[1] She was raised on her father's farm with a large family of siblings including: William Wesley (1886), Mitchell Alvin (1888), Lee Emerson (1890), Fabian Dewine (1891), Ida Nora (1893), George Douglas (1895), John Rodney (1900), Milton Parke (1901) and Kenneth Durward (1903).

[6] After her graduation in 1922, Ream moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she worked at the LDS Hospital as a supervising nurse until 1923.

[8] Keen to improve her ability to assist her patients, Ream decided to return to school to become a physician and completed her bachelor's degree in 1928 at the University of Utah.

[8][9] She then transferred to the University of California, San Francisco, where she worked as a nurse in the Bay Area until earning her Doctor of Medicine degree in 1932.

[9] In addition to setting up a private practice in Manila, from 1934 she served as the chief medical officer of the Mary Johnston Hospital.

[5][6] He received a medical discharge in December 1941, but, before the family could leave, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and Sam was called back to active duty.

[9] On December 8, 1941, Japanese bombers began an air raid at Baguio in the Philippines, where the Allens had made their home.

[5][10] Establishing a makeshift hospital to care for the wounded, Allen volunteered her services to the Army as a civilian physician-surgeon.

[20] Allen pressed for improved sanitation controls to limit the cases of dysentery and disease among the camp chickens,[Notes 2] suggesting that all garbage be buried.

[25] After 18 months of captivity, she asked for a transfer and took her boys to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where there was a shortage of physicians, in early 1943.

By 1943, the shortages of drugs, sheets, blankets, mosquito nets and other basic supplies impacted the ability to treat patients.

Relief supplies did not arrive until December 1943, requiring doctors to search for substitute medical treatments,[27] but were again at critical shortage levels by the end of 1944 and starvation was a serious problem.

[31] By late 1944, food supplies were so scarce that inmates were eating vegetable peelings, and the garbage disposal crews became obsolete.

After her homecoming, an article in the Oakland Tribune called Allen "a real heroine...who worked 'sometimes night and day' caring for the sick".

Her funeral was held March 20 at the Oak Hills 4th Ward Chapel in Provo, before she was interred at the Golden Gate National Cemetery, in San Bruno, California.