#42. “Where’s Dan?” A WW2 Flight Nurse’s Font-Lines Search

Episode 42 -- “Where’s Dan?” A WW2 Flight Nurse’s Font-Lines Search– Episode Transcript

Cold Open
[Narrator] A small boat sailed silently through the choppy waters of a dark Manila Bay in early May 1942.
Its passengers, evacuees of the beleaguered Corregidor Island, waited anxiously for a sign of their promised rescue.
Were the months of hunger and war behind them? Would their rescuers slip through the blockade of Japanese warships?
Finally, at 7:35 pm they saw it: A recognition signal from a surfaced submarine.
The small craft pulled alongside the submarine, and 27 passengers climbed aboard the USS Spearfish with their baggage, important files, and mail.
“In final testimony of the hell left behind,” one of the passengers later remembered, “the dark bulk of Corregidor suddenly blazed with fires and bursting shells. . . . The Japs were starting to lay down a terrific, continuous barrage that was to mean the end of Corregidor.”
But the Spearfish, still undetected by the enemy, and those few American evacuees were safe — at least from the bombs pummeling Corregidor.
But could they evade the gauntlet of Japanese warships guarding the only route out of Manila Bay and searching for any signs of an American sub trying to slip through.
This is Left Behind.

Podcast Welcome
Welcome to “Left Behind,” a podcast about the people left behind when the US surrendered The Philippines in the early days of WW2. I’m your host and researcher, Anastasia Harman. My great-grandfather Alma Salm was one of the POWs, and his memoir inspired me to tell the stories of his fellow captives.
If you, like me, believe it's important for people to hear this relatively unknown part of World War II history. Please consider sharing this episode with a friend. Word of mouth is the number one way that people find new podcasts. So by sharing, you’re helping to keep these important stories alive.

To start off today, I have a question for you: Have you ever heard about flight nurses during WW2?
Until researching this episode, I hadn’t. And that’s a shame because these women were awesome. Seriously, the things I’m constantly learning as I research this podcast continue to astound me.
Flight nurses flew in the planes bringing men and supplies to the front lines, helped load sick and injured men, and attended to them as they were flown to American military hospitals. They were basically the evacuation helicopters of WW2. And right now I’m sitting here imaging the opening credits of MASH. I’ll spare you my rendition of the theme song. But a flight nurse’s job was so much more involved than what I’ve mentioned here, and I’m going to tell you all about it.
Because today’s episode is about one of those flight nurses.
And I know, you’re probably wondering how a flight nurse fits in with the Bataan and Corregidor story, because there weren’t US planes flying in and out of those locations, at least at the beginning of the war. Well, the woman who we’re highlighting today was first a nurse in a Bataan field hospital, then she escaped from Corregidor on a submarine – which could have been a full episode h in and of itself, because have you ever seen pictures of the interior of a WW2-era submarine? I toured one at Pearl Harbor, and it was enough to trigger my claustrophobia while the hatch was open, and we were above water. I hardly want to imagine life with a closed hatch and submerged. We’ll get into all that, but back to this flight nurse.
So, this woman escapes Corregidor, comes back to the US in summer 1942, at which point the Army tells her she won’t have to go back overseas during the war. She settles into nursing at a military hospital and then volunteers – as in she sought out the assignment – to become a flight nurse on the front lines in the Pacific Theater.
And the reason for that…well, she was searching for someone.
Let’s jump in.

POW’s Life Story
Before the War
[Narrator] Lucy Iris Wilson was born in Big Sandy, Texas, on August 26, 1917. Big Sandy is a tiny town – its population in 2020 was just 1,231. It’s located in east Texas, about halfway between Dallas and Shreveport, Louisiana. She was the middle child of Artie B and Nora Wilson’s 5 children.
Lucy was at least a 3rd-generation Texan – both her parents and 3 of her grandparents were Texas natives, and Lucy herself would have children born in Texas.
She grew up on the family farm and, after graduating from Big Sandy High School, she headed for the big city where she trained as a nurse at Dallas’s Parkland Hospital, graduating as a nurse in 1939 and even working in the hospital’s emergency room. She worked as a civilian nurse for about a year and a half until she joined the Army Nurses Corps in December 1940 and was sent her directly to Beaumont General Hospital at Ft. Bliss near El Paso, Texas.
If you know southwestern US geography, you’ll know that El Paso, Texas, is on the border with southern New Mexico (and also with Mexico). In January 1941, so about the same time that Lucy arrived at Ft Bliss, New Mexico’s 200th Coast Artillery National Guard unit was called into active, federal service, and all of its men were moved to Ft. Bliss.
Among them was a 24-year-old Lieutenant named Daniel “Dan” Jopling, and he was captivated by young Nurse Wilson, who one source described as pert and blue eyed.
Now Dan Jopling was about 8 months older than Lucy. He was born in Colorado, but raised in New Mexico, and he joined the 200th CA after completing 2 years of college.
The couple would have had a good 7 months to get to know each other at Ft Bliss before Dan and the 200th were sent to The Philippines in August 1941. (BTW – Jack and Robert Aldrich were in the 200th Coast Artillery. I covered their story in episode 29, and it’s a beautiful episode about the bonds of brothers not just in arms, but by blood.)
The 200th arrived in The Philippines in September and were assigned to Ft. Stotsenberg, which was about 100 miles/165 km north of Manila. About 6 weeks later, in late October 1941, some nurses arrived from the States and, according to author and historian Dorothy Cave, who wrote the history of the 200th Coast Artillery,
[Cave] “[Dan] heard one [of the nurses] mention [Lucy’s] name, and he inquired further. Yes, Lucy Wilson was with them. Dan sped to Fort McKinley.”
[Narrator] Ft. McKinley was an American base in Manila, thus Lucy would have been assigned to the military hospital in Manila. Despite being stationed about 100 miles apart, the couple continued their relationship and, apparently, Dan proposed to Lucy several times. Lucy’s response to his first proposal?
[Lucy] “Are you nuts? Not on this forsaken island.”
[Narrator] But, eventually, Dan’s repeated proposals led to an engagement. They set their wedding date as April 8, 1942. As it turned out, that would be a date neither of them would ever forget.

