WWII Nurses Turned Prisoners of War | The "Battling Belles" of Bataan | 6
Against The Odds
Audible
4.7 • 7.9K Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
The capture of American nurses in the Philippines is often described as an “untold story” of WWII; Dr. Elizabeth Norman set out to change that. She conducted extensive interviews with 20 of the 77 nurses who were captured. Norman collected the nurses’ firsthand accounts, and pored over their diaries and letters, weaving these sources together in her book, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan. Norman joins Cassie to delve into what it was like to care for patients while trapped in an internment camp for three years.
https://www.amazon.com/We-Band-Angels-American-Trapped/dp/0812984846
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of Against the Odds ad-free right now. |
| 0:05.3 | Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. |
| 0:11.0 | From Audible originals, I'm Cassie to Peckle, and this is Against the Odds. In fact that In 1930s America, nurses joined the military to serve their country, to get a steady paycheck and also to travel. |
| 0:49.6 | Imagine if you grew up on a small chicken farm in Massachusetts, or if you came from Elk Point, South Dakota. |
| 0:56.4 | Joining the Army or Navy was your passport to the world. And some of those nurses found |
| 1:02.3 | themselves stationed in the Philippines, ringed by Vietnam, China, and Japan. Before December 8, |
| 1:09.3 | 1941, the Philippine Islands were a dream posting, with sandy beaches, |
| 1:15.4 | tropical flowers, and dancing under the stars. But in the hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, |
| 1:22.1 | Japanese forces turned their sights on the Philippines, and the nurses found themselves caring |
| 1:27.3 | for patients |
| 1:28.0 | during intense fighting as the Japanese advanced on Manila, Baton, and Corregador. |
| 1:34.3 | A lucky few slipped through the enemy blockade, but most of the nurses became prisoners of war. |
| 1:41.2 | Dr. Elizabeth Norman is an RN and taught for many years at NYU. |
| 1:46.3 | She's the author of We Band of Angels, |
| 1:49.3 | the untold story of the American women trapped on baton. |
| 1:53.4 | Dr. Norman, welcome to Against the Odds. |
| 1:56.0 | Thanks, Cassie. Glad to be here. |
| 1:58.2 | So did I get the description about right? |
| 2:00.0 | If I were a nurse, maybe from a farm in the Midwest, |
| 2:03.5 | arriving in Manila around 1940? |
| 2:05.9 | Was this a tour in Paradise? |
| 2:08.5 | It certainly was. |
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