Elizabeth M. Norman (52 page)

20.
The song was handwritten in Inez McDonald’s diary, located in the archives at the U.S. Army Medical Museum, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas. Used with permission of Mrs. Kennedy Schmidt.

21.
In his June 21, 1945, War Department interview with a Judge Advocate Department agent, Duckworth said, “In my opinion it [the bombing] was not deliberate. I base that on two reasons, first that they had such ample opportunity to bomb us and had never done so. They knew they were winning and there was no reason for them to get angry.… Secondly I heard they were using inexperienced flyers and it is my opinion that it was just poor bombing on their part. When I was showing a Japanese general through the hospital after surrender he expressed his disapproval by gestures not words. He pointed to the holes and shook his head and gestured that it was too bad. All the bombings were either at the first or tag ending of a run.” Transcript, Supreme Command for the Allied Forces in the Pacific (SCAP) collection, National Archives, Suitland, Maryland, pp. 3; 6.

22.
Wainwright, p. 72.

23.
Redmond, pp. 97–99.

24.
Wainwright, p. 79.

25.
Ruth Straub (September 28, 1942), p. 2.

Chapter Seven: Bataan Falls: The Wounded Are Left in Their Beds

1.
Harries, M., and Harries, S., pp. 223–24.

2.
Ibid
.

3.
Harries, p. 479.

4.
Wainwright, pp. 78–80.

5.
Ibid
.

6.
Ibid
.

7.
Ibid
.

8.
Ibid
.

9.
Helen Cassiani Nestor, 1990 author interview.

10.
Edith Shacklette Haynes, 1983 ANC interview.

11.
Ibid
.

12.
Weinstein, p. 49.

13.
Redmond, p. 122.

14.
Geneva Jenkins, 1983 ANC interview.

15.
Josie Nesbit Davis, 1983 ANC interview.

16.
Ibid
.

17.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

18.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

19.
Lucy Wilson Jopling, 1990 author interview.

20.
Minnie Breese Stubbs, 1983 ANC interview.

21.
Redmond, pp. 123–25.

22.
Keith, B., pp. 53–55. Chaplain Preston Taylor later became a major general in the U.S. Air Force.

23.
Ibid
.

24.
In July 1944, Helen Cassiani wrote an essay called “Variation on an Evacuation.” Quotations from this unpaginated essay. Used with permission.

25.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

26.
Minnie Breese Stubbs, 1983 ANC interview.

27.
Sally Blaine Millett, 1990 author interview.

28.
Ruth Straub (September 28, 1942), p. 2.

29.
Earlier, Josie Nesbit had left the docks with a sergeant to find a telephone to call Corregidor for help. Some sources state that Josie went back to Little Baguio but she does not specify where she went. They found the lines to Corregidor cut. An officer told her to go back to the pier and wait. “They’ll be back,” she remembered him saying. Before she left, he invited her and the sergeant to breakfast. They gobbled down eggs and food the men wanted consumed before the enemy got them. Then, Josie returned to the pier with her staff to wait. Josie Nesbit Davis, 1983 ANC interview.

30.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

31.
Williams, p. 82.

32.
Gastinger quoted in Knox, D., p. 104.

33.
Wainwright, p. 81. He incorrectly included the two wounded women, Rita Palmer and Rosemary Hogan, in his description. These two had arrived on Corregidor before the evacuation of the nurses.

34.
Wainwright, pp. 84–85.

35.
Ibid
.

36.
The speech written by Captain Salvador Lopez had been widely reproduced including Ullom, p. 75.

37.
Historians agree there are no definitive mortality and morbidity statistics for the Death March or the years the Bataan veterans spent as POW’s. The numbers and details used are from: Ashton, P., p. 165; Falk, S., p. 150; Kerr, E., p. 60.

38.
Weinstein, p. 49.

39.
Report no. 209, General Headquarters, United States Army Forces, Pacific. War Crimes Branch. National Archives, Suitland, Maryland. SCAP Collection, RG 331, Box 1118.

40.
Information on Mrs. Mercado’s rape taken from several war crimes testimonies on file at the National Archives, Suitland, Maryland. SCAP Collection. RG 331. Testimony from Ethyle Mae Taft Mercado, Major Herman Archer and Sergeant Norman Miller, patients in Hospital #2; and an unnamed testimony witnessed by Captain Carl Twitchell on June 25, 1945.

Mrs. Mercado survived the war and returned to the United States. Intelligence agents analyzed her testimony and wrote: “There is evidence that an American … named Mrs. Mercado was raped by Japanese but the evidence, much of which is hearsay, is very general and fails to identify the perpetrators. In view of these facts it is not believed that prosecution for this offense is justified.” Page 3, Report No. 209, SCAP Collection, RG 331.

41.
Duckworth, James, p. 26.

Chapter Eight: Corregidor—the Last Stand

1.
Ullom, p. 44.

2.
Information on Maude Davison from: Comeau, Genevieve K., (1961);
Davison, Maude C. Major ANC N700 404;
and Davison personnel file, obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri, under the Freedom of Information Act; and a 1993 interview with her stepson, Robert Jackson.

3.
The term “Guam blisters” appears in Gwendolyn Henshaw Deiss’s, Sallie Durrett Farmer’s and Earlyn Black Harding’s 1983 ANC interviews.

