Nurses in World War II were not sequestered on the hospital ships, or in facilities far from the action. In fact, they were placed directly in the thick of the fighting and, on the occasion of the American's loss of Corregidor, they ended up captured, along with their patients and were put into prisoner of war camps where they spent the remainder of the war.
Once such camp, Santo Thomaso, became a tiny sea of hope where, for years, nurses labored to stave off starvation and death by slow, torturous diseases like beri beri and malaria. Too, they suffered the physical torture and abuse of their Japanese captors.
The pictures of these nurses survive. Smiling, healthy looking women making the best of difficult conditions, smiling in the face of hardship. The same women - those who survived - were likewise pictured smiling upon their release. Older, worn, haunted, and cadaverously thin, yet smiling at their good fortune to have survived what killed not only other nurses, but civilians and other military personel.
Sisters of healing, the descendants of Florence Nightengale and Clara Barton, heroine of the Civil War battlefields, where she fought the prejudice of the time against women participating or even witnessing the brutality of that most horrible of wars. Heirs of the nurses of WWI who, unheralded and for the most forgotten, they, too, toiled on the battlefields, drove ambulances, and died. They didn't die with weapons at their side, but with implements of healing in their hands.
Never forget these women. Never forget their monstrous bravery to face the carnage of war with only a smile and a bit of bandage. Never forget that they, too, fought for their nation with all they had at their disposal. Their hearts.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Friday, January 18, 2008
The Women Who Went To War
The Greatest Generation. Soldiers, sailors, pilots. Fighting and dying in Europe, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We see the photo of the flag raising on Iwo Jima and august authors write somber histories of the sacrifice of men from all walks of life.
Images of women are few and far between. They are Rosie the Riveter. They are crying Mothers and Wives. They are smiling USO workers. And in the index of history books under "women" you see prostitutes listed.
What is missing is the history of the women who left their homes and lives and joined the war effort by placing themselves in harm's way. They lived, and died, for their country and I want to tell their stories. I am a writer and I am writing about the women who went to war. They went as nurses in Europe, and the Pacific. They were interned in Japanese prisoner of war camps, like Santo Thomaso. The went as OSS agents - the covert agency that became the CIA - and they were smuggled into Europe where they reported from France and behind enemy lines in other places in Europe - where some were captured, tortured and died without breaking. They went as journalists and photographers and reported the victories and defeats and the human carnage that they witnessed; and women were among the first into the death camps to record the horrors. They went as pilots, joining the Women's Air Force Service Pilot program under Jacqueline Cochrane, with requirements so stringent that male pilots would not have qualified. They ferried planes, tested new models - including the notorious Bunsen Burner that killed indiscriminately - and trained gunners by towing targets behind their planes. While freeing up male pilots for the war effort, they logged thousands of hours and they died, alone, in the effort. They went to war with their minds, working on the top secret Manhattan Project, from Los Alamos and the race for the bomb, to the monstrous Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee where they aided in the distillation of the precious chemical elements that made a bomb possible; and they deciphered codes, and relayed messages as radio operators, and filled clerical positions. And they did go to war by going to the factories to pick up where their men had left off, to produce planes and tanks and weaponry. And they went to war to keep up morale, as USO performers and Red Cross Workers. They answered the call to arms, but they were given no weapons to fight with. Instead hey were given cameras, and typewriters and planes and microphones, and medical supplies. They were resented and they were harrassed. And they marched into war with all the valour and bravery of their male counterparts. And for their efforts they have been forgotten.
What the macho adventure and espionage authors have done for men and the military, I aim to do for the women in World War II. Nurses, pilots, reporters, spies, scientists, assembly-line workers and singers. Their stories are just waiting to be told. And it is about time they were.
Images of women are few and far between. They are Rosie the Riveter. They are crying Mothers and Wives. They are smiling USO workers. And in the index of history books under "women" you see prostitutes listed.
What is missing is the history of the women who left their homes and lives and joined the war effort by placing themselves in harm's way. They lived, and died, for their country and I want to tell their stories. I am a writer and I am writing about the women who went to war. They went as nurses in Europe, and the Pacific. They were interned in Japanese prisoner of war camps, like Santo Thomaso. The went as OSS agents - the covert agency that became the CIA - and they were smuggled into Europe where they reported from France and behind enemy lines in other places in Europe - where some were captured, tortured and died without breaking. They went as journalists and photographers and reported the victories and defeats and the human carnage that they witnessed; and women were among the first into the death camps to record the horrors. They went as pilots, joining the Women's Air Force Service Pilot program under Jacqueline Cochrane, with requirements so stringent that male pilots would not have qualified. They ferried planes, tested new models - including the notorious Bunsen Burner that killed indiscriminately - and trained gunners by towing targets behind their planes. While freeing up male pilots for the war effort, they logged thousands of hours and they died, alone, in the effort. They went to war with their minds, working on the top secret Manhattan Project, from Los Alamos and the race for the bomb, to the monstrous Oak Ridge plant in Tennessee where they aided in the distillation of the precious chemical elements that made a bomb possible; and they deciphered codes, and relayed messages as radio operators, and filled clerical positions. And they did go to war by going to the factories to pick up where their men had left off, to produce planes and tanks and weaponry. And they went to war to keep up morale, as USO performers and Red Cross Workers. They answered the call to arms, but they were given no weapons to fight with. Instead hey were given cameras, and typewriters and planes and microphones, and medical supplies. They were resented and they were harrassed. And they marched into war with all the valour and bravery of their male counterparts. And for their efforts they have been forgotten.
What the macho adventure and espionage authors have done for men and the military, I aim to do for the women in World War II. Nurses, pilots, reporters, spies, scientists, assembly-line workers and singers. Their stories are just waiting to be told. And it is about time they were.
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