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- Description:
- Retired Major Harriet Jayne talks about her long career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, before, during and after World War II. After receiving her nurse's training at Marquette University, Jayne says that she enlisted in the Army and was sent to Fort Custer in Michigan for training in February 1941, was shipped out with the 52nd Evac Hospital to New Caledonia in September 1942 and to the New Hebrides with the 48th Station Hospital in January 1943. She talks about the mosquitoes, and hot days and cold nights in the South Pacific, having malaria and later being sent to New Zealand to recover from a broken foot. Jayne says that she rejoined her unit on Guadalcanal in June 1944, moved north with the fighting to Tinian Island in January 1945 and was on Tinian when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. She says that she returned to the States in October 1945 and recalls her many duty stations after the war and finally ending her career in February 1961 while serving at Fort Bragg. Jayne is interviewed by Betty C. Taylor Thompson.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-05-10T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a poignant oral history interview, American Red Cross worker Ruth Wysor talks about her adventures while serving in the Philippines during World War II and in American occupied Japan after the war, including being held prisoner in a Japanese prison camp and adopting and raising a war orphan. Returning to the Philippines with General Douglas MacArthur and the American Army, Wysor says that she was separated from U.S. forces, driven into the countryside and wounded and captured by the Japanese. She describes being held in the infamous Santo Tomas Internment Camp, subsisting on a diet of rice alone and receiving no medical attention. The camp was finally liberated after three months and she says that her untreated knee wound continues to trouble her forty years later. After the war, Wysor says that she was sent to Kamakura to help set up the first Red Cross club in Japan and that her unit befriended a group of destitute missionary sisters who lived nearby and gave them food, supplies and medical care. Wysor says that the nuns also cared for orphans and that she became godmother to a little girl, cared for her when she became ill and finally applied to adopt her. With the help of General MacArthur himself, Wysor says that she was finally able to return to the United States with her new daughter and became the first single woman in the state of Ohio to be allowed to legally adopt a child. Wysor says that her adopted daughter thrived in the U.S. and has gone on to be a successful adult. Recorded at the AOA Convention held in San Antonio, TX. Wysor is interviewed by Alf Thompson and Betty Thompson.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Betty Van Kirk discusses her eleven months of service in the American Red Cross in the Pacific Theater during World War II. She talks about her training at American University, shipping overseas to New Guinea, how women were treated, dating, the climate, dispensing cigarettes, toothpaste and other personal items to soldiers in the hospital wards where she worked, sleeping under mosquito netting, being "sacred to death" of malaria, and meeting former American POWs and seeing their deplorable condition. Van Kirk says that she now finds it hard to remember the faces of the people she served with so long ago. Ends abruptly.
- Date Issued:
- 1982-04-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Anna Lisa Moline talks about her service in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps during World War Two. Moline talks about her pre-war education and employment and says that she joined the Army in April 1941 after a good friend enlisted. She discusses her first state-side assignments, leaving New York for Scotland on December 7, 1942 and joining the 30th General Hospital to help set up a hospital in a bombed out Catholic school. Moline says she and a friend were recruited for a secret mission and were sent to Russia to treat causalities from Allied bombing missions who landed in Soviet controlled territory. Moline remembers being bombed by the Germans in Russia, taking patients into the trenches for safety, living in a barracks with an earth floor, ant infestations, and terrible latrines. Moline says that after the war she worked at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing as an assistant superintendent, but left because of stress related health issues caused by her time in the Army. Moline is interviewed by Marjorie Brown.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-04-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a poignant oral history interview, Marian Weller talks about her long career in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and her service during the Vietnam War. Weller says that she comes from a family with a long military history and that she even graduated as a second lieutenant from the Army Student Nurse program in 1967. She talks about her basic training at Fort Sam Houston, working at Walter Reed Hospital in 1968 and being shipped to Vietnam in February 1969 to join the 95th Evac Hospital, across the harbor from Da Nang. She talks about her duty in the "yuck unit" working with patients with disfiguring battlefield injuries, the civilian casualties brought in by the choppers, life on the base, being in a helicopter crash, atrocities committed by the Viet Cong, the corruption which was part of daily life, trying to clean blood off concrete floors and the relentless tropical heat and humidity. She says that she rotated back to the States in 1970 and served at hospitals in Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, Texas and the Philippines and finally retired as a major in 2002. Weller talks candidly about developing medical and emotional problems in the years after her Vietnam service and says that she was finally diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a visit to the Vietnam War Memorial sent her into a three day crying jag. Weller is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-02-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Etta Goff discusses her time as a teacher in Germany following World War Two. Goff talks about her inability to serve earlier because of her mother's illness and her concern that she was too old to teach overseas. Goff says however, that she passed her physical with flying colors and was off to Heidelberg, Germany at the age of 52. Goff speaks fondly of the German people, especially a man who was a POW in the United States during the war. She also describes the school house she taught in and the curriculum she developed. Goff is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1984-03-26T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project