We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese
We Band of Angels: The Untold Tale of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese Books
Product Description
“This is a gripping book. Elizabeth Norman presents a war tale in which the main characters never kill one of the enemy, or even shoot at him, but are nevertheless heroes. . . . First on Bataan, then went to Corregidor, they were below nearly constant shell fire, were everlastingly hungry, close to starvation, had horrendous diseases to deal with despite a shortage or even a complete lack of proper medicines, getting small or no sleep, nothing in the way of recreation–yet they were a right band of angels, inspiring all the men whom they were there to help. In a squalid prison camp, they remained giants, despite their small size. . . . They were the most courageous of the courageous, who endured unspeakable pain and torture. Americans today should thank God we had such women.”
–Stephen E. Ambrose
We Band of Angels is the tale of women searching for adventure, caught up in the drama and danger of war.
On the same day the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, it also struck American bases in the Far East, chief among them the Philippines. That raid led to the first major land battle for America in World War II and, in the end, to the largest defeat and surrender of American forces. Caught up in all of this were ninety-nine Army and Navy nurses–the first unit of American women ever sent into the middle of a battle.
The “Angels of Bataan and Corregidor”–as the newspapers called them–became the only group of American women captured and imprisoned by an enemy. And the tale of their trials on a bloody battlefield, their desperate flight to avoid capture and their ultimate surrender, imprisonment, liberation and homecoming is a tale of endurance, professionalism and raw pluck.
By the side of the way, they helped build and staff hospitals in the middle of a malaria-infested jungle on the peninsula of Bataan. Then, small of supplies and medicine, they worked nearly the clock in the operating rooms and open-air wards, dealing with gaping wounds and festering limbs, ministering to the wounded, the sick, the dying.
A few fell in like, only to lose their men to the enemy. Finally, on the tiny island of Corregidor in Manila Bay, the Japanese took them prisoner. For three long years in an internment camp–years marked by being alone and starvation–they kept to their mission and stuck together. In the end, it was this constancy, this sense of purpose, womanhood and honor, that both challenged and saved them.
Through interviews with survivors and through unpublished calligraphy, diaries and journals, Elizabeth M. Norman acutely re-makes that time, telling the tale in richly drawn portraits and in a dramatic narrative delivered in the voices of the women who were there.
Amazon.com Review
“Found worms in my oatmeal this morning. I shouldn’t have objected because they had been sterilized in the cooking and I was getting fresh meat with my breakfast…. I’m still bringing up the rear consequence and so are most of us…”
Ruth Marie Straub, an Army nurse, wrote those words in her diary on March 15, 1942, just over three months after the Japanese first bombed the U.S. military base in Manila. She and her colleagues had evacuated the city and customary, in the Philippine jungle, hospitals for the skyrocketing numbers of casualties. In the face of the advancing Japanese Army, the nurses and other military personnel continued to retreat, first to the Bataan Peninsula, and then to Corregidor, a rocky island in Manila Bay. Straub was one of the lucky ones; she was evacuated with a handful of other nurses in April 1942. Her remaining colleagues, meanwhile, surrendered with the rest of the U.S. forces in May and were taken to STIC–Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where they were to spend near three years in captivity.
We Band of Angels tells the tales of these courageous women, tagged by the American media as “The Angels of Bataan and Corregidor.” Utilizing a wide range of sources, including diaries, calligraphy, and private interviews with surviving “Angels,” Elizabeth M. Norman has compiled a harrowing narrative about the experiences of these women–from the people-club atmosphere of prewar Manila; to the jungle hospitals where patients slept on rattan cots in the open air; to the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor, where they choked on dust and worked even as the bombs rained down above them; to the STIC, where per-person rations were cut to 900 calories a day and the women resorted to frying weeds in cold cream for food. The tale Nelson tells is compelling but slightly flawed: like many biographers, Nelson has a deep affection and respect for her subjects, which causes her to soften rough edges. At the same time, but, Nelson argues that these women were not heroes–nor were they angels (in the acknowledgments, Nelson notes that she didn’t want the word angels in the title, but the publishers had their way). Perhaps because Nelson is a nurse herself, she is trying to stress that her profession is noble and that these women were, in a sense, just fulfilling their duties.
Nursing is noble, of course, but it is clear that these women were something unique. Amazingly, all of the Angels of Bataan, some 99 in number, survived their suffering–and clearly helped hundreds of the other sufferers survive. We Band of Angels deserves a space on the bookshelves of anyone interested in World War II. –C.B. Delaney
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Here is potential for a fantastic book. WWII. Unsung heroes. Jungle, jungle rot, politics,bombing, snakes, starvation, etc. It’s all there and the book reads like freshman English pumped up. Those 5-star reviews have to be excellent friends. Shame on Random House.