During the War
[Narrator] Stationed in Manila, Lucy Wilson wouldn’t have seen the first airplanes that attacked The Philippines on December 8, 1941. But Dan saw them. Actually, he heard them, felt their bombs and staffing, and was part of the American ground attempts to fight off the Japanese bombers and fighter planes attacking Clark Field and Ft Stotsenberg, where Dan was stationed.
As soon as the attacks ended, he sent a telegram to Manila. Author Dorothy Cave wrote:
[Cave] “At Fort McKinley, before communications completely broke down, someone handed Lucy Wilson a telegram. Was she alright? Dan Jopling wanted to know. She had no way to answer. Then the wounded began to arrive.”
[Narrator] Lucy herself described those arrivals and the following scenes that she would never forget:
[Lucy] “We worked around the clock. It was pure hell, seeing all those patients with limbs and parts of bodies missing, and all sorts of hideous wounds, having to wait in line to get into surgery.”
[Narrator] Although they’d been separated by miles, the war now divided them in a whole new way – as communication lines broke down, neither had much knowledge of where the other was or what they were doing. But despite their different tracks, they both ended up on Bataan Peninsula with the majority of US and Filipino forces on Luzon, The Philippines largest island.
Lucy was ordered to evacuate Manila on Christmas Eve, 1941. She recalled:
[Lucy] “A phone call alerted us to be ready to retreat and take only what we could carry in our hands. In a little while a bus came for us. All day we jumped into muddy ditches when Jap planes flew over. We got to Limay [on Bataan’s eastern coast] about midnight, and someone opened a can of beans. It was the best Christmas dinner I ever had.”
[Narrator] Once on Bataan, Lucy was stationed at Field Hospital #2 where she was an operating room nurse. I’ve described this hospital a few times in previous episodes, but the main thing to know is that it didn’t have buildings. All the wards were “open air,” with the jungle canopy for their roofs and maybe woven mats for walls or partitions.
One day in late January 1942, Lucy was getting off nursing duty when an officer stopped her and asked:
[Officer] “Do you know a Lt. Jopling?”
[Narrator] When she nodded that yes, she did know a Lt Jopling, the officer then asked:
[Officer] “Would you like to see him?”
[Lucy] “You bet!”
[Narrator] Came Lucy’s enthusiastic answer. For the past month to 6 weeks, she hadn’t known where her fiancée was, or even if he were alive. Lucy followed the officer to a ward of cots spread out on the jungle ground. In one of the beds lay Dan. She explained:
[Lucy] “Dan had dengue fever—breakbone fever, we called it. He was there a week, and when I got off work, we’d sit on the beach and talk and watch the [Japanese] bomb and burn Manila.”
[Narrator] Dengue Fever is a mosquito-borne tropical disease that causes joint and muscle pain, headaches, vomiting, and rashes. It was one of the many common tropical diseases that the patients jamming the field hospital were suffering from. And it wasn’t just the patients who were sick – the doctors and nurses were sick as well. However, these health care providers usually didn’t have the desire or ability to stop working because there were so many wounded and sick men to care for in the hospital.
Historian Elizabeth Norman, in her book We Band of Angels about nurses on Bataan, described nurses setting up their sick beds in hospital wards so they could oversee the care of their patients, and surgeons sick with malaria, shaking with chills as they held scalpels, ready to make incisions. Norman wrote:
[Norman] “Lucy Wilson, an operating room nurse dizzy and weak with the disease, found a way to wedge an arm in a space near her operating table to steady herself during surgery.”
[Narrator] In war-time situations, you must make do with whatever works best. But can you image being cared for – especially in the operating room – by someone so sick he struggles holding the scalpel steady? Just horrific circumstances.
Lucy and the other nurses wore khaki mechanic’s coveralls, instead of white nurses’ uniforms, so that they would be somewhat camouflaged as they went about their duties. The seat of Lucy’s coveralls hung down her knees, and she often tripped over them as she worked.
She also described:
[Lucy] “[We] saw the bombs dropping and from the explosions, and we could estimate when the next load of patients would arrive.”
[Narrator] Those loads of patients became more frequent as the war headed into early April 1942, and the Japanese—newly reinforced with supplies and fresh troops—began their final Bataan offensive. With in days the American lines were breaking, and men were flooding the hospital. Author Dorothy Cave wrote:
[Cave] “Lucy Wilson … worked almost without rest on [the] surgical team. Bombs hit about them continually, and shells exploded. With each detonation the lights wavered and the makeshift wall of vines and Nipa shook.
“Demoralized men streamed past. The lines had broken, they reported. Only God knew what was happening. Or where Dan might be. Lucy concentrated on the wounded and dying men… She willed her numbed body to keep going and her numbed mind not to speculate.”
[Narrator] Lucy was assisting in the operating room on the afternoon of April 7, when orders came for all nurses to leave the hospital for evacuation to Corregidor Island, about 2 miles offshore from Bataan Peninsula. Lucy said:
[Lucy] “By the time we received the word, took off our gloves and gowns in the middle of operations and walked down there, most of the nurses were already gone. Walking out in the middle of an operation with hundreds lined up under the trees waiting for surgery was devastating to me. This I have to live with for the rest of my life.”
[Narrator] The next day was supposed to have been her wedding day. But when that day dawned, she would be walking toward the town of Mariveles (on Bataan’s southern tip) and away from Dan, wherever he might be, rather than down an aisle toward him.
You see, her evacuation from Bataan didn’t go quite as planned. Lucy explained:
[Lucy] “By the time I got my surgical gown and gloves off and got to the nurses’ unit, they’d all been sent out but two. Most of the vehicles were gone, so they put us on a dilapidated garbage van. We were supposed to be at Mariveles by midnight to catch a boat for Corregidor.”
[Narrator] But instead of being at Mariveles, at midnight, Lucy’s garbage truck was stopped in heavy traffic because an explosion at an ammunition dump halted all movement south. By the time the traffic started moving, midnight had come and gone. The boat didn’t wait. Then the garbage truck died, and her supposed-to-be wedding day dawned with her still several miles from Mariveles. Lucy recalled:
[Lucy] “So we hiked to the shore to wait for a boat. Or the Japs. And I wondered if Dan was dead or alive.”
[Narrator] With Lucy on the Bataan shore was Clara Bickford, a hospital #2 nurse, whose story I covered in episode 25. In that episode, I explain more details about these nurses’ escape to Corregidor.
Lucy, Clara, and their fellow hospital #2 nurses eventually arrived on Corregidor, where they went straight to work in the Malinta Tunnel’s underground, 1,000-bed hospital. And I covered details about life in that tunnel hospital in episode 40 about Rosemary Hogan.
For the next month, Lucy spent her days and nights underground attending the men who had been wounded above ground in the relentless onslaught of artillery and air bombing from Japanese forces on Bataan.
Then, on May 3, she was told to be ready to leave Corregidor that night. Initially, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go and shared her feelings with a friend:
[Lucy] “I told him I wasn’t going, that I was tired of retreating, but he said, ‘Get out and go on,’ and that I couldn’t help Dan by staying, and he’d want me out.”
[Narrator] That convinced her. By 7:30 that night, Lucy was one of 12 nurses, 12 officers, and a civilian in a small boat bobbing their way under cover of darkness toward … the empty blackness of Manila Harbor -- where an American submarine, unseen by Japanese forces, was on the surface and waiting for her and the others to board.
That sub was called the USS Spearfish, and it was the last of 8 round-trip submarine cruises from Australia to Corregidor during the initial months of the war. You see, as Japanese ground forces invaded The Philippine Islands, Japanese naval forces set up a blockade around the islands to prevent American and other Allied forces bringing ships and other aide to the beleaguered forces in The Philippines.
For months, these 8 submarine trips had delivered 53 tons of food as well as some weapons, ammunition and other equipment. The underwater crafts left the islands with a total of 185 people, the Philippines treasury, and some vital army records. ON both sides of the coin, the impact of the trips was almost negligible, considering the number of servicemen in The Philippines. Still, for people like Lucy Wilson, the risky missions meant everything.
On May 3, 1942, the USS Spearfish’s official log recorded:
[Log] “2035 – Received following 27 passengers with baggage, files, mails and miscellaneous gear.”
[Narrator] That entry is followed by a list of names, including Lucy Wilson’s. BTW – the 27 passengers included 2 stow away servicemen not discovered until it was too late to return them to Corregidor. Also, among the “files, mails and miscellaneous gear” was the last-known photograph of the Finance Department, which I discussed in the last episode (number 41).
Manila Bay crawled with Japanese ships. War ships. War ships that would attack — on sight — any American submarine. So the submarine waited -- on the water’s surface, unmoving, and charging its batteries -- for more than an hour as the active shelling and bombardment of Corregidor played out above water.
Inside the submarine, the crew was busy welcoming the new passengers on board. Captain Earl Sackett, who was one of the Corregidor evacuees with Lucy, wrote:
[Sackett] “Within the throbbing steel hull of the submarine, sympathetic [submarine] crew members served up such food as the hungry refugees had not seen for months. Bunks were already at a premium, but the choicest ones were unselfishly given up to the passengers, with all hands put on a strict schedule for sleeping at different times during the day and night.”

