Honouring the FMI sisters of Vunapope

Honouring the FMI sisters of Vunapope LISA HILLI'The Little Sisters' (Indigenous Sisters) would creep in and leave a bunch of bananas or taro for us.They were tortured but did not stop doing this.The food would just be left there We never saw them and were never allowed to speak to them.-Sister Berenice Twohill 1In a valley concealed by dense tropical forest several kilometres inland from the Catholic Mission of Vunapope, a group of local Papua New Guinean women trudged tirelessly up and down a steep incline every day, delivering locally grown produce at the risk of their own lives to sustain an interned group of approximately 300 malnourished civilians.This remarkable group of Papua New Guinean women kept these civilians alive for almost three years.They were Katolik (Catholic) sisters from the Daughters of Mary Immaculate (Filae Maria Immaculata) congregation, more commonly known as the FMI sisters of Vunapope.The international group of civilians detained during Japan's military occupation of Rabaul in World War II were predominantly European and American affiliates of the Catholic Church congregations Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) and Sacred Heart Mission (MSC).Sister Berenice Twohill was one of a few Australian citizens who chose to stay in the territory, rather than flee with the majority of Australians upon Japan's invasion in January 1942.The Australian telemovie Sisters of War, released in 2010, portrayed the Australian Catholic sisters' harrowing experience; however, it reduced the 45 FMI sisters' efforts and lives to only one Papua New Guinean woman, and excluded the mixed-race children who were also detained.Similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor in the American-occupied Territory of Hawai'i several weeks earlier, Japan's invasion of Rabaul caught everyone in the former Australian-occupied Territories of Papua and New Guinea by surprise.Under Emperor Hirohito's reign, Japan saw itself as the liberator from Western imperialism of the indigenous peoples of Asia and the Pacific during WWII or the 'Sacred War'.