Navy Medicine July-August 1942
Jennifer Mitchum

In May and June, Allied forces saw two impressive victories in the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. Midway cost the Japanese plenty, but not enough to make them close up shop. Instead, they were reinforcing their forces and establishing strong military facilities throughout the South and Central Pacific. These moves
prompted "Operation Watchtower", the U.S. counterattack in the Solomons Islands. This was the first
large-scale amphibious landing by Allied forces in the Pacific and the first American land offensive of the war.(1)

On 7 August, Marines landed on Florida, Tulagi, Gavutu-Tanambogo, and Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands under the cover of naval surface and air forces. On Guadalcanal, marines landed virtually unopposed. The Japanese, taken by surprise, had left in a hurry.

Across the strait, approximately 20 miles to the north, the story was different. The 7,500 Marines who landed on Florida, Tulagi, and Gavutu-Tanambogo faced tough resistance from Japanese troops. A significant
number of casualties accumulated and a reported one man out of every ten was a casualty.(2)

With the exception of a few isolated nests of snipers, forces had gained control of Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo by 2200 on 8 Aug despite difficulties. Estimated Japanese losses were 1,500 killed, 23 captured, and 70 escaped to Florida Island.(3) Our casualties were comparatively small - 8 officers and 100 enlisted men killed, missing or died of wounds, 7 officers and 133 men wounded, a total of 248 casualties in taking
the three islands.(4)

Medical personnel accompanying Marine units ashore made unceasing efforts to get wounded to safety and care for them. Company aid men, maintaining a position about 200 yards behind the front lines,
administered plasma and morphine and applied dressings and splints. They landed with and closely behind the initial assault wave and were the first line of Navy medical care. Some waves later, battalion aid medical
personnel and equipment arrived.

In the initial stages of the campaign, battalion and regimental medical sections carried only combat medical equipment and supplies. These units usually consisted of two medical officers and about 20 hospital
corpsmen. Upon their arrival, stretcher parties, formed largely from rear echelon troops, brought wounded back to battalion aid stations, which were set up about 600 yards behind the line, moving forward as the line
moved.

The last link in the Navy medical care chain was the medical companies which consisted of six
medical officers and about 80 corpsmen. These companies were divided into three sections - collecting and sorting, hospital, and evacuation. Collecting went inland to battalion aid stations and evacuated casualties to the beach. They were then loaded aboard boats and carried to transports anchored offshore which took them to medical facilities on nearby islands. Field hospitals weren't erected in the early stages of the campaign because of daily aerial bombing and artillery fire. Several overall problems hampered Navy medicine's
effectiveness in the initial stages of the campaign. One was communication. Patient evacuation from beaches was often delayed due to a lack of communication facilities and centralized control. Control boats had been provided but communication didn't exist between them and beach medical sections. Problems also revolved around the coordination of evacuating ships. Medical facilities aboard some ships were disproportionately overcrowded compared to others because of a lack of coordination. For instance, some ships didn't fly the "Mike" flag indicating that they could transport casualties.

Enemy Number One

Navy medicine faced several challenges once ashore as well. When forces reached the deserted Japanese camp on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 8 Aug, they found a trove of useful supplies and
equipment including food but also plenty of refuse. For example, the camp, representative of camps
elsewhere, was sweltering with flies and mosquitos. This, in part from conditions prevailing in rain forests as well as because of the latrines full of waste left behind by the enemy. Thus, sanitation was a major problem. Personnel had to destroy these and construct new fly-proof facilities. In addition, they had to find ways to
dispose of garbage in which they ruled out burning fearing that the smoke would be a beacon for enemy air forces.

Such unsanitary conditions invite diseases and illnesses and catarrhal fever, dengue, and malaria were soon evident. Malaria appeared about two weeks after the initial landings. By the end of August, 22 men had been added to the First Marine Division sick list for malaria on Guadalcanal and this number was climbing
steadily.(5)

A number of factors influenced the escalation of malaria cases. For one, many men lost or discarded of their head and bed mosquito nets during landing operations leaving them nearly defenseless. Furthermore, line personnel and men were more concerned with killing the enemy and avoiding being killed than with adhering to preventive medicine. Moreover, troops had to maintain good mobility and had to be able to carry the bulk of their livelihood on their backs as they roamed through the steamy heat and rain. Thus, they
prioritized their essential items and anti-mosquito equipment was not high on the list.

Hospitals Answer the Call

Transports and other vessels carried battle wounded to Navy medical facilities located on islands behind battle lines. Base Hospital No. 2 and Mobile Hospital No. 3 were already established in Efate Island, New Hebrides, and American Samoa at Tutuila respectively. At the start of the campaign, Mobile Hospital No. 4 was being erected in Auckland, New Zealand, and Mobile Hospital No. 6 arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on 7 Aug. Housed in a partially completed 300-bed Army convalescent hospital in a locality known as Silver Stream, Mobile Hospital No. 6 personnel received their first patient on 8 Aug. Likewise, most
hospitals operating in the South Pacific received patients while they were being erected and expanded at a rate in which to meet the growing need for beds.

Navy Medicine at Sea

Since the beginning of the war, Navy medical expertise saved countless lives at sea. This campaign was no exception. Solace (AH-5) picked up her first load of casualties, which came mainly from U.S. cruisers shot up in the Battle of Savo Island, from Guadalcanal and Tulagi on about 16 Aug. Medical consultants and staffers sorted the casualties and determined which would go to Army facilities and which would go to Mobile Hospital No. 4, Auckland, New Zealand. Personnel performed several surgical and orthopedic procedures en route and three days later Solace arrived at Auckland. Personnel disembarked the 360 wounded and
transferred them to the mobile hospital.(6) Solace remained in port until 25 Aug and then sailed for Espiritu Santo. Before the end of the Guadalcanal campaign, Solace would have made several trips like this one.

Navy medicine's presence was vital aboard other sea vessels including submarines as demonstrated in the Makin Island expedition of 17 Aug in which 220 Marines, under the leadership of LCOL Evans E. Carlson, raided enemy shore installations to distract the Japanese from American landings in the Solomons. After nearly two days of fierce fighting, the raid proved to be successful for a task force of Japanese cruisers,
transports, and destroyers en route to Guadalcanal changed course for the Gilbert Islands.

The Makin Island raid, however, was costly and Marine casualties totaled 51, of whom 18 had been killed, 14 were wounded, 12 were missing and 7 had "drowned trying to buck the surf."(7) They boarded the
submarines Nautilus (SS-168) and Argonaut (SF-7) and headed for Pearl Harbor. There were seven
wounded aboard each submarine. CAPT John M. Haines commented about the Navy medical service, "...The operations by the surgeons [Lieutenants William B. McCracken and Stephen L. Stigler] were carried out under the most difficult circumstances with relatively crude arrangements. But such was the skill of these two
surgeons that not a single one of the casualties, to my knowledge, subsequently died."(8)

Advance Base Units: Acorns, Lions, and Cubs

The establishment of advanced base units was first considered in 1941 in connection with the
Lend-Lease program and the development of bases in the Western Hemisphere. But when war broke out, the material and equipment assembled for Lend-Lease bases were diverted and shipped over seas. As a security measure late in 1941, these bases were given code names while they were being assembled. Destroyer bases were called LIONS and seaplane bases as CUBS. A LION was a unit designed to provide all necessary
services, including medical and hospital, for an advanced base of 50,000 or more men. CUBS were designed to serve smaller advanced bases. Sometimes a scion from a LION became a CUB. In addition, there were ACORNS, highly mobile units that provided shorebased aircraft groups in amphibious forces and advance bases with necessary support and services upon landing in combat zones. The medical component of ACORNS provided a 100-bed mobile dispensary which was divided into two echelons.

LION One, under the command of CAPT J.E. Boak, USN, was commissioned at Moffett Field Naval Air Station, CA, on 15 July 42. CAPT Lucius W. Johnson, MC, USN, was in charge of its medical
department. The medical unit was organized much like a medical division afloat with department heads
having latitude in planning and all plans being coordinated by the division commander. Navy reservist comprised the majority the unit's officers.

