Elizabeth M. Norman (55 page)

22.
Marie Adams, June 11, 1945, war crimes testimony. National Archives, Suitland, Maryland. SCAP Collection, 40–31–136.

23.
Pearson, E., p. 998.

24.
Helen Cassiani Nestor, 1990 author interview.

25.
Mary Rose Harrington Nelson, 1989 author interview. Edith Shacklette’s daily room-monitor notes provided more information about menstruation. Each woman had to reuse her fabric pads. An individual waited until her supply fell apart before
putting in a request for more. A woman’s menstrual hygiene is usually private. In the camps, this privacy disappeared. Shack told her staff to “mark your sanitary pads well.” In a 1990 interview, Mrs. Sally Blaine Millett said the nurses embroidered their initials on each cloth to keep their supplies separate. Every month, they rinsed out their bloody pads in sanitary napkin buckets kept in the communal bathroom. Wealthier internees could pay someone else to do this task. After they had washed them, the nurses had to lay the pieces outside on a lawn, in full public view, to dry. Often a woman sat next to her wash. Thus, there was no way to hide their sexual physiology.

26.
McCall, p. 129.

27.
Nash, p. 1.

28.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

29.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries. No dates for recipes and menu entries.

30.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

31.
Gwendolyn Henshaw Deiss, 1983 ANC interview.

32.
Minnie Breese Stubbs, 1983 ANC interview.

33.
Margaret “Peg” Nash, 1991 telephone interview with author.

34.
Sally Blaine was twenty-nine years old in 1944; 1990 author interview. Edwina Todd (p. 340) mentions that the navy women also suffered from urinary incontinence.

35.
Ibid
.

36.
McCall, p. 134

37.
The four leaders were E. E. Johnson, C. L. Larsen, A. F. Duggleby and C. C. Grinnell, chairman of the Internee Committee, who lent money to the nurses. Two months later in 1945, friends identified their bodies in a mass grave. According to STIC historians and recorders, Hartendorp (pp. 424–25) and Stevens (p. 483), no reason was given for the executions.

38.
The message appears in many sources, including Hartendorp (1964), Nesbit (1945) and Ullom (no date).

39.
From January 1942 until July 1944, the average weight loss for men was 31.4 pounds, for women, 17.7 pounds (McCall, p.
96)
. Another survey taken in January 1945 indicated that men had lost twenty more pounds since August 1944, bringing their average weight loss since internment to fifty-one pounds. The women had lost fifteen more pounds, causing their average weight loss to climb to thirty-two pounds (Pearson, p. 1003).

40.
Eleanor Garen, 1991 interview with Susan Sacharski.

41.
EG book, p. 115, Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice,” and p. 111, Helene Martha Ball, “That Is All.”

42.
EG book, p. 121, April 28, 1944, entry.

43.
Steven, p. 156.

44.
Nash, p. 2.

45.
Hartendorp, pp. 399–400. Dr. Stevenson survived his jail sentence.

46.
Marie Adams, June 11, 1945, war crimes testimony. National Archives, Suitland, Maryland. SCAP Collection, 40–31–136.

47.
Dorothy Still Danner, 1992 telephone interview with author.

48.
Nash, p. 3.

Chapter Fifteen: And the Gates Came Crashing Down

1.
Steinberg, R., p. 114. No doubt MacArthur’s intelligence officers had told him that the city was starving and that the internees at STIC and the prisoners of war at the other stockades, down to one cup of food a day or less, were dying by the score.

2.
Ibid
.

3.
Hartendorp, p. 405.

4.
Eleanor Garen, 1991 interview with Susan Sacharski.

5.
Rose Rieper Meier, 1984 ANC interview.

6.
Hartendorp, p. 405.

7.
Wright, Major B. C., p. 125. Other sources reported the contents as, “Roll out the barrel, Santa Claus is coming Sunday or Monday,” and “Roll out the barrel. Christmas will be either today or tomorrow.”

8.
Scholl, p. C3.

9.
Minnie Breese Stubbs, 1983 ANC interview.

10.
Bertha Dworsky Henderson, 1983 ANC interview.

11.
Ibid
.

12.
Hartendorp, p. 406.

13.
In 1938, Irving Berlin wrote the music and lyrics to “God Bless America.” Singer Kate Smith popularized the song, which became a kind of second national anthem during the war.

14.
Ullom, p. 231.

15.
Bertha Dworsky Henderson, 1983 ANC interview.

16.
Rose Rieper Meier, 1984 ANC interview.

17.
Time Inc. Picture Collection, Time Life Syndicate, Time Files 17030.

18.
Scholl, p. C3.

19.
Helen Cassiani Nestor, 1990 author interview.

20.
Eleanor Garen, 1991 interview with Susan Sacharski.

21.
Steinberg, p. 126.

22.
Hartendorp, p. 406.

23.
Hartendorp, p. 407.

24.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

25.
Rita Palmer James, 1983 ANC interview. Sir Alexander Fleming discovered and named penicillin in 1929. Ten years later a research team at Oxford University succeeded in purifying the antibiotic drug, which allowed for large-scale production in time for clinical use with military casualties in the war.

