This is part 2 in a series -- Read part 1 here.
While planning their invasion of the Philippines, the Imperial Japanese Army had decided how to administer control over the conquered islands. Among these plans was the conversion of Manila’s Santo Tomas University from Dominican academy to prison. Founded in 1611 by Dominicans and named after Saint Thomas Aquinas, Santo Tomas had stopped classes during the first week of the war. To create a sense of solitude from the busy city, the priests had surrounded the sixty-acre campus with a twelve-foot concrete and stone wall. Iron gates provided access to the school. Once Japan took the Philippines, however, the masonry and iron barrier transformed into prison walls. People of all ages and a myriad of nationalities– American, British, Australians, Canadians, Dutch, Polish, Norwegian, and French, to name a few – were held at Santo Tomas Internment Camp (STIC). Among these prisoners were Army and Navy nurses; putting their own well-being aside, these women went above and beyond the line of duty to care for their fellow prisoners.[1]
Upon their arrival at Santo Tomas in early July, the nurses captured at Corregidor were forced into isolation at the Santa Catalina dormitory, originally intended to train nuns. For six weeks, the only contact the nurses had with the main camp were the Japanese guards. Lieutenant Hattie Brantley later said that she believed that this isolation was designed to make the nurses forget the mistreatment of male prisoners they had seen on Corregidor. After this six-week period, which gave them time to rest and heal from their illnesses, the Japanese moved the women into the prison’s general population on August 24. [2] This enabled them to return to their duties, treating wounded and ill prisoners.
New Testament given to Army nurse 2nd Lieutenant Edith Corns by Methodist Chaplain Col. Perry Wilcox on Corregidor. Lt. Corns kept it with her through her imprisonment in Santo Tomas (National WWII Museum)
The nurses were not immediately given permission to tend to the internees. Initially, some of them were assigned to clean the women’s latrines. After petitioning the Japanese commandant, Captain Maude Davison succeeded in their reassignment to the hospital. Some nurses were reassigned to establish a hospital in Santa Catalina, others to various clinics and hospital wards throughout the camps or civilian hospitals in the city. Nurses worked either a four-hour day shift or an eight-to-twelve-hour night shift, which were split equally amongst the women until several nurses volunteered to permanently hold night duty.[3] The nurses settled into a daily routine throughout the fall of 1942, growing accustomed to the hardships of captivity.
One of these hardships included a scarcity of medicine and supplies. The Japanese had provided none when they created STIC; most of the equipment and medicine used during the first six months of the camp’s existence had been smuggled in by civilian physicians who had brought them in pillowcases or other sacks upon their internment. Doctors and nurses had to improvise their medical care. For example, Lt. Ann Mealer described using strands of hemp and tongue depressors as sutures. For the first year and a half, patients requiring surgery were allowed to go to a civilian hospital outside of the camp. After this practice was banned, nurses and doctors had to rely on anesthetics and medicines already in the camp.[4]
Throughout late 1942, the Japanese consolidated their prisoners of war into Santo Tomas. The women captured at Mindanao, for example, were brought to STIC in September. With their arrival, by the start of 1943, all military nurses captured during the first six months of war– besides Ruby Bradley and Beatrice Chambers, who remained imprisoned at Camp John Hay – were in STIC. Sixty-four Army nurses and eleven Navy nurses were POWs in Manila, along with several thousand civilians. By May 1, approximately 4,200 people were held in the rapidly growing camp, and a week later, the Japanese decided to move eight hundred men to a new internment camp at Los Baños, about 40 miles southeast of the former capital city. These men were intended to be the most able-bodied and fit, since Japan planned to force them to build this new camp from scratch. One of the men on the list was Dr. Charles Leach, a doctor who was travelling to China when the war broke out; he was responsible for leading the creation of the camp hospital during the early days of STIC in January 1942. When the Navy nurses arrived at STIC in March 1942, they worked closely with him and the other civilian nurses to tend to their fellow prisoners.[5]
US propaganda poster featuring Navy nurse POWs and a racist depiction of the Japanese typical of WWII-era America. (National WWII Museum/National Archives )
When the move was announced, the Navy nurses decided to volunteer to join these 800 prisoners at Los Baños. Several Army nurses, who had fallen in love with men that were being moved, asked Maude Davison for permission to leave Manila as well; Davison, however, refused. While her authority as their captain was questionable after nearly a year of internment in a civilian prison camp administered under civilian rule, regardless, the nurses heeded her leadership.[6]
On May 14, the navy nurses and prisoners were loaded onto steel train cars and embarked on their journey to Los Baños. This was a miserable trip for the 800 men and eleven nurses. Laura Cobb later recounted the overcrowded and hot conditions: “We were placed in steel box-cars, 65 to a car (where normally 30 men would have been a load), one to two nurses placed in a box-car… both doors were closed when the trains got underway. After some persuasion, the doors were opened. Some of the men were almost suffocated.”[7] After seven hours, the trains finally arrived at Los Baños.
