The war took hold in earnest in March when Japanese warships appeared off Buka. Father James Hennessey, a Boston-born priest who was also on a mission, was taken away — never to be seen again by the nuns. And then Buka plantation owner Percy Good was found, as Sister Hedda recorded, “His throat was cut, and they buried him in a grave about a foot deep. Such treachery! It makes us just sick, as we think the same fate might have befallen Father Hennessey.”
The time had come to flee to Bougainville, a larger neighboring island with more jungle cover. They had no idea their ordeal on the island would last for more than nine months as they played cat-and-mouse with Japanese soldiers bent on capturing them.
Despite such entries in Sister Hedda’s journal, the sheer terror felt by the nuns rarely surfaces in her accounting, but the journal made clear that they knew that in time they were bound to fall into Japanese hands.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/14/the-remarkable-story-of-four-stranded-nuns-a-remote-island-and-a-heroic-submarine-rescue/?utm_term=.b290a4da70df
Topic: Escape From Paradise (Read 2852 times)