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In January 1942, the Japanese war machine thundered across South East Asia. In its path lay a tiny Catholic mission station, Vunapope. Here a handful of Australian nurses took refuge along with a number of wounded Australian soldiers. Abandoned by their commanding officers, they were left to face the Japanese alone. Sisters of War is inspired by the true story of two extraordinary Australian women, Lorna Whyte (now Johnston), an army nurse and Sister Berenice Twohill, a Catholic nun from country New South Wales who was stationed at Vunapope. Although they were two very different women, their friendship would survive the incredible events that followed. When the Japanese arrived at Vunapope, the nurses and their patients were saved from massacre by the appearance of the mission’s leader, Bishop Leo Scharmach. This astonishing man bluffed the Japanese into believing that he was a personal friend of Hitler and that the mission was Hitler’s property. Any massacre of Australians would be a declaration of war on Germany. In the dark days that followed, Sister Berenice and Lorna found themselves facing starvation, beatings and torture. Their beliefs were constantly tested, as was their friendship. Sister Berenice idolised Bishop Scharmach; Lorna was convinced he was a collaborator. The tiny mission became a setting for betrayal, heroism and death. And all the normal rules of war were broken. The nuns found themselves looking after 15-year-old weeping and homesick Japanese soldiers. The Americans, their allies, flew over every night and bombed them savagely. The Japanese executed their own wounded soldiers who were too maimed to fight. After six months, Lorna and Sister Berenice were separated. The Australian nurses were sent to Yokohama to be part of a prisoner exchange. But the exchange program collapsed and the nurses found themselves trapped in war time Japan, freezing and ravaged by disease. At the same time the inhabitants of Vunapope were taken to a dark, uninhabited jungle valley where they would be safe from air raids. Sisters of War is adapted from the wartime diaries and interviews with Lorna Johnston (nee Whyte), Sister Berenice and others who survived. The story of their captivity, their friendship, their will to survive and their extraordinary courage has never been told.