Sinking Ship
Both Bridie and Sheila are evacuated from Singapore for their own safety because there is a Japanese invasion coming. However, they are placed in more imminent danger because of this evacuation to safety because it has come too late, and there are already enemy submarines in the ocean waiting to torpedo the ships they are sailing on. They are torpedoed and the ships sink, leaving the women floating in the ocean, and they are ultimately captured by the Japanese that they were being evacuated to avoid.
Sheila's Sexual Favors
Bridie makes her feelings about women who had sex with the Japanese very clear. She does not know why anyone would do such a thing, and she does not know how they could look their kids and families, or even themselves, in the eye afterwards. She is unaware that in order to get her the malaria medication that she needed to save her life, Sheila had sex with Lipstick Larry, the most lascivious guard, and that she has been haunted by this ever since.
Keep Smiling
Towards the end of the war, the Emperor of Japan issues a letter that is read to the Australian nurses, that tells them they should "keep smiling" because liberation is coming soon. This is tremendously funny to them and not only to they "keep smiling", they dissolve into uncontrollable, almost hysterical laughter, at the suggestion that anyone might think that people in their condition should be smiling in the first place.
Snobbish Women
Bridie points out that the women who had the most airs and graces, went regularly to the incredibly expensive and elite Raffles Hotel, and who generally looked down on everyone else, were the first to abandon their propriety when the opportunity arose to offer sex to a Japanese guard in return for the smallest food item or benefit.
Geneva Convention
After keeping prisoners in the most degrading of conditions, starving them, denying them basic sanitation and forcing them into sex, the Japanese decided that because they wanted to abide by the Geneva Convention they would provide cultural enrichment to their prisoners by playing them classical music for an hour every day.
