All This Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned by the Japanese

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About All This Hell: U.S. Nurses Imprisoned By The Japanese

Product Description Before December 1941 drew to a close, five navy nurses on Guam became the first American military women of WWII to be taken prisoner by the Japanese. More than seventy army nurses survived five months of combat conditions in the jungles of Bataan and Corregidor before being captured, only to endure more than three years in prison camps. In all, nearly one hundred nurses became POWs. Many of these army nurses were considered too vital to the war effort to be evacuated from the Philippines. Though receiving only half the salary of male officers of the same rank, they helped establish outdoor hospitals and treated thousands of casualties despite rapidly decreasing supplies and rations. After their capture, they continued to care for the sick and wounded throughout their internment in the prison camps. When freedom came, the U.S. military ordered the nurses to sign agreements with the government not to discuss their horrific experiences. Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee have conducted interviews with survivors and scoured archives for letters, diaries, and journals to uncover the heroism and sacrifices of these brave women. Their dedication to accuracy, combined with their personal expertise in medical care and military culture and discipline, has resulted in a honest, fair history of the dedicated military nurses who were captured in the Pacific theater during WWII. “Like their male counterparts, these nurses faced the reality of combat, anguish of surrender, and the brutality of captivity. Their story is one chapter in the annals of World War II that must be told, if American men and women are to appreciate the depth of sacrifices made by their countrymen and women in the cause of freedom.”—Rear Admiral Frances Shea Buckley, Nurse Corps, U.S. Navy (Ret.) “Goes far toward telling their story in a way most readers can grasp, sensing the heroism as well as the horrors of some of the most desperate years our Republic has ever faced.”—Frank F. Mathias “As well as ably telling the story of what women can tolerate in the service of their country, the authors give a stirring account of the fighting that took place on Bataan and Corregidor at that time.”—American History “Adds a tremendous chapter to the narrative of women prisoners in wartime by following a cast of characters almost cinematically through their daily routines and their reflections recorded in letters, diaries, and interviews.”—Rain Taxi From Library Journal Some of the least known but most interesting World War II narratives involve the experiences of civilian and military American women living in the South Pacific during the Japanese occupation--the subject of the present volumes. All This Hell describes the plight of 84 female nurses stationed in the South Pacific prior to the war whose lives went from idyllic to horrific when they were interned by the Japanese. Based upon both oral histories and published biographical and autobiographical accounts, the book provides a readable and gripping introduction to the topic for all readers. Its authors, veteran military medical personnel, have also written Albanian Escape, which deals with wartime nursing during World War II. Prisoners in Paradise is a broader, more analytic study. Kaminski (history, Univ. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point) explores the wartime activities of the region's thousands of non-native civilian and military women. Going beyond a narrative of their trials, she considers how attitudes toward gender roles shifted and adapted as women struggled to survive and protect their families. Based upon an extensive list of primary and secondary sources, this book is useful not only in its coverage of this neglected period but also as a more general study of gender in wartime. While All This Hell is recommended for all public and larger academic libraries, Prisoners in Paradise is most appropriate for academic and larger public libraries. -Theresa McDevitt, Indiana Univ., PA Cop