Prior to the entry into war, the Philippines was a choice assignment for nurses looking for adventure on a two-year tour of duty. Beginning with the first Japanese attacks on the Philippines, the nurses pivoted from their regular duty shifts to trauma nursing, tending to the casualties of the bombings of Clark Field.
.jpg)
Some nurses were able to escape from Manila, where most of them were based, to Bataan prior to the Japanese capture of the capital city of Manila. But 11 Navy nurses surrendered there in January. The remaining Army nurses worked around the clock in two hospitals set up in the jungles of Bataan with 18 open-air wards containing 300-400 patients each, wounded and increasingly sick and weak troops.
On April 9, 1942, just prior to the fall of Bataan, the women were moved to the island of Corregidor. From there, arrangements were made to evacuate a small group of nurses, but 66 remained and were captured with the fall of Corregidor on May 6. They were the largest group of American women taken captive and imprisoned by an enemy. Both the Japanese and Americans used the capture of the nurses as propaganda; the Japanese to boast of their victory in the Philippines, and the Americans to inspire patriotism and revenge.
In July, the nurses were put into Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC) in Manila. Santo Tomas became a POW city of roughly 6,000 people. The nurses helped to establish Santa Catalina Hospital on the grounds of the camp.
They helped to stem epidemics in the overcrowded camp, organizing a public health campaign in the most unsanitary conditions. The nurses treated patients with minimal supplies in spartan conditions for accidents, illness, and malnutrition. The weight loss due to starvation in the camps averaged around 32 percent of an individual's body weight. The American nurse POWs were not just waiting to be liberated, they were fighting to survive and to ensure the survival of others. All 77 survived until liberation by American forces.
The Army nurses were released from Santo Tomas in early February and the Navy Nurses, who had been moved to Los Banos Internment Camp, were released three weeks later.