Bangka massacre remembered 80 years on

Family members and Australian army nurses attended the first official Bangka ceremony in 2016. (AAP)

On the morning of February 16, 1942, 22 Australian nurses, survivors of the sunken merchant ship SS Vyner Brooke, were marched into the surf by Japanese soldiers off Bangka Island, east of Sumatra.

In one of the worst atrocities of Australia's involvement in World War II, all bar one would not make it back to the beach alive.