[Narrator] I’ve mentioned Captain Sackett several times throughout various podcast episodes. He was the captain of the USS Canopus, the submarine tender caught in The Philippines at the beginning of the war, and which became a vital machine shop for the Allied forces on Bataan. (It was also the ship my great-grandfather Alma Salm was serving on when the war broke out.) Shortly after returning home, Sackett wrote a memoir of his time in The Philippines, and, as I understand, shared it as best he could with the families of the men under his command, most of whom, if still living, were now prisoners of war. I’ve used that memoir many times in previous episodes to tell the stories of the men under Sackett’s command.
And the trip on the Spearfish wasn’t Sackett’s first submarine ride. Actually, he was a submarine-school graduate and had served on 3 submarines during the 1920s, even commanding the third one.
A career naval man, Earl Sackett’s adult life was spent mainly at sea, but his younger self couldn’t have been farther from the ocean.
Born in Nebraska on March 29, 1897, Earl was the third of Samuel and Minnie Sackett’s 4 children. The family lived in Wisconsin, Idaho, and possibly Oregon by the time 18-year-old Earl joined the Navy in 1915, continuing the military legacy of his Sackett family: His grandfather fought in the Civil War. And his great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution.
After a year in the Navy, Earl went to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated as an Ensign and spent the early 1920s patrolling the ocean.
Despite his near-constant movement, Earl found time to marry, and in August 1922, his only child, a daughter, was born in Norfolk, Virginia.
He went to sub school and served on 3 subs in the mid-’20s, then spent 2 years as a Naval Academy instructor. He received a masters’ in Mechanical Engineering in ’34 and spent the remainder of the ’30s moving up in rank while serving aboard various ships and at Navy bases.
Then, in February 1940, just a month shy of his 44th birthday, Captain Earl L. Sackett assumed command of the USS Canopus.
The USS Canopus was a submarine tender. It carried food, fuel, torpedoes, supplies, relief crews, and more for US submarines. She sailed mainly between The Philippines and China, attending to the US submarines that patrolled those waters.
On December 8, 1941, while Japanese planes were bombing Dan Jopling up at Clark Field, Captain Sackett and the Canopus were anchored in Manila Bay. The old ship had just finished a massive overhaul — getting more armor and better anti-aircraft guns.
Little did Captain Sackett know how immediately useful those additions would be.
Under Sackett’s order, the crew painted the ship’s exposed parts the same color as the Manila dock and draped cargo nets to camouflage the ship.
But the Canopus wasn’t a high-priority Japanese target. Until, that is, she moved to Mariveles Harbor on Bataan Peninsula’s southern tip.
On December 29, an armor piercing missile hit the Canopus. It shot through all decks and damaged the engine room, where escaping steam killed and wounded several of Sackett’s crew members.
A week later, Japanese planes attacked again. And Captain Sackett took drastic measures to ensure his ship and crew were no longer targets. In his own words:
[Sackett] “It was useless to pretend any longer [that camouflage would hide the ship from enemy planes], but at least we could make them think that what was left was useless.
“The next morning, when [a Japanese] scouting plane came over, his pictures showed what looked like an abandoned hulk, listed over on her side, with cargo booms askew, and large blackened areas around the bomb holes, from which wisps of smoke floated up for two or three days.
“What he did not know was that the smoke came from oily rags in strategically placed smudge pots, and that every night the “abandoned hulk” hummed with activity, forging new weapons for the beleaguered forces of Bataan.
[Narrator] The ruse worked.
Japanese planes left the Canopus alone. For the next 3 months, Sackett and the Canopus crew supported the Americans defending Bataan. It was leadership that would earn Captain Sackett a Navy Cross (the US Navy’s 2nd highest military decoration).
But Bataan would fall. And in the early hours of April 9, 1942, Captain Sackett ordered the Canopus backed into deep water. He described:
[Sacket] “There she was laid to her final rest by the hands of the sailors she had served so faithfully.”
[Narrator] Sackett and the Canopus crew escaped to Corregidor Island and joined the 4th Marines to defend the island’s beaches, until Sackett was chosen to leave the island.

