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6 WWII entries
The Last Bataan Angel
They called them the Angels of Bataan—sixty-four Army nurses trapped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Lt. Col. Madeline "Madge" Ullom survived thirty-seven months of captivity to become the last living bridge to their story.
The Unbroken Eleven: Cobb & Navy Nurses
As most U.S. medical personnel evacuated to Bataan, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Laura Cobb and her ten nurses were left behind at Cañacao Naval Hospital to treat casualties from the Japanese bombing. Relocating their wards to Sternberg General Hospital and then St. Scholastica’s College, the unit maintained care until their internment at Santo Tomas in March 1942. Later transferred to Los Baños, they tended to starving prisoners until American paratroopers, soldiers, and Filipino guerrillas rescued them on February 23, 1945.
Lipstick and Shrapnel: A WWII Army Nurse Story
Ever since fifth grade, Sally Blaine had dreamed of the Philippines. When she joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps in 1939, she repeatedly signed the overseas volunteer list at Letterman General Hospital until her name was finally drawn. By June 1941, she arrived at Fort Stotsenburg in Pampanga, where life moved at the gentle pace of a peacetime garrison. "At Stotsenburg, life was like a picnic," she recalled. "At six o’clock in the evening, all the women had to be in long dresses. Men had to be in white uniform—the formal attire."
The Map on Her Back
When leprosy took Josefina Guerrero's health, it cost her everything else. Her husband left. She was separated from her young daughter. Society turned its back. Yet the very disease that made her an outcast soon became her greatest shield.
The Man Who Told Them Not to Smile
By looking the other way at small missteps, Rokuro Tomibe kept men and women alive who otherwise would have faced execution or torture.
The Man at the Gate
Carroll Grinnell was a businessman by trade. But when war reached Manila, his work suddenly boiled down to keeping four thousand people from starving. By the time his wife, Ruth, received his Medal of Freedom after the war, the paper merely confirmed what the camp already knew: he never turned anyone away.