Question; what medal/award were the nurses who were evacuated from the Philippines given in July 1942?

[cw1979]

I read the We Band of Angels; The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese the other day and found myself wondering about an award/medal it talked about.

 

The book made it clear the US Army nurses who were taken prisoner where given the Bronze Star for merit when they were released in 1945. Less clear was an award given to the US Army nurses who were evacuated in 1942; the book talked about them being given an award but did not name it. The award was given on July 1, 1942 at the National Red Cross Headquarters in Washington DC; Eleanor Roosevelt was in attendance. The press at the time did not name the award but did refer to it as a "special purple" award or ribbon depending on which newspaper you read. The book does list a Legion of Merit being awarded to a Navy nurse (Ann Bernatitus) five days later.

 

If you look at the photograph located here you will see the nurses are in uniform not in summer frocks as described in the news article above. The award is the rectangle pinned to the left breast of each uniform.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=5920&PIpi=6491513

 

If you watch this newsreel footage you will see the same ceremony in which an officer pins what the narrirator calls "citation ribbons" onto the nurses. Again this does not match the news article above. The ribbon is pinned to the left breast (not sure if the DUC was always worn on the right in the Army) and it appears very different than the DUC ribbon. View 40 to 46 seconds for the best view of the award.

http://www.gettyimag...otage/502852591

 

On page 30 of this issue of The Journal of the Orders and Medals Society of America it references nurse Juanita Redmond being awarded a "purple ribbon" instead of the Purple Heart by Mrs. Roosevelt.

http://www.omsa.org/..._Vol53_5_31.pdf

 

The nurses awarded the medal/award were:

Catherine Acorn
Dorothea Daley
Susan downing Gallagher
Eunice Hatchitt
Willa Hooks
Ressa Jenkins
Harriet Lee
Mary Lohr
Florence MacDonald
Juanita Redmond

 

 

Would these women have been awarded the Purple Heart for merit instead of wounds? If not what could this award have been?

 

Thanks for your help!

 

 

[flyboy53]

It was the Purple Heart.

 

Lt. Col. Juanita Redmond Hipps is called South Carolina's War Heroine. She wrote the book, "I Served on Bataan." A quarter century after the war, she was featured in a May 29, 1966 article in The State and Columbia Record that detailed her wartime service. The article mentions her Purple Heart and said that all 22 nurses evacuated from Bataan were awarded the medal "for conspicuous bravery under fire."

 

Also, she had earned flight nurse wings, four Distinguished Unit Citations and must have still been in service at the beginning of the Korean War because her awards included the National Defense Service Medal.

 

What I find curious is that she is identified as in charge of the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps in various on-line biographies, but her grave marker says U.S. Army.

 

She's buried at Arlington.

[cw1979]

Thank you so very much! I have been researching and looking everywhere for the answer to this question.

 

Im still a little confused about the ribbon depicted in the links above; they don't look like a Purple Heart to me but who knows what was done during wartime.

 

Thank you again

[flyboy53]

My guess is that you are seeing something special done for the sake of the cameras.

 

Remember this was a PR event involving Mrs. Roosevelt and the American Red Cross. There's only a handful of nurses present. There could have been a regulation issue, the citations and orders were not yet completed, or the fact that things were happening very quickly at first to boost morale. Also, it could have been something from the Red Cross.

 

Do you notice that the nurses all seem uncomfortable; as if they would rather be somewhere else.

 

What you see in the images could have been a length of Purple Heart ribbon or some sort of substitute done in its place while the real awards were being prepared.

 

I would have liked to have seen the other ceremony if there were 22 nurses being decorated. That truly would have been impressive.

[KASTAUFFER]

I know some of the nurses were awarded the Legion of Merit whose ribbon is sometimes mistaken for the Purple Heart.

 

Kurt

[cutiger83]

Flyboy53,

 

I believe you are mistaken.

 

While Juanita Redmond did receive the purple heart, all of the nurses who were rescued when Bataan and Corregidor fell did not receive the purple heart. As I posted in the other thread, they did receive the Presidential Unit Citation and the American Defense Service medal.

 

Do you have a link to the article that you mentioned? I have not been able to find the link. The PUC is often confused with the purple heart ribbon because of the shade of blue. I believe what is mentioned in the article as the purple award to the 22 nurses is actually the PUC and not the purple heart. They would not have been awarded the purple heart "for conspicuous bravery under fire." but were awarded the PUC for this occurrence.

 

I looked up the records of some of the other nurses who were rescued before Batann fell. None of them have the purple heart but as you can see on the list of medals for Ann Bernatitus, she did receive the American Defense Medal.

 

Ann Berntatitus: (no purple heart mentioned)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_A._Bernatitus

 

LTC Hortense Eleanor McKay (no purple heart mentioned)

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=42791145

 

I believe the ribbon in the picture with Eleanor Roosevelt is the American Defense Service Medal. As you can see in the pages I posted from the book “American Women during World War II”, the book first mentions the 18 nurses honored by Eleanor Roosevelt on June 1, 1942. Then it states “Two months later, five NNC members were awarded the ribbons associated with the American Defense Service Medal; the medal itself was unavailable because of wartime metal shortages. The fact that this book states it was first awarded by ribbon only could explain why the picture shows only a ribbon with the medal ceremony.

 

Thanks, Kat

[cw1979]

I have to side with Flyboy53 on this one

 

the article he talks about can be viewed at https://dspace.ychistory.org/bitstream/handle/11030/72953/00000107.PDF?sequence=1

 

“All 22 nurses received the purple heart ‘for conspicuous bravery under fire’.” The article goes on to say she was awarded the “National Defense and the Pacific and Asiatic Theatre ribbons set with combat stars plus the Presidential Unit Citation Ribbon with stars for Bataan and Corregidor and the Philippine Defense Ribbon.”

