Cassie DePeckel

So during your research, one of the Army nurses you got to know well was Cassie Nestor.

What was her background?

That's so lovely.

So the nurses experienced a pretty cushy posting until December 8, 1941.

What did you learn from them about the first minutes of the Japanese attack on Manila, which came just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor?

How did Cassie describe the scene at the hospital?

What a devastating scene.

Oh my gosh.

U.S.

and allied troops held out in Manila for a few weeks during the Japanese offensive.

The Navy nurses stayed in Manila.

But around Christmas 1941, the Army nurses evacuated to field hospitals on Bataan.

For people who aren't familiar with Bataan, can you give us a brief geography lesson and how did the nurses get there?

The army nurses who retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, along with U.S.

and allied forces, underwent several months of trying to do their job in the jungle as the Japanese invaded.

Can you imagine what field hospital number one must have been like for the nurses?

As U.S.

and Filipino troops fought the Japanese on Bataan, the casualties mounted and they had to build another field hospital.

The Army nurses treated patients in essentially a jungle hospital.

What was hospital number two like?