[6] Two army nurses, Lt. Floramund A. Fellmeth and Lt. Florence MacDonald, accompanied severely wounded patients from Sternberg aboard the improvised hospital ship Mactan that departed Manila shortly after midnight of the New Year of 1942 for Australia.

[22][23] On 29 April, a small group of army nurses were evacuated, with other passengers, aboard a navy PBY Catalina.

[26][27] When Corregidor fell to Japanese forces under the command of General Masaharu Homma on 6 May, the remaining nurses were captured and on 2 July transferred to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp.

Lt. Juanita Redmond, one of the few nurses to escape, published a memoir of her experiences on Bataan in 1943 that concluded with a dramatic reminder that her colleagues were still prisoners.

[42] The nurses' story was dramatized in several wartime movies,[43] including: When So Proudly We Hail was shown in the theaters, a recruitment booth staffed with Red Cross volunteers was set up in the lobby.

[47] A Department of Veterans Affairs study released in April, 2002 found that the nurses lost, on average, 30% of their body weight during internment, and subsequently experienced a degree of service-connected disability "virtually the same as the male ex-POW's of the Pacific Theater.

Upon returning to the US, the US Army awarded their nurses, among other decorations, the Bronze Star for valor and a Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism in action.

[55] On 9 April 1980, a bronze plaque was dedicated at the Mount Samat shrine by men who survived Bataan and Corregidor.

[56] It reads: In honor of the valiant American military women who gave so much of themselves in the early days of World War II.

They lived on a starvation diet, shared the bombing, strafing, sniping, sickness and disease while working endless hours of heartbreaking duty.