Just before 10 pm on May 3, 1942, as the USS Spearfish lay motionless in Manila waters, a Corregidor ammunition dump exploded, casting light into the dark bay, and the Spearfish submarine, still on the surface, moved away from the light to avoid being seen.
It cruised along the surface for about half an hour, until the crew spotted a Japanese destroyer. Immediately the submarine submerged. It silently moved at 5 knots (roughly 5.5 mph) through Manila waters, all the while listening for the destroyer they were trying to evade.
For the next 20 hours and 47 mins, the submarine remained underwater, as the pilots maneuvered the submarine through the naval blockade. The submarine log records all the details of movement, course changes, speed, and observations during that time, as the small craft threaded its way through mine fields and enemy vessels.
Historian Elizabeth Norman wrote:
[Norman] “As the Spearfish slowly and carefully picked its way through the minefields around Corregidor and slipped quietly under the Japanese patrols, the crew warned the passengers to keep still. If the enemy attacked and dropped depth charges, they said, the passengers were to cover their heads with pillows and blankets, and pray.
“For many long, hot, malodorous hours, the 12 nurses sat silently and anxiously, waiting for the danger to pass, and breathing the stale air. Some thought their rescue ship a shoe box, others imagined it a sardine can.”
[Narrator] Lucy Wilson herself said that the tight quarters, at sea, underwater,
[Lucy] “took some getting used to.”
[Narrator] Still, she conceded,
[Lucy] “Having worked for 48 hours straight and having only eaten wormy rice, that submarine to me was heaven.”

