The Army Nurses of Bataan and Corregidor: Captured in 1942, Freed in 1945

After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Army invaded the Philippines so fast that General Douglas MacArthur had to pull U.S. forces back to the Bataan Peninsula within weeks. Army nurses were soon posted to hospitals on Bataan and on the nearby island of Corregidor.

Two hospitals under fire

The hospital on Corregidor was deep underground, in the island's tunnels. On Bataan the Army built its first open-air hospital since the Civil War — 2,900 beds for American and Filipino soldiers, women, children and Japanese prisoners. Nurses slept close to foxholes while bombs fell nearby, trucks kept bringing the wounded from the front, and the operating tables in the tents stayed full. One night the doctors and nurses gave their own blood for amputees.

Capture

The Japanese took the hospitals on Bataan and Corregidor in May 1942. One nurse later described the surrender on Corregidor: the nurses stood silent and tense while Japanese soldiers walked up and down the line inspecting them; it was hard to read their faces or to tell rumour from reality and reality from fear — and the Japanese seemed puzzled, almost confused, by the sight of women in uniform.

The 99 captured nurses spent the rest of the war in a prison camp on the campus of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, short of food and clothing, and still caring for their fellow prisoners.

Home

They were freed in January 1945 and brought back to the Army's Letterman General Hospital at the Presidio of San Francisco, where they were promoted and awarded the Purple Heart.

Sources

• National Park Service, Presidio of San Francisco / Golden Gate National Recreation Area, "Military Nurses in the Philippines." https://www.nps.gov/articles/philippinesmilitarynurses.htm
• Photos: Golden Gate National Recreation Area Park Archives.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.