Live sunday. Author and journalist david will be our guest to talk about Natural History and the origins of deadly viruses and hiv. A contributing writer mass written many books including the reluctant mr. Darwin. His latest is breatheless about the race to defeat the covid19 virus. Join in the conversation with your phone calls. Facebook comments, text and tweets. Indepth with david quammen. Remember looking out after the bombing and seeing the city on fire. Id like each one of you to remember you were an american. You are an officer in the United States army. How could they prepare us there was no precedence for women or nurses being taken prisoner. Life was a constant struggle. Food was scarce. I wentgr to bed hungry and gt up hungry. To us, liberation was around the corner. Freedomom wasnt free. We had to fight for it and pay for it. Early in world war two, after japan struck at pearl harbor and early in world war ii. Fiveve navy nurses on guam and 1 navy 67 army nurses. Three dieticians were captured and internalled. These were the First American women prisoners of war. There werent many army and women nurses in the philippines in 1940s. Only two at camp john ab 20 were assigned in manila. 6io or 7 in the station hospital near clarkan field a dozen navy bases on the naval base. Five were stationed on guam. 1700le miles to the east. Duty in the tropics consist of duties onwards. A busy Maternity Ward and ample free timehe to enjoy the pleasus and life over seas. Early in 1941 this knowledges began to change as more troops came in from the states. Training steppedup with air raids and blackout drills. The nurses numbers had grown to 105. The possibility of war was on everyones mind. It completely closed off. Even the native people in guam that have relatives over there. Obviously they areed closed off and something they didnt want anybody to know about. We saw some japanese ships. We a were ordered to puton clos and go on the top deck and all of the gis were below and outofsight. News came as unexpectedly as the attack. He told us, of course, pearl harbor had been bopped. Id like to tell you something. This is an unusual situation he said, id like each one of you to remember that you are an american. You are an officer of the United States army. If you know what your duty and responsibility is, he said, there may come a time when no one will tell you what to do but you will know what your conscious says and you will know the oath you have taken to protect your country and always remember that. Later that day the sounds of japanese aircrafts were heard overhead. The native air force base was hit and camp john, clark field, dellll carman field were also struck. Mamanila as well. It flew over and they started dropping bombs around every with where. We lived a charmed life because the bombs fell around the hospital but not on it. As the plains passed and he stopped and from right in front of my foot he picked up a shell casing a millimeter difference and that would have been the end for me. I would have never come back from guam, it was that close. The five nurses were captured onn december 10th and were released the following august. Patients and hundreds of new casualty poured into manila on trucks and buses. I remember looking out after the bopping and seeing manila on fire. These are the patients screaming for help. , you wanted to help everyone. There were two nurses in the war. It was a war that held 78 patients. There were twowo or three in a bed. They weren setting on chairs. They were lying on the floor and holding onto arms and legs. They were trying to control the bleeding. We received orders from our chief nurse. Whatever patients we thought should go to surgery line them up. They were operating on the steps they were just studenting in blood. Daylight air raids continued. In two weeks the japanese changed the Peaceful World into oned of confusion, destruction, and death. Medicalie supplies were shippedo what they saw as a holding force. A line to be held until a convoy of ships could bring more men, weapons, and supplies from home they were held until the 23. They cede we would go to the pond tomorrow. This is probably the first time of us heard the word baton on Christmas Eve we were loadedd into buses and trucks in our white uniforms and transported to the peninsula. They were transported outside of manila and captured a few days later. I remember looking out over the balcony and seeing the American Flag come down and the rising sun going up Hospital Number one went into operation on the southeast coast. Between then and january 25th major surgery was performed on 1200 battle casualty. When the hospital started coming in Hospital Number two and as i understand it they took bulldozer into the jungle and bulldozed the path and cots and beds u or whatever was available were set up along the path we started to evacuate people. Theyde would go around and decie which patients could be evacuated. We were receiving soso many casualties and doing so much that oftentimes patients that had surgery the day before had to be moved they were loaded intobu buses and trucks and whatever down to the field Hospital Number two the girls lived in the buses and bathed in the stream. Wed just toss a blanket on the ground. All you could do is give them food and medicine. One thing that stands out. When i was making my rounds it was one man calling for a drink of water, i didnt give it to him. Now i wish i had, the poor fellow, it wouldnt have done him any harm. Meanwhile, the city was bombed and they were moved. They were on top of an abandon motor pool. Two wooden buildings. Onese turned over and used as te operatingms room. The other wooden building was occupied by us nurses as quarters. The patients were out in the open with just a cover. Bo Hospital Number one was bombed. Patients were killed and two nursesev were injured. The sad part being there that night was i think our soldiers were told to retreat. They came by and they all hestopped and said do you have y d food. Everyone was hungry. Wet didnt have food to give them. That night weed were supposed to leave the Commanding Officer called me and said get your nurses down here at a certain time and tell them dont bring anything buthe what they can cay in their own two hands. I said what about my filipino nurses. He said they arent going. I said well im not going. They call me momma and i wouldnt leave them here. He said, they are going. Get them down here. Reporter the boats carrying the nurses dodged japanese aircrafts. They arrived to find corregidor under siege. [bombing] if you ever want to know what the darkness of egypt was like you wouldn find out in the tunnel. When the bombing would occur and the generators would go off. Its so dark you could feel it. It was a very gory