#40. Escape into Enemy Hands

Episode 40 – Escape into Enemy Hands – Episode Transcript
Note: This episode contains somewhat graphic details of the aftermath of a bombing as well as mentions of sexual assault and may not be appropriate for all audiences.

[Narrator] The wind had picked up and the lake’s surface was riddled with the high crests of choppy waves.
Even though darkness had fallen, Army nurse Lt. Rosemary Hogan, a 29-year-old with a cheerful, round face that lit up with her contagious smile and accompanying dimples, could see the seaplane in front of her and wondered if it really could become airborne given the weather conditions.
But it was now or never. They had to leave tonight, because rumors had it that the Japanese forces would be to this lake the next day.
She was one of 10 nurses boarding the seaplane in front of her. Across the way, she could see 10 others boarding an identical craft.
[Nurse] “Goodbye!”
[Narrator] The nurse behind Lt. Hogan called out, waving vigorously to the other group of women.
[Nurse] “See you in Australia.”
[Narrator] There was excitement and anticipation in the air, within 24 hours they would all be safely in Australia, the war on Bataan just a memory.
Rosemary bobbed up and down with the movement of the small boat, as she patiently waited her turn to clamber on to the seaplane’s roof, and climb down into the fuselage.
Once inside the plane, Rosemary walked down the narrow metal walkway, past the radio operator’s room and toward the tail. She took a seat on a cot – meant for resting – but now a makeshift seat for a few nurses. She could feel the wind, coming in through the machine gunner hole in the tail.
The other PBY took off first. Their first attempt failed, and doors opened so passengers could push out luggage. Finally, after a couple more tries, the first plane was airborne, circling above the lake.
Rosemary held tightly to the cot’s edge, as the plane picked up speed, cutting through the turbulent water. It went faster and faster and then a huge crash and Rosemary was thrown forward into the nurse next to her. And then the plane was still, except for the up and down motion as the plane bobbed in the choppy water.
[“Nurse] “Water!”
[Narrator] One of the nurses cried out, pointing to the floor where a small stream of water now trickled down the metal walkway. The pilot’s voice came across the radio.
[Pilot] “We’ve hit a rock. Going back towards shore to assess damage.”
[Nurse 2] “No need for that,”
[Narrator] came another nurse’s voice. Rosemary looked to the woman, only to see her pointing at the plane’s metal siding. Then she saw it – the rock had torn a small hole in the fuselage, through which water was entering. She immediately shrugged herself out of her terrycloth coat and handed it to a woman closer to the rupture.
[Rosemary] “Here! Use this to plug the hole.”
[Narrator] The material was shoved tightly into the hole, but by the time the plane reached as close as it could to shore, the water inside the plane was ankle deep. Rosemary and her friends disembarked.
There was no chance now of leaving tonight.
And, Rosemary wondered, would tomorrow bring the invading Japanese forces?

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 appreciate this podcast and believe it’s important for people to know this relatively unknown part of WW2 history, please consider sharing it with a friend. Word of mouth is the main way people find new podcasts, and by sharing, you’re helping to keep these important stories alive.
Days before The Philippines fell to Japanese forces, 20 US Army nurses, all Bataan veterans, boarded two PBY seaplanes in a last moment escape effort to Australia. Among them was Lt. Rosemary Hogan, who had been wounded in a hospital bombing 3 weeks earlier.
But instead of escaping, Rosemary became stranded on an island unknown to her. And she was eventually captured by Japanese forces.
But her story doesn’t end there. After liberation, she continued climbing the military ranks – until she became the first Air Force nurse to reach the rank of Colonel and then found herself fighting a different kind of battle.
She was a brave, incredible woman.
Let’s jump in.

POW’s Life Story
Before the War
[Narrator] Rosemary Hogan's story begins March 12, 1913, on a quiet farm nestled between the small towns of Chattanooga and Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma, just north of the Texas border. She was the 10th of Francis and Mary Hogan’s 11 surviving children, which made her 22 years younger than her oldest sibling. Her parents were sooners, coming to claim free land in Oklahoma in the 1880s.
At the tender age of four, Rosemary decided she wanted to be an army nurse a goal that would form the rest of her life. That dream began being fulfilled in the late 1920s, when Rosemary graduated from Chattanooga High School with academic distinction and earned a scholarship to any school she desired. She chose Scott and White School of Nursing in Temple, Texas (which is between Austin and Waco).
That scholarship likely paved the way for Rosemary’s later success, because during the 1920s, the Hogan family became well acquainted with tragedy. And I wonder whether she would have been able to attend nursing school without it. In 1926, one of Rosemary’s older sisters passed away, and that sister’s husband died the next year. Their 7-year-old daughter Mauree Trail came to live with Rosemary’s family.
By 1930, Rosemary’s own father had passed away. 18-year-old Rosemary lived in Chattanooga, Oklahoma, with her mother, brother, and niece Mauree. And no one in the home, it seems, had an occupation as the Great Depression deepened. Then, in 1937, Rosemary’s mother died while visiting family in New Mexico.
Quick side note – Mauree, the niece who lived with Rosemary in the late ‘20s and early 30s, gave birth to a daughter in 1943, whom she named “Rosemary,” I suspect in honor of her own Aunt Rosemary (who was, by that time a POW. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Rosemary spent 3 years at Scott and White School of Nursing, then returned home where she worked as a nurse for a nearby hospital and then for the Civilian Conservation Corps. But these positions were just fillers until she could enter the army. She later said:
[Hogan] “When I had earlier made up my mind to become a military nurse, I had to be patient. In those days, your name would be on a waiting list for some time before you could get in. It was a year before I finally got my commission in the army.”
[Narrator] But that moment did come and on August 1, 1936, Rosemary Hogan was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Nursing Corps. She first served at Ft. Sill, just 30 miles north of her hometown of Chattanooga, Oklahoma.
In January 1940, 2nd Lt. Rosemary sailed for the Philippines, where she began working at the Sternberg General Hospital, which was a military hospital in Manila. Amidst the pre-war days, Rosemary found solace in nursing duties and enjoyed the pleasures of island life – dances, parties, trips to the mountains with fellow nurses, and, of course, young Army officers also stationed near Manila.

During the War
[Narrator] Early on the morning of December 8, 1942, Lt. Rosemary Hogan made an urgent call to her Army nurse friend Juantia “Red” Redmond. She told Red that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Red, who had just come off an all-night shift, responded:
[Juanita] “Thanks for trying to keep me awake. But that simply isn’t funny.”
[Hogan] “I’m not being funny, Red. It’s true.”
[Narrator] Rosemary replied. She was, of course, correct, and the reality of war soon hit home when Lt. Hogan was chosen to take a group of nurses to convert old Philippine army barracks on Bataan into field hospital #1.
Thus, on December 24, 1941, Hogan and 51 other nurses – both American and Filipino -- rode in the back of transport trucks down the Bataan peninsula toward the new hospital. They expected red brick buildings, instead they got bamboo huts. She later described arrival to reporter, who wrote:
[Newspaper] “The [nurses’] convoy had been delayed and it was too dark to work, so Rosemary Hogan, … the senior nurse in charge, walked her nurses down to the beach to cool off.
“It was a clear night, the stars were shimmering on the water, and the women, slipping off their shoes and shaking the road dust from the hair, sat in small clusters on the pristine sand. Most remember the quiet of that moment; they spoke in hushed voices and listened to the waves break on the beach. Then someone realized the date – it was Christmas Eve.
“Back at the compound they rummaged in a warehouse for footboards, headboards, frames, braces and springs, which they hauled across the dusty compound to their new quarters, a screened hut, then knocked the parts together into beds and, finally, exhausted, slipped into sleep.”
[Narrator] That peaceful evening under the Christmas stars was perhaps the last they had before fighting started—mere miles north of the field hospital. Rosemary described:
[Hogan] “There was enough equipment in the warehouses to set up a 1000-bed hospital. However, the hospital wasn’t exactly that big. The size fluctuated. As soon as there was a bed down, a patient was in it. When you needed another bed, you went to the warehouse and got it. The hospital was always filled.”
[Narrator] With her at Hospital #1 were nurses Juanita Redmond and Eunice Hatchitt, who I highlighted in episode 15.
A week after arriving at the hospital location, the staff were forced to move Hospital #1 to southern Bataan – because the original location was too close to the front-line action and enemy bombings. So, Lt. Hogan worked with the doctors, nurses, and other medical staff to set up the new Hospital #1 location and then transport patients to it.
A reporter embedded on Bataan wrote that 28-year-old Lt. Hogan was one of two main stand-out nurses on Bataan:
[Newspaper] “Nurse Hogan knew Bataan as perhaps no other American nurse did. When all hell broke loose, she was sent out to establish the peninsula’s most advanced hospital base. Although only a young second lieutenant in rank, she acted like a veteran and accomplished the most important tasks without turning a hair.”

[Narrator] Three months later, Japanese airplanes purposely bombed Field Hospital #1 on the morning of Sunday, April 5 – Easter Sunday. I detailed the horrors of this air raid in episode 22, so for brevity here, let’s just say that bamboo and open-air hospital wards don’t stand up well to 250-500-lb bombs.
Exploding shrapnel tore into Nurse Hogan’s right knee, left arm, and more. Some reports say she was “severely wounded,” but I don’t have specific details as to that. A newspaper reported:
[Newspaper] “Lt. Rosemary Hogan … lay un-whimpering in a foxhole while men from the front were given medical attention.”
[Narrator] She likely lay wounded in the bottom of that foxhole for hours. Nurse Redmond remembered:
[Juanita] “I saw Rosemary Hogan being helped from her ward. Blood streamed from her face and her shoulder; she looked ghastly.
“’Hogan,’ I called, ‘Hogan, is it bad?’
“She managed to wave her good arm at me. ‘Just a little nosebleed,’ she said cheerfully … ‘How about you?’”
[Narrator] Rosemary Hogan, herself, picked up the story here:
[Hogan] “I was evacuated by a small motorboat across to the island of Corregidor. The shrapnel was taken out and I was in pretty good shape.”
[Narrator] A few days later, her fellow Bataan nurses were evacuated to Corregidor Island on the eve of Bataan’s April 9, 1942, surrender to Japanese forces.

Between early January and April 9, life on Corregidor had been fairly quiet. The American and Filipino forces there endured some heavy bombardment in late December and early January. However, the Japanese focus was capturing Bataan peninsula. But, once Bataan fell, Corregidor became Japan’s main target.
The tadpole-shaped island had a roughly 1-mile diameter “head” which connected on its eastern side to a tapering “tail” about 3 miles long and pointing eastward. Just east of the point where the tadpole’s head and tail met was the large Malinta Hill.
During the 1930s, the US Army Corp of Engineers dug a tunnel system under Malinta Hill – and aptly named it: the Malinta Tunnel. This tunnel (which exists today) has a main corridor around 800 feet long, running east to west through the base on the hill. The corridor is about 25’ wide and 15’ tall -- at its highest point where the walls curve up to meet.
Branching off the main corridor were lateral tunnels, most of which were around 160’ long and 15’ wide. There were 13 branching lateral tunnels on the north side of the main corridor and 11 on the south. The lateral tunnels served as barracks, admin officers, storage areas, and more. If this sounds confusing, well, you’re not alone—people often describe the tunnel system as maze or labyrinth like. So I’ve posted a map on Facebook and Instagram so you can get a better idea.
One of the northeastern laterals was almost twice as long as the others, and it was bisected by its own perpendicular laterals. This area housed the 1,000-bed hospital. I don’t have specific details, but I suspect Lt. Hogan would have been taken to this hospital when she was evacuated from Bataan after the bombing.
When Lt. Hogan and the Bataan nurses arrived, more than 7,000 servicemen and women and civilians, including children, were living within the entire tunnel system.
The Bataan nurses immediately went to work in the Malinta Tunnel hospital. Historian Elizabeth Norman, in her book We Band of Angels, about the experiences of the Bataan nurses, wrote:
[Norman] “The hospital had all the familiar trappings of an infirmary—white enamel bedside tables, iron beds, flush-type latrines, showers, spigots, filing cabinets and refrigerators. In addition to recovery and convalescent wards, the hospital laterals held operating rooms, a dental clinic, laboratories, kitchen and dining areas, a dispensary and sleeping quarters for the nurses.”
[Narrator] Also, the hospital started attracting quite a number of uninjured and sickness-free male visitors as news spread that a large number of young American women were now there.
By the way, accounts suggest that Lt. Hogan recovered enough to pick up nursing duties at the Corregidor hospital.

As I mentioned earlier, once Bataan fell, Japanese forces immediately began heavy artillery and air bombardment of Corregidor Island, which only intensified throughout April. Hospital staff were soon installing double and triple-decker beds in the hospital’s wards to accommodate the growing number of wounded from the gun batteries outside the tunnels.
As the bombs pounded Corregidor, the population inside Malinta Hill wasn’t particularly impacted. Here’s historian Norman again:
[Norman] “As in all the laterals throughout the complex, red lights hung from the arched ceilings and flashed warnings of impending attacks, but Malinta Tunnel was so well built, the hospital staff could continue to work during raids, interrupted only by the muffled thuds of bombs and shells landing above.”
[Narrator] Despite the relative safety, life in the tunnel was its own kind of hell: the concussions from the incessant bombings of Corregidor caused nurses to get severe headaches and earaches, beds bounced across the floor, medicine bottles fell and shattered, wasting precious resources. It was impossible to tell day from night inside the tunnel. The damp, stagnant air in the close quarters bread fungal infections and skin boils.
There was a ventilation system, but it couldn’t keep up with the dust continually stirred and created by the bombings. The generators often failed, and servicemen had to hold flashlights for the surgical teams in the middle of surgeries. One nurse wrote in her diary:
[Brantley] “If you ever wanted to feel what the darkness of the Egyptian pyramids must have been like, you should have been in Malinta Tunnel when the lights went out.”
[Narrator] Another wrote:
[Straub] “Enemy shelling was heavy for 5 hours. The atmosphere of the tunnel becomes more depressing as each day passes. Food is fairly good; in fact excellent in comparison to that of Bataan.”
[Narrator] Another observer added:
[Observer] “Every day it seemed that the line of stretchers grew longer. … The narrow hospital corridors were crammed with the wounded, the sick and the dying; convalescents were hurried out to make room for fresh casualties as doctors made their rounds with an increasingly artificial joviality.”

[Narrator] Then, on the night of April 28, a huge Japanese shell landed at the entrance to the tunnel, where more than 80 servicemen had gathered to escape the tunnels’ oppressive air. Historian Norman wrote:
[Norman] “The concussion was so colossal it slammed shut the tunnel’s slatted iron entrance gate, and the laterals echoed with screams from the outside. Corpsmen and nurses in nearby laterals sprinted toward the entrance to aid their comrades. When they arrived, they had to pry open the iron gate, a grizzly task, for jutting between the slats were body parts and pieces of torn and mangled flesh.”
[Narrator] 14 men were dead; 70 wounded. The doctors and nurses worked all night attending to the wounded – and even for the Bataan veterans, the carnage inflicted on their patents was stomach turning. Nurse Juanita Redmond wrote:
[Redmond] “I wish I could forget those endless, harrowing hours. Hours of giving injections, anesthetizing, ripping off clothes, stitching gaping wounds, of amputations, sterilizing instruments, bandaging, settling the treated patients in their beds, covering the wounded we could not save. …
“I had still not grown accustomed to seeing people torn and bleeding and dying in numbers like these. … when you are faced by such mass suffering and death, something cracks inside you, you can’t ever be quite the same again.
“Only while it’s happening, there’s a sort of blessed numbness that keeps you going…
“That night, some died before we could get to them. Legs and arms had been wrenched off; there were jagged flesh wounds; pieces of exploded shrapnel stuck in ugly wounds; deaths from shock mounted no matter how frantically we worked over other victims.
“One boy, half-conscious, his leg hanging by shreds from his thigh, said to me through gritted teeth, ‘Don’t cut off . . . my clothes . . . got no underpants on.’ …
“The litter-bearers kept bringing in more and more. Once, as I stooped to give an injection to one that they had just put down on the floor, I saw that it was a headless body. Shock and horror made me turn furiously on the corpsmen.
“’Must you do this?’ I cried.
“The boys looked at what they had carried with consternation almost equaling mine.
“’It’s so dark out there,’ one of them stammered. ‘We can’t use lights. We feel for the bodies and just roll them onto the stretchers.’“
[Narrator] Outside the tunnel, of course, the medics couldn’t use lights because they didn’t want to draw additional enemy fire at them. So the servicemen had to do their best in total blackout conditions.

[Narrator] The endless night turned into the worst day of air and artillery bombings yet, with the pummeling starting as 7:25 am. The tunnel shook with incessant concussions, filling the halls with dust, which choked the nurses and patients. The island – once a garden-like military resort – was on fire, as Ambulance drivers dodged bombs and cratered roads to reach artillery units in the unprotected parts of the island and which were incurring severe casualties.
That afternoon, General Jonathan Wainwright, commander over all US forces in The Philippines, received word that two PBY planes would be at Corregidor that night with room for 20 nurses and a few civilians.
The Consolidated PBY Catalina, the plane’s official name, is a “flying boat” or “amphibious aircraft.” So, a seaplane. It was used for ocean battle and was especially useful for air attacks on submarines. The plane’s wings (and thus the propellers) sit on top of the fuselage, rather than on the sides as with most planes. The wingtips have retractable stabilizing floats, which allow the craft to land on water. (And there were retractable wheels in the bottom of the fuselage, so it could land on dry ground.)
In the front of the plane, naturally, was the cockpit – and jutting out into the plane’s nose was a small area where a gunner or bombardier could sit. Directly behind the cockpit was the radio and navigator room. Next was a small kitchenette area – with a hot plate and a bunk for resting. The next compartment had a couple of rest bunks. Beyond that was the rear gunner’s compartment, which one had to crawl through to reach the lavatory, which must have been fairly cramped because by this point, you’d be a fair way into the tapering portion of the tail.

At 6 pm, April 29, Lt. Rosemary Hogan and several other injured nurses learned they were being evacuated to Australia. Joining them would be some older nurses, such as those in their 50s, some nurses who, it was felt, wouldn’t be able to withstand potential imprisonment, and even a few pretty faces – to help with the war PR back home. Evacuees could bring 1 bag weighing less than 10 pounds.
The plan was to fly only at night – to avoid Japanese planes and antiaircraft fire. They would fly from Corregidor on the night of April 29-30 to Mindanao Island, about 500 miles/800 km south. There they’d rest for the day, then resume the flight to Darwin, Australia, about 1,400 miles/2,200 km south of Mindanao on the night of April 30.
Around 11:45 pm, April 29, the 20 nurses and a handful of civilians and military officers gathered on the Corregidor dock. Luckily, the Japanese guns from Bataan had stopped firing for the night. The PBY planes landed on the water, coming to rest in a nearby cove. The passengers boarded boats, which ferried them to the waiting planes.
10 nurses boarded each plane. From what I’m gathering from pictures and diagrams of the plane, they would have had to enter and exit the plane from hatches on fuselage’s top. (I’ve put those images on Facebook and Instagram.)
Lt. Hogan’s plane also contained 3 civilian women, 1 Army colonel, and a naval officer – who I’m fairly certain was Francis Bridget. He is the officer who formed an infantry battalion from Navy men who had never been trained in ground combat, but still managed to halt a Japanese landing behind enemy lines on Bataan. I highlighted him in episode 13. (It’s an excellent story, and highly worth a listen.)
Once loaded, the planes took off. Gen. Wainwright later recorded:
[Wainwright] “We stood there and watched the seaplanes roar and take off and prayed they would not be hit…. They sailed right off the water beautifully, pulled out over the side of Cavite beyond the range of the antiaircraft guns and were enveloped in the night.”
[Narrator] Rosemary later told a reporter:
[Hogan] “From Corregidor, we started our airborne trip to Australia. Our flights were to be made entirely at night. Aboard were ten nurses and six civilians. Out first stop was at Mindanao in the Southern Philippines.

[Narrator] The planes made their way south and landed in Lake Lanao in the interior of the southern Philippine Island Mindanao. The passengers disembarked and rested at a small Army encampment at the lake, where the soldiers shared their breakfast with the nurses and other passengers.
After sunset, boats came to take the nurses out to the planes on the evening of April 30. One of the girls from Lt. Hogan’s plane called out to the other plane’s nurses:
[Nurse] “So long! We’ll see you tomorrow.”
[Narrator] But . . . that wouldn’t happen.
Rosemary Hogan was on board PBY plane #2. Historian Norman wrote:
[Norman] “A stiff wind had put a heavy chop on the water and the first PBY struggled several times before it became airborne. As it circled in a holding pattern, seaplane number two tried to taxi into position, but the turbulence kept blowing it back to shore, and all at once one of the women aboard head a crunching sound. A rock beneath the waterline had ripped a hold in number two’s fuselage, and the cabin began to fill with water.”
[Narrator] You’ll recall that the fuselage was at the bottom of the plane, so a rock could easily impact it.
Lt. Hogan quickly removed her terrycloth jacket to plug that fuselage hole, but the water soon rose to ankle deep. Norman continues:
[Norman] “In darkness and wet, the passengers disembarked, while a navy boat crew and salvage expert worked on the damaged ship. … By late afternoon the next day [May 1], the crew of [plane] number two had been able to effect repairs and was ready to try again, but the nurses and colonels were nowhere in sight.”
[Narrator] Unable to wait longer for their passengers, the pilots took flight and landed safely in Darwin, Australia, the next morning, with no idea what happened to their passengers.

Now, don’t think too badly of these pilots. There was a reason they had to leave quickly – the Japanese were fast approaching.
You see, fate or coincidence made the escape’s timing – quite unfortunate.
On April 29 – the very day those 2 planes left Corregidor – Japanese ground forces invaded Mindanao in earnest. They landed at a town called Parang early in the morning on April 29 and began pushing inland in the direction of Lake Lanao, where the two planes would land the morning of April 30. Parang is only about 61 miles/98 km south of the southwestern point of Lake Lanao, and by the afternoon of May 1, when the PBY plane was finally deemed fit for flying, Japanese forces were swiftly approaching the Lake Lanao area.
By May 3, Japanese forces had taken the Lake Lanao, having pushed all the way to the northeastern shore of the lake.

And Rosemary and the other passengers? Well, first off, upon deboarding the disabled plane on the evening of April 30, the Army colonel with the nurses assumed command of the group. Historian Norman wrote:
[Norman] “The colonel … did not think the BPY could be repaired; therefore, he wanted the group to hide until MacArthur sent a rescue plane or boat. Everyone agreed with the colonel’s decision, and together they went inland to seek a hiding place. They made their way to an old hotel a safe distance from the Japanese lines.”
[Narrator] Here’s the thing…I don’t think the group had access to communication lines with American forces on Mindanao. So, their information regarding front lines and Japanese advances would have been…minimal. And I find myself wondering what information that colonel thought he knew regarding Japan’s advance and MacArthur’s ability to send rescue.
I mean, from what I’ve read, it was pretty clear Corregidor and the rest of The Philippines was about ready to fall to Japan. The PBY planes that came to get the nurses and others was the last chance – and I think they knew that. So deciding to wait for MacArthur to send another rescue party – well that just doesn’t seem to have been a plausible line of thinking. But I digress.

That first night (April 30), the group made their way to a hotel in a nearby town. And when the plane was ready to leave the next afternoon – they couldn’t be found.
And this is where the story gets a little fuzzy. Norman wrote that they
[Norman] “tried for almost two weeks to evade the Japanese, wandering from one house or farm to another until, at last, there was no place left to hide. The group surrendered to a unit of the Japanese army about midday on May 11.”
[Narrator] I wish I had more details about their movements during this time. One source suggests that they tried to get to a US airfield in the northern part of the island. And that, by travelling only at night, they eventually got there – but it had already been taken over by Japanese forces. I’m not certain if they really did head for an airfield. The Del Monte airfield, which was the only US airfield in north Mindanao, was roughly 50 miles/80 km, as the crow flies, northeast of Lake Lanao – and that’s cutting straight through the jungle. They could have gone along the road, but that journey would have been 100 miles/160 km and taken them along the coast and through enemy lines.
Here’s what Rosemary herself said about those 11 days on Mindanao:
[Hogan] “We hid for a few days in a ranch house, but when we learned of the [entire US] surrender [of The Philippines], we went to a Philippine hospital and gave ourselves up. We helped in this hospital from April until September, when we were transferred to Santo Tomas Internment Camp—in Manila.”