4.
Russell, M., p. 28.

5.
Hattie Brantley, 1983 ANC interview.

6.
Ruth Straub (September 29, 1942), p. 2.

7.
Ibid
.

8.
Guerrero, L., pp. 9–12. After conquering the islands, the Japanese published the
Philippine Review
as a literary propaganda journal. Its purpose was to persuade Filipino intellectuals to join the Japanese in forging a new government. The May 1943 issue was devoted to young men and women. “No one of its contributors is over 50, most of them are below 45.… You have been promised a down-to-earth issue and here you have it—in young, vigorous, multiloqeunt language” (p. 1). The journal was published from March 1943 through December 1944. Steinberg, D. (1967), and Dr. David Steinberg, October 1997 personal communication. L. Morton (1962) erroneously attributes “Last Days of Corregidor” to Mrs. Maude Williams, a civilian nurse-anesthetist who worked with the army nurses. Apparently Mrs. Williams copied Guerrero’s essay into her diary without attribution. Duplicates of this essay also were found with Inez McDonald’s memorabilia at the U.S. Army Medical Museum, Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, and in Eleanor Garen’s notebook, Garen files. It is the only collaborator’s work found in the nurses’ diaries. One possible explanation of why they included the essay in their personal notes may be that they found the piece accurately reflected their Corregidor experience.

9.
Ruth Straub (September 29, 1942), p. 2.

10.
Wainwright, p. 102.

11.
Wainwright, p. 101. There is no mention in either Colonel Cooper’s 1946 report or Maude Davison’s records about the specific criteria used to choose the evacuees. The official story behind the list of names remains a mystery. What information exists was culled from the 1983 ANC interviews and 1989 through 1997 author interviews with army nurses who were stationed on Corregidor at that time.

12.
Ann Mealor Giles, 1983 ANC interview.

13.
A copy of Order No. 28, signed by Brigadier General Carl H. Seals, adjutant general with General Wainwright, was given to the author by Sally Blaine Millett.

14.
Ullom, M., p. 7.

15.
Eunice Hatchitt Tyler, 1990 author interview. Clara Mae Bickford Bilello died May 19, 1978. Mrs. Tyler said Bickie later told her, “I hated you that night.”

16.
Williams, p. 92.

17.
Helen Cassiani Nestor, 1990 author interview.

18.
Redmond, p. 150.

19.
Josie Nesbit Davis, 1983 ANC interview.

20.
Ann Wurts’s story was published in Nesbit, p. 32, and Williams, pp. 93–94. According to Nesbit, “The name she [Wurts] suggested was not among the twenty who left” (p. 32).

21.
Wainwright, p. 102.

22.
This phrase appears in many references, including Rumolo, p. 306.

23.
Anna Williams Clark, 1983 ANC interview.

24.
Ruth Straub (September 29, 1942), p. 2.

25.
USS Spearfish Special Mission
, June 3, 1942, entry.

26.
Dietitian Ruby Motley Armburst was interviewed in 1984 by Lieutenant Colonel Martha Cronin, USA. A transcript is located at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, under the title “Army Medical Specialist Corps POWs of the Japanese.”

27.
Ann Mealor Giles, 1983 ANC interview. Mrs. Giles never received a medal or commendation for her decision.

28.
Wainwright, p. 109. Wainwright misspells her name as “Mieler.”

29.
Ruth Straub (September 30, 1942), p. 2.

30.
Eleanor Garen personal correspondence, May 3, 1942. Garen files.

31.
Ruth Straub (September 30, 1942), p. 2.

32.
Among the fifty-four army nurses was Mary Brown Menzie, who joined the ANC in December 1942. And, there were two army nurses, Ruby Bradley and Beatrice Chambers, imprisoned in the northern Luzon town of Baguio. Twenty army nurses left Corregidor on two PBY’s, eleven on the submarine and one had evacuated Manila on a hospital ship in January 1942.

Chapter Nine: A Handful Go Home

1.
Sally Blaine recalls the aircraft were called the “Lead PBY” and the “Wing PBY.” Lieutenant Pollock piloted the Lead PBY, which was damaged on Mindanao. Lieutenant Leroy Deede piloted the Wing PBY, which safely lifted off Lake Lanao and
landed in Australia. The ten army nurses on the damaged seaplane were: Earleen Allen, Louise Anschicks, Agnes Barre, Ethel “Sally” Blaine, Helen Gardner, Rosemary Hogan, Geneva Jenkins, Eleanor O’Neill, Rita Palmer and Evelyn Whitlow.

2.
In 1991, Sally Blaine Millett, one of the nurses who was stranded on Mindanao, wrote a twenty-one-page paper detailing the ordeals of her group. According to her recollections, Rosemary Hogan removed her white terry-cloth jacket and tried to plug the hole in the fuselage. The water was soon ankle deep in the cabin. After quickly exiting the PBY and leaving their luggage behind, the group traveled to a hotel in Donsalan (now Malawi City). Colonel Stewart Wood, a Japanese-speaking assistant chief of staff to General Jonathan Wainwright, was also stranded. As senior officer, Wood took command of the nurses. He told the women that he believed the plane was unsafe to carry all of them. He wanted the group to stay together and find a place to hide until MacArthur could send another rescue plane. Everyone agreed with his assessment and plan.

3.
Sally Blaine Millett never heard any criticism of the PBY crew for leaving Lake Lanao without them. The ten army nurses, three civilian women, a naval officer and Colonel Wood began an unsuccessful twelve-day odyssey traveling around Mindanao looking for a safe haven. The group surrendered on twelve noon, May 11, 1942. The nurses spent over three months interned in a hospital on Mindanao. On August 26, 1942, the Japanese moved them to a coastal town where they were confined with one hundred captured missionaries. On September 5, the women boarded a prison ship for a trip to Manila. Their Japanese captors had told them they were going to be repatriated. Instead, the group ended up imprisoned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. Colonel Wood and the naval officer went to the Tarlac prisoner of war camp on Luzon with other high-ranking American officers. Colonel Wood survived the war.