Echoes of Navy Medicine’s Past
Part V: World War II, Pacific Theater
By Jan Herman and Mr. Grog
December 7, 1941 still represents the U.S. Navy’s greatest disaster. In just over two hours much of the Pacific Fleet had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Even before the last Japanese aircraft had disappeared over the horizon, what the raiders had accomplished by their surprise attack was catastrophic. The pride of the fleet—seven battleships that once projected U.S. might and prestige—either lay on the bottom or were too crippled to be of any immediate use. Bombs, torpedoes, and machine guns had taken a terrible toll, with the Navy alone losing 2,008 men.
The wounded and severely burned survivors of the attack required immediate treatment, and Navy medical personnel were on the scene to provide that care. Navy medicine was represented at Pearl Harbor by a naval hospital, a partially assembled base hospital, and USS Solace (AH-5), the Navy’s newest hospital ship. Heroic efforts to save lives by the men and women who manned these facilities began minutes after the first Japanese bomb fell and never waned until the last casualty was tended to.
Physicians, nurses, and hospital corpsmen on duty at Naval Hospital Pearl Harbor performed emergency surgery, treated burns, and comforted the dying. The same scene played out aboard USS Solace, which lay at anchor just beyond “Battleship Row.” Oil-soaked sailors plucked from the harbor were taken to the hospital ship for treatment.
If the ferocity of the Japanese onslaught that followed Pearl Harbor left American forces reeling, isolated, and with scant hope of reinforcement, as an institution Navy medicine was equally stretched. Possessing only limited resources and with a presence only in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, a few small installations, and aboard the few vessels of the Asiatic Fleet, Navy medical personnel were hard pressed to treat patients as the Japanese rolled through the Pacific conquering everything before them. On 8 December 1941, World War II came to the Philippines when Japanese bombers hit Clark and Nichols Fields.
Two days later enemy bombers returned, this time destroying the Cavite Navy Yard and killing and maiming scores of Americans and Filipinos. Personnel at the nearby Cañacao Naval Hospital worked frantically to treat the wounded.
Japanese soldiers who landed on Philippine beaches in late December 1941 overwhelmed the ill-equipped and outnumbered Americans and Filipinos. By the time Japanese forces entered Manila on 1 January after GEN Douglas MacArthur declared it an open city, its battered defenders had already withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula to make their last stand.
As food and medicine ran out, disease took its toll among Bataan’s defenders. The lack of quinine for the treatment of malaria was critical, and without it many men came down with the disease. Nearly everyone suffered debilitating weakness from dysentery. Overwhelmed, Bataan’s 75,000 defenders finally surrendered in April 1942.
But out in Manila Bay, the island fortress of Corregidor still remained defiant despite a lack of food and ammunition. After a month of heavy bombardment and finally landings by Japanese forces, Corregidor surrendered on May 6th. American power in the Far East had been extinguished. Yet despite the new reality, the hundreds of medical professionals captured in the Pacific were still “Doc” or “Nurse” to their fellow POWs. Without hospitals or supplies, they continued to practice their healing art, often under unimaginable circumstances.
Some 10,000 surrendered at Corregidor after thousands of captured Americans and Filipinos had already died on the infamous Bataan Death March. Those who survived Japanese brutality and neglect now faced Japanese prison camps. For the approximately 17,000 Americans and 12,000 Filipino scouts who surrendered in the Philippines, the real ordeal had barely begun. Torture, forced labor, starvation and death became the norm in Japanese POW camps throughout the Far East.
Even though physicians and corpsmen did the best they could to provide health care in these camps, they had virtually no drugs or instruments. Malaria and dengue fever were endemic. Sanitation was non-existent and almost everybody had dysentery. Many came down with deficiency diseases like scurvy, optic neuritis, and beriberi. By the summer of 1942 the Japanese held over 50,000 prisoners, 20,000 of whom were Americans.
Eleven of these were Navy nurses from the Cañacao Naval Hospital. They spent the war in internment camps at Santo Tomás in Manila and then at Los Baños in the Philippine countryside, where they were finally liberated in February 1945. Many of their male colleagues never made it home, either succumbing to disease, starvation, brutal treatment by their captives, or dying by “friendly fire” when the so-called hell ships in which they were being transported to Japan were sunk by American submarines or aircraft.
