Cassie DePeckel

They're all eager for the train to start moving again.

Dorothy checks her watch and calls out to the hundred men packed into the car behind her.

Ten more minutes until we rotate again.

She scowls as another train full of Japanese troops passes them on a parallel track.

Apparently, military trains get higher priority.

How long will she and the other prisoners be left here to cook in these metal cars?

It's May 14th, the day the nurses transfer to Los Banos.

But what should have been a two-hour journey has already taken five, and Dorothy has no idea how much longer there is to go.

Their trouble started at the train station that morning.

Instead of a passenger train with proper seats, the Japanese brought container cars for shipping goods with no air slits or ventilation.

Then, after the Japanese packed the first car full of prisoners, they padlocked it shut.

Upon seeing this, Dr. Leach and Chief Nurse Laura Cobb marched up to the guards and yelled that the men inside would suffocate.

Dorothy watched this exchange in fear.

Cobb was wearing a flowery lei necklace.

She was once again concealing records beneath her shirt, but she'd gotten right in the guards' faces anyway.

Dorothy had to admire her bravery.

Cobb and Leach finally got the guards to agree to open the boxcar doors a little, but on one condition.

The Japanese insisted on putting two Navy nurses in each car and promised to shoot the nurses if anyone escaped.

As Dorothy waits for the train to start up again, the stench of sweat is overpowering.

The men are losing water fast.