US Military Nurses at War
U.S. military nurses are commissioned officers who serve as Registered Nurses (RNs) across the branches of the Armed Forces, including the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They provide comprehensive medical care to service members, veterans, and their families in diverse settings, ranging from military hospitals and field clinics to combat zones and humanitarian relief missions.
Tens of thousands of American women served as military nurses during the Second World War. As members of the Army Nurse Corps, Navy Nurse Corps, and Cadet Nurse Corps, they cared for patients in Europe, the Pacific, and on the home front. Many of them risked their lives. When the Japanese Army occupied the Philippines, it captured 99 military nurses and held them as prisoners of war for three years.
(US Signal Corps Archive Photo)
Ensign Jane Kendiegh, USNR, of Oberlin, Ohio, the first Navy flight nurse to set foot on any battlefield, bends over a wounded Marine on the airstrip on Iwo Jima. 6 March 1945.
Nurse Prisoners of War in the Pacific
(Mary Cronk Farrell)
(National Archives Photo)
This photo of Navy Nurse Peggy Nash was snapped by a Japanese guard in the Santo Tomas Prison Camp hospital. Peggy had been in a panic when the man followed her around for five days because she didn’t know what he intended. She was relieved when he took her photo and finally went away. She never expected to see the picture.
But nearly there years later, it was found on a Japanese prisoner and wound up crossing the desk of a naval officer who had known Peggy. American newspapers published the photo and it was her family’s first indication she and the other Navy nurses might be alive.
(National Archives Photo)
This photo is Army Nurse Frankie Lewey tending a wounded man shortly after U.S. soldiers crashed their tanks through the gates to liberate the POW nurses. It’s iconic. Throughout combat and imprisonment, the women continually put the needs of others before their own. One of the nurses was so ill she was hospitalized when liberators arrived. But when she heard the voices of the American soldiers, she jumped up and went outside. She ended up nursing wounded men all night in her pajamas.