Sisters Under the Rising Sun

Heather Morris’s 2023 historical novel, Sisters Under the Rising Sun, is based on the true stories of women imprisoned by the Japanese Army during World War II. The novel was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller and is an act of historical remembrance, chronicling the sinking of the Vyner Brooke, the infamous Radji Beach Massacre, and the organized communal survival of women in the Palembang and Muntok internment camps. The narrative follows two groups of Allied women—English civilian sisters Norah Chambers and Ena Murray, and a contingent of Australian Army nurses including Nesta James and Vivian Bullwinkel—who must forge a new community to endure starvation, disease, and the constant threat of violence. The novel explores themes of The Power of Female Solidarity in a Dehumanizing Environment, Art and Music as a Form of Spiritual Resistance, and The Indiscriminate Brutality of War.

Sisters Under the Rising Sun continues Morris’s method of fictionalizing historical testimony, which she established with her internationally bestselling debut, The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2018), and other works like Cilka’s Journey (2019) and Three Sisters (2021). Morris, a New Zealand author, writes biographical fiction based on extensive research and interviews with survivors or their families to dramatize real-life experiences of trauma and resilience during World War II.

This guide refers to the 2024 St. Martin’s Griffin trade paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, illness, death, sexual violence, animal cruelty, and sexual harassment.

Plot Summary

In Singapore in February 1942, Norah Chambers makes the agonizing decision to send her eight-year-old daughter, Sally, away to safety. As her husband, John, is in the hospital with typhus, Norah puts a distraught Sally on a ship to Australia with her aunt Barbara. Amid explosions at the wharf, Norah promises that she and John will follow, a promise she fears she cannot keep. Days later, Norah, a still-weak John, and her sister, Ena, flee the burning city. Ena’s husband, Ken, stays behind to care for their sick parents. The trio boards the HMS Vyner Brooke, an evacuation ship crowded with civilians. Also on board is a group of Australian Army nurses, including friends Nesta James, Betty Jeffrey, and Vivian Bullwinkel, who were ordered to evacuate against their will. Sister Nesta helps the frail John onto a launch, and the nurses sing to raise morale.

Aboard the overcrowded ship, the nurses, led by Matron Paschke and Matron Drummond, organize evacuation drills while Norah is consumed with worry for Sally. The ship is attacked by a Japanese plane, damaging the lifeboats. A second, more severe bombing raid follows, causing the Vyner Brooke to sink. Norah, John, and Ena abandon ship, the women badly burning their hands on the ropes as they slide into the sea. Nesta organizes the other nurses to jump overboard just before the ship goes under. As survivors float in the oil-slicked water, Japanese planes return to machine-gun them. In the chaos, Norah and Ena rescue a five-year-old girl named June, who has been separated from her mother. Nesta finds Betty and other nurses, and they spot and then lose sight of their matrons in a crowded lifeboat; Nesta grabs hold of a plank of wood and floats to shore. After drifting on a raft, Norah’s group is picked up by an RAF launch, but the airmen inform them they have no choice but to deliver them to the Japanese at Muntok pier on Banka Island.

On the beach, Nesta finds another survivor, Phyllis Turnbridge, before they are captured and marched to Muntok. All the prisoners from the pier are herded to a barracks compound, the first of several prisoner-of-war camps. The men and women are separated, and Norah is devastated as John is taken to the men’s side. In their hut, she and Ena meet Margaret Dryburgh, a missionary who tends to their burned hands. More survivors arrive, including nurses Betty Jeffrey and Blanche Hempsted, who recount their harrowing ordeal on a raft.

Two weeks later, Sister Vivian “Bully” Bullwinkel arrives, traumatized and injured. She reveals that she is the sole survivor of a massacre on Radji Beach. In a flashback, she recounts how her group of survivors, including Matron Drummond, was found by Japanese soldiers. The men were marched away and executed. The remaining 22 nurses and other women were then ordered into the sea and machine-gunned. Vivian, though wounded, survived by playing dead. She later found a wounded British soldier, Private Kingsley, and they surrendered together. Kingsley died in the camp hospital soon after her arrival. To protect Vivian as a witness, Nesta makes the other nurses swear an oath of secrecy. Shortly after, the prisoners are moved, and John is forcibly separated from Norah and Ena at the pier.

