Student Presentations
Purpose: To become familiar with the stories of female prisoners of war. There have been numerous female military prisoners of war and women who were in conflict zones during war that have been captured and interned by military forces. This unit is divided into three units the psychology of captivity, stories and artifacts. Who were some of these women and what are their stories? What are some modern viewpoints of the ‘female military captive’? What are some of the ways and means captives are able to survive their psychological and physical abuses? Some notable POW’s that may be of interest beyond required readings for the unit are: Medal of Honor Winner, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Civil War; Edith Cavell, Belgian Nurse, WWI; First Lieutenant Reba Whittle, USAF Nursing Corps WWII Eastern Front; United Kingdom Special Operations Executive captives Yolande Beekman, Eliane Plewman, and Madeleine Damerment, World War II; Anna Timofeeva-Egorova (sometimes spelled Yegorova), pilot, Red Army Air Force, USSR, LTCOL Vivian Bullwinkel, Australian Army Nursing Service; COL Ruby Bradley, USA, World War II.
Required:
Part 1. Viewpoints of the Female POW and Psychology of Captivity
1). Elaine Sciolina. "Female P.O.W. is Abused, Kindling Debate," The New York Times,-U.S., June 29, 1992.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/29/us/female-pow-is-abused-kindling-debate.html
2). Anita Ramasastry. "What Happens when GI Jane is Captured? Women Prisoners of War and the Geneva Conventions,"
Wednesday April 2, 2003. FindLaw Online.
3). Review: Wayne Dillingham, MAJ USAF “The Possibility of American Military Women Becoming Prisoners of War,
Justification for Combat Exclusion Rules,” Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics pdf (11 January 1990).
4.) In class: excerpts from V.E. Frankle. Man's search for meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 1963
Part 2. Stories of POWs Dame Margot Turner (Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service World War II),
Monika Schwinn (German Malteser International Nurse/NGO Vietnam War), Noor Inayat Kahn (UK Women's
Auxiliary Air Force/SOE Agent).
5). Margot Turner as told to Sir John Smyth. The Will to Live: the Story of Dame Margot Turner DBE, RRC. (pp. 41-113 includes chapter titles: The Will to Live, Muntok Internment Camp,
Palembang-Imprisoned with Thieves and Murderers, Back to Internment, Muntok Once More.
6). In class excerpts from: Shrabani Basu. Spy Princess The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. Omega Publications (2006).
7). Monika Schwinn and Berhnard Diehl. We Came to Help. (pp. 3-13, 29-39, 40-49,60-65, 66-72, 127-128, 129-140, 203-207, 209-216, 230-255) Harcourt Brace 1976.
Part 3. POW Artifacts
8). Artifact: The Day Joyce Sheet. Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong, the double bed sheet was embroidered and appliquéd with 1100 names, signs and figures and includes two years of
camp diaries in code. It was successfully hidden during numerous searches of the camp and brought back to England at the end of the war. The needle Mrs. Joyce was using is still
lodged in the sheet at the place where she broke off when the camp was liberated in 1945. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30083388
9). Artifact: Margaret Dryburgh. The Captives' Hymn.
Sung by Vrouwenkoor Cadans Women's Choir.
Part 4. In Class Film
10). Rod Miller. Sisters of War (2010) ABC1Australia. Telemovie based on the true story of Lorna Whyte and Sister Berenice Twohill.
11). The Rabaul Nurses Camps 1942-1945.
Background on Sisters of War
12). "Courage Amid the Conflict," The Sydney Morning Herald
13). Review the website:
Australia's War 1939-1945
14). Review for related Internet resources.
http://www.rabaulnurses.com.au/Related%20Sites.html
Supplemental Materials:
Barbara Angell. A Woman’s War the Exceptional Life of Wilma Oram Young, New Holland Australia (2003).
Frank Anton, Tommy Denton. Why Didn’t You Get Me Out? A POW’s Nightmare in Vietnam. Summit Publishing Group, 1997.
Rick Bragg. I am a Soldier Too: The Jessica Lynch Story. Alfred A. Knopf, (2004).
Rhonda Cornum. She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story. Presidio Press (1993).
Dana Cury and Heather Mercer. Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan. Waterbrook Press. (2009).
L. Dopson. “Dame Margot Turner, Distinguished survivor” Nursing Standard 1993 Nov 17-23:8(9):53-4
Beryl Escott. Heroines of SOE. The History Press. (2010).
Mark Felton. Real Tenko: The Extraordinary True Stories of Women Prisoners of the Japanese. Pen and Sword, (2011).
Angharad Fletcher. “Sisters behind the Wire: Reappraising Australian Military Nursing and Internment in the Pacific during World War II.
Med Hist. 2011 Jul; 55(3): 419–424. A
Elliott Gruner. “Women as POWs Forgetting the Rhonda Cornum Story.” Minerva 1 (Mar 31, 1996): 1.
Shoshona Johnson. I'm Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen--My Journey Home. Touchstone. (2011)
Leona Jackson. “I was on Guam", The American Journal of Nursing, Vol. 42, No. 11 (November, 1942), pp. 1244–1246.
Betty Jeffrey. White Coolies. Audio Book MP3CD: Bolinda Audio Edition (November 5, 2012).
E. Monhan and R. Neidel-Greenlee. All This Hell, US Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese. University Press of Kentucky (2003).
E. Monahan and R. Neidel-Greenlee. And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II Anchor (2004).
E. Norman. We Band of Angels. Random House Trade Paperbacks (2013).
Office of the Surgeon General, United States of America. Textbook of Military Medicine: War Psychiatry. Walter Reed Institute for Research, Wash., D.C. (1995).
Juliette Pattison. “Playing the daft lassie with them’: Gender, Captivity and the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War”
European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire Volume 13, Issue 2, 2006 pp271-292.
Mary Raum, PhD, Lecture of Opportunity (LOU): The Female POW. U.S. Naval War College, March 26, 2013.
Red Grew The Harvest, Missionary experiences during the Pacific War of 1941-45 as related by Sisters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Pacific War) Pellegrini & Co, Sydney (1947)
Juanita Redmond. I Served on Bataan, JB Lippincott Co. (1943).
Jessie Elizabeth Simons. While History Passed. William Heinemann Ltd., (1954).
Anna Timofeeva-Egorova. “Over Fields of Fire: Flying the Sturmovik in Action on the Eastern Front 1942-45 (Soviet Memories of War) Helion (2001).
Ian W. Shaw. On Radji Beach. The Story of the Australian Nurses after the Fall of Singapore. MacMillian Australia. (2010).
Penny Starns. Surviving Tenko: The Story of Margot Turner. The History Press. 2010.
Derek Summerfield. "The Invention of post-traumatic stress disorder and the social usefulness of a psychiatric category."
British Medical Journal. Jan 13: 322 (7278): 95-98
Margaret Utinsky. Miss U, Angel of the Underground, 1948, 2016
Elizabeth Kate Vigurs. The women agents of the Special Operations Executive F section - wartime realities and post war representations.
PhD thesis, University of Leeds. (2011) White Rose e-Thesis online.
Documentary: Vivian Bullwinkel: An Australian Heroine. Available for purchase on DVD.
"WW2 Women Prisioners of War, Rheinprovinz Military District, Germany (Apr. 27, 1945)"
Department of Defense. Youtube Video.
Kate Webb. On the Other Side: 23 Days with the Viet Cong. Quadrangle Books, 1972.