Costavina Aya "Coosje" Ayal (15 April 1926 – 28 March 2015) was a resistance fighter in Western New Guinea during World War II.
[1] She gained fame as the sole female survivor of the only guerrilla group in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) that held out during the Japanese occupation.
When the Japanese fleet entered Dore Bay on 12 April 1942, an armed militia of 62 persons–of which sixteen-year-old Coosje Ayal was a member–was already hiding there, led by KNIL captain Johannes Bernardus Herman Willemsz Geeroms [nl].
[2] Ayal wore a soldier's uniform and learned how to handle a carbine and hand grenades, but also performed 'domestic tasks' such as cooking, mending clothes and caring for the wounded.
[3] Ayal followed a nurse's training in Brisbane, Australia, as an infantrywoman in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Women's Corps and she was promoted to corporal.