,

See Thy kingdom come on Earth.

Margaret Dryburgh, an English woman who studied and taught music, wrote the "Captives' Hymn" while in captivity on Sumatra. A trio of women prisoners first performed the song on July 5, 1942.

In her book, "Song of Survival," Colijn writes that 50 years ago,

"I viewed the hymn, particularly that fourth verse about the loved ones, in terms of the emotions it evoked in me--a tender, touching hymn.

Now I see it as a statement by a generous, forgiving and loving woman . . .

She (Dryburgh) showed no bitterness or anger, only courage and hope that o'er the world nations may brothers be. Now I see Margaret Dryburgh's 'Captives' Hymn' as an instrument of peace."

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Revealing injustice

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Misto has said that one purpose of his play is to show the injustices he believes have been done to the memory of the nurses, and of the thousands of other women and children who suffered with them. His Author’s Note (p 16) makes this clear. Their compensation afterwards was inadequate, and for fifty years no memorial was organised for them. The bombing of ships full of women and children and the shooting of nurses and Australian soldiers, breaking the international rules of war, was in fact what is now called a ‘war crime’.

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(Australian Nurses – POW recovering after the war)

In particular the evidence given that medicines provided by the International Red Cross lay unused outside the camp boundaries when children as well as women like Sheila were dying inside is a chilling reminder of the inhumanity of war.

Johann Strauss II - The Blue Danube Waltz



Misto’s play reemphasizes this statement as it expressed to the audience the horrific experiences and events that the women had endured but also managed to reflect the positive aspects that had resulted due to the interview. Its purpose was to inform and entertain viewers on the horrific massacre of 21 Australian nurses on Banka Island and the consequences of such a devastating war.

Hiroshima Mushroom Cloud

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SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

RECRUITMENT POSTERS FOR AUSTRALIAN WOMEN WW2

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IMPORTANT RESOURCES









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