Army Nurses

Before the attack of Pearl Harbor, the Army Nurses Corps listed fewer than 1,000 nurses on its rolls. By the end of the war, more than 59,000 American nurses were serving in the Army.

On 7 December 1941, there were a total of eighty-two Army nurses stationed in Hawaii serving at three facilities, including Tripler Army Hospital. (In 1941, Tripler Hospital as we know it now, didn't exist. At that time, Tripler Hospital was a set of wooden structures at Fort Shafter.)


There was another medical unit at Hickam Field. Lieutenant Monica E. Conter was on duty there during the attack. She recalls, “I ran out on the third floor porch overlooking Pearl Harbor. . . I rushed downstairs and received permission to bring the patients down. Some of us were in the elevator when the electricity was cut off—they used the trap door to get us out. . . and all the electric clocks stopped at exactly eight o’clock.

"You cannot imagine the noise—aerial torpedoes bombs, machine gunning, our anti-aircraft. In the middle of this,. . . we heard the roaring of the planes again... one made a thirty-foot crater about twenty feet from the wing. .the next bomb fell across the street...smoke and fumes from the bomb came in and someone cried, ‘Gas!’ We all thought the same thing, the bombs didn’t get me but the gas will.’ Soon afterwards we had our masks and helmets. More casualties…the wounded were crying for water and there was no water to give them because we heard it had been poisoned“

(Six months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, there were 12,000 nurses on duty in the Army Nurse Corps.)

PHOTO: Appendectomy using gas mask at a General Hospital, Hawaii. Left to right: Second Lieutenant Ida Chernes, Lieutenant Colonel Arnold Jensen, Second Lieutenant Willene Byrd, Captain Ken Mooney, Second Lieutenant Dorothy Dozier, and patient. (Department of the Army)

From Nightingale to Eagle: An Army Nurses History by Edith A. Aynes describes her experiences as the chief nurse of the 148th General Hospital in Hawaii throughout 1942.

Women of World War II Hawaii