Los Baños, another prison created from a former university campus (the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture and Forestry), was in poor condition upon their arrival. Lieutenant Cobb later recounted the sparse conditions in the camp hospital, describing how the men had to improvise objects like beds from bamboo and wood and bedpans from corrugated tin taken off of roofs. Medicine was also made using the resources found in the camp. For example, to prevent the epidemic spread of tuberculosis in the steamy jungle environment, the women concocted a cough syrup of onion juice and sugar to prevent ill prisoners’ coughs. To dress wounds, they made an adhesive paste made from the sap of a rubber tree and oil, and to prevent bacillary dysentery, they brewed tea from guava leaves.[8]
Back at Santo Tomas, the camp continued to grow. Three days after the trains left for Los Baños, eight hundred new internees arrived at STIC, among them 325 men over fifty and nearly 200 children, most of them under five. Many of these elderly men were veterans of the Spanish-American War who decided to stay in the Philippines; they suffered from many of the conditions that came with age, including arthritis and heart disease. The children, as well, also put a strain on the nursing staff with the diseases and conditions that primarily affect younger people. As such, the hospital size and mortality rate at STIC grew by the end of 1943, despite the nurses’ best efforts.[9]
Towards the end of September, Lieutenant Ruby Bradley finally joined her fellow nurses at STIC. Bradley, who had been held with fellow nurse Beatrice Chambers at Camp John Hay since her initial capture, had wanted to rejoin her comrades in Manila for months. Chambers, who had grown up in Baguio, decided to stay (although she said later that she regretted her choice).[10]
While at John Hay, Bradley’s nursing skills were put to the test. For example, early in their imprisonment, the medical staff in the prison had to deliver a baby when a mother entered labor a few days before her scheduled transportation to the civilian hospital in Baguio. Without a functional hospital yet established, the nurses had to deliver the baby on a mattress in the storeroom, utilizing an ether mask from a tea strainer to anesthetize the soon-to-be mother. A baby bed was made from a cabinet drawer; the few instruments available were sanitized in boiling water over a wood fire. In the first three months alone, thirteen babies were born at Camp John Hay, most in slightly better conditions after the establishment of a camp hospital. Soon after, she had to perform an emergency appendectomy. At great personal risk, Bradley and another doctor smuggled medical supplies and WWI-era morphine into the camp from the former US Army Hospital. Bradley and Chambers were moved to Camp John Holmes, a civilian internment camp in Baguio, in April 1943; it was there from which Bradley was moved to STIC.[11]
Army nurses (left-right) Bertha Dworsky, Sallie P. Durrett, Earlene Black, Jean Kennedy, Louise Anichieks, and Millei Dalton in Santo Tomas Internment Camp, 1943. This image was taken by the Japanese (Army Center of Military History)
January 1944 brought a major change to the Army nurses imprisoned at STIC. Control of civilian prison camps moved from the civilian Japanese Bureau of External Affairs to the Imperial Japanese Army’s War Prisoners Department. This, of course, marked a change for the worse in the administration of the camps; the Japanese army was notorious for its cruelty and mercilessness, and their rule over STIC and other internment camps were no exception. Beginning in February, Filipino doctors were no longer allowed to work in the camps and the military ruled that only “extreme emergencies” could be sent for treatment outside the prison walls. Furthermore, more prisoners were brought into Santo Tomas from external camps and prisons and at the same time, the food deliveries decreased significantly, causing significant risk of malnutrition and starvation within the prison camp.[12]
The overwhelmed doctors and nurses at Santo Tomas had to continue treating their prisoners, despite these new challenges. Part of the gymnasium was converted into a geriatric service for men, and another building was converted into an isolation hospital for patients fighting contagious diseases. They also opened a twenty-four-hour clinic and small emergency room; shortly after its creation, the clinic became so crowded that the nurses had to set out simple medication like aspirin and laxatives in small bowls for patients’ self-service.[13]
