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Photos still in the works: Alice Darrow (from last month); And a photo of Elsie from 2020; And Elsie’s H.O.
At 106 years old, Alice Darrow can vividly remember her days as a nurse during World War II, part of a pioneer group that dodged bullets as they carried packs filled with medical supplies and treated soldiers’ burns and gunshot wounds.
Some nurses were killed by enemy fire. Others spent years as prisoners of war. Most returned home to live quiet lives, but received little recognition.
Darrow remained sitting with patients after hours. One One of them arrived at his hospital on Mare Island, California, with a bullet wound to the heart. She didn’t expect to survive the surgery, yet it would change her life.
“For them, you are everything because you are taking care of them,” she said, sitting at her home in the city of Danville in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Eighty years after the war ended, a coalition of retired military nurses and others is campaigning to award the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the nation’s highest civilian honors, to all nurses who served in World War II. Other groups, such as the Women Air Force Service Pilots of World War II and the real-life Rosie the Riveters, have already received the honor.
“I think the general public often doesn’t recognize the contributions of nurses in every war,” said Patricia Upah, a retired colonel who served as an Army nurse in conflicts overseas, and whose late mother also was an Army nurse in the South Pacific in World War II.
Only a handful of people like Darrow are still alive. The coalition knows of five World War II nurses who are still alive – including 107-year-old Elsie Chin Yuen Situ, who became the first nurse. Sugar American Nurse to join Army Nurse Corps. They fear that the time to honor pioneers is running out.
The US senator said, “Now is the time to honor those nurses who have come forward and contributed to protecting our freedom.” tammy baldwina Wisconsin Democrat said in a statement.
Baldwin and New York Republican U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik have sponsored legislation to award the medal, but it faces steep hurdles. It requires two-thirds of each chamber – 67 cosponsors in the Senate and 290 in the House – and so far, the bill has eight and six cosponsors, respectively.
saving life in the face of danger
Before the war, there were less than 600 nurses in the US Army and less than 1,700 nurses in the US Navy. By the end of the war, this number had increased to 59,000 in the army and 14,000 in the navy.
The Congress bill cites horrific examples of bravery. Some nurses were treating patients on naval hospital ships as the ships came under fire. Sixty nurses landed on the coast of North Africa on 8 November 1942 to set up shop and care for the attacking troops.
“Without weapons, they walked toward the shore amid enemy sniper fire and eventually took shelter in an abandoned civilian hospital,” the law states.
Nurses saved lives. The law states that less than 4% of American soldiers in World War II who received medical care in the field or were evacuated died from wounds or disease.
“They probably saw more infections. They probably saw more chemical casualties. Remember, they didn’t have disposable products, so they had to sterilize everything,” says Edward Yackel, a retired colonel of World War II nurses and president of the Army Nurse Corps Association.
“Without them,” he says, “we would not have the knowledge base we need to fight today’s wars.”
Some nurses faced harsh imprisonment. In 1942, about 80 military nurses were captured when the US handed over the Philippines to Japan. Held as prisoners of war, the women faced starvation, rationing, and disease but continued to work until their liberation three years later.
nurse Phoebe Pollitt, a retired nurse and professor of nursing at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, said 600 U.S. Army hospitals around the world and 700 prisoner-of-war camps on military bases in the U.S. played a big role. But his role has been largely ignored.
“Even in the history of women’s history and the history of health care, nurses are at an all-time low,” she said.
breaking color barriers
Most military nurses were white, and those who were not often had to fight for the right to serve.
In 1941, only 56 black nurses were allowed to join the US Army. Japanese American applicants whose families were imprisoned during the war were not accepted into the Army Nurse Corps until 1943.
Elsie Chin Yuen Situ was born in Stockton, California, but spent her adolescence in China. After fleeing Japanese forces in Hong Kong she joined the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps in evacuated China.
She later applied to the US Army Nurse Corps, but said she had an obligation to serve her country – and that meant China.
An angry Chinese American medical officer wrote a letter on Situ’s behalf, saying that she was an American citizen. She became the first Chinese American nurse to join the Army Nurse Corps, working in China and India before returning to the United States
He already has a Congressional Gold Medal awarded for his service to Chinese Americans despite the discrimination they faced in the war.
“When our country faced threats to our freedom, we answered the call of duty,” he said in video-recorded remarks at the 2020 ceremony.
love story
Among the patients Darrow cared for was a young soldier injured in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Before surgery to remove the bullet lodged in his heart, he asked if she would go on a date with him if he was successful.
“I said, ‘Sure, you can trust me,'” she says, and laughs. “I couldn’t say, ‘No, I don’t think you’re going to make it.'”
Dean Darrow was saved and went out. The couple kept the 7.7 mm bullet with them. He married and raised four children. He died in 1991.
In September, Alice Darrow accompanied her daughter and son-in-law on a trip to Hawaii, where they donated the bullet to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial so that visitors from around the world could learn about its significance and the love story behind it.
Darrow said he looks forward to seeing the Bullet on display. The Congressional Gold Medal will be another treasure to look forward to.
“It would be an honor,” she said.
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Terry Tang of the AP’s race and ethnicity team contributed from Phoenix, Arizona.