Tripler Hospital on Pearl Harbor Day and the Nurses Who Answered the Call

Story by Janet A. Aker

Defense Health Agency

World War II became real to many Americans on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, when 350 Japanese planes staged two air attacks on the U. S. military in Pearl Harbor and surrounding bases on Oahu, Hawaii. The attacks that morning took the U.S. Armed Forces by complete surprise.

“In the end, the U.S. would suffer the loss of 2,403 sailors, airmen, Marines, soldiers and civilians, and the battleships of America’s Pacific Fleet would lie at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. America’s air power lay in scattered ruins on Oahu’s airfields,” according to the official history of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

Tripler Army Hospital was one of three military hospitals on the island overwhelmed with casualties.

Army Nurse Kathryn Doody Realizes It’s War

Eighty-two U.S. Army nurses were assigned to the three hospitals on Pearl Harbor Day, according to the U.S. Army’s 1972 commemorative book, “The Army Nurse Corps.”

One of those was Kathryn M. Doody, a farm girl from the Eastern shore of Maryland. Doody sailed to Honolulu in September 1941 to report to duty at Tripler after joining up in 1940 “because I was anxious to see the world,” she said in a May 27, 2004, video collected by the Library of Congress.
“I hadn’t been there very long before the bombs descended,” Doody recalled.

Doody was asleep in the nurses’ quarters at Tripler on a calm, semi-cloudy Sunday morning. “They woke me up, the noise. And I thought, ‘What in the world can this be?’ ‘Cause I never heard any racket that was so profound.”
When the night nurse came off duty, Doody recounted she said: “’Girls, you know what’s happening? … The island of Oahu has been attacked by the enemy, Japan.’”

Doody dressed hastily in her white tropical nurses’ uniform after being called by the nurse in the operating room, who said: “’Miss Doody, would you mind coming over to the operating room? They’re bringing all these men in from Hickam Field.’”

“I got in the hospital, into the operating room,” Doody recalled. “They had as many stretchers as they could get in one room. You know, all the rooms were filled up with wounded men.”

Tripler General Hospital at Fort Shafter was the largest military hospital in Hawaii, and, along with the 500-bed Army Schofield Barracks Station Hospital, could accommodate up to 1,450 patients.

Doody’s Day and the Next

One of Doody’s first operations was a traumatic amputation, and she feared she would faint from the sound of the bone saw.

“We were operating on a fellow that had had a fractured leg above the knee, and they were going to amputate that. So, the largest bone I had seen amputated in my … career was a finger or a toe. And I said to myself, ‘The sound of sawing bone, I don’t think I can stand, so I’m going to faint.’ And I never fainted in my life before.”

At some point, a Japanese plane flew over, “and we heard the bullets hitting the pavement. And the doctor that was working ducked his head … [and] said, ‘That was a close one.’ But none of it hit the hospital.”

She worked in the operating room from shortly after the attacks began until midnight under blackout conditions when the nurses were sent back to their dark quarters to return the next morning.

Wounded men and those recuperating from surgery were left on the floor overnight because it was too dark to move them, Doody recalled.

On the morning of Dec. 8, “we started all over again, you know, with the rooms being filled with wounded soldiers.”

The Casualties

More than 60% of casualties had suffered burns caused by either burning fuel oil in the harbor or flash burns caused by exposure to high-heat or very close bomb detonations, according to the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command in a report on medical activities at Pearl Harbor.

In addition, the casualties had machine gun wounds, traumatic amputations, penetrating abdominal wounds, lacerations, and compound fractures. Almost all suffered from shock.

“Tripler Hospital was overwhelmed with hundreds of casualties suffering from burns and shocks,” according to a historical account of Dec. 7 from the nurses’ commemorative book.

“Nurses, physicians, and medical corpsmen triaged, stabilized, and transported those likely to survive, while staging the dead behind the building,” according to the Army’s historical records. Nurses used their lipsticks to mark the foreheads of the wounded as to whether they had received morphine or a tetanus shot.

The Hospital Experience

“From their first realization of an enemy attack, the doctors, dentists, nurses, and corpsmen were unexcelled in personal bravery, in determination, in resourcefulness, and in their capacity to put into practice previously formulated plans,” the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command wrote in its account of the attack.

Both Schofield and Hickam hospitals took direct hits from the Japanese, who bombed and then strafed American bomber and fighter planes and personnel from very low altitudes, eyewitnesses said.

U.S. Army nurse Myrtle M. Watson was the only nurse in the orthopedic ward at Schofield Hospital during the attack. As the bombing started, “she helped protect patients by piling mattresses around them for cover,” according to an account from the Army.

“For three days, Watson continued working around the clock, with only a skeleton crew to assist” her and only a dim flashlight at night. “Collaboration between tireless doctors, nurses, and corpsmen was key to providing life-saving surgery and care,” the Army history said.

“The heroism of the drivers that were killed that day trying to speed those dying men to the hospital will probably never be told … All of this time, planes were diving low over Wheeler and as each plane pulled out of its dive, we could easily see those deadly bombs hurl themselves on their way to someone’s death,” according to eyewitness Don Hall, who was stationed with the Army Judge Advocate’s Office at Pearl Harbor.

Hickam Hit Hard

Casualties at Hickam “were also heavy, particularly among men who had taken refuge in the hangars after the first attack,” according to a U.S. Army account of the attacks.

U.S. Army Nurse Corps First Lt. Annie Fox was the chief nurse at Hickam Field Hospital, which was converted to an evacuation hospital during the attack.

“Fox assembled the nurses and volunteers to help care for the wounded,” according to the Army account.

“She assisted doctors with surgical procedures while the battle outside continued. When the wounded began to arrive at an overwhelming rate, she administered pain medicine and prepped patients for transfer to other hospitals.”

Although herself uninjured, Fox became the first woman in WW II to be awarded a Purple Heart in 1942 for “her fine example of calmness, courage, and leadership, which was of great benefit to the morale of all she came in contact with.” In 1944, the commendation was changed to a Bronze Star for valor.

A few minutes after the initial attack on Hickam, about 25 dive bombers hit at the hangars at Wheeler Field, and heavy casualties occurred when one bomb exploded in an adjoining barracks, according to the Army history.

After the bombing, the Japanese planes circled back at very low altitudes to machine-gun the pursuit craft parked (as at Hickam) in close formation in front of the hangars, and, as they circled, some of the enemy strafed nearby Schofield Barracks.

The Reckoning: A ‘Day Which Will Live in Infamy’

The surprise attacks lasted one hour and 15 minutes. There were 159 U.S. aircraft damaged; 169 destroyed; 16 ships were damaged; and three were destroyed.

Killed in the first wave were 1,177 officers and crew of the USS Arizona, nearly half of the total number who died that day. The battleship sank after taking a direct hit from an armor-piercing bomb that struck the ship’s forward magazine, causing a massive explosion that blew the ship out of the water “at the stern almost 90 degrees,” according to an eyewitness, retired 804th Engineer Aviation Battalion Allen Bodenlos. “The explosion was so tremendous, the ground where we were shook so violently, it almost knocked me over.”

The White House knew of the attacks almost immediately. The next day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his famous “Day of Infamy” speech to Congress and formally declared war on Japan and Germany.

Doody, a Model for Military Nursing

Like many veterans, especially of WW II, Doody was reticent to talk about the horrors she saw while treating the injured and claimed she didn’t recall events or feelings. She was 87 when her video recollections were recorded. “I have this calmness about not being upset or perturbed,” is how she explained her personality. As for the wartime nursing experience, she was modest. “It’s just what you were trained to do.”