As 1944 progressed, hunger continued to grow amongst the prisoners. By the summer, adult rations were cut from approximately 1,500 calories a day to about 1,180 (for comparison, the FDA recommends approximately 2,000 to 3,000 calories for young adults depending on their sex and activity levels). For the nurses at both STIC and Los Baños, many of whom gave their rations to those in more need, the weight loss was dramatic. Upon her liberation, the formerly-110-pound Ruby Bradley weighed 86 pounds, Helen “Cassie” Cassiani, Eleanor Garen, and Navy nurse Mary Rose “Red” Harrington lost approximately 45 pounds each. Despite the complaints of the internees, the Japanese Army refused to address the issue, callously waving off their concerns.[14]
Supplies, in addition to food, were sparse. Without any plaster, broken arms were dressed using worn-out dresses or other clothing unfit to wear; at Los Baños, Navy nurse Laura Cobb described spending hours sterilizing operating room linens. Fear gripped the nurses at STIC when the Japanese ordered the prisoners to be inoculated against “plague.” Lt. Madeline Ullom later recalled a concern amongst the nurses and the camp that their captors were testing biological weapons on the prisoners, since they could not read the labels on the vials given to them and had no idea what was inside. Considering that the Japanese did not bring medications or other supplies into STIC, the “benevolent” order to protect the prisoners from the plague alarmed the prisoners; the motivations and purposes of these vaccinations remain unknown.[15]
In late September, the first American air raid on the Philippines happened, bringing hope to the prisoners that their liberation was imminent. In response to the increased military pressure, the Japanese once again cut rations entering into the internment camps. By mid-October, internees at STIC received approximately six ounces of food a day, less than a thousand calories, and by January, that went down to approximately seven hundred. Disease related to malnutrition was common– in September, STIC recorded 75 cases of beriberi (caused by thiamine deficiency), twelve cases of pellagra (caused by niacin deficiency), and four cases of scurvy (caused by vitamin C deficiency). Death rates in the hospital nearly quadrupled from an average of two deaths per month to an average of seven in October. By January 1945, multiple deaths per day were regular.[16]
US Army nurses climb into trucks as they leave Santo Tomas (Army Center of Military History)
February 3, 1945, marked the end of the long and difficult ordeal suffered by the prisoners. After a long and difficult campaign to take back the Philippines, that evening, American tanks crashed through the gates into Santo Tomas. General Douglas MacArthur had ordered his men directly to STIC, fearing that the Japanese would kill their prisoners rather than allow them to be liberated with the rest of Manila. The newly-freed nurses and doctors immediately began tending to wounded GIs brought in as the battle continued. There were only a few medics with the troops, so their participation was vital in saving the lives of these men. After years of isolation, the nurses were unfamiliar with some wartime medical developments; for example, when an Army doctor asked former prisoner Rita Palmer to give him some penicillin, she did not know what he wanted. The American government took control of penicillin production upon their entry in the war in December 1941, quickly increasing the stock to save soldiers' lives on the front. In 1941, the US did not have enough penicillin to treat a single patient. By the end of 1942, they had enough to treat less than 100. By September 1943, they had enough to treat the Allied Armed Forces as necessary. As such, penicillin, seen as a new and experimental medicine at the time of the nurses’ capture, had become commonplace amongst Army medics by the end of the war.[17]
Within the week, one hundred Army nurses and forty Army doctors arrived in Manila to care for the sick and wounded, finally relieving the newly liberated nurses. On February 12, the POW nurses were notified they would be leaving for Leyte, an American-held island to the south. Upon their arrival, they were admitted to the 126th General Hospital; seventeen of the group required intravenous fluids, the others were able to stay in hospital tents along the beach.[18]