Despite the fate of these unfortunate POWs, the war against Japan was in full swing by the summer of 1942. Reconquering territory held by the enemy was the priority and it meant fighting island by island, each one a stepping stone to Tokyo. Organizing the Navy Medical Department to care for the thousands of Navy and Marine Corps casualties generated by opposed amphibious landings, make them well, and then return them to duty was the major priority. It was in the Pacific war that Navy medicine faced its greatest challenge dealing with the aftermath of intense, bloody warfare fought far from fixed hospitals. This put enormous pressure on medical personnel closest to the front and forced new approaches to primary care and evacuation.
The most dramatic and demanding duty a Navy hospital corpsman could have was with Marine Corps units in the field. Because the Marine Corps has always relied upon the Navy for medical support, corpsmen accompanied the leathernecks and suffered the brunt of combat themselves. Many of them went unarmed, reserving their carrying strength for medical supplies.
Navy corpsmen were the first critical link in the evacuation chain. From the time a Marine was hit on an invasion beach at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and a host of other Pacific islands, the corpsman braved enemy fire to render aid. He applied a battle dressing, administered morphine, and tagged the casualty. If he were lucky, the corpsman might commandeer a litter team to move the casualty out of harm’s way and on to a battalion aid station or a collecting and clearing company for further treatment. This care would mean stabilizing the patient with plasma, serum albumin, and, later in the war, whole blood. In some cases, the casualty was then moved to the beach for evacuation. In others, the casualty was taken to a divisional hospital, where doctors performed further stabilization, including emergency surgery if needed.
Navy hospital ships, employed mainly as ambulances, provided first aid and some surgical care for the casualties’ needs while ferrying them to base hospitals in the Pacific or back to the United States for definitive care. As the war continued, air evacuation helped carry the load. Trained Navy nurses and corpsmen staffed the evacuation aircraft.
Enabling the Navy and Marine Corps to defeat the enemy also meant recognizing that disease more often than enemy action threatened this goal. During the battle for Guadalcanal in the Solomons, malaria caused more casualties than Japanese bullets. Shortly after the landings, the number of patients hospitalized with malaria exceeded all other diseases. Some units suffered over a 100 percent casualty rate with personnel being hospitalized more than once. Only when malaria and other tropical diseases were brought to heel could the Pacific war be won.
Navy medical personnel moved quickly to reduce the impact of malaria and other tropical diseases. Personnel trained in preventive medicine oiled malaria breeding areas and sprayed DDT. Physicians and corpsmen dispensed quinine and atabrine as malaria suppressants.
The Pacific war was massive in scale, fought over vast stretches of ocean. Fleets engaged one another often many miles distant from one another. Carrier-based aircraft were the surrogates that sought out the enemy and delivered the ordnance. U.S. Navy task forces consisting of carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts required their own medical support and each of these vessels had among their crews corpsmen, physicians, and, aboard the larger vessels, dentists as well. By October 1945 the fleet numbered over 7,000 vessels from landing craft and auxiliaries to the Essex class carriers and Iowa class battleships. The hundreds of vessels smaller than destroyers had their corpsmen to be sure, but the larger vessels rated physicians, corpsmen, dentists, fully equipped sick bays, battle dressing stations, and usually an operating room. The standard medical complement for a 7,250-ton escort carrier was one medical officer, a flight surgeon for the embarked air group, a dentist, and about 13 corpsmen. A much larger 27,100-ton Essex class carrier like USS Franklin (CV-13) boasted four physicians augmented by a flight surgeon, 3 dentists, and 31 corpsmen. During routine operations, physicians and corpsmen serving aboard vessels in the South Pacific encountered and treated heat and humidity related maladies exacerbated by confinement without air conditioning—heat exhaustion and stroke, fungus infections, heat rash, and breathing disorders.
The encounters between Japanese and American fleets were most often brutal affairs with many casualties generated in both brief and sustained actions. Torpedoes, bombs, and armor-piercing shells produced horrendous wounds. When the Japanese launched their kamikaze terror campaign, medical personnel were often overwhelmed. A single suicide plane plunging through the flight deck of an aircraft carrier and igniting fueled and armed aircraft produced hundreds of burn victims within seconds. As the fighting drew ever closer to the Japanese home islands in early 1945, thousands of sailors were killed and wounded by these human-guided missiles.
Navy medical personnel also served aboard submarines that prowled the Pacific destroying thousands of tons of Japanese shipping. Among its crew, each submarine carried one highly trained corpsman or pharmacist’s mate, as they were then called. (Physicians were not assigned to submarines.) Indeed, one of the most dramatic stories to come out of World War II recounted an emergency appendectomy performed by a 23-year-old corpsman as his submarine, USS Seadragon, cruised submerged in enemy waters. The corpsman, Wheeler B. Lipes, successfully removed the badly infected appendix and saved his patient. This heroic story not only highlighted the skill and resourcefulness of Navy corpsmen, but also buoyed the nation’s spirits early in the war when news from the Pacific was anything but encouraging.
When World War II finally ended with the Japanese surrender aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) on 2 September 1945, the U.S. Navy had become the largest maritime force the world had ever known. And the Medical Department which supported that Navy would itself never again have as many personnel, or staff as many hospitals, dispensaries, and hospital ships as it did on that day.
What followed victory was rapid demobilization as soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in the Pacific theater headed home. Helping get them there were aircraft carriers, battleships, LSTs, and Navy hospital ships—all of which became troop transports in what was called “Operation Magic Carpet.”
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Archives: Evans Collection
Evans Collection
Personal papers
1931-1952
1 folder, unrestricted, no finding aid
Personal papers
1931-1952
1 folder, unrestricted, no finding aid
Records of Chief Pharmacist Mate Archie Charles Evans service during
World War II in which he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal "For heroic
service as a Corpsman, attached to the U.S.S. Marblehead, during
operations against enemy Japanese forces in the Java Sea on 4 and 5
February 1942. Seriously wounded in the original blast when his ship
sustained two direct hits during an enemy bombing attack, Evans refused
aid for himself and immediately proceeded to treat the wounded in his
area until they could be evacuated to the battle-dressing station.
Continuing without sleep and suffering intense pain from burns and a
broken arm sustained in the blast, he worked steadily for two days and
two nights, ministering to the wounded and accepting treatment only when
the ship reached port." Records include his ID cards, record jacket,
newspaper clippings, a photograph of the Marblehead and a 1951 letter
from Warner Bros about making a movie.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Antietam
Twentieth Annual Conference
On Civil War Medicine
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary
of the Battle of Antietam
October 5-7, 2012
Hagerstown, MD
Individuals are invited to submit lecture proposals for the NMCWM’s Twentieth Annual Conference on Civil War Medicine to be held October 5-7, 2012. Proposals should be one to five pages in length, typed and double-spaced, and must be accompanied by a bibliography. They also should include the title, speaker’s full name, short biographical sketch including professional and academic affiliations, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone and FAX numbers, and a brief statement as to why the topic is particularly appropriate for this forum. Presentations should be limited to 45 minutes, followed by a five-minute question-and-answer period. All presentations must be in a PowerPoint format.
Deadline for submission is 1 April 2012. Proposals should be sent to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Attention Conference Program Committee, P.O. Box 470, Frederick, MD 21705. All proposals will be considered, but submission of a proposal does not guarantee an invitation to speak.
For more information, contact Ms. Karen Thomassen at Museum@civilwarmed.org or call 301-695-1864.
On Civil War Medicine
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary
of the Battle of Antietam
October 5-7, 2012
Hagerstown, MD
Individuals are invited to submit lecture proposals for the NMCWM’s Twentieth Annual Conference on Civil War Medicine to be held October 5-7, 2012. Proposals should be one to five pages in length, typed and double-spaced, and must be accompanied by a bibliography. They also should include the title, speaker’s full name, short biographical sketch including professional and academic affiliations, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone and FAX numbers, and a brief statement as to why the topic is particularly appropriate for this forum. Presentations should be limited to 45 minutes, followed by a five-minute question-and-answer period. All presentations must be in a PowerPoint format.
Deadline for submission is 1 April 2012. Proposals should be sent to the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Attention Conference Program Committee, P.O. Box 470, Frederick, MD 21705. All proposals will be considered, but submission of a proposal does not guarantee an invitation to speak.
For more information, contact Ms. Karen Thomassen at Museum@civilwarmed.org or call 301-695-1864.
