Blog posts by David Gormley-O'Brien

The following are blog posts arising David Gormley-O'Brien's books and research.

Sources for Japanese breakout from Cowra Prisoner of War Camp

David Gormley-…

At 1.50 am on 5 August 1944, almost a thousand Japanese prisoners-of-war interned at No. 12 Prisoner of War Camp, Cowra, NSW, staged a mass breakout. 22 Garrison Battalion was assign as the camp guard. Armed with improvised weapons including baseball bats and sharpened mess knives the Japanese stormed the prison barb-wire fences. 234 Japanese prisoners died with 108 wounded. Four Australian guards were killed, with four wounded (three by friendly fire).

The Bridge jumpers

David Gormley-…
The opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at the height of the Great Depression in March 1932 was a festive occasion for the young nation. Celebrations were short-lived when the bridge became a popular spot for suicide jumpers. It took nearly two years and almost 50 deaths for the reluctant Government to erect a safety barrier on the bridge's footways.

Vivian Bullwinkel

David Gormley-…
Vivian Bullwinkel was the sole survivor of the massacre of 21 nurses on Bangka Island in World War II. She spent the following three and a half years in Japanese internment camps in Sumatra. She appears in An Attractive Naivety, and in reading her diaries, notebooks, and her testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials in December 1946, I was struck by her extraordinary courage and leadership. Her story is told in my historical novel, An Attractive Naivety.
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