Rating: 1 / 5
After reading the other reviews, I feel that I must support the sometimes criticized one-star review. This book is poorly written. Alternatively pretentious (using versimilitude for truth, diurnal for daily) and wordy, the writing in this book is so poor that it is only worth the effort is you are truly interested in the theme matter. I was not, and quit about halfway through.
Rating: 3 / 5
It seems like it is not politically right to “criticize,” in the right sense of the word, anything nowadays. But criticizing is not necessarily a terrible thing and it doesn’t mean that the one being criticized is a lesser person because of it. Maybe we need to not accept everything we read as gospel until we place it to a test. And perhaps it might be excellent to have a healthy disbelief and a BS meter to filter everything we see, read and hear. What is right and what is embellishment? What is bias and what is fiction? And what is propaganda and what is undeniable, confirmable, truth?
“We Band of Angels” by Elizabeth M. Norman for the most part is a excellent book about the American female nurses on Bataan during WWII. It gives a perspective that is valuable if for no other reason than it adds another piece to the complex puzzle of how people react in a time of war; more specifically the Bataan women in uniform. But it also gives the perspective for better or worse from a sexual top of view. Not sexual in the sense of erotic or prurient, but the battle of the sexes, maleness and femaleness and the author builds on those differences from page 1. Indeed that is the premise of the book. The author tries to make the book more of a political statement than an historical one and she nearly succeeds.
Being a male, and I make no apologies for it although at times I get the sense from what the author is saying that I should, I take exception to some of the insinuations and downright fake statements she occasionally indulges. I have no doubt that the author is intelligent, accomplished, and probably has calligraphy after her name, but she at times lets her bias’s eclipse the larger picture of what WWII, and war in general for that matter, was and is all about. I also have no doubt to the courage and right heroism of the women on Bataan. But even some of the women she writes about do not seem to share the author’s conclusions. And that is my largest complaint-I bought the book because I have a deep interest in WWII, and a part of that interest is Bataan-the horrors of Bataan after the Japanese invaded, the Bataan death march, the concentration camps, the escapes and the tales of survival, the civilian populace and the foreigners trapped there with them. All of this is of interest but the last thing I want to read in a historical rendering is a feminist preaching propaganda.
To be honest, most of the book is not blatant with it, but the author does get in her digs hostile to the status quo, military leadership, and men. One eventually gets the feeling that the author does not hold the military, then and now, in very high regard and one wonders what her right feelings are about men in general.
All in all if one ignores the preaching and subtle innuendo there is some excellent in rank here. And it is everlastingly fascinating to me to find out what happened after the war to the books subjects and the author gives us some of that in rank.
One last thing-I reckon the book would have been more fascinating if it had in rank on the Philippine people in general and more specifically the Philippine nurses who worked with the American nurses. Hardly a mention is made of them and nothing is said of their outcome. An argument surely may possibly be made that the Americans on Bataan during WWII owed a lot to the Philippine people.
Rating: 3 / 5
Let’s let the book converse in for itself:
“Nearly 8:00 p.m. on April 10 [1942], one day after the surrender, an American officer at Sickbay #2, recuperating from a bullet wound in his lung, heard a woman screaming in the tent next to him. In the darkness he propped himself up and saw an American medic quickly approach the tent, only to be sharply turned away by a [Japanese] sentry wielding a rifle and bayonet. The cries continued for a even as, then stopped. In the morning, Ehtyle Mae Mercado [an American from Utah, wife of a Filipino] stumbled into the officer’s tent, bruised and crying. She’d been raped, she said, at least five times, all through the night….
“Roughly a quarter of the 3,800 internees were children below the age of eighteen….
“It was not unusual to see children scrounging through garbage cans by the Japanese army mess hall for scraps of food…”
Rating: 5 / 5
Elizabeth Norman’s historical account of nurses trapped on Bataan in World War II, We Band of Angels, was a tender and informative tale of the heroic deeds performed by women in the military. It is a very fascinating book and is not compulsory for more advanced readers who delight in war tales.
