Lt. Commander Laura M. Cobb was a chief nurse in the U.S. Navy during WWII who was imprisoned by Japan for more than three years in the Occupied Philippines. Under her direction, eleven other navy nurse POWs maintained rank and provided medical care to thousands of civilian inmates. Early in the war, Cobb courageously mislabeled quinine as baking soda in order to stop enemy medical corps from stealing the supply. She is credited with saving inmates from malaria. In 1943, she oversaw the creation of an infirmary at the Los Baños concentration camp where her nurses relied on scavenged supplies and local resources to provide medical care to more than 2,400 men, women and children. In U.S. military medical history, she is one of seventy-eight nurse POWs; and the only chief nurse in navy medical history to continue her duties while in enemy captivity. She received the Bronze Star with a gold star device and her citation honored her “dauntless determination, zealous efforts and unselfish devotion to duty in the face of unprecedented hardship.”
Lucchesi, Le Beau E. This is really war: the incredible true story of a navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippine. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2019.
2.
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Oral history with Lt. CDR. (ret.) Dorothy Still Danner. Oral History with André Sobocinski, 3-4 Dec. 1991; “Interview with Bertha Evans St. Pierre, World War II Navy Nurse POW.” Oral History with Jan K. Herman, 20 May 1992; “Interview with CDR Margaret Nash, NC, USN World War II Nurse and Pow.” Oral History with Andree Marechal-Workman. Aug. 1992.
3.
Lucchesi, Le Beau E. The heroic navy nurse. Military History 2020; p.18
4.
Johnson J. Laura Cobb: a Kansas Nurse in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp. Navy Medicine 2003; 94: 7.
5.
Laura M. Cobb station file. Washington, DC, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. 1918–1947.
6.
Johnson, 2003. Cobb Station File.
7.
Evans St. Pierre oral history, 1992.
8.
Nash oral history, 1992; Todd CE. Nursing under fire. Military Surgeon 1947; 100: 335–341.
9.
Lucchesi, 2019; Danner D. What a way to spend a war: navy nurse POWS in the Philippines. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995; Nash oral history, 1992; Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. “Interview with Mary Rose Harrington Nelson, nurse POW, WWII.” Oral History with Jan K. Herman, 7 January 1994;
10.
Ibid.
11.
Danner, 1995; Lucchesi, 2019.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Robert Kentner, PhMLC, USN. ‘A Daily Journal of Events Connect with the Personnel of US Naval Hospital, Cañacao, PI from the Outbreak of War in the Philippine Islands, 12-8-1941 until Liberation of Bilbid Prison, 2-8-1945’, Hospital Corps Archives, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, Bethesda, MD.
14.
Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Geneva, July 27, 1929; Convention on the Opening of Hostilities, The Hauge, October 18, 1907.
15.
TanakaY.Hidden horrors: Japanese War Crimes in WWII. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2017.
CatesTR.The drainpipe diary. New York: Vantage Press, 1957; Danner D. What a way to spend a war: navy nurse POWS in the Philippines. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995; Hartendorp AVH. The Santo Tomas Story. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964;
21.
Todd, 1947; Danner, 1995.
22.
NormanEM.We Band of angels: the untold story of American nurses trapped on Bataan by the Japanese. New York: Random House, 1999); Norman E and Eifried S. How did they all survive? An analysis of American nurses' experiences in Japanese Prisoner-of-War Camps. Nursing History Review 1995; 3: 105–127.
23.
Nash oral history, 1992; Lucchesi, 2019; Danner, 1995; Harrington Nelson oral history 1994.
Johnson, 2003; Todd, 1947; Hibbs R. Beriberi in a Japanese Prison Camp. Annals of Internal Medicine 1946; 25: 270–282; US War Department, Annual Report of the Secretary of War, vol. 2, pt. 2. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1901.
41.
Arthur, Anthony. Deliverance at Los Baños. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985; Beaber JS. Deliverance! It has Come! In the Philippines 1942-1945. Texas: University of North Texas Libraries, 2001; Dorothy Still, war crimes statement, 10 September 1945; declassified NND 775011, National Archives, Washington DC.