The women are transported to Camp II at Irenelaan, a village of Dutch houses in Palembang, Sumatra. Life settles into a routine under the command of Captain Miachi until the Japanese commandeer the nurses’ houses for an officers’ club and order the nurses to serve as “hostesses”—that is, to sexually service the soldiers. When the nurses refuse, Miachi cuts off food rations for the whole camp. To prevent mass starvation, four nurses volunteer to “service” the officers at the club, sacrificing themselves for the others. The remaining nurses swear never to reveal the names of the four volunteers, a vow they keep for life.

As a form of resistance and to bolster morale, Margaret Dryburgh and Norah form a choir. They compose “The Captives’ Hymn,” which becomes a source of hope. The concerts become a vital part of camp life. Norah, a trained musician, also floats the idea of a “voice orchestra” in which the women would sing instrumental music.

Months pass. The women make brief contact with male prisoners working nearby, singing carols to them through the jungle. In early 1943, Japanese guards return after being temporarily replaced by local recruits. They harass the women for their clothing and appearance but otherwise leave them alone, as a group of Chinese internees are now serving as “comfort women.” Malnutrition and disease set in by summer, particularly after a trader whom Miachi had allowed to sell goods in camp leaves. Miachi himself is replaced by a new commandant named Kato.

In October 1943, the prisoners are moved to Camp III, a filthy, dilapidated former men’s camp. Margaret falls gravely ill with dengue fever, but Norah finally puts her idea for a voice orchestra into practice, performing a Tchaikovsky piece to help Margaret recover. Norah goes on to organize a formal choir that performs for the first time around Christmas: The voice orchestra’s performance of Ravel’s “Bolero” provides a transcendent moment of beauty for the starving women. However, in April 1944, Kato is replaced by a new commandant, Captain Seki, who attends one of the concerts and demands that they perform Japanese music. Norah is forced to stand in the sun all day after refusing. Sickness and starvation are constant threats. As conditions worsen, Allied planes are spotted overhead, leading to harsher rules from the guards.

In October of 1944, the prisoners are moved again, enduring a horrific journey to Camp IV, part of which is spent trapped in the kerosene-fumed hold of a junk boat. Although conditions at the new camp are somewhat better, the women are so weak that the death rate from disease and starvation climbs. Norah and her friend Audrey Owen take on the grim task of burying the dead and carving their names on wooden crosses. When Ena falls ill, Norah trades her wedding ring to a comfort woman named Tante Peuk to secure extra food. Ena survives, but the first of the nurses dies in early 1945. Meanwhile, Tante Peuk herself develops a fever that Norah nurses her through; she will later realize that Tante Peuk seized the opportunity to slip Norah’s wedding ring back into her pocket.

In April 1945, the prisoners are forced to move a final time to Camp V at Belalau, a disused rubber plantation. The journey is brutal, and many die en route. Margaret Dryburgh dies upon arrival, a devastating loss for the entire community.

In August 1945, Captain Seki announces the war is over. The women are too weak and disbelieving to celebrate until Red Cross parcels begin arriving in the camp. Soon after, men from a nearby POW camp arrive, and Norah is joyfully reunited with John. Australian paratroopers arrive to evacuate the nurses, who are given a hero’s send-off by the camp. Days later, Norah, John, Ena, and June are also evacuated. As their truck leaves, the Dutch nuns who were also interned in the camp line the road, singing “Bolero” in a final, moving tribute to Norah.

The 24 surviving Australian nurses return home to a massive welcome in Perth. In Singapore, Norah and Ena are reunited with their mother and Ena’s husband, Ken, and learn that their father died in captivity. June is reunited with her father, Mr. Bourhill. Finally, Norah and John travel to Belfast to find their daughter, Sally, now 12. Sally does not recognize the gaunt strangers until Norah sings a familiar lullaby, prompting a tearful and long-awaited reunion.