Ada Corbitt (Mickey) Syer as a captain, Australian Army Nursing Service and a prisoner of the Japanese, 1941-1945, interviewed by Margaret Evans

2/10th Australian General Hospital, was one of four reinforcement nurses when she embarked in 1941; went as the nation and fighting soldiers needed them, no familial reason not to go, and it was a way they could contribute to the war effort and they had professional skills; qualities of nurses; their strength and good health helped them as they went into POW camp; experiences of bombardment and sinking of SS Vyner Brooke; drifting at sea clinging to a piece of wreckage; arriving at Bangka Island; Japanese guards at Customs House; Vivian Bullwinkel; trustworthiness of others in the prisoner camp; civilian internees arriving with possessions, those from Vyner Brooke had only what they were wearing; black market (exchanged her gold watch for a single egg); spies in the camp; chance to earn money from civilian internees by babysitting or doing their laundry; ate a small amount of rice twice a day and a drink of hot water in the middle of the day; no privacy; practicalities of menstrual cycle; occasionally borrowing money from the Dutch internees at inflated interest, debts mostly honoured by the government at the war’s end; establishment of order amongst themselves; malaria and dysentery; ban on individual campfires due to danger, only fire allowed in main cook house; group dynamics of all female camp; fear of rape by off-duty guards; END OF PART ONE
Discusses each camp they were interred in: arrival at Muntok and near execution; Customs House; Cinema; “coolie lines” at Native Jail; crossed Bangka Straits to Palembang; accommodated in villas then huts; back to Muntok; Palembang and then by train and truck Lubuk (Loebuk) Linggau; end of war and repatriation to Singapore; reflections on her survival; morale boosters; vocal orchestra; “The Captives’ Hymn” composed by Margaret Dryburgh; the circumstances for children in the camps; ongoing bond with camp-mates at home; readjustment to home life; relationships with family and friends after the war; their POW experiences beyond the comprehension of people at home; nightmares END OF INTERVIEW