26.
Williams, p. 205.

27.
Rose Rieper Meier, 1984 ANC interview. K-rations were lightweight, emergency food developed during the war for fighting units.

28.
Sallie Durrett Farmer, (no date) ANC interview.

29.
Time Inc. Picture Collection, Time Life Syndicate, Time Files 17030.

30.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 7, 1945, entry.

31.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

32.
Jeanne Kennedy Schmidt, 1992 personal correspondence.

33.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

34.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 8, 1945, entry.

35.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

36.
Cassie quoted by Terry Myers Johnson, 1992 author interview.

37.
Charlie Dworsky and John Henderson were married for twenty-five years and had one son, John R. Henderson. He died in 1991. She died in 1992. Information from her obituary in the
San Jose Mercury News
(February 28, 1992), p. 5B.

38.
The 12th Regimental Quartermaster flag is now at the Quartermaster Museum in Fort Lee, Virginia. Peggy Greenwalt Walcher, May 1992 telephone interview with author.

39.
Information about the plan and execution of the Los Banos rescue mission from: Calip, J., and Guerrero, J. (pp. 13–17) and Bailey, M. (pp. 57–66).

40.
Mary Rose Harrington Nelson, 1989 author interview.

41.
Todd, p. 340.

42.
Margaret “Peg” Nash, 1991 telephone interview with author.

43.
Ibid
.

44.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 12, 1945, entry.

45.
In 1945, the death rate in Santo Tomas was 72.4 per thousand. The nurses served with 1,536 physicians and corpsmen on Bataan and Corregidor. Their mortality rate represents deaths from: battles leading up to surrender, the Death March, the brutal military prison camps, the labor battalions and the “hell ships” (overcrowded POW ships en route to Japan, which were accidentally sunk by Allied bombs and torpedoes).

46.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

47.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 12, 1945, entry.

48.
Ibid
.

49.
. Ibid
.

50.
Rita Palmer James, 1983 ANC interview.

51.
Clarke, A. R., p. 345.

52.
Repatriated Allied Prisoner Physical Examination Form. Garen files.

53.
“Angels of Bataan saved—work on!” p. 1.

54.
Miller, L. G., p. 1. Story appeared in March but the dateline was February 19.

55.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 14, 1945, entry.

56.
Edith Shacklette’s Japanese diaries, February 16, 1945, entry.

57.
Each woman received: the Bronze Star, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Medal with two battle stars, a Presidential Unit Citation with two oak leaf clusters, the American Defense Medal with one battle star, the Philippine Defense Ribbon with one battle star, the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one battle star and six hash marks for years of overseas military service. Information from Sally Blaine Millett, Josie Nesbit and Ruby Bradley’s military records.

58.
Several other evacuees met the POW’s when they came home. Though few have discussed it, clearly there was tension in these reunions. Obviously, the evacuees had prospered during the war and some of the former POW’s resented the lucky women who had been spared imprisonment. Redmond, for example, had jumped two ranks to major, and she had written a best-selling book about the nurses’ part in the battle of Bataan.

59.
Bertha Dworsky Henderson, 1983 ANC interview.

60.
Telegram in Garen files.

61.
“Rescue of Army nurse brings joy to mother,” South Bend
Tribune
(no page). As it turned out, Lulu Garen did not make the trip to the coast. Instead, she was at a local airport when her daughter’s cross-country flight touched down. Garen files.

Chapter Sixteen: “Home. We’re Really Home.”

1.
“Bataan Angels sigh with joy as planes land in California,”
Fresno Bee
, Feb. 26, 1945. This news article, and others cited in this chapter without page numbers, were compiled in a large scrapbook titled
Home from Bataan
, ASF Group, Bureau of Public Relations (no date). Army Nurse Corps archives, Center for Military History, Washington, D.C.

2.
“Angels of Bataan,” Associated Press, Feb. 22, 1945.

3.
“Tough soldiers weep at return of ‘angels,’ ”
San Francisco Chronicle
, 1945.

4.
“Bataan nurses are honored during busy week at Letterman,” p. 2.

5.
“68 ‘Angels of Bataan’ fly back to heaven after 3 years of prison camp hell,”
Salt Lake City Tribune
, Feb. 25, 1945.

6.
The two nurses awarded Purple Hearts for the wounds they received when the Japanese bombed Hospital #1 on Bataan in April 1942 were: Rita Palmer from Hampton, New Hampshire, and Rosemary Hogan from Chattanooga, Oklahoma. At an unknown date, Mary Brown Menzie, the army nurse who was assaulted by a Japanese soldier on Corregidor in May 1942, also received a Purple Heart.

7.
Copies of the Roosevelt letter found in Inez McDonald Moore’s files at Fort Sam Houston Medical Museum archives, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and in the Garen files.

8.
“Freedom: A lot of little things … to Angels of Bataan,”
California Call
, Feb. 28, 1945.

9.
Phyllis Arnold, 1983 ANC interview.

10.
“The Bataan ‘Angels.’ ”
The New York Times
, Feb. 28, 1945.

11.
“Freed nurses reunited with men they aided on Bataan,” p. 3.