LION One medical personnel performed diverse tasks including having sick call, transferring patients to the Mare Island Hospital, providing dental services, doing physical and mental examinations, and lecturing LION One personnel about their mission and related policies. Because the medical unit would be divided into
possibly three hospitals and several dispensaries once overseas, medical personnel received special training in
groups on the rapid handling of shock, transfusions, and burns. All hands were also trained in first aid and many took courses on gas warfare, small arms, and anti-aircraft. Medical and dental officers had to qualify as first aid instructors and hospital corpsmen received training in several other areas like in operating room
techniques and anesthesiology.

CUB One was also organized at NAS Moffett Field, CA, on 15 July. Is hospital section was staffed with 27 medical officers, three Hospital Corps warrant officers, 200 enlisted personnel and equipment and
supplies for establishing a 200-bed hospital facility. On 21 July, CUB One sailed for Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides and immediately began landing operations upon their arrival on 11 Aug. Within the first 48 hours, the majority of the hospital supplies had been brought ashore. Personnel began erecting living quarters and shelter for the landed gear and subsequently CAPT Joel J. White, MC, USN, commanding officer, selected a site for the hospital. The site, gently sloping terrain about 20 feet above sea level, oval in shape and approximately 100 yards in depth by 400 yards in length, was considered most suitable for establishing a sick bay because it was near the center of operations and could be well camouflaged from air and sea.

To meet the medical needs of those in intense combat to the north of the hospital camp, CAPT White, six medical officers, one warrant officer, and 40 corpsmen transferred to these areas. At 6-week intervals
members of this group rotated with those the hospital to reduce hardships. On the 15th day ashore, 35 men,
many seriously burned, were brought to the hospital from a surface vessel. They were housed in the only erected quonset hut and a hospital tent. The hospital's first fatality was among this group - a man comatosed upon arrival suffering from multiple injuries, 3rd degree burns and blast injuries. The hospital compound expanded as the need for beds grew.

Bilibid

Navy medical personnel at Bilibid Prison in the Philippines were hard at work as well operating the hospital they had established there in June 1942. On 2 July, 1,277 prisoners captured at Corregidor arrived at Bilibid prison.(9) Hospital personnel immediately began classifying them as not sick at all, light sick, and heavy sick. Two hundred and eighty members of this Corregidor group were classified as patients. This brought the patient census to about 1040. Navy medical personnel - 15 doctors, 5 dentists, a warrant officer, 47 hospital corpsmen - who came over with the group from Corregidor assisted the hospital staff. Subsequently, the majority of them were added to the hospital roll raising its staff total to about 200. The Corregidor Navy medical group brought with them many critically needed supplies and medicines including a dental outfit, operating table, and X-ray machine.

Army and Filipino nurses came over from Corregidor as well. The Army nurses had been sent to Santo Tomas internment camp where the Navy nurses captured at Canacao, P.I., were interned. The Filipino nurses remained at Bilibid but like many other Filipino prisoners they were soon released home. A few days
after the groups arrival, the Japanese transferred about 500 to other internment camps, most of them going to the one in Cabanatuan which was about 60 miles north of Manila.

All American internees suffered from malnutrition and nearly all suffered from one or more of the
following - dysentery, beri-beri, malaria, gunshot wounds, bone fractures, contusions, tuberculosis, scurvy, dengue, xerophthalmia (dug thickened lusterless condition of the eyeball resulting from severe deficiency of vitamin A, jaundice, and hypoproteinemia syndrome with varying levels of bodily damage because of a
protein deficiency in diet.(10)

Periodically members of work details came to Bilibid. They suffered from malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and other diseases. They told stories about the adverse living conditions and brutal treatment that
prevailed in the work camps. For example, they told had to cook moldy, worm-filled rice in wheel barrows and were beaten if they weren't working hard or fast enough.