[Narrator] Two days after their escape, Corregidor Island and all the rest of The Philippines surrendered to Japanese forces. Sackett recorded:
[Sackett] “When news of the fall of Corregidor came through the radio. . . faces were grim and grief stricken. We had hoped that there might be time for more submarines to be sent in, and more of our shipmates rescued. Now that last hope for our friends were gone. They had joined the “Missing in Action” roll call.”
[Narrator] Despite having safely fled Manila Bay by this time, the USS Spearfish remained in enemy waters.
[Sackett] “Danger was by no means past. The gauntlet of Japanese-patrolled sea lanes still had to be run, and for weeks the only sight of the sun would be through a periscope. But the passengers had placed their destinies in competent hands, and they had no need to worry over such trifles.”
[Narrator] The Japanese controlled all but a few small Philippine islands. And their ships patrolled the waters in and around The Philippines and surrounding nations.
For the next few days, the submarine continued its slow progress past the southern Philippine islands, remaining submerged during the day.
At 12:43 am on May 6, the submarine spotted two Japanese destroyers, which almost immediately altered course and sailed straight for the Spearfish. The submarine dove underwater, not resurfacing until 7:13 that night.
But the anxiety wasn’t over.
Not even an hour later, the lookout spotted a submarine — only 600 yards away! Fearing they’d been spotted by an enemy sub, the Spearfish immediately dove.
Fear. Worry, Held breath. Until, that is, word came that it was a false alarm. Not a submarine, probably cloudy water or a rock. All was clear.
8 days after leaving Corregidor, the Spearfish was finally able to transmit a message to Navy command. The passengers had escaped. All were safe.
The submarine increased speed slightly as it sailed farther south.
But it wasn’t until day 12 when they’d passed through Lombok Straight, which cuts through Indonesia to connect the Bali Sea with the Indian Ocean, that the sub could increase speed to 15.5 knots (about 15.5 mph). And for the next 5 days their cruise was event free.

[Narrator] Inside the sub, everything was done in shifts – eating, sleeping, everything. 8 of the nurses were assigned to 4 bunks – which they took turns sleeping in during shifts. The women began wearing men’s undershirts and cut off dungarees, which are sailors’ uniforms similar in look to overalls, because it was hot and sweaty inside the boat. Thankfully, the sub could often surface during the nights, allowing for fresh air to fill the holds.
You might already know this, but a toilet on a submarine is called the “head.” The nurses had trouble using the “head” because operating it involved opening and/or closing 7 different valves in a correct order – and if a step was missed, the result was getting showered with the toilet’s contents. The women eventually talked a mess boy in to operating it for them.
Instead of just sitting around and “enjoying” the cruise, the nurses offered their help. Historian Elizabeth Norman wrote:
[Norman] “As the ship cruised south toward Australia, the nurses, somewhat rested now, offered the Spearfish crew their labor, and they worked in the galley and mess, cooking, washing dishes, and helping serve the meals. Their willingness to pitch in made them popular with the crew, and soon their section of the ship seemed to draw a large number of visitors.”
[Narrator] The submariners weren’t used to women onboard their craft, but the women’s presence made the men aware of personal appearance and hygiene on this voyage. One crew member wrote a poem entitled: “What Women Can Do to a Submarine Crew.” It begins:
[Poem] “Beyond a doubt you will surely note
If you walk about, a change in the boat…”
[Narrator] He then talks about how various crewmen have altered their habits -- such as drinking tea, washing their clothes, not smoking cigarettes (but I wonder if cigarettes were even allowed in a submarine…I hope not), and even noting that one crew member had stopped picking his nose. The poem concluded:
[Poem] “I’m trying to say in all these verses
We brought aboard a flock of pretty nurses
On that eventful day in May
When we were out Corregidor way.”
[Narrator] After 17 days on board the submarine, Lucy Wilson, Captain Sackett, and the rest of the Spearfish passengers reached the safety of Australia’s Freemantle Harbor (on the southern part of Australia’s western coast) at 7:29 am on May 20. The 2 stowaways were handed over to the proper authorities, while the other 25 passengers continued their journey home. Lucy recalled:
[Lucy] “I was 17 days under water, then across Australia on a troop train. Along the way, aborigines cooked mutton stew for us in fifty-gallon oil drums. We sailed from Melbourne to New York, and [the Army] said we’d never have to go overseas again.”
[Narrator] In Melbourne, on Australia’s southeastern coast, Lucy and her fellow nurses boarded the transport ship USS West Point, which sailed across the southern Pacific, then up the western coast of South America, through the Panama Canal and the Caribbean, and then north to New York, where it docked on July 2 – nearly 2 months to the day of Lucy having escaped Corregidor Island. The Navy had informed the media of the ship’s anticipated arrival and the precious cargo, and the docking was broadcast live on the radio across the United States. Back home in Big Sandy, neighbors walked a mile to Lucy’s family’s home to share the good news of her homecoming.
But before she could go home to Texas, Lucy first went to Washington, DC, where she and the other escaped nurses, including Eunice Hatchitt from episode 15, were decorated for their bravery under fire in the Philippines.
When she finally arrived home in Big Sandy later that month, she was greeted by a crowd of 1,000 people welcoming her home and paying tribute to her heroism in Bataan. While home on leave, Lucy wrote a letter to Dan Jopling’s mother, telling her that Dan was safe and well when Lucy left Bataan.
[Lucy] “The 200th [Coast Artillery] certainly made a name for itself. I am proud to have met many of the boys, especially Danny.”
[Narrator] Of course, the last time Lucy had seen Dan was well before Lucy was evacuated to Corregidor, and Bataan had fallen to the Japanese. By the time Lucy wrote Dan’s mother, Dan had endured the Bataan Death March, the horrors of Camp O’Donnell, and was at Cabanatuan POW camp in central Luzon. How much of this Lucy would have known? Well, probably little because I don’t believe the servicemen and women on Corregidor Island knew about the war crimes associated with the Bataan Death March at the time that Lucy escaped.
And even though she wrote this seemingly good accounting of Dan, Lucy was worried about him – wondering how he was doing and where he was.
These worries followed her as she took up her new appointment as assistant chief nurse at Sheppard Field Hospital in Wichita Falls, Texas. And eventually those concerns became large enough that she wanted to get back to the Pacific and find Dan.
So, she enrolled in flight nurse training.

