This is a departure from my usual blogs. I have shared many of my own nursing experiences in the past. In honor of our country’s birthday, I want to share a little bit about some very important but, probably mostly unknown American Heroes.

I have to work Saturday, the Fourth of July. And I am on call during the evening. I will be out seeing patients all day, then answering the phones all evening. And, as I go about my day, assessing, prioritizing, comforting and giving care, I will be thinking about Rosemary Hogan, Ann Bernatitus, and all the others.

Rosemary Hogan was born in Apheatone, Oklahoma, in March of 1912. She was class valedictorian when she graduated from high school and earned a scholarship to attend nurses’ training. In 1936, she joined the U.S. Army Corps of Nurses and was stationed at Fort Sill.

She and the other nurses she served with have been described as “nurses in search of adventure, serving with the military on an island paradise” known as the Philippines. Rosemary arrived in the Philippines shortly before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

She was in charge of a group of American and Filipino nurses who went to the Bataan Peninsula to establish a 1000-bed hospital at Limay. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent attacks on Manila, they moved the hospital further inland to a place called Little Baguio.

In May of 1942, while working in the operating room during a bombing raid, she received serious shrapnel wounds. For her heroism and service-related injury, she received The Purple Heart.

During transport to Corregidor, Hogan and 76 other nurses were captured and spent the next 37 months ministering to the injured and sick prisoners of war at Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila.

Another survivor described the surrender: “The nurses stood mute and edgy. Up and down the line walked the Japanese, looking them over. It was difficult, at first, to read the enemy's face, to separate reputation from reality, reality from fear.... The sight of women in uniform was so alien to the Japanese that they seemed puzzled, indeed almost confused, by the nurses' presence." (Elizabeth M. Norman)

Throughout their internment, the nurses continued to care for the soldiers and others with whom they were interred. “Wracked with disease and injury” they created structure and purpose with their nursing practice.

Ann A. Bernatitus, Lieutenant (j.g.) in the Navy Nurse Corps, served in Bataan, on the front lines, for three months, caring for the wounded amid relentless strafing in Manila, before being evacuated to Corregidor, narrowly escaping capture by the Japanese.

After escaping and ending up in Australia, she returned to the United States to serve as a nurse at the newly-dedicated Naval Medical Center at Bethseda, MD, then at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital. In 1944, she returned to the South Pacific as Chief Nurse aboard a hospital ship off Okinawa.

She was the first person in the United States Naval Service to receive the Award of the Legion of Merit. Her award reads:

Lieutenant (jg) Ann A. Bernatitus, USN
Nurse Corps, (Exeter, Pa):

For exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services as a member of Surgical Unit No. 5 during the Japanese attack on the Philippines, Nurse Bernatitus maintained her position in the front lines of the Manila-Bataan area rendering efficient and devoted service during the prolonged siege (Dec. 1941 through Apr. 1942).

From a newspaper picture showing Lt. Bernatitus and the other 21 nurses who escaped:

“Of 99 nurses known to have served in or at Bataan, 22 escaped before the final fall of the Philippine Islands. The remaining 77, the largest group of women Prisoners of War in American history, were repatriated in 1945. Through four years of deprivation, cruelty, and constant death, they valiantly served to save others. To the men with which they served, and to whom they ministered, they became known as the Angels of Bataan.”

Lt. Helen Cassiani Nestor, when interviewed concerning her experiences at Bataan and during the internment stated:

"We were just doing our job."

Cali