Elizabeth Norman, the author of We Band of Angels, focused on the American female nurses that served on Bataan. These women were some of the first nurses to be acknowledged for their efforts on the war front. They served faithfully in the dangerous hospitals that they were assigned to and when they were placed in prisoner camps, they even joined the underground rebellion to help the men that survived the Death March. The nurses were considered civilians to the Japanese because they were woman and at that time Japanese woman were typically in a more submissive role. The woman who served were “suddenly being lionized and the result was a confused, if not schizophrenic, portrait of American womanhood: one moment gutsy patriots doing a dirty job, the next vessels of virtue who needed the protection of men” (We Band of Angels, page 192). The women did not fight but they still served. They courageously helped in any way that they could with no complaining. The nurses had a duty and they performed it with dignity. When they were …show more content…
People were worried that if the war ended while the men were still POW’s then the Japanese would kill them to hide any mistreatment that happened. The prisoners of war first had to fight the Japanese, then when they surrendered they were placed in POW camps, then many of them had to march 65 miles to a new camp, and many of them did all of this while suffering from diseases. “For the men of Bataan, disease was the real enemy, killing them and sapping their morale with even greater efficiency than the Fourteenth Army” (Ghost Soldiers, page 59). Two-thirds of the men would die from disease, starvation, poor living conditions, or injuries as a result of beatings. More men died from these things than were killed during