WW2 saw rapid expansion of the US Army Air Force (or the USAAF for short), its planes, and its transportation routes. Soon after the war’s beginning, leaders realized it would be possible for planes to fly sick and wounded men from the front lines to hospitals – on the same planes used to bring men and supplies to the front.
But the USAAF wasn’t prepared to staff these kinds of operations, so they started rush training programs. One history of flight nurses’ states:
[History] “To prepare for any emergency, flight nurses learned crash procedures, received survival training, and studied the effects of high altitude on various types of patients. In addition, flight nurses had to be in top physical condition to care for patients during these rigorous flights.”
[Narrator] From what I’m understanding, a flight nurse was part of a unit called an “air evacuation transport squadron.” The flights included the airplane’s crew, flight nurses, and surgical technicians. No doctors accompanied the nurses and technicians on the flights; thus the nurses (who outranked the technicians) were the first line of medical care from the front line to the hospital and they were trained to start IVs and oxygen – tasks nurses at the time typically didn’t do.
The plane would land at an airfield near the front lines, the nurses, crew, and technicians would load the sick and wounded men, and then they’d get back into the air. And, yes, sometimes the nurses were loading patients while under enemy fire.
Flight nurse positions were volunteer positions – as in, the Army Nurse Corps did not order nurses to be part of the squadrons. This was mainly because these positions were dangerous. The planes could not have Red Cross markings on them because they carried military supplies, so the flights were vulnerable to enemy attacks.
These nurses were literally in the line of fire. Field nurses, I’ve always thought, were fairly vulnerable, but field hospitals are usually in the rear, well behind the front lines. The Flight Nurses were flying into the front lines in the very planes that the enemy was shooting at and trying to bring down.
During WW2, about 500 nurses served in the air evacuation transport squadrons worldwide, evacuating nearly 1.2 million patients, with only 46 patients dying en route to hospitals. Which is just an amazing feat in an of itself.

[Narrator] So, wanting to get back to the Pacific, Lucy volunteered as a Flight Nurse. After undergoing training, she started her year in the position in January 1944. Here’s her account of that experience:
[Lucy] “I landed first in New Caldonia. When we heard of any place with a landing strip, I hit it. Always I wanted to get back and find Dan.”
[Narrator] BTW – New Caldonia is a small island off Australia’s northwestern coast, and it became the US Pacific headquarters in 1942. It was an important Allied base during the war. OK, back to Lucy:
[Lucy] “Most of the time we were island hopping on C-47s, up to the front lines, with ammunition and food.”
[Narrator] C-47s were transport plans that were extensively used during WW2 to transport troops, cargo, paratroopers, and injured men. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers, think of the planes that Easy Company jumps out of into Normandy. For the Air Evacuation Transports, the planes were fitted with bunks and similar for patients to lay in while being transported.
[Lucy] “Sometimes we’d have to circle until the firing stopped, and we’d land and load the injured quickly. Some of the soldiers would come up and touch our arms—they just wanted to touch an American woman. If we didn’t give them anything but courage, we were the symbol of what they were fighting for.
“Chest or skull injuries affect breathing, so we’d ask the pilots to fly low—sometimes nearly skim the ocean—so they could breath. We tried to take food for them. They never got much food in the Pacific—it was all going to the European Theater.
“We were the first nurses into Guadalcanal—we flew the injured back to hospitals on islands behind us. Finally, we got to Leyte [Island in The Philippines]—and then Luzon. It was the highlight of my life.”
[Narrator] When her 1-year assignment as a flight nurse was up, she begged to stay. She still hadn’t found Dan. The Army allowed her to remain on duty in the Pacific. Thus, in January 1945, she found herself again on Luzon Island, where she had served on Bataan. She said:
[Lucy] “After watching brave men suffer and die on Bataan and Corregidor because of inadequate medical facilities it gave me the greatest satisfaction to realize that these men were being flown to the finest hospital care within a few hours.
“On Bataan we had about 80 nurses to care for 7,000 patients and worked on a 24-hour schedule. Now the same number of nurses will be responsible for about 1,500 persons and hospital conditions will be much better.
“I wanted to get back there to talk to those we had to leave behind. That’s one desire you’ll find common among all those who got out. You can’t work with people, starve with them, and fight alongside them as we did at Bataan without gaining great admiration for them.”
[Narrator] But although she saw plenty of Bataan men, who were now freed POWs, including men Dan had served with in the 200th Coast Artillery, Lucy didn’t cross paths with Dan. She recalled:
[Lucy] “I helped fly out some ex-POWs, and some were from the 200th. I kept asking them all, ‘Where’s Dan? Where’s Dan?’”
[Narrator] And she eventually got a response:
[Ex-POW] “Dead. On the Oryoku Maru.”
[Narrator] But at first, she refused to believe the answers, and kept on asking anyone she could. She continued hearing the same answer. Dan had died on the Oryoku Maru. And, eventually, she accepted that reality:
[Lucy] “I knew if Dan was alive, I would have known it by then. So, I said, ‘Okay, send me back to the States.’ I knew Dan was dead.”

