Some women served near the front lines in the Army Nurse Corps, where 16 were killed as a result of direct enemy fire. Sixty-eight American service women were captured as POWs in the Philippines.
Many of the women and children were held in prison camps in terrible conditions and forced on death marches. Some women were killed on sight and others were raped, beaten, and forced to become sex slaves. Much of the book showcases the words of the people who lived through this period.
The Only American Female POW in WWII Europe Had to Fight for Her Status. Reba Whittle was ready to join the Army Nurse Corps long before the United States entered World War II. She had no idea that before the war was over, she would earn a place in World War II history but never be recognized for it in her lifetime.
From Florena Budwin, a Civil War woman who disguised herself as a man to join Union troops and was held in a Confederate prison camp, to the 67 Army nurses who were taken captive by the Japanese in World War II, there have been less than 100 military women held as POWs throughout American history.
Each service branch eventually opened to women, and by the end of the war, over 350,000 women wore American service uniforms. Though they did not serve in combat roles, 432 women were killed and 88 taken prisoner.
As of 2006, women made up 4.3 percent of Marine officers and 5.1 percent of the Corps' active duty enlisted force. Today, they are no longer referred to as "female Marines." They are, simply, Marines.
During the Vietnam War, more than 265,000 American women served the military and 11,000 women served in Vietnam, with 90% working as volunteer nurses. Responsibilities included massive causality situations involving amputations, wounds, and chest tubes for their patients.
Of the 22,376 Australian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese, some 8,031 died while in captivity. After the end of the war, War Crimes Trials were held to investigate reports of atrocities, massacres and other causes of death.
Over 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in south-east Asia.
Joseph Alexander became a POW at 15. He was a military and civilian worker at Kelly AFB. Joseph Alexander never got to enjoy his youth. At just 14 years old, and with his grandmother by his side, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and is said to have been the youngest American prisoner of war.
Unprepared for coping with so many captured European prisoners, the Japanese held those who surrendered to them in contempt, especially the women. The men at least could be put to work as common laborers, but women and children were "useless mouths." This attitude would dictate Japanese policy until the end of the war.
András Toma (5 December 1925 – 30 March 2004) was a Hungarian soldier taken prisoner by the Red Army in 1945, then discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 2000. He was probably the last prisoner of war from the Second World War to be repatriated.
Grace Murray Hopper
Known as "Amazing Grace," Commodore Hopper's importance in U.S. naval history is apparent everywhere you turn: a destroyer was named after her (USS Hopper, DDG-70), as was the Cray XE6 "Hopper" supercomputer.
The reasons for the Japanese behaving as they did were complex. The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) indoctrinated its soldiers to believe that surrender was dishonourable. POWs were therefore thought to be unworthy of respect. The IJA also relied on physical punishment to discipline its own troops.
During World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (towards Soviet POWs and Western Allied commandos) were notorious for atrocities against prisoners of war.
Crucifixion was a form of punishment, torture and/or execution that the Japanese military sometimes used against prisoners during the war. Edwards and the others were initially bound at the wrists with fencing wire, suspended from a tree and beaten with a baseball bat.
United States Army Colonel Floyd “Jim” Thompson, the longest held prisoner of war (POW) in American history, and his wife, Alyce, were products of the idealism of post-World War II America. When Thompson was shot down and captured, they began a journey that changed them forever.
The longest-held enlisted POW is Bill Robinson from East Tennessee. Don Dare spoke with the retired Air Force Captain about his years in captivity and a pilot who is still MIA. Shortly after being captured, a North Vietnamese militia woman escorted Robinson, in what he learned years later was a propaganda photo.
The Great Papago Escape was the largest Axis prisoner-of-war escape to occur from an American facility during World War II. On the night of December 23, 1944, twenty-five Germans tunneled out of Camp Papago Park, near Phoenix, Arizona, and fled into the surrounding desert.
The Midnight Massacre is remembered for being "the worst massacre at a POW camp in U.S. history". A museum was opened at Camp Salina in 2016.
Others, often starved and treated brutally, worked for months under shellfire close behind German lines. In camps in Germany conditions were better, but prisoners suffered increasingly from shortages caused by the British blockade. Many survived only because of regular Red Cross parcels.
The POWs suffered frequent beatings and mistreatment from their Japanese guards, food was the barest minimum, and disease and injuries went untreated. Although the POWs finally received Red Cross packages in January 1944, the Japanese had removed all the drugs and medical supplies.
The Eight Women on The Wall: Nurses Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice. The names of eight women, all nurses (seven from the Army and one from the Air Force), are inscribed next to their fallen brothers on The Wall in Washington, D.C.
Navy: Loretta Walsh. On March 21, 1917, Loretta Perfectus Walsh became America's first official enlisted woman of any service when she joined the Navy. In the spring of 1917, the United States began preparing for the inevitability of war. However, men were not enlisting in sufficient numbers.
During the Vietnam War, accidents, illnesses, and hostile fire claimed the lives of 20 military physicians and 10 military nurses. If a medical team determined that a patient required hospitalization for more than 30 days, then they transported the patient to bases in Hawaii, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines.