Browse Items (57 total)

In this photo, 2nd Lt. Ann Ruth Orrick, an army nurse in the Ninth US Air Force, is fixing her hair in a strangely random outdoor vanity. Orrick, stationed in the Middle East, specifically Bengasi, Cirenaica, Libya, was lucky to have access to a…

US Army Cadet Nurse Corps member Alice Kanagaki's experience as a nurse during the war was drastically different from her counterparts across the nation. Kanagaki, a young Japanese American woman born and raised in Vacaville, California, spent the…

This photograph shows US Army Nurse and instructor of new recruits, Dorothy Managan (on gurney), smiling with nursing recruits as they practice setting a fracture and carrying a patient on a gurney. These kinds of activities were exactly what these…

This image shows a group of smiling navy nurses standing on the deck of the USS Relief in 1941, a navy hospital ship in World War II. It is clear that these women are wearing life jackets and other protective gear necessary when risking death by…

This group, part of a contingent of 15 army nurses serving at the segregated all African American 268th Station Hospital in Australia in 1943, is shown joyously opening their first batch of mail from home. One of the most meaningful things a nurse…

This is a picture taken of the medical crew, including navy nurses, aboard the USS Comfort, AH-6 hospital ship headed to the Pacific Theater in 1944. Built by the US Navy, this ship could hold up to 400 patients at once. Ships like this one were just…

This poster was one of many pieces of propaganda used to encourage American women to serve as nurses in World War II. The nurse shown on the poster, circulated in 1943, represents the misguided view of military nursing that many Americans held at the…

Contrary to popular belief, American nurses in World War II had to deal with imminent danger not only for troops, but for themselves as well. These women were trained in keeping themselves safe, and had to use methods such as the one shown in the…

This image shows US Navy Flight Nurse Ensign Miriam R. Serrick, from North Carolina, giving a patient a penicillin injection during an evacuation flight in 1945.

Penicillin, discovered by bacteriologist Alexander Fleming in 1928, was used…

This group of Navy nurses is working to organize and distribute mail at Pearl Harbor in 1944. They wear the traditional spotless white uniforms of Navy nurses. These women had multiple duties they had to perform, and some of their daily tasks were…