[Narrator] Mere weeks before Lucy’s Air Evacuation Transport Squadron landed on Luzon Island, Dan Jopling was loaded onto a Japanese transport ship with 1,620 other POWs. The ship was called the Oryoku Maru and it was bound for Japan.
Now, if you’ve listened to many of the Left Behind episodes, you’ve likely heard me talk about the Oryoku Maru. At least 9 of the POWs I’ve spotlighted so far were part of this disastrous trip. And every time I write about it, I try to include some of the POW’s personal experiences, as far as I can find them. So here’s a bit about Dan’s experience.
First off, he had been at the Cabanatuan POW camps since June 1942 when he and ¾ of the Cabanatuan POWs were transferred from the camp to Manila in October 1944. Shortly before leaving the camp, he wrote to his mother:
[Dan] “Darling Mom: I am well and waiting for the day when we will be together again. I have received your letters, and was very glad to hear everyone is well. Tell all my relatives I am fine, especially my darling sister. I love you and think of you. Love all, Dan.”
[Narrator] After waiting several weeks in Manila, Dan and the other POWs were loaded into the cargo holds of the Oryoku Maru on December 12, 1944. He said that the ceiling in the hold was
[Dan] “So low we could only stand in a half-crouching position.”
[Narrator] They were so crammed into the hold that they couldn’t sit and soon the oxygen began to run out.
[Dan] “Men began to attack their friends, cutting their throats and drinking their blood, and their own urine. In a few minutes the guards began firing into the holds and the screams of the mad and dying were horrible.”
[Narrator] The day after the unmarked ship left Manila, it was attacked by US dive bombers, which incapacitated the ship. Still, as the bombers attacked, the men in the holds nearly cheered.
[Dan] “There was not one man who did not feel pride in their accuracy, and among the group one could hear, ‘Come on, Yanks!’”
[Narrator] The attack continued the next day, and the ship soon caught on fire. The passengers and crew were evacuated. Only then did the Japanese guards allow the POWs to attempt escaping the inferno.
[Dan] “The ship was already burning and sinking rapidly before we could come out of the holds and swim ashore. The Jap guards opened heavy fire as the men began climbing the ladders, and continued to fire as they dived into the water.
“As it was a considerable distance to the shore, many of us who were able made trips to and from the ship bringing in men who could not swim or were too weak to do so. When were finally ashore, we were marched into Olongapo and crowded into a wire-enclosed tennis-court.”
[Narrator] The men waited at Olongapo, a former US Navy Yard, for several days before they were taken by train to another part of Luzon Island, where they boarded two different transport ships. Dan was put on the Enoura Maru. Dan recalled that 16 men died in his part of the ship as it sailed to Taiwan.
[Dan] “Constantly came the cries of men for water. Many were dying each day, and as the Japs had nothing to weight the bodies with, they refused to lower them over the side for fear they would float and submarines could trace our course. The emaciated bodies were stacked about us like corkwood.”
[Narrator] The Enoura Maru was attacked by American planes in Taiwan, and several hundred POWs were killed. The survivors, including Dan Jopling, were transferred to yet a third ship, which arrived in Moji, Japan, on January 30, 1945. Only 550 of the original 1,620 were still alive.
It was mid-winter and the men were sick and freezing, wearing the rags and loincloths they’d had in The Philippines. More than 150 Oryoku Maru survivors would die over the next several weeks and months. So, when the ex-POWs in The Philippines told Lucy that Dan was dead, well, they were probably betting on the odds that were definitely against his survival.
He first went to a POW camp near Fukuoka, Japan, and then, in April 1945, was transferred to the Jinsen POW camp in Korea, with many other Oryoku Maru survivors. That camp was liberated in September 1945, and among the freed POWs was Lt. Daniel Jopling.
Dan had survived the unthinkable and he was sent back to Manila in October 1945 and then to Bruns Hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for recuperation.

