We Band of Angels

We Band Of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese (1999) by New York University professor Elizabeth M. Norman follows a group of nurses who continued caring for the sick while under great duress from the “Bataan Death March” and WWII. In interviews, Norman said she was inspired to research and tell this story because the role of these female nurses was downplayed when they came back from the war and even in contemporary literature. Norman is a registered nurse and holds a PhD; both of her parents were in the military, and she has held a lifelong fascination toward nursing and the military. Themes include selflessness, courage, perseverance, gender in the military, and compassion. Norman interviewed twenty of the nurses who survived the Bataan Death March and nearly three years as prisoners of war in an internment camp.

Norman begins her work of narrative nonfiction by discussing the general peacefulness of a US military base in the Philippines before December 7, 1941 (i.e. Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entrance into WWII). At Sternberg Hospital in Manilla, for instance, which holds 450 beds, the nurses from around the continental U.S. (and mostly of working-class origin) enjoy golf courses, bowling alleys, and movie theaters. At times, Sternberg Hospital and the surrounding military base seems more like a country club than a site for war. All of the nurses are trained by the Navy or Army Nurse Corp, but they were never intended to enter any sort of combat situation.

But then Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu, Hawaii, is attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy Service. Hospitals around the Philippines are ordered to stop all services and prepare for a possible attack, which occurs only one day after Pearl Harbor. With a fleet of 250,000 men, the Japanese Navy easily overwhelms the American and Filipino forces defending the capital city, Manila. These forces, including the female nurses at Sternberg Hospital, retreat to a nearby peninsula called Mariveles, or Bataan. When a commanding officer says that only American nurses are to be evacuated, one nurse refuses to leave Manilla until American and Filipino nurses are safely transported out of the capital; the commanding officer finally relents.



Bataan remained unsettled by humans for a reason. The area was full of poisonous snakes and oversized rats. The nurses set up two temporary hospitals (one of which is nearly bombed) and tend to the wounded and sick despite the immense number of flies buzzing about and fearless monkeys who steal their equipment. Norman reprints letters and diary entries from this period. One nurse entry from 1942 says she found worms in her oatmeal, she’s still losing weight, and the make-shift hospital is nearly out of drugs.

Without more US aid coming to assist, the Filipino and American forces surrender to Japan within a month of the first attack.

The Japanese separate the 73,000 Filipino troops and the 14,000 US troops into units of one hundred. Despite the triple-digit heat—the hot environment that promotes dysentery, malaria, and roundworms—the Japanese forces inform the new prisoners of war that they will be walking nearly sixty-five miles through inhospitable terrain to a prison camp on the other side of the island.



During this “death march,” thousands die from starvation, preventable diseases, or are simply killed by Japanese soldiers (estimates vary from 5,000 to 10,000).  Fortunately, the female nurses are not required to walk with the male troops.

In the internment camps at Santo Tomas and Los Banos, overcrowding is a major problem. As the ninety-nine (seventy-two American, twenty-seven Filipino) nurses help their patients, they themselves experience a host of medical problems, including scurvy and pellagra. Norman interviews more of the survivors to learn that they got used to worms in their oatmeal, that they came to look forward to cat food, and that they had to stop people from sneaking into the hospital to drink blood (that’s how rare fresh water was).

Despite these dire circumstances, the nurses summon the energy to make Christmas presents and sing songs together. Without hairpins available, most of them cut their hair very short; after the war, they report that the shorter hair helped them fulfill their duties.



Not until 1945, were U.S. forces able to release these prisoners of war.

Norman looks at the reception the women received when they returned from the war. Their sacrifice was immense, but in 1945, Americans were not in the habit of viewing women as war heroes. Journalists tended to ask them if they feared being raped or if they were surprised how fashion in America had changed while they were gone. (None of the nurses said they were raped). In the early 1950s, several of the nurses and male members of the Army nominated Major Maude Davison for a Distinguished Service Medal. Surprisingly, the Army refused to give any woman a prominent medal recognizing them for their extraordinary effort during WWII.

When Norman interviewed the twenty nurses who were still alive, each of them was in her eighties. When asked if they had any regrets about the war, most of them reported they still felt sick that they had been forced to leave the wounded men behind.