The Bataan-Corregidor nurses on their way home

US nurses, February 12, 1945, recently released from Santo Tomas internment camp

Photo credit: John Tewell

On July 2, 1942, the nurses were imprisoned in the Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila, where they tried, as much as possible, to help the other prisoners as they all struggled to survive on starvation rations.

Finally, on the evening of February 3, 1945, US troops liberated Santo Tomas. They came too late for many of the prisoners, who had by then died of ailments related to undernourishment. All of the Bataan-Corregidor nurses survived.

On Sunday, February 11, 1945, American lieutenant colonel Nola Forrest told the gaunt, exhausted, but elated nurses to be ready for departure on the following morning. She also mentioned that US intelligence officials, who realized these women had never been trained for combat nursing, were eager to debrief them. “You’re the first [US military] women to have served under actual combat conditions,” she said. “Whatever tips you have on how you survived could be of great help to others.”

All the nurses would be promoted to a higher military rank, Forrest said, and would receive the Presidential Citation and a Bronze Star.

Excerpt from "Denny Williams: Nurse under Fire" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater 

The Vocal Orchestra of the Palembang Internment Camp

The Colijn sisters, Dutch East Indies, 1939.

 Left to right: Antoinette, Helen, Alette. 

(Both Antoinette and Alette sang in the vocal orchestra).

Photo credit: Song of Survival by Helen Colijn.

Then Helen saw the word ORCHESTRA scratched in large letters in the dirt. Orchestra? She knew there were no real instruments in camp. Had she generated excitement for a performance played on crude homemade instruments?

They would all soon find out. A few minutes later, 30 women, each holding a piece of paper in one hand and a stool in the other, filed out of the main kitchen to face the audience. Children sat in front, while many of the adults, including Helen, stood.

Then Margaret Dryburgh spoke. “This evening,” she said, “we are asking you to listen to something quite new, we are sure: a choir of women’s voices trying to reproduce some of the well-known music usually given by an orchestra or a pianist.” The singers, she said, would sit on their stools just like orchestra performers, in order to conserve their energy.

Then she took her place among the singers. Norah Chambers stood in front of the performers. She raised her hands. The choir began to sing, in four-part harmony, Dvorak’s “Largo” from the New World Symphony.

(Sheet music copied by Norah Chambers for the vocal orchestra.)

“The music soared in its first rich and full crescendo,” Helen wrote later. “I felt a shiver go down my back. I thought I had never heard anything so beautiful before. The music didn’t sound precisely like an orchestra either, although it was close. . . . The music sounded ethereal, totally unreal in our sordid surroundings.”

“Huu, huu.” Helen heard a new sound, “the ugly raw voice of an angry guard,” coming up behind her. Surely Norah could hear it too. But she didn’t stop directing the music.

“Huu, huu.” The angry guard, his bayonet fixed on his rifle, passed through the standing audience. Soon Helen could only see the tip of his bayonet.

The music continued. The angry voice did not. Helen craned her neck: she could no longer see the bayonet. Had the guard put down his weapon? Was he also mesmerized by the beautiful music? Apparently so. “As the Largo moved toward a great, glorious crescendo,” Helen would write later, “the guard remained as still as we for the rest of the concert."

Excerpt from "Helen Colijn: Rising Above" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater. 

Click here for more about the vocal orchestra.

Jane Kendeigh lands on Iwo Jima

Jane Kendeigh attempts to comfort wounded marine William Wyckoff. 

Iwo Jima, March 6, 1945.

Credit: US Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery Library & Archives

"Although the plane was high enough to be clear of the US bombardment, it was certainly visible to the Japanese snipers below. Jane knew that Japanese anti-aircraft guns on the island had already shot down US carrier planes. One of those guns might still be in action. But an anti-aircraft gun wouldn’t be necessary to take them down; a single bullet hitting the fuel tank would cause the plane to explode. So Jane and the others were relieved when the plane finally swished past the highest point on the island—Mount Suribachi—and settled in for a landing.

Jane’s destination was beside the airstrip: a small sandbagged hospital tent. The roar of guns and artillery was so loud, Jane and Silas could barely hear one another speaking as they hurried inside. There they found doctors and male medics working frantically to save lives in rough conditions. The stretcher-bearers carried wounded men out of the tent and lined them up near the waiting plane. Jane spoke comfortingly to each man, if he was conscious, and checked him as he went aboard.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant DeWitt asked the medics in the tent about the previous plane, the one he’d missed. They told him it was due in very soon; the pilot had lost his way.

This delay meant that Jane Kendeigh had suddenly become front-page news: the first navy flight nurse to land on Iwo Jima, the first navy flight nurse to step onto a World War II Pacific battlefield. Lieutenant DeWitt’s photograph of her speaking to William was transmitted to the United States, where it appeared in nearly every newspaper in the nation."

Excerpt from "Jane Kendeigh: Navy Flight Nurse" from Women Heroes of World War II: The Pacific Theater.