Although Navy medical personnel at Bilibid were not usually assigned to work details, they were not exempt from brutal treatment by their captors. According to Dr. Hjalmar A. Erickson, USN, some common Japanese torture methods were the water and hot plate treatments. When a prisoner received the water
treatment, Japanese guards would ram a rubber tube down his throat as he lay on the ground. Then when the water came out through the pores, the guards would remove the tube and jump up and down on the man's bare
stomach.(11) A prisoner receiving the hot plate treatment was forced to strip and stand on a wet metal
plate. Then Japanese soldiers would prick his flesh with electrically-charged wires.(12)

Medical personnel made several improvements at the Bilibid hospital. They fixed roofs, plumbing
fixtures and electric light outlets, constructed open latrines, and set up a galley, an operating room, X-ray dark room and a special diet kitchen to prepare any extra food for gravely ill patients.(13)(14)

Nurses at Santo Tomas

Army nurses coming over from Corregidor joined the 11 Navy nurses, who had been stationed at USNH Canacao when it was bombed in December 1941, at the University of Santo Tomas. The university, consisting of about 50 acres and several buildings, was one of three civilian internment camps set up by the Japanese on Luzon. It was the largest of the camps and served as a model for a camp later set up at Los Banos. In addition to the nurses, there were about 4500 internees. The Army nurses were housed in the Santa Catalina dormitory which was in close proximity of the hospital and assumed administration of the hospital.

The Navy nurses had been interned there since March. When they arrived, they found a little hospital housed in what had been a mechanical engineering building. Lacking beds, patients brought their own. Internees worked daily for two to four hours and then stood in line for food. Nurse Dorothy Still Danner recalled how some internees were fortunate to have food and other items tossed over the fence to them. "There were those who had servants and the servants would bring them cooked food in these little
containers...and we'd see everything from mattresses to bedsteads to the whole bit going over the fence."(15)

Santo Tomas was a unique camp in that an executive committee made up of internees presided over the
internal affairs of the camp. This internal governing body consisted of five or six members and a chairman. In addition, the camp's commandant and guards were Japanese businessmen instead of members of the
Japanese Army. "They [the guards] were not like the guards in the POW camps. In fact, they would be out there playing with the kids. They seem to have a liking for children. They would play ball with them...some of them would take the youngsters out and by them candies and ice cream..." said nurse Danner.(16)

Elsewhere

As activity in the South Pacific escalated, so did Navy medical activity elsewhere. Hospitals along the west coast were taking additional measures to insure that there would be adequate space and care available to the many wounded expected to be brought stateside as the Guadalcanal campaign waged on. To ease
the load on west coast hospitals, USNH Oakland, CA, was commissioned on 1 July 42. In addition, Mobile Hospital 5 had been commissioned in May and was transferred to Noumea, Caledonia on 26 Aug. Mobile Hospitals 7 and 8 were commissioned on 9 July, and 21 Aug respectively and personnel were undergoing final
training and preparations for duty overseas in the Pacific theater.

Other facilities were commissioned elsewhere. Hospitals were established in the Balboa, C.Z., and Seattle, WA, and a 325-bed dispensary was commissioned at the USN Base, Roseneath, Scotland, on 24 Aug 42.

Further Back in the War

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Foward in to the War

References

1. United States Naval Chronology World War II. Naval History Division, p 30.

2. Karig W and Purdon E. Battle Report: Pacific War, Middle Phase, p 84.

3. Ibid., p 92.

4. Ibid.

5. The History of the Medical Department of the United States Navy in World War II, Vol. I: A Narrative and Pictorial Volume, p 73.

6. "USS Solace: Chronological Chart of Ship Activities," p 2.

7. Karig W, Purdon E. Battle Report: Pacific War, Middle Phase, p 125.

8. Ibid., p 126.

9. Patton WK. "Bilibid: Account of Captivity at Manila, P.I. 1942 - 1945," p 40.

10. Smith SW. Prisoner of the Emperor, p 48.

11. Erickson HA. "Experiences of LCDR Hjalmar A. Erickson, MC, USNR," p 4.

12. Ibid.

13. At some point in their stay at Bilibid, medical personnel were paid in printed Japanese pesos. Thus, they were permitted to buy additional food from merchantmen.

14. Smith, p 56.

15. Danner DS, LT, NC, USN. Interview by Jan K. Herman, 3 & 4 December 1991. BUMED Archives.

16. Ibid.