Angels of Bataan

Until early December 1941, the Philippines was a highly sought-after duty assignment for Navy and Army nurses to serve their two-year tour.

In this Pacific paradise, young women in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps could swim in a beautiful ocean, relax on pristine beaches, and enjoy numerous games, sports, and social activities that occurred daily across the islands. The nurses had their pick of soldiers and sailors to take them on excursions or to dances, and they felt that the Philippines gave them the adventures that life in the United States couldn’t offer to women. On 8 December 1941, these nurses began to experience adventure and life of another kind, one that would test them and shape them into a toughened group of extraordinary women called “The Angels of Bataan and Corregidor.”

Just hours after they bombed the base at Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces unleashed a series of attacks against other U.S. bases in the Pacific, including Clark Field in the Philippines. The nurses’ daily routines were suddenly disrupted by bombshells and torpedoes. The hospitals were flooded with casualties, and the nurses and doctors struggled to keep up with the wounded men rapidly filling the beds, hallways, porches, and anywhere they could fit. The island’s medical supplies were inadequate to deal with the masses of soldiers coming to the hospitals, and nurses barely had enough time to finish patching up one man before turning to the next. Their days became a blur of bloody limbs and mangled flesh as Allied forces fought in vain to stop the Japanese.

Although MacArthur promised reinforcements to the weary and battered troops in the Philippines, months passed without help, and it soon became clear that relief was not coming. As MacArthur was ordered to withdraw to Australia and abandon the Philippines, the Army and Navy nurses on Bataan and Corregidor continued to care for the sick and wounded men from the frontlines, even while many of them were sick themselves. When the Japanese advance became imminent, American military leaders ordered that the women be moved back from the front, possibly in reaction to the stories of brutality faced by Chinese women after Japan invaded. Appalled by the order, many women considered disobeying their superiors to stay with their patients. They considered it selfish to leave the men under their care to save themselves. In the end, the Army nurses were roused by their commander, Capt. Maude C. Davison, and the group left their makeshift jungle hospitals for the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor, where they would be protected by the reinforced underground bunker. The Navy nurses at Bataan, however, were caught by the Japanese during the surrender and sent to Los Banos Internment Camp, while the men, their patients, were forced into what was later known as the Bataan Death March.

The Army nurses that made it to the Malinta Tunnel were somewhat better protected underground than the open jungles of Bataan, but the work was the same; battered and wounded men, dwindling food supplies, disease running rampant. The Japanese bombarded the bunker daily, until finally they could hold out no longer. The island was officially surrendered on 6 May 1942, and the American personnel were rounded up. The nurses initially believed that they would be sent to a camp with the other soldiers, but were once again separated from their patients when the Japanese transported them to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp.

Although not constantly flooded with wounded and dying soldiers, life as a prisoner of war at Santo Tomas was a different kind of difficult. To keep the women from falling prey to despair and the monotony of life at Santo Tomas, Capt. Davison and her second-in-command, Lt. Josephine “Josie” Nesbit, established a hospital and organized the women into work shifts for four hours every day. This gave them a purpose as well as allowed them to care for the other 6,000 Allied POWs in the camp. The women stuck together, working and living side-by-side as they waited for any word or signs of rescue. “Mama Josie”, in particular, strived to keep the women fed and clothed, and even took over their shifts when nurses became to sick to work, which happened frequently as rations were cut to below subsistence levels. As the daily death toll within the camp increased from disease and malnutrition, the nurses cared for their patients, all of them ill and malnourished themselves, but fighting for not only their own survival but the survival of everyone at Santo Tomas and Los Banos.

When the camps were finally liberated in February of 1945, all 77 nurses from Corregidor and Bataan were alive, although they were sick and weak and had lost an alarming portion of their body mass from starvation. The nurses were brought back to Australia and then to the United States. They were given a hero’s welcome and time to rest, although many family members of men who had fought or been captured at Bataan and Corregidor wrote to the women, asking about their sons, husbands, and brothers. The nurses were icons for many people across America, inspiring other women to become nurses or join the war effort in other ways in the last days of the war.

The Angels of Bataan and Corregidor did not consider themselves heroes, just nurses who did their jobs. Nevertheless, they suffered inhumane treatment in prison and witnessed firsthand the horrors of war, and their experiences stayed with them for the rest of their lives, although they seldom shared these experiences with outsiders, who were unlikely to understand what they had been through. Their shared traumas of time before and during their imprisonment forged a tremendous bond between these nurses. Their legacy is still celebrated and honored to this day in books and movies, but most importantly in the remembrance of these nurses and their dedication to their duty as healers in the midst of battle and imprisonment.

Read more:

Norman, Elizabeth M. "We Band of Angels."

National WW2 Museum, "Nurse POWs: Angels of Bataan and Corregidor"

US Naval Institute, "From Small Town Girls to Prisoners of War"

Working Nurse, "Angels in Hell: The Nurse POWs of Bataan and Corregidor"