Admiral Zimble's obituary from the Washington Post
James A. Zimble, Navy surgeon general, dies at 78
By Emily Langer, Washington Post
Registration for "The Tuskegee Experience" Conference is Now Open
This new year marks the 80th anniversary of the start of the infamous syphilis experiments at Tuskegee. Given the revelations in 2011 by the Presidential Bioethics Commission regarding related tragedies undertaken from 1946-48 in Guatemala, the anniversary provides an significant opportunity to reflect upon the role of ethics in research and healthcare. To mark this date, the Navy Medicine Institute, in partnership with the Smithsonian, will be hosting a special ethics education conference on 19 April 2012 at the National Museum of Natural History entitled "The Tuskegee Experience."
Additional information, including conference agenda and registration, can be found at:
http://angleproof.com/conference/smithsonian/index.php?c_id=21
Additional information, including conference agenda and registration, can be found at:
http://angleproof.com/conference/smithsonian/index.php?c_id=21
Sunday, January 1, 2012
BUMED's historical observatory editorial in today's Post
A new lease on life for the Old Naval Observatory
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-new-lease-on-life-for-the-old-naval-observatory/2011/12/28/gIQAoK27QP_story.htmlThis is the building the historian's office and archives are currently based in.
Echoes of Navy Medicine’s Past: Navy Medicine in the “Great War” and Inter-War Years, 1917-1941
Echoes of Navy Medicine’s Past
Part IV: Navy Medicine in the “Great War” and Inter-War Years, 1917-1941
By Jan Herman and Mr. Grog
In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called for a declaration of war against Germany, and American isolationism headed for temporary retirement. The United States was now committed to its first European conflict. In order to maintain the health of a rapidly growing wartime Navy and care for its sick and injured, the Navy Medical Department had to recruit and train hundreds of physicians, dentists, and nurses, as well as thousands of hospital corpsmen.
Even though the U.S. Navy never engaged a German fleet during its year and a half participation in World War I, Navy medical personnel served with Marine Corps units on the Western Front; aboard every man-of-war, troop transport, and supply ship; with submarine divisions, aviation groups; and with the United States Railway Battery in France. In 1917, the Navy deployed 38 physicians, 5 dentists, and 348 hospital corpsmen to France; nurses went as well. What they encountered were trench warfare’s frightful realities—trench foot, disease, rats, vermin, the complete absence of the most rudimentary hygiene, and the terrifying results of gas warfare—mustard, phosgene, and chlorine.
Those medical personnel with the Marine Brigade in France also had to deal with other war trauma—shrapnel, blast injury, high velocity projectile wounds, and psychiatric disorders, then collectively known as shell-shock. From that terrible conflict in Europe, medical personnel became skilled in trauma resuscitation, the treatment of wounds and infectious disease, and war’s psychological wounds. disease, and the psychological wounds of war.
Because of the prevalence of communicable diseases, preventive medicine was a major component of a Navy physician’s daily routine. Indeed, illness could be acquired in places other than the battlefield. According to one Navy physician, venereal disease in wartime France increased because control of licensed prostitution had become less rigid. By his account, 50 percent of French prostitutes were infected with syphilis in its primary or secondary stages.
Aviation and submarine medicine were born during World War I. Both fields should not have surprised anyone for the airplane and submarines were, for the first time, used extensively by the combatants. During the 1920s and 1930s, these new technologies would keep many Navy personnel busy learning how to protect the human body in both hypobaric (aviation) and hyperbaric (undersea) environments. To support the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, the Navy established five hospitals. They included Navy Base Hospitals Numbers 1 and 5 at Brest France, Navy Base Hospital No. 2 at Strathpeffer, Scotland, Navy Base Hospital No. 3 at Leith, Scotland, and Navy Base Hospital No. 4 at Queenstown, Ireland.
Notable among these medical facilities were the base hospitals in Brest. That city served as a major port where American troops disembarked and thousands of wounded were sent home. Navy Base Hospital No. 5 had a minimum capacity of 500 beds and throughout the war it averaged 400 patients. During the influenza epidemic that number reached 800. The hospital had all the facilities necessary for providing advanced medical and surgical care and received patients from other naval stations in France, from the Merchant Marine, and from U.S. naval facilities of all classes. The hospital remained in operation until March 1919.
