CNJ+ May 2024

diseases. In the jungle over 5,000 soldiers were be ing treated by the nurses, many with life-threaten ing injuries. An average ward consisted of 300 pa tients to one nurse. They all shared 5 medicine glasses, 15 thermometers, and one teaspoon between them. Dysentery and jungle mos quitos spreading malaria were killing men just as fast as bullets were. There was little food left and people were starving of hunger. The Japanese forces did not follow the Geneva Conven tion rules and continued to

years of hardship, they were finally liberated in Febru ary 1945.) During the Japanese oc cupation of the Philippines, in addition to its civilian population, Santo Tomas became the initial intern ment camp for both the army and navy nurses, with the army nurses remaining there until their liberation. Capt. Maude C. Davison, 57 years old and with 20 years of service experience, took command of the nurs es, maintained a regular schedule of nursing duty, and insisted that all nurses

11 Navy nurses after being freed from Los Banos Internment Camp

bomb areas under the Red Cross signs. Every day cots were moved more into the jungle and under thicker brush so the planes couldn’t see them from above. Just before the fall of all of Bataan, on April 9th, 1942, the nurses serving there were ordered to the island fortress of Corregidor by General Wainwright (commander of the forces in the Philippines after MacArthur was ordered to Australia). It was tough for them to leave all the wound ed soldiers in the makeshift jungle hospitals, knowing what awaited them. Some of the most wounded were also transferred to Corregidor along with the nurses, but sadly it was a race against time to get out. More POWs died at the hands of the Japanese in the Pacific theater, and specifically in the Philippines, than in any other conflict to date. In the Philippines, in total 11,107 American soldiers captured in the Philippines died. Some died in the Philippines, and others were transported and died in places like Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, or the Japanese home islands, where they were forced into slave labor. Others were killed in the “Hell Ships” en route to Japan, ships that were bombed by American planes or torpedoed by American ships whose crewmen did not realize their countrymen were in the transport holds. There were tunnels at Corregidor that connected to the tunnels of Manila. The nurses tended to the most devastating injuries of war there. There was little food, no medicine or supplies. They were starving to death in the tun nels, only coming out during the time the Japanese weren’t bombing them. Every day they suffered the horrors of these bombings. The tunnels kept them safe for the time being. On 29 April, a small group of army nurses were evacuated, with other passengers, aboard a navy PBY Catalina. However, they were stranded in Mindanao and became prisoners. The nurses were transferred back to Ma nila and interned at the University of Santo Tomas. On May 3rd, the sole navy nurse, Ann Bernatitus, a few more army nurses, and a small group of civilians were evacuated aboard the submarine Spearfish. When Corregidor fell to Japanese forces under the command of Gen eral Masaharu Homma on May 6th, the remaining nurses in the tunnels were captured and on July 2nd, transferred to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. When Bataan and Corregidor fell, 11 navy nurses, 66 army nurses, and 1 nurse anesthetist were captured and imprisoned in and around Ma nila. They continued to serve as a nursing unit while prisoners of war. (After

wear their khaki blouses and skirts while on duty. Josephine Nesbit, age 55, worked alongside her. (The camp is described in detail in a book called The War by Ken Burns.) In May 1943, the eleven navy nurses, still under the command of Lt. Cobb, were transferred to a new internment camp at Los Baños, where they es tablished a new infirmary and continued working as a nursing unit. At Los Baños they came to be known as “the sacred eleven”. In all, both the army and navy nurses were the largest group of American women taken captive and imprisoned by an enemy. Both the Japanese and Americans used their capture for propaganda purposes—the Japanese to boast of their victory in the Philippines, and the Americans to inspire patri otism and revenge. While the capture of the nurses was widely publicized in the U.S., little specific information was known of their fate until they were liberated. Santo Tomas became a POW city housing roughly 6,000 people. Within the camp, the nurses helped establish Santa Catalina Hospital. Despite min imal supplies and unsanitary conditions, they treated patients for accidents, disease, and malnutrition. Their dedication and professional care were vital to all the Allied POWs held there. Miraculously, all the nurses survived the long imprisonment from May 1942 to February 1945. In January 1944, control of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp changed from Japanese civil authorities to the Imperial Japanese Army, with whom it remained until the camp was liberated. The diet of the internees was re duced to 960 calories per person per day by November 1944, and further reduced to 700 calories per person per day by January 1945. A Department of Veterans Affairs study found that the nurses lost, on average, 30% of their body weight during internment, and subsequently experienced a degree of service-connected disability “virtually the same as the male ex-POW’s of the Pacific Theater. As an example, Maude C. Davison’s body weight dropped from 156 to 80 lbs. during that year they were under the Imperial Japanese Army’s rule. Emboldened by the success of the Raid at Cabanatuan, General Douglas MacArthur ordered Major General Vernon D. Mudge to make an aggressive raid on Santo Tomas in the Battle of Manila. The internees at Santo Tomas, including the nurses, were liberated on February 3rd, 1945, by a “flying col umn” of the 1st Cavalry after becoming prisoners of War for 3 years of in

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