US Army nurses leaving Manila on their way back to America, Feb. 12, 1945. They were given new uniforms to replace their old, worn-out clothing (Army Center of Military History)
While Manila had been liberated, the nurses at Los Baños remained prisoners. Allied intelligence showed that a full assault on the camp would be too costly and instead planned a lightning raid to liberate the camp. On the night of February 22, about three weeks after Santo Tomas was liberated, American paratroopers landed outside of the camp, working with Filipino guerrillas and Army rangers to kill the guards surrounding the camp. The weaker internees were loaded into vehicles and everyone else followed on foot. The Navy nurses rode with the sick and wounded; Margaret “Peg” Nash and Edwina Todd each held a newborn infant, helping the mothers who were too weak after childbirth. After four hours, the convoy had crossed Manilla Bay to the safe, American-held city of Mamatid. They too, had been liberated from imprisonment.[19]
Three years of captivity necessitated significant medical care for many of the nurses. Sixty-year-old Maude Davison, the indomitable leader of the Army nurses, was suffering from an intestinal obstruction and the effects of starvation. Francis Nash had beriberi, Ethel “Sally” Blaine had malaria, and Louise Anshicks and Myra Burris were recovering from surgeries conducted while imprisoned at STIC. Even those who were not seriously ill were still malnourished, on the verge of starvation, and dehydrated.[20]
After the terrible conditions of the internment camps, the nurses were given as many luxuries as possible. Ordinary foods like Coca-Cola and doughnuts were referred to as “Manna from Heaven” by some of the former prisoners; cookies, ice cream, and movies were luxuries not experienced since 1941. The nurses were promoted one rank and decorated for their valor– each former POW received a Presidential Citation and a Bronze Star with two Oak Clusters, and Lts. Rosemary Hogan, Rita Palmer, Francis Nash, Mary B. Brown Menzie, and Vivian Weissblatt received Purple Hearts for wounds sustained throughout the war.[21]
Former ex-POW Army nurses awarded their Bronze Stars and promotions, Feb.20, 1945 (Army Center of Military History)
Group of Army nurses preparing to finally return home to the United States, Feb. 20, 1945 (Army Center of Military History)
The Army nurses returned to the States by late February and the Navy nurses by early March and granted ninety-day leaves of absence. While they were treated as heroes and dogged by the press, many also returned to tragedy. Some, like Cassie, whose mother died of a heart attack three days before her liberation, lost parents and loved ones, others had to deal with the loss of a POW fiance or husband. For many of these women, they faced trauma after their ordeals. Eleanor Garen, exhausted by the press and personal attention and likely suffering from trauma, isolated herself and refused to leave her house in South Bend. “I was not used to this freedom… I felt lost,” she later said.[22]
After their leave, the former POWs reported to redistribution centers across America to choose their reassignment. These centers mostly tested and reclassified troops from the European and Mediterranean Theatres for either discharge or reassignment, usually to the Far East in preparation for the impending invasion of Japan. The former POWs were not considered for deployment back in the Pacific but largely given preference for their assignments. Many picked hospitals in the South because they were used to the hot and humid weather, others were assigned to bond tours to raise money for the war effort or recruit for the Army Nurse Corps.[23]
Navy nurses rescued from Los Baños, March 1945. Chief Nurse Laura Cobb (left, with glasses), speaking with Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid (Wikimedia Commons)
As the war wound down, some of the nurses were eager to return to civilian life. However, Madeline Ullom and sixteen other Army nurses decided to remain in the military. One of these was Ruby Bradley, who continued serving until 1963.[24] Her post-war career and the post-war lives of the other military nurses will be described in a future article.