One of World War II's heroic stories began on April 8, 1942 when Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, the commander of the U.S. Army in the Philippines, ordered the evacuation of military and civilian nurses to the island of Corregidor. A month later, Corregidor fell and 77 American nurses were captured by the Japanese, becoming the largest group of female prisoners of war.

General Douglas MacArthur ordered a retreat to the inhospitable jungles of the Bataan Peninsula and the supposedly impregnable island of Corregidor at its tip. There, they would make a stand and wait for reinforcements. The reinforcements never arrived, in an article written by Elizabeth M Collins, Soldiers Magazine.

A makeshift hospital ship, manned by one of the Army nurses, managed sneak out, but the most gravely wounded couldn't be moved and were left behind in Manila with 11 Navy nurses. Meanwhile, between Christmas and New Year's Eve, the Army nurses crossed the bay under heavy fire, becoming, the first group of American military nurses sent onto the battlefield for duty.They were already the first women to wear fatigues and combat boots in U.S. military history.

Hospital 1 on Bataan initially consisted of 29 bamboo and grass sheds, and doctors and nurses could barely keep up with the casualties from the unrelenting air raids and fierce, often hand-to-hand, combat, performing 187 major surgeries in one 24-hour period, Jan. 16, 1942, according to Elizabeth M. Norman, a professor of nursing history at New York University and author of "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese.

Hospital 2 was farther inland, and in the open air. There was no protection from the mosquitos, so malaria and dengue fever were endemic, affecting everyone from the wounded to healthy Soldiers to the nurses themselves, while ever-present flies contaminated food and water with dysentery and other parasites.

Food, contaminated or not, was scarce. Infantrymen were fighting on 1,000 calories a day by late February a quarter of the nutrition they needed to stay in fighting shape. They ate the cavalry horses, water buffalo, even monkeys, while the sick and exhausted nurses forced themselves to work. One senior nurse, bedridden from malaria, even set up a cot in the middle of her ward and continued directing her staff, Norman wrote.

Two of the nurses were injured with shrapnel when the Japanese bombed Hospital 1 for the second time, and quickly went back to work. Watching women endure the same danger and hunger seemed to inspire the troops to continue the fight, Norman wrote, but by April, the enemy was only miles from the hospitals. On April 8, 1942, Lt. Gen. Jonathan "Skinny" Wainwright, new commander of the U.S. Army in the Philippines, ordered the nurses to the relative safety of Corregidor.

They didn't want to go  didn't want to leave helpless, sick and wounded men to fend for themselves. They were nurses and their sacred duty was to stay with their 8,800 patients, but orders were orders. They escaped by dodging sniper fire and mines and explosions in whatever buses and boats were available.

The Japanese then used the hospital patients as human shields. They also force-marched the ambulatory Soldiers (wounded or not) some 60 miles through the rugged terrain and heat during the infamous Bataan Death March. Anyone who fell behind was killed and historians estimate that almost 20,000 Americans and Filipinos perished. The nurses felt they had abandoned their patients, and Norman said it haunted them for the rest of their lives.

Their new hospital was underground in the dank, hot, airless Malinta Tunnel. It continuously shook from bombs and artillery fire, Gates later recalled, saying, "The É tunnels were jammed with wounded. Every other patient they brought in was someone we'd known personally. That was hard to take." And once again, food and medical supplies quickly ran low.

Japanese soldiers were infamous for raping the women they conquered and Wainwright, who publically hailed the nurses' bravery, wanted them off the island. He managed to have 22 Army nurses and one Navy nurse sent to Australia by PBY plane and submarine, but there wasn't time to evacuate the remaining 56. A second plane hit an underwater rock during a refueling stop and left 10 nurses stranded on the island of Mindanao. They were eventually captured as well.

The Japanese infantry assaulted Corregidor's beaches in wave after punishing wave. Wainwright finally surrendered May 6, because "fighting in the É tunnels, jammed with wounded, would be mass murder," 2nd Lt. Eunice Young remembered in a passage quoted by Bowersock. The next morning, she continued, "In the middle of a difficult operation, I heard a scuffling noise and glanced up. In the door stood a Japanese soldier with his bayonet fixed. My heart popped into my mouth." Expecting to die, the nurses wrote their names on a bed sheet, but the Japanese, Young went on, were shocked at their presence and had no idea what to do with "captured women in uniform."

While Japanese soldiers stole the nurses' valuables, by all accounts, none were molested or killed. Eventually, they moved the nurses to the civilian internment camp of Santo Tomas in Manila, where the 11 Navy nurses had been held since March. The Navy nurses later moved north to the Los Banos internment camp.