This tale takes place a few months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entered WWII. The Japanese soon capture Corregidor, a small island in the Philippines, and General MacArthur’s weakened troops are forced to surrender due to severe supply shortages. Before the war, some young American women looking for excitement joined the army as nurses, hoping its promises would fulfill their dreams of finding adventure. “Women who sought after adventure and romance – self possessed, ambitious and unattached women – signed up…(p2 of pictures).” Small did they know just how much adventure they would find and what heroes they would prove to be.
A hero is someone who possesses the ability to do fantastic things. They are ordinarily intelligent, have some type of extraordinary ability, and ordinarily channel these attributes towards helping others. Ancient Greek heores were emphasized as being more physically strong than mentally strong. There is also a fallen hero, like Roy Hobbs in The Natural, who had the qualities needed to be a hero, except for a character flaw that led him to a downfall. The nurses on Bataan possessed many of these characteristics and can be characterized as heroes.
Even as the United States was unprepared for what the war would result in, the army officers on Bataan, being so isolated from linked forces, were simple prey for the vicious Japanese military. Though incredibly surprised by the attack and ill equipped for the turmoil that was to come, the officers and nurses on Bataan were ready to keep fighting for as long as they may possibly survive. Every nurse, the “Angels” as they called themselves, thrust her dread aside and bravely continued to serve the sick and wounded, despite the fact that in many cases they were so ill they may possibly barely stand themselves. Still, unable to get much needed food and medical supplies, the medical officers on Bataan had to give in to the enemy. Some nurses, supposedly picked at random, were allowed to escape the horrors that would come and made it back to America. The others were forced into army internment camps where many men lost their lives in mass shootings and others were brutally punished for minor acts. Though for a even as conditions below Japanese command seemed to improve, the Japanese shortly resumed their harsh control. The camps’ inhabitants suffered immensely from various diseases and conditions. Most were malnourished, as food was in small supply, and the shape up of patients already suffering from diseases became steadily worse, most of them dying. Even through the heartbreaking deaths, terror, and indescribable living conditions, the people (especially the nurses) never gave up hope. They seemed to be able to maintain faith in their people and that one day they would be rescued. One nurse said, “If you gave up hope, you would have just folded up and died (p. 165).” And, after suffering, but surviving, terrible conditions for about three years, the rescue finally came. Nearly Christmas, 1945, American tanks burst through the iron gates of the internment camp, reinstating hope in all. Still, the Japanese would not surrender to the Americans until after they held a group of people hostage. This climax is well depicted by the author, with a lot of suspense. The Japanese may possibly not long withstand the American army and the inhabitants of the camp were soon liberated.
The “Angels” in this tale can certainly be viewed as heroes. Elizabeth Norman depicts their heroism by describing many qualities and feelings they had. One quality of a hero that they surely possessed is the ability to place others before themselves. Of course, it is the job of a nurse to care for others, but the nurses on Bataan unquestionably did beyond what they were required, or even expected. These courageous women risked and sacrificed their lives to make sure the safety of others nearly them; often putting aside private needs just to protect their patients and colleagues. When one nurse became ill with malaria, “she set herself on a cot in the middle of her ward and directed the work of her staff from there. (p. 51)” The nurses were very reluctant to withdraw from their work – they persevered and finished the job, no matter what it took. “Many nurses were sick with malaria and dengue (p. 140),” said Madeline Ullom, one of the nurses. Still, they still kept on fighting. The women stayed determined to survive during even the most trying moments, and fought to the end, a typical characteristic possessed by heroes.
Another trait of heroism these women demonstrated was courage. Though the nurses were non-combatant members of the army, they did much fighting of their own. They showed much bravery in “battle,” and in the face of the enemy. The nurses did their best to keep cool when treating the thousands of casualties entering the sickbay each day, and never lost their wit. The army nurses realized that they had to take risks to protect themselves and their patients. “Soon the women started to forage for food…they waited for the guards to pass, then two or three of them would…return with as many cans of tomatoes and sacks of flour as they may possibly hide…(p. 138).” They came up with plans, though risky, to steal food for their starving patients and themselves. They kept busy to maintain their sanity and help them to cope with their loss of freedom when below Japanese command. As she entered the internment camp, one nurse “Filled up her day with projects and reading and exercises (p.158),” another said, “The secret to being a survivor is to keep busy (p. 166).” The women were intelligent, further proving their heroism.
This is truly an account of the courage, strength, and hope possessed by the heroes in the book. Though the tale is non-fiction tale, it is very fascinating and at times what the nurses went through is unbelievable. The author shows that though the nurses viewed themselves as run of the mill people, in a time of crisis they were able to gather strength, saving lives to find a hero in themselves.
Rating: 3 / 5