[Narrator] Back home in Oklahoma, while Rosemary was working at an enemy-controlled hospital on Mindanao, her brothers and sisters learned about the successful evacuation of nurses from Corregidor to Australia and that another plane carrying nurses was “forced down enroute to Australia, and that the passengers had joined Allied forces in hills fighting in the Southwest Pacific area.”
Because there was no word from Australia about her safe arrival, Lt. Hogan’s siblings assumed she was fighting in the hills on a Pacific Island somewhere.
Well, whoever relayed this information to them got some of the story – which is about on par 1940s wartime information (and for 2020s information as well). And, actually, despite the inaccuracies, the siblings obtained much more information about their sister than did most families whose loved ones were in The Philippines when Bataan fell.

After working about 4 months in the Mindanao hospital, in September 1942, Lt. Hogan and her fellow nurses were transported by ship back to Manila and incarcerated at Santo Tomas Civilian Internment Camp, where they were reunited with the nurses left behind on Corregidor, who had established a camp hospital. Rosemary recalled:
[Hogan] “At Santo Thomas, we had our own rules, our own mayor and councilmen, our own police force etc. Of course, in charge was the Japanese commandant.
“The camp wasn’t as bad as the people at home thought it was. Everyone had a job to do and so there was not a serious morale problem. We all had our jobs to do—prepare and cook food, do KP, perform room details. In the spare time there were things that could be done to pass the time; there was bridge, chess, tournaments of both of these, and sports. Church services were held for each of the denominations.
“The food wasn’t too bad during the first year, even though there were only two meals a day. Toward the end, our meals became very meager—for breakfast, we would have rice and hot tea; at night, we would have rice and a green vegetable. The few times we had meat, it was in a stew. During those first month, the Japanese would let Filipino vendors bring in fruit and vegetables. There was one time when we even had ice cream and candy, but this was only at the beginning.
“If anyone got special treatment, it was the children. They received extra food and had their own hospital and schools, the latter covering all the grades through high school.”
[Narrator] I had the privilege of speaking with a great-niece of Rosemary’s -- Mary Glover – who told me:
[Mary] “She never talked much about her being a prisoner of war. The only story that I really remember her telling me was that they weren’t fed well. Well, she said one day she on one of the other girls happened to see a bird nest up in a tree. And they thought, ‘Hmmm, I wonder if there's any eggs in that bird nest.’ Well, there were a few eggs in there. They had not had eggs or any sort of good food and quite a long time. So they confiscated the bird eggs. And one of the girls had a little bit of cold cream in a jar, and they put a little cold cream in a pan and they scrambled up those eggs. And she said that was the most delightful thing. Actually, almost unbelievable, to them.”

[Narrator] The main medical problems at Santo Tomas were caused by diseases – the tropical climate, crowded housing, and lack of food led to malaria, dysentery, diarrhea, beriberi, and malnutrition. Lt Hogan recalled:
[Hogan] “To combat them, we were allowed to send committees into Manila to get available drugs from drugstores. When we got them, the foreign labels on the bottles would have to be translated into English. However, there was neither atabrine nor anti-biotics. The drugs that we did get had to be used very sparingly.”
[Narrator] Red Cross packages arrived in 1943, and Rosemary thought
[Hogan] “They were wonderful. They contained blood plasma, vitamins, liver extract, materials for clothing—even some clippers for our hair.”
[Narrator] But those supplies lasted only so long, and the internees resorted to other means, such as making their own clothing out of scraps of any material they could find. Rosemary described fashioning a pair of underwear from a man’s undershirt. She used a piece of a worn-out blood plasma tube for elastic and sewed them with raveled out thread – which I think means she unraveled another cloth to use the thread for sewing.
She had to stand in line for everything at Santo Tomas. The internees were housed in a large 3-story building that had been a university pre-war. There were two bathrooms for every floor, 5 toilets per bathroom, as well as 5 showers and three wash basins per room. 4,000 people relied on these meagre facilities.
As American planes began flying over Manila in late 1944 and into Jan and Feb of 1945, the Santo Tomas prisoners were ordered by their guards not to look out the windows at the planes, on threat of being shot. But, the internees found a way to catch a glimpse of the heroes they’d waited so long to see. A newspaper reported:
[Newspaper] “Prisoners would lie on the floor, several deep sometimes, and look up at the skies. With luck the planes occasionally came across their range of vision.”
[Narrator] In one such rush to the floor, Rosemary wrenched her back.
[Hogan] “I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be awful to be rescued walking on crutches from this silly accident after all the narrow escapes I’ve had!”