"They were a tough bunch," Cantrell added. "They had a mission. They were surviving for the boys and each other. That does give you a bit of added strength."

The nurses learned to make sutures from hemp, 2nd Lt. Ruby G. Bradley wrote in an article for the Army's Office of Medical History. Bradley was captured north of Manila at Camp John Hay in December 1941, and was sent to Santo Tomas in September 1943. She later served in the Korean War, becoming a colonel and the most decorated woman in U.S. military history at that time. Nurses sterilized surgical instruments by baking them in ovens or boiling them over Bunsen burners. Men in camp banged scrap metal into bedpans, Norman added, and interned chemists turned rubber from the rubber trees in camp into a paste to hold bandages.

The nurses saw everything from childbirth to heart attacks, and Gates was even diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy while in camp. There were diphtheria, chicken pox and tuberculosis outbreaks as well. But as Japan started to lose the war, the prisoners received less and less food and fewer privileges. Starting in 1944, the biggest problems were symptoms of malnutrition and starvation, especially beriberi, which Norman explained leads to swollen, painful limbs and is caused by thiamine deficiency. The nurses were sick and starving as well, and could do little for their patients but make them comfortable and watch as they starved to death, as many as five a day by early 1945, when they were forced to live on just 700 calories a day.

"As the Americans drew nearer still, less food was given to the people," Palmer said. "The large flock of pigeons that had nested in the eaves gradually disappeared." Gates later said she ate dogs and cats, and once crawled around the floor to find a single grain of rice. She lost 23 pounds.

The nurses knew they were dying, Norman said. "They knew the camp was on a death watch and it was only a matter of time. They would make these cynical jokes about it, but none of those nurses ever expressed a fear to me about their own deaths, ever, either in battle or in camp."

"It appeared to take more courage to live than to die," Bradley wrote. Fortunately, the allied troops arrived in time to save them from starvation and execution, which the Japanese were widely rumored to be planning.

Just after dark on the night of Feb. 3, the nurses heard gunfire in the streets of Manila and then the 1st Cavalry Division and 44th Tank Battalion barreled through the gates. The internees went wild, screaming and crying with joy, singing "God Bless America," Gates remembered. "We could hardly talk to the men. Everyone was weeping with joy and we were almost unable to believe that it had finally happened." The Navy nurses at Los Banos were liberated Feb. 22.

A number of the Soldiers, who had pushed through enemy lines to liberate Santo Tomas, were wounded Ð six eventually died Ð and more were injured as the Allies fought to keep control of Santo Tomas over the next few days. The nurses, weak with hunger and seriously ill (Palmer had just been hospitalized with dysentery and malaria), rushed to care for American Soldiers for the first time in nearly three years. They stayed on duty until the Army sent a fresh unit of nurses to relieve them.

Then they got to go home, via a long, circuitous route of island hopping, official ceremonies, hospitals, physicals, press interviews, ticker tape parades and awards ceremonies. The nurses were all promoted and awarded the Bronze Star, and Palmer and another nurse received Purple Hearts. Their 100-percent survival record, Norman explained, is unmatched to this day. They were famous heroines and perfect recruiting tools for the Army Nurse Corps, but they weren't sure why.

"We never did anything heroic," Young wrote in the Saturday Evening Post. "We were captured at our posts, like thousands of Soldiers."

And then they were largely forgotten. Only a few received long-term treatment in military or veterans' hospitals. Most were simply sent home to their parents. Some got married, and some, like Bradley, went back to work as Army nurses.

"The government never bothered to follow up with them about the impact of this on fertility, on cancer rates, on heart disease," Norman said. She learned that many died fairly young, and that they all had chronic gastrointestinal and dental problems, as well emotional and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Gates' relatives, for example, said she was never the same. She tried to commit suicide in the early 1950s, and finally dying from breast cancer in 1970 at the age of 55.

Still, they didn't regret it. Although Palmer admitted in the 1990s that, "I have not successfully come to terms with everything that happened in those years," she added that she "learned some valuable lessons, a great deal about human nature under extreme conditions and the recognition that little is gained and nothing resolved by war."

Whatever the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor may have thought of their service, Cantrell said, "These women are my heroes. They are our heroes as nurses. I think that some of the things we do today are because of women like them."

Source:
http://soldiers.dodlive.mil/tag/battling-belles-of-bataan/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4393394/How-Angels-Bataan-Corregidor-survived.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/07/pow-story-angels-bataan-army-nurses-is-one-greatest-wwii-stories-never-told.html