mess. The Navy Personnel that would get shot up, you know, in the water covered with oil slick and trying to swim through fire, you know, the oil and the gasoline. They would come in as black as could be and trying to clean them up enough to do whatever surgically had to be done was c a terrible chore. Teams worked at times as the bombing shook the fortress for 26 days and nights. The battle continued. Morere patients found over crowd wards spilling out into the main tunnel. When i knew surrender was coming i felt very shaky. I was glad we had the work to do it. It kept my thoughts on something besides what was happening outside. So when ther general and his family were taken off i think this was the first time that i realized thein writing on the wall. We would eventually have to surrender. We were on duty in the tunnel hospital when it was surrendered. We didnt see the flag being lowered. They came to my ward an hour before surrender and he had the flag with him. He said, peggy will you hold onto this flag and get it back if you can. I said i would. How could they prepare us. There was no precedent for women, nurses being taken prisoner. The nurses were japanese and they faced them in army cover alls only their red cross arm bands. The nurses were left alone with their patients american and japanese. The w shrinking stores were cut more. J on june 25th. They were moved out of the tunnel to the topside ruins of fort mills hospital. A week later the nurses were marched to the docks and taken a week later the nurses were nurses held since march now at japanese internalment centers. They put them in a building called san catiline na. They kept them separated from the rest of them and also from us. I always felt the japanese wouldnt know how to put women in military. Us they wanted us moved in with the weiv morn of over and this was n internalment camp of 3,000 people. We were told we would help take care of the civilian internalli. The japanese put us in one large room and searched our belongings. There were two of them they werent speaking english but pointing to the flag wanting to knows. What it was. I pretended it was a shawl. They still looked concerned i just said it was a shawl and they let me keep it. We worked w the entire time while internalled. The lifehe was pretty much the same. The japanese let one red crosske package come in that contained 48 poundss of food. Some of itself was parishable food everybody was a always talking aboutly food. You could hardly talk to anyone without the topic of food coming up in the conversation i went to bed hungry and got up hungry i lost 47 pounds during that time and had quiet a bit of trouble with malaria, dissen tarry. We were subject to the same problems as the rest of the prisonerass. It was sad seeing them die. I know, once we had 7 deaths within 28 hoursth from starvatin towards the last. The nurses were hungry for food. Also the Gilbert Islands were smuggled in by attorneys that worked outside the walls and from the hidden radio. In may of 1943 the japanese opened another internment camp. We would go and set up camp. They planned to move them out of the city. After we started, the first thing we thought about was to try to get something to eat. We could see. A chicken. Its saw the barb wire fence. The only thing we could think about was to try to get the chicken make some stew or something to eat. We had a lot of bedbugs. The men had these beds and had little holes in them. We learned the philippine way of getting rid of them. You put your mattress spring outside and put sugar on them and attract the ants. The ants would eat the bedbugs andet put scolding water and get the ants off. Reporter conditions worsened. Scarce Food Supplies dwindled more. Then new hope arrived on octobeh , 1944. To us, liberation, you see was just around the corner. We didnt think wed spend another christmas. We had no idea they were barreling down. We heard a lot of firing around 4 00 p. M. Weea heard guns. I was on the ground and we heard guns firing and japanese had loud speaker systems on the grounds. They ordered everyone to go into thehe building and stay there ad stay away from windows. I was on night duty at the time. It was 7 00 in the morning when the japanese were out their doing their exercise. They were stacked in one pile they were lining up to be counted. Before we knew it parachutes opened up and dropped to camp and they killed all of the guards. I was looking and heard a heavy roar they were coming in the first section of the camp. I understand some were fightenned. They came in the gate and there wasnt a soul to be seen it sanks rolled up in front of the building. They said we are americans and we are here to liberate you. They asked if we were hungry and said do you have anything to eat. They brought out a chocolate bar and i ate a part of it and saven the rest. We never throw anything away and i still dont throw anything away today. Twowo weeks after the liberation the nurses were rescued and moved bys to it safety of the american line. Then they all came home. Deeply effected by their experiences and with a are you knewed understanding of what freedom is. Ill never forget. We wondered how do you make them understand what freedom is. I think the next time was at the harbor and we were home. Freedom is not free. I think there is not a day goes by that im not eternally grateful for all we had in this great country of ours. Im glad in the navy i could serve my country in that way. It was truly an unusual education. I looked at it as such. It was hard and terrible and many terrible things happened but i wouldnt trade it for anything i would do it all over again. [ music ] weekends are intellectual. Every saturday american mystery tv documents americas story. On sunday we bring you the lateliest of nonfiction books and authors. Including charter communications. Charter is powder to be recognized as one of the best internet providers and we are just getting starting. Building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure. Charter communications along with these Television Companies support cspan 2 as a public service. Cspan has a lot of podcasts for you. On the afterwards podcast and on q and a hear wide ranging conversations with authors and others making things happen. Book plus are weekly hour long conversations that future nonfiction books on a wide variety of topics. About books takes you behind the scenes with inside interviews and bestsellers list. Find all of the podcast by downloading the free app and on the website. On lectures and history University Professors kevin spoke about the men from ohio that were elected president. They severed between 1868 and 1920. James garfield, william mckinley. Tom hanks and the executive producer the racest history enjoy american history