 

To me this sounds like the 22 nurses received the Purple Heart; Redmond later received the "National Defense ribbon" which I am guessing means the American Defense Service Medal. It talks about the Presidential Unit Citation as a separate award. While the names may not as clear as we would like them to be for history purposes it does appear to answer the question.

 

The 5 Navy nurses had been captured on Guam; they served under a different set of circumstances than those in the Philippines (armed resistance ended in a few days) so I can understand them receiving a different award; in this case the American Defense Service Medal, it fits their service.

 

The 5 Navy nurses also appear to have been ineligible for the Purple Heart until December 3, 1942 when FDR issued executive order 9277 which extended the award to the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard (Previously it had been awarded only to members of the Army and Army Air Force).

[cw1979]

I forgot to add; as I understand it many people awarded the Purple Heart for merit (not wounds) later exchanged the award for the Legion of Merit or the Bronze Star depending on the events they were involved in. Perhaps some of the 22 nurses did this and others (Such as Redmond) did not leading to the confusion.

[flyboy53]

Not sure if this is helpful in this string, but it's important to note that what may seem universal acceptance of various U.S. awards and decorations was not the original practice or intent. Each service had some medals that were unique to that service. For example, the Navy Good Conduct Medal dated back to the Civil War, while the Army Good Conduct Medal didn't occur until 1941.

 

When the Purple Heart was re-introduced in 1932, largely through the efforts of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, award of the medal was retroactive to World War I and included those recipients of a "Wound Chevron" or a Meritorious Service Citation Certificate issued by the commander of the AEF. The Meritorious Service Citation was considered to be in keeping with General Washington's intent for the original Purple Heart decoration. At that point, it's important to note that the Purple Heart was exclusively an Army award and it's position was just above the Good Conduct Medal.

 

So the fact that Navy nurses didn't rate the decoration for their heroism was strictly the nature of the regulations of their service. A Legion of Merit for such duty is pretty impressive even by today's standards.

 

It was not until December 1942 that the Purple Heart Medal was broadened to the other services with the signing of Executive Order 9277 by President Roosevelt. It was also this order that redefined the eligibility for the medal to wounds received in combat. Interestingly enough, there must have been some sort of glitch in the order because President Truman formally made the award retroactive to WW I wounded with his own executive order in 1952.

 

It wasn't until 1985 that the decoration was elevated to where it should have been, above the Meritorious Service Medals and below the Bronze Star Medal.

[coastie56]

Just as a minor correction the one nurse you have listed as Dorothea Daley is actually Dorothea Daley Engel.

Her pic is attached from my book Fort Hood in WW2

Arthur Miller wrote a short play about her

[cutiger83]

Just as a minor correction the one nurse you have listed as Dorothea Daley is actually Dorothea Daley Engel.

 

At the time she returned from Bataan, she is listed everywhere as Daley not Engel. I am trying to find when they were married but have been unable to find the date so far.

 

 

[cutiger83]

I found this article which mentions 6 women receiving the royal blue emblem for bravery. Since Daley is in the picture of the 6 Red Cross nurses receiving the ribbon with Eleanor Roosevelt, this could explain what the ribbon is in the picture. I am trying to research the Royal Blue Ribbon.

 

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19420708&id=nisjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ytYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3828,5639238&hl=en

[cutiger83]

Here is another newspaper that Bob was so kind to get me from the newspapers website. This one also mentions the "royal blue emblem for bravery" given to the 6 Red Cross nurses. I am still trying to figure out what is this royal blue emblem. The only thing that I can find which would be close would be the PUC unless this is a specific Red Cross emblem.

 

 

 

[cutiger83]

 

At the time she returned from Bataan, she is listed everywhere as Daley not Engel. I am trying to find when they were married but have been unable to find the date so far.

 

 

 

Found out they were married Feb 19, 1942. Her husband died as a POW. Since they were married before she evacuated, not sure why she is listed as Daley in all of the articles after her escape. Could be that the newspapers did not know they had been married.

 

...Kat

[cw1979]

I'm still not sure the Distinguished Unit Citation is the correct award in this matter. I agree the nurses were awarded the DUC but I do not think it is the one from the photographs.

 

My opinion, for what it is worth, is the nurses were given several different awards around the same time with the DUC being one of them. Since the Bronze Star wasn't created until 1944; the Legion of Merit was still a few months off from being approved and some of the nurses who served in Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attack were awarded the Purple Heart for merit (not wounds) it would seem appropriate for the Bataan nurses to be awarded it as well.

 

An award of the Purple Heart if the metal part was removed would explain the description "special purple ribbon" as it looked different/odd compared to the regular award.

[flyboy53]

Agreed. A Distinguished Unit Citation is awarded to an entire unit, not just a half dozen nurses.

 

The DUC would have gone to the entire medical unit -- men, women, doctors, technicians and clerks -- and it would have been listed as such on Army orders and regulations.

[cw1979]

I wonder if the military didn't want the press to know Ms. Daley had married an officer who was by then a prisoner of the Japanese? Could have effected her use as a propaganda tool for the war effort if she was afraid her husband would be mistreated because of her work. Just a thought.

 

Found out they were married Feb 19, 1942. Her husband died as a POW. Since they were married before she evacuated, not sure why she is listed as Daley in all of the articles after her escape. Could be that the newspapers did not know they had been married.

 

...Kat

 

[cw1979]

bump