DANNER-DOROTHY

SPENT  THREE  YEARS  IN

JAPANESE  POW  CAMPS  DURING WWII

LTJG Dorothy Still was one of eleven nurses who were called “The Sacred Eleven.”  The following are excerpts from an interview, “Dorothy Still Danner: Reminiscences of a Nurse POW” published by the Naval Historical Center in 1992.

I wanted to be a dress designer but I joined the Navy in 1937.  My first assignment was at Balboa Hospital in San Diego.  In 1939 I was transferred to the Canacao Naval Hospital in the Philippines.  While we heard about the rape of Nanking, nobody thought the Japanese would be silly enough to try and do anything to Uncle Sam.

I was awakened in the middle of the night and told that Pearl Harbor had been hit.  On Wednesday the 10th, the Navy Yard was bombed.  After the raid we rushed to the hospital and patients were all over the place.  Triage was impossible.  You just tried to find out which were the worst ones to go to surgery and so on.  After a few weeks we moved to the Santa Scholastica School in Manila.  The Army had converted it into a hospital.  The military declared Manila an open city and retreated but the medical personnel remained.  On 2 January 1942, the Japanese came into Manila but didn't come to Santa Scholastica until a few days later.  At first the Japanese were not hostile and mostly left us alone.  But then they started taking quinine from us, they took our beds and also began to beat up the men.  But they ignored the nurses.

I was sent to Santo Tomas POW Camp on March 8, 1942.  Soon Santo Tomas became too crowded so they decided to move part of the camp out of Manila and selected a site near the town of Los Banos.  We went to the agricultural college outside Los Banos which had been a part of the University of the Philippines.  The Japanese put a barbed wire fence around it.  Our hospital was a small 25-bed unit.  Initially there were only men and nurses at Los Banos.  Dependents did not arrive until December.  When they did, they changed the whole outlook of the camp. They brought touches of civilization with them - tablecloths and salt and pepper shakers, etc.

While food was not plentiful starvation was not a problem.  Since we lived in an old agricultural college we had limited access to meat.  We also had a garden in which we grew mostly eggplants and a sort of sweet potato.  Of course, there was rice and beans.  Duck eggs were occasionally available.  Life began to change in late 1943 when the Japanese military took over the camps from Japanese civilian administrators.  Now a Japanese supply officer made life miserable and apparently wanted to starve the internees.  Our lifestyle worsened appreciably in early 1944 because the Japanese brought many more civilians into Los Banos who were sick and the elderly.  There were few able-bodied men to take care of this load.  Life really became hard in Santo Tomas.

By March 1944, the whole spirit at Los Banos changed.  The camp just kind of fell apart and the food situation began to deteriorate.  Living conditions worsened.  By this time, the Americans had invaded the Philippines, so as life got worse for the Japanese, they made life worse for us.  We were only getting two skimpy meals a day, mainly rice.  There was practically no meat.  We used to have coconut milk but they were no longer available.  We began to lose weight.  It looked like Christmas 1944 would be very gloomy but a songfest by the priests and sisters livened things up.  On Christmas Eve they had a midnight mass and practically the whole camp turned out.  There were no gifts involved, just spirit of friendliness between people.  It was a beautiful Christmas!

On January 9, 1945, American troops landed at Lingayen Gulf.  The Japanese awakened us in the middle of the night and told us they were leaving.  They turned the camp over to the administrative committee.  The administrative committee said, "Today we're announcing you are free.  This is Camp Freedom."  An American flag was sent up the flagpole and we sang the national anthem.  Tears were running down everyone's face.  It was a very emotional moment.  Unfortunately our freedom only lasted a week as the Japanese came back.  

MacArthur's troops came down toward Manila and on February 3rd liberated Santo Tomas.  Thus far the Americans had only liberated prisoners in their line of advance.  But a Los Banos rescue meant going far behind enemy lines to rescue over 3,000 people.  Paratroopers were to be dropped over Los Banos and attack in conjunction with infantry who would come ashore in amphibious vehicles from a nearby lake. These amtracs would then evacuate many of the civilians.  The plan was to sneak up behind all the guard houses and at the specific moment everything would happen at once.

I was on duty that night.  There was a newborn baby and I was trying to feed her with what little powdered milk was left.  The mother could hardly nurse the baby.  She hadn't had enough nourishment herself.  It was just about seven in the morning, February 23, 1945.  I had the baby in my arms when I noticed smoke signals going up.  Then, all of a sudden we saw a formation of aircraft and as paratroopers started jumping out the guerrillas and soldiers around the guard houses began killing the Japanese there.  Then the amtracs came in crashing through the fence near the front gate.  An amtrac pulled up in front of the hospital and  American troops jumped out.  We never saw anything so handsome in our lives.  These fellows looked so healthy and so lively.  The firing was mostly over in about 15 minutes but it took a while to evacuate the internees.  In fact, the American troops actually had to set fire to the barracks to get the internees moving.  I left on an amtrac in the second wave.  This whole thing went off with just the most amazing precision that you could imagine.  In retaliation for the raid, the Japanese later murdered 1,500 inhabitants of the nearby town of Los Banos.

After being liberated from Los Banos, we were flown to Leyte where they served us beautiful steaks, which of course we couldn't eat because our stomachs had shrunk so much.  It was surprising to see how much publicity we got.  When we landed in Oakland there was quite a reception for us, we had a very thorough examination and went on 90-day recuperative leave.  My health had been good but while I was in Los Banos I developed the dry type of beriberi as had many others.  It was very uncomfortable because I ached all over and my knees buckled.  There was nothing I could do for it because it was caused by malnutrition.  Our diet was not very good, especially during the last few months before our rescue.  But I quickly recovered once I was able to eat good food again.

Upon conclusion of the war all 11 Navy nurses were awarded the Bronze Star Medal by the U.S. Army.  The Navy awarded a Gold Star to each nurse In lieu of a Second Bronze Star Award.

Following World War II, Dorothy Still remained on active duty until April 29, 1947, leaving the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander.  In 1947 she married Goldburn Robert Danner (1907 – 1956) and continued working as a nurse.  In 1995 she authored the book, “WHAT A WAY TO SPEND A WAR: NAVY NURSE POWS IN THE PHILIPPINES.”  She died on June 16, 2001, and was interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

          

A photograph of nurses rescued from Los Banos taken the day after liberation shows them with VADM Thomas C. Kinkaid, Commander Seventh Fleet.  LTJG Still is in back row extreme left.  The navy nurses are still wearing uniforms which had been sewn from discarded fabrics by  one of the nurses.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)