[Narrator] On February 15, 1945, American forces arrived at the Santo Tomas gate. And Rosemary was ready for them, wearing
[Newspaper] “A neat khaki blouse and skirt had been hoarded for the occasion. When the big moment arrived, Rosemary rushed off to get properly dressed.
“Dashing around a corner in the corridor, she ran head-on into Gen. Douglas MacArthur himself.
“Standing there in a flowered cotton knee-length house coat made from materials sent by the American Red Cross, she became the first nurse to shake hands with the general.”
[Narrator] But with the Americans’ arrival also came realization of what the American people had thought happened to the imprisoned nurses. Rosemary recalled that an inebriated soldier
[Hogan] “strolled casually into our little hospital, stopped, and stared in amazement to find Army nurses there.
“Well, tell me,” he said, “how did the Japs treat you?”
“It could have been worse,” I said.
“Didn’t they do anything to you?”
“Sure. They locked us up in this place.”
Damn it,” he insisted, “I mean, did they rape you?”
[Narrator] It was the first of many similar conversations or rumors that she would grow to detest.
Nonetheless, Rosemary – after 33 months as a prisoner of war – was liberated. A few days later she was promoted to 1st Lieutenant, and within two weeks was on an airplane to San Francisco, where she spent a bit of time recuperating. During her stay there, she was awarded the Purple Heart for the wound she had suffered during the hospital bombing on Bataan. She was the only Bataan nurse to receive that medal.

After the War & Legacy
[Narrator] By mid-March 1945, Rosemary was home in Chattanooga, Oklahoma, enjoying a quiet life on an extended leave. Neighbors brought her home-made cakes, cookies, preserves, and chocolates and officially welcomed her home with a town gathering at the local schoolhouse.
She was the hometown darling, and the local newspaper – from then on – covered her military promotions and stations, often referring to her as “Our Angel of Bataan.” The community was quite proud of Miss Rosemary Hogan.
But there was also a downside to returning home. Rosemary became annoyed with questions about how the Japanese treated her and the other nurses – questions that veiled the true question: Had the Japanese violated them? She wrote a frank answer:
[Hogan] “I never heard the ghastly rumors about myself until I had been home a week. Then a girlfriend said:
“’I guess you’ve heard all the frightful things that have been said about you?’
“I had not, but it seemed that an officer from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where I had been stationed before the war, called this girl and asked her, ‘Did you hear what happened to Rosemary?’ That was when I was supposed to have lost my arms and tongue. ‘I know it’s true,’ he said, ‘because I checked it.’”
[Narrator] He checked it? I just have no words for some people’s boasting and gossip. For the record, as far as I’ve found, none of the Bataan or Corregidor nurses ever reported being sexually assaulted by their Japanese captors.

Moving to a happier topic, one of the bright sides of returning home was being with family. Here’s Rosemary’s niece Mary again:
[Mary] “I was just an infant when she returned. My mother had me wrapped in a blanket. And she came to visit. I apparently needed a diaper change. And my mother took me into another room in the house and she followed along and she gave me a once-over. She told my mother, ‘This baby is perfect. She doesn't even have a birthmark.’ And my mother remembered that about her and repeated it many times. Anyway, that was my first encounter with Aunt Rosemary. I don't remember it, but I have heard about it several times.”

[Narrator] In 1947, the United Staes Air Force was formed as a separate branch of the United States Armed Forces – and Rosemary decided to become one of the first Air Force nurses. She continued to climb the ranks, and by 1955 she was a Lt. Col. That same year, she became part of the Headquarters Inspector General group –a member of the medical team that traveled world-wide to inspect Air Force medical facilities. Her first duty was two months in England, Scotland, and continental Europe.
This position allowed her to return -- with a medical inspection team -- to The Philippines, where she had worked before WW2. She enjoyed her time there, recalling that
[Hogan] “There were some familiar sights; but not many. Everything had changed”
[Narrator] In August 1956, she celebrated 20 years of military service.
[Hogan] “Being an air force nurse is an opportunity which is unparalleled—there’s literally a world of experiences and travel. With the exception of those 33 months at Santo Tomas, I’d like to do it all over again.”
[Narrator] Nearly 2 years later, Rosemary became the first nurse in the Air Force Medial Corps to attain the rank of full colonel.
Colonel Hogan was Chief of the Nurse Division, of the Office of the Tactical Air Command Surgeon, at Langley AFB in Virginia. Her niece Mary shared that the family
[Mary] “was pretty proud of the fact that she was the first woman to attain the status of colonel.
“There used to be a program on TV, ‘What's My Line?’ She was on that program one time. And of course they blindfolded the big celebrities who did the guessing because she came out in her colonel uniform. She just about had them fooled, until one asked just the right question. And I think they figured out that she was a military officer. The whole family got the biggest kick out of that. And she had a ball doing that.”
[Narrator] For those of us not alive in the 1950s and ‘60s – like me – “What’s My Line?” was a game show where a group of celebrity panelists would question contestants in order to determine their occupation.
I tried to find the clip of Rosemary on the show, but unfortunately haven’t been able to do so.
Here’s niece Mary again:
[Mary] “There was something about her that when she came into the room, she lit it up. She had a, I don't know how to describe it, she had a presence. And she had a smile that was just incredible. The laugh that she had was, it was not a silly laugh, it was a wholesome laugh.
“She enjoyed music and I learned to play the piano and the organ when I was young. When she would visit, one of my aunts had an organ in her house, and she would love for me to play it. Sometimes she even sang along. So that was kind of cool.”
“She seemed like she was always happy. She just made everybody feel good.”

