Cassie DePeckel

From Audible Originals, I'm Cassie DePeckel and this is Against the Odds.

In 1930s America, nurses joined the military to serve their country, to get a steady paycheck, and also to travel.

Imagine if you grew up on a small chicken farm in Massachusetts, or if you came from Elk Point, South Dakota.

Joining the Army or Navy was your passport to the world.

And some of those nurses found themselves stationed in the Philippines, ringed by Vietnam, China, and Japan.

Before December 8, 1941, the Philippine islands were a dream posting, with sandy beaches, tropical flowers, and dancing under the stars.

But in the hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces turned their sights on the Philippines, and the nurses found themselves caring for patients during intense fighting as the Japanese advanced on Manila, Bataan, and Corregidor.

A lucky few slipped through the enemy blockade, but most of the nurses became prisoners of war.

Dr. Elizabeth Norman is an RN and taught for many years at NYU.

She's the author of We Band of Angels, the untold story of the American women trapped on baton.

Dr. Norman, welcome to Against the Odds.

So did I get the description about right?

If I were a nurse, maybe from a farm in the Midwest, arriving in Manila around 1940.

Was this a tour in paradise?

I'm curious, had the nurses serving in the Philippines received any training for combat conditions?

Did they have any idea what they could be facing when they had arrived there?

How many of these World War II nurses did you track down?

And were there any common threads to their interviews?

So can you tell us a bit more about the backgrounds of these nurses and what doors enlisting the military opened up for them?

I can imagine that's super exciting for them to be able to have that new opportunity.