This Day in History: The Nurses at Pearl Harbor

The first time in American history that Army nurses were at the front lines of battle.

On this day in 1941, civilians and military on the Hawaiian island of Oahu enjoy a beautiful day, blissfully unaware that the United States would soon be at war. Have you ever thought about the military nurses stationed at Pearl Harbor that weekend?

They were about to be put in a unique position, yet they had no way of knowing it.

Indeed, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor early on December 7, it marked the first time in American history that Army nurses were at the front lines of battle—and they had to serve in this capacity, without any warning or preparation.

“We thought we were having a two-year (holiday-style) tour of duty at taxpayer expense,” one nurse, Harriet Moore Holmes, later reminisced. “We were looking forward to it immensely.”

Holmes had spent the night of Saturday, December 6, 1941, at a dance with friends. They’d been out late, and Holmes was sound asleep when the Japanese struck the next morning.

She couldn’t believe the scene when a supervisor woke her up.

“I could see the black smoke streaming up from Pearl Harbor just over the hills and just then a Japanese pilot flew low over the hospital,” she described. “He waved at us. We felt lucky he didn’t want to bomb a hospital.”

The nurses must have been astonished at the scenes that followed, but they resolutely went to work saving lives—as did then-First Lt. Annie Fox, chief nurse at Hickam Field. Indeed, Fox would later receive a Purple Heart for her extraordinary service.

“[S]he administered anesthesia to patients during the heaviest part of the bombardment,” her citation stated, “assisted in dressing the wounded, taught civilian volunteer nurses to make dressings, and worked ceaselessly with coolness and efficiency, and her fine example of calmness, courage and leadership was of great benefit to the morale of all with whom she came in contact.”

The Purple Heart was later changed to a Bronze Star when the award criteria were adjusted to include only those who had been wounded.

But Fox wasn’t the only Army nurse who went above and beyond the call of duty that day.  Second Lt. Anna Urda was a patient at Tripler General Hospital because of an infection in her right cheek. When the bombing started, she knew that she was a patient no more. She changed into her nurse’s uniform—but soon ran into her chief nurse.

Urda later described the encounter: “[A]s soon as [the chief nurse] looked at me she said, ‘Where do you think you're going with that red face?’ And I said, ‘On duty where ever you need me.’”

Meanwhile, Holmes’ roommate, 2nd Lt. Marguerite Oberson, would get very bad news. Her fiancé was a pilot. Miraculously, he’d gotten a plane in the air during the Japanese attack—but then he was shot down.

“She was very shook up when she found out he was killed, but she kept right on working,” Holmes said of her friend.

Nearby, 2nd Lt. Myrtle Watson was working at Schofield Hospital. It was a weekend, so she was the only nurse on her ward. Worse, the chaos and damage from the bombing was making it difficult for doctors and nurses to make their way to the hospital.

“There was no communication and we were so busy, we had no idea what had happened at Pearl Harbor, how bad it was there,” Watson later told a reporter. She worked nearly nonstop for three days, tending to the wounded and living on chocolate bars and coffee.

Her family still didn’t even know if she’d survived.

We often hear about the bravery of the men who served at Pearl Harbor, but women performed nobly that day, too—nor was it only the Army nurses. Navy nurses had their own heroic moments in the ships that were being attacked in the harbor.

Naturally, that is a story for another day.

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