[Narrator] On Veterans’ Day 1961, 49-year-old Rosemary married widower and fellow Air Force serviceman Arnold Luciano at Langley AFB in Virginia.
[Mary] “Luciano was a cool guy. I think maybe they had known each other in the past. I'm pretty sure he was a widower. And they just enjoyed the same things and had mutual friends. I think it was just a matter of being able to travel together and do things together more conveniently. I thought he was a pretty cool guy and they suited one another. After she was hospitalized for the cancer, he was almost always there when he went to visit her.”
[Narrator] Rosemary left the Air Force in 1962 and, sadly, not too long after that, was diagnosed with colon cancer, which eventually spread to other parts of her body.
She entered an Air Force Hospital near San Antonio, Texas, in February or March 1964 where her niece Mary was able to visit her.
[Mary] “She came to visit quite often when I was in high school. That was when she developed cancer. So, she came to San Antonio for treatments and for her care. So we got to see her a little more often. My brother and I went up to see her at the hospital and it was in her last days.”
“She always looked great. She always had a smile and she welcomed us. In my naiveite, I thought that she was going to be okay. But of course she didn't make it.”

[Narrator] 52-year-old Rosemary Luciano passed away at 1:30 pm on June 24, 1964.
She was the 7th of her 11 siblings to pass away. Most of the Hogan brothers and sisters died young. Only 4 of the 11 lived beyond age 60.
Rosemary’s local hometown newspaper, The Lawton Constitution, published her death announcement and life retrospective on page 1 of the Thursday, June 25, 1964, paper. The story was placed above the masthead, making it the paper’s lead story. The title read:
[Newspaper] “Col. Rosemary Hogan Luciano, Our ‘Angel of Bataan’, Dies of Cancer in Texas”

Colonel Rosemary Hogan Luciano was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. During her military service, she had received the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, a Presidential Unit Citation, and Philippines Republic Presidential Unit Citation. Which made her, according to that hometown newspaper article,
[Newspaper] “One of the most honored and decorated nurses of the war.”
[Narrator] Truly a remarkable woman and American hero who faced unbeatable odds and came out champion.

Exactly a week after Rosemary “escaped” Corregidor on that PBY plane, the island was invaded by Japanese landing forces. Within hours, the remaining Army nurses—and everyone else on the island – were POWs.

More on that next time.
This is Left Behind.

Outro
Thanks for listening! You can find pictures, maps, and sources about Rosemary Hogan’s story 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 nurses in The Philippines during WW2, I suggest the book We Band of Angels, by Elizabeth Norman.
If you enjoy this podcast, please hit that like and subscribe button so you’ll know when I drop a new episode. And consider leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Left Behind is researched, written, and produced by me, Anastasia Harman.
- Voice overs by: Emily Herenberg, Robyn Sutherland, Tyler Harman, Jake Harenberg, and Brooke Davis
- Special thanks to: Mary Glover for her time and assistance with this episode.
- Dramatizations are based on historical research, although some creative liberty is taken with dialogue.
And I’ll be back next time with the front-line Marines who met the landing Japanese.

Sources

“Area Army Nurse Going to Europe,” 09 Mar 1955, page 7, The Lawton Constitution, Lawton, Oklahoma, online at Newspapers.com, accessed 25 November 2023.
Bill Crawford, ““Col. Rosemary Hogan Luciano, Our ‘Angel of Bataan’, Dies of Cancer in Texas,” 25 Jun 1964, Page 1, The Lawton Constitution, Lawton, Oklahoma, online at Newspapers.com
“Chattanooga Girl Is Given Purple Heart; Commended,” 01 Mar 1945, page 5, Lawton News-Review, Lawton, Oklahoma, online at Newspapers.com, accessed 16 November 2023.
“Chatty’s ‘Angel of Bataan’ Looks back over 15 Years,” 06 Sep 1956, page 6, online at Lawton News-Review at Newspapers.com, accessed 18 November 2023.
Elizabeth M. Norman, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan (New York City: Random House, 1999), 17-19, 54-55, 119, 142-53, 161-63, 316, 439.
“Former Chattanoogan Given Colonel Rank as TAC Nurse,” 10 Apr 1958, page 12, Lawton Morning Press, Lawton, Oklahoma, online at Newspapers.com, accessed 16 Nov 2023.
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Frank Hewlett, “Bataan Heroes Surrendered after 15 Days and Nights of Battling Impossible Odds,” 12 Apr 1942, page 1, The Lawton Constitution, Lawton, Oklahoma, online at Newspapers.com, accessed 24 November 2023.
James Allen Trail (1876-1927) - Find a Grave Memorial, accessed 15 November 2023.
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Rosemary Hogan and Arnold Luciano, 11 November 1961, “Virginia, U.S., Marriage Records, 1936-2014,” database online: Ancestry.com, Lehi, Utah, 2015, Original data: Virginia, Marriages, 1936-2014, Virginia Department of Health, Richmond, Virginia, accessed 13 November 2023
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