DANVILLE, California — At 106 years old, Alice Darrow clearly remembers her days as a nurse during World War II, part of a pioneering team that dodged bullets by carrying bags of medical supplies and treating burns and gunshot wounds of servicemen.
Some nurses died from enemy fire. Others spent years as prisoners of war. Most returned home to a quiet life without receiving much recognition.
Darrow sat with patients even after hours. One of them arrived at her hospital on Mare Island in California with a bullet lodged in his heart. He wasn't expected to survive the surgery, but he would change her life.
“You are everything to them because you care about them,” she said from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area town of Danville.
Eighty years after the end of the war, a coalition of retired military nurses and others is campaigning to award one of the nation's highest civilian honors, the Congressional Gold Medal, to all nurses who served in World War II. Other groups, such as Women Air Force Pilots of World War II and the real Rosie the Riveters, have already received this honor.
“I think the general public is not often aware of the contributions that nurses have made in almost every war,” said Patricia Upa, a retired colonel who served as an Army nurse during conflicts overseas and whose late mother was also an Army nurse in the South Pacific during World War II.
Only a few, like Darrow, are still alive. The coalition knows of five World War II nurses still alive, including 107-year-old Elsie Chin Yuen Situ, who became the first Chinese-American nurse to join the Army Nurse Corps. They fear time is running out to honor the pioneers.
“It’s time to honor the nurses who stood up and did their part to protect our freedom,” U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, said in a statement.
Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, have sponsored legislation to award the medal, but it faces formidable challenges. It requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber—67 cosponsors in the Senate and 290 in the House—and the bills currently have eight and six cosponsors, respectively.
Before the war, there were fewer than 600 nurses in the US Army and 1,700 in the US Navy. By the end of the war, this number had risen to 59,000 in the Army and 14,000 in the Navy.
Congressional bills provide heartbreaking examples of bravery. Some nurses worked on Navy hospital ships, treating patients who came under fire. Sixty nurses landed off the coast of North Africa on November 8, 1942, to organize and assist the invading troops.
“Without weapons, they went ashore under enemy sniper fire and ultimately took refuge in an abandoned civilian hospital,” the law states.
Nurses saved lives. Fewer than 4 percent of American soldiers in World War II who received medical care in the field or were evacuated died from their wounds or disease, the legislation says.
“They probably saw more infections. They probably saw more casualties from chemicals. Remember, they didn't have disposable products, so they had to sterilize everything,” says Edward Yakel, a retired colonel and president of the World War II Army Nurses Association.
“Without them,” he says, “we would not have the knowledge base we now need to fight today's wars.”
Some nurses survived harsh captivity. In 1942, about 80 military nurses were captured when the United States surrendered the Philippines to Japan. While held as prisoners of war, the women suffered from hunger and disease, but continued to work until their release three years later.
Nurses played a huge role in the 600 U.S. Army hospitals around the world and in the 700 prison camps on U.S. military bases, said Phoebe Pollitt, a retired nurse and professor of nursing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. But their role has gone largely unnoticed.
“Even in women’s history and health history, nurses are at the bottom of the barrel,” she said.
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 into 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 teenage years in China. She joined the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps in unoccupied China after escaping Japanese forces in Hong Kong.
She later applied to the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, but they said she had an obligation to serve her country—and that meant China.
An outraged Chinese-American health worker wrote a letter on Situ's behalf, claiming that she is a US citizen. She became the first Chinese American nurse to join the Army Nurse Corps, serving in China and India before returning to the United States.
She already has a Congressional Gold Medal. awarded to Chinese Americans for their service in the war, despite the discrimination they faced.
“We answered the call to duty when our country faced threats to our freedom,” she said in a videotaped speech at the 2020 ceremony.
Among the patients Darrow cared for was a young soldier wounded during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Before the operation to remove the bullet from her heart, he asked if she would go on a date with him, if he would survive.
“I said, 'Well, of course you can count on me,'” she says and laughs. “I couldn't say, 'No, I don't think you can handle it.'
Dean Darrow survived and they left. The couple kept the 7.7 mm bullet. They got married and raised four children. He died in 1991.
In September, Alice Darrow went on a cruise to Hawaii with her daughter and son-in-law, where she donated the bullet to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial so visitors from around the world could learn about its significance and the love story behind it.
Darrow said she is looking 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 Race and Ethnicity team in Phoenix, Arizona.
