The Military Nurses, Dieticians, Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists

Fear never entered into it.
Lenore Terrell Richert, USN, Navy Hospital Pearl Harbor


Nurse Valera Baubel Wiskerson remembers, "Patients who’d been in the hospital before the bombing left to return to duty and didn’t take their records with them, so we never knew what happened to them. ..A doctor called me over to help lift a patient in the burn ward. We’d lift a patient up and draw the sheet from underneath, and because the burned skin came off, fresh oil was put on the sheet. I was holding under the patient’s thigh and lower leg to raise him when his leg separated from the knee in my hand. I turned white as a sheet. The doctor looked at my face. I took deep breaths to keep from fainting. After the patient was put on the sheet, I found a blanket and took it downstairs. The patient I was bringing it for had died. A new one was in his place so I covered him.

"I remember the burn cases where eyelids and lashes were burned and you couldn’t see the nose. Burns smell horrible. Our chief nurse kept a perfumed handkerchief in her pocket, and while she was feeding a burn patient, she would sniff it. Once a patient asked if he could sniff it too, because he couldn’t stand the smell.
–Valera Baubel Wiskerson, USN, Navy Hospital Pearl Harbor.


We put mattresses on the floor in the hallway to get a little rest at a time. Helen Entrikin, USN, Pearl Harbor


Mildred Irene Clark Woodman, a US Army nurse at Schofield Barracks remembers, "The hospital was hit, even though it had a large red cross painted on the roof. I kept hearing planes overhead, but we were too busy to be afraid or to ask what was happening. . . at night someone brought in fried chicken, but few of us felt hungry. . . patients had severe wounds. . . many wanted to go out and fight back. Some wanted a prayer said or to hear the 23rd Psalm, and we obliged them along with the surgical procedures.

"Two anesthetists slept in the hospital for over two weeks following the attack. Operating rooms and patient areas were blacked out with dark army blankets; it was like a steam bath at night when we had to operate. Later, black paint was used on the windows.

“ One dark night during the blackout, Nellie Osterund and I were coming back from Fort Shafter. . . I heard a rustling noise from the grassy area, and automatically said, 'Stop. Who goes there?' A very young man’s voice came back saying, 'It’s the guard, ma’am.' Then he said, 'Ma’am, would you please put out your cigarette.' I told him I wasn’t smoking and we finally figured out the light was the radium dial on my watch. That’s how spooky people were.”

From NO TIME FOR FEAR: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II by Diane Burke Fessler, 1996.


Besides nurses, there were female dieticians, occupational therapists, and physical therapists stationed in Hawaii. In later posts I'll go into more depth about their role during the war. The woman to the left is Pam Waddell Bradbury. She spent the evening of December 6, 1941, dancing the night away at the Royal Hawaiian hotel. A 26-year-old Army dietician at Schofield Barracks Hospital, she awoke the next morning to Japanese fighter planes screaming over the barracks.

"I ran outside and saw all these planes," Bradbury told the Fort Worth Star Telegram in 1995. "At first we thought they must be having a dogfight from Wheeler Field."

Bradbury spent the day at the barracks hospital, where the situation grew so grim that a doctor told her that there were more gravely injured soldiers and sailors than the staff could care for.

He said, "All you can do is light their cigarettes and hold their hands."

PHOTO: Fort Worth STAR-TELEGRAM
PHOTO of Poster: National Archives

Women of World War II Hawaii