Meanwhile, for at least 6 months, Lucy Wilson thought her fiancée was dead. She was living in Washington, DC, when she received a letter from her mother. As she opened the letter, a cablegram from Manila fell out. It was signed:
[Dan] “With love, from Dan.”
[Narrator] A startled and confused Lucy dialed her mother
[Lucy] “Mama, where did this come from?”
[Mom] “I don’t know, but two dozen roses just arrived!”
[Narrator] Lucy caught the next flight home to Big Sandy, Texas, where she found more roses waiting for her. But Dan’s sudden resurrection, in her mind at least, and appearance left Lucy questioning…everything. They’d been apart for nearly 4 years. 4 years that had been a lifetime in which they’d each endured unthinkable and even unspeakable trials. They were different people, and Lucy, who had spent many long months mourning Dan’s death and thinking herself unengaged, found herself wondering whether marrying him was the right choice.
[Lucy] “I called my chief nurse and said, ‘Sankie, what am I going to do? He’s changed, and I’ve changed, and I can’t marry him. But I can’t tell him on the phone.’
“She said, ‘Lucy, go and see him,’ and she went with me to Santa Fe. They had long dark wards in Bruns [Hospital], and Dan was coming in one end and I in the other, and I knew if I didn’t tell him that minute, I wouldn’t have the nerve. So, I said, there in front of everybody, ‘Dan, I can’t marry you!’”
[Narrator] So…not the movie-ending homecoming I suspect Dan Jopling had been expecting. (And to be honest, not what I was expecting either. But this is a true story, not a WW2 romance.) Historian Dorothy Cave picked up the story from there:
[Cave] “For the next few days [Lucy] vacillated and returned home still undecided. But the stubbornness that had brought Dan Jopling home propelled him to Big Sandy that weekend. Three days later they headed back for Santa Fe, man and wife.”
[Narrator] That marriage happened on December 5, 1945. Lucy received her Army discharge papers that same day.

After the War & Legacy
[Narrator] Now before we get into Dan and Lucy’s happily ever after, I want to check in on Captain Earl Sackett’s war time activities a little bit.
After coming home from Australia, Captain Sackett spent the rest of WW2 commanding the Submarine Repair Facility in San Diego and then on Fleet Admiral Chester A. Nimitz’s staff in Hawaii.
An almost 50-year-old Rear Admiral Earl L. Sackett retired from active Navy duty in January 1947.
He spent his retirement years in San Diego, California, where he died on October 7, 1970. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery just outside of Washington, DC.
And here’s something random, but interesting – well, at least to me. Earl L. Sackett was the last captain that Alma Salm (my great-grandfather) served under before captured by the Japanese.
Sackett’s parents — Samuel and Minnie Sackett — are buried in a cemetery near Portland, Oregon. My father (who is Alma Salm’s grandson) lives just a few blocks down the street from that cemetery. Literally within half a mile of each other. And, on a visit home during the pandemic, I dragged all 3 of my siblings to that cemetery to search for their graves. My brother, to my chagrin, is the one who found it. Such a small world.

Well, back to Dan and Lucy.
Dan remained in the Army after WW2, and he and Lucy spent time at stations in California and in Texas. By 1950 they had two children, and then a third born in 1957 (from what I’ve discovered. There could have been more children that I haven’t found.) Lucy seems to have stayed home with the children.
Dan retired from the US Army in 1961 as a Lt. Colonel and the family settled in the San Antonio, Texas, area. He then spent 8 years working for the Red Cross. He died in July 1985.
Lucy remained in the San Antonio, Texas, area the remainder of her life. In 1991 she published an autobiography titled Warrior in White. She enjoyed speaking to veterans’ groups, feeling a kinship with them because only those who have served can understand that
[Lucy] “War is hell. I don’t care which it is, where it is.”
[narrator] Still, Lucy doesn’t seem to have regretted her war-time choices. She told a crowd at a Ex-POW recognition ceremony:
[Lucy] “I’ve had so many people ask me, ‘Would you do it again?’ You bet I’d do it again.”
[Narrator] 84-year-old Lucy Wilson Jopling, this courageous woman, who continually put herself in the line of fire to ensure American servicemen had the best chance of survival, passed away on Christmas Day in 2000. In the end, she found eternal rest with Dan, once again, at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

Just 2 days after Lucy Wilson escaped Corregidor on the USS Spearfish, Japanese forces landed on the island. Waiting on the beaches to meet those landing parties were the US Marines – already battered and bruised – but ready to give the fight of their lives.
So be sure to hit the follow button because there will be more on that next time.
This is Left Behind.

Outro
Thanks for listening! You can find pictures, maps, and sources about Lucy Wilson, Dan Jopling, and Earl Sackett’s stories on the Left Behind Facebook page and website and on Instagram @leftbehindpodcast. The links are in the show description.
If you’d like to know more about Lucy Wilson’s war-time experience, I suggest her autobiography, Warrior in White or author Dorothy Cave’s book Beyond Courage: One Regiment against Japan, about the 200th Coast Artillery during WW2.
Left Behind is researched, written, and produced by me, Anastasia Harman.
- Voice overs by: Robyn Sutherland, Brooke Davis, Valerie Scatina, Tyler Harman, Mike Davis, and Jake Herenberg
- Dramatizations are based on historical research, although some creative liberty is taken with dialogue.
And remember to subscribe to left behind because you won't want to miss next time’s battle for Corregidor Island.

Sources
Lucy Wilson and Dan Jopling
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Earl Sackett
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