The Navy added to its “fleet” of hospital ships in 1918 with the acquisition of two former steamships, Havana and Saratoga, which became USS Comfort (AH-3) and USS Mercy (AH-4), respectively. Although provisions of the Geneva Convention protected hospital ships, Navy officials feared that the German government would not abide by these agreements. As a result, both vessels remained in American waters until the final month of the war when they were used as troop transports.
Navy medical personnel exhibited great valor during World War I. A total of 60 Medical Corps officers, 12 Dental Corps officers, and 500 hospital corpsmen were assigned to field service with the Marine Corps. By the time the war ended in 1918, two physicians, two dentists, and two hospital corpsmen had earned the Medal of Honor; 684 citations and awards were awarded to the 331 Navy medical personnel who served in France.
Navy Cross recipient Lena H. Sutcliffe Higbee (1874-1941), Superintendent of the Nurse Corps, was one such honoree. She helped pioneer a new training program to augment the number of nurses being deployed to France when trained nurses were in short supply. The “Vassar Training Camp” served as a finishing school for many of these nurses. During Higbee’s tenure, the Navy Nurse Corps grew from 160 in April 1917 to 1,386 by the Armistice in November 1918.
It has been said that the “war to end all wars” closed not with a bang but a “cough.” Even after the Armistice was signed, Navy medical personnel, including Higbee’s nurses, continued to combat the so-called “Spanish Flu” in the pandemic that ultimately killed between 22 and 40 million people worldwide.
A year after the Armistice, Navy medical personnel found themselves involved in another conflict that grew out of the Russian Revolution. When Allied forces intervened in a civil war between “Whites” and “Reds in post-Czarist Russia, the Navy went with them. Navy Medical personnel participated in other post-war foreign interventions, most notably in Haiti. During the U.S. occupation, which lasted from 1915-1934, Navy medical officers and hospital corpsmen served in the public health arm of the newly created Haitian gendarmerie supervising the drainage of low-lying areas, the cleaning of streets in cities and villages, and the control of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Even though the period between the world wars saw a shrinking military, the United States was the only nation to maintain hospital ships. The aging and obsolete Solace was decommissioned in 1921 and replaced by Relief (AH-1), the first U.S. vessel to be built as a hospital ship from the keel up. She was commissioned on 28 December 1920 with a bed capacity for 500 patients, and served as the largest, most modern, and best equipped hospital ship up to that time. Relief also became the first Navy hospital ship to allow Navy (female) nurses aboard as regular staff.
The inter-war period also saw swift developments in military and civil aviation, which solved many problems concerning human endurance and the adverse effects of accelerative forces, anoxia, fatigue, and psychological stress. To deal with these aviation related issues, the U.S. Naval Medical School instituted a course in aviation medicine.
Japanese aggression in China, the rise of Nazism in Germany, and the threat of a new world conflict initiated a rebuilding program for the U.S. Navy in the 1930s. In a message to Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt recommended a 20 percent increase in our naval strength, and Congress took heed. From June 1939 to June 1941, the number of active duty Navy physicians went from 841 to 1,957; the Dental Corps increased from 255 to 511; the Nurse Corps increased its rolls from 439 to 524; and the Hospital Corps increased in size from 4,467 to 10,547. By the summer of 1941, the Navy had 23 hospitals in commission and two hospital ships. It was not enough. On 6 December 1941, who could have anticipated what lay ahead for a nation and a Navy unprepared for war.
Part IV: Navy Medicine in the “Great War” and Inter-War Years, 1917-1941
By Jan Herman and Mr. Grog
In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson called for a declaration of war against Germany, and American isolationism headed for temporary retirement. The United States was now committed to its first European conflict. In order to maintain the health of a rapidly growing wartime Navy and care for its sick and injured, the Navy Medical Department had to recruit and train hundreds of physicians, dentists, and nurses, as well as thousands of hospital corpsmen.
Even though the U.S. Navy never engaged a German fleet during its year and a half participation in World War I, Navy medical personnel served with Marine Corps units on the Western Front; aboard every man-of-war, troop transport, and supply ship; with submarine divisions, aviation groups; and with the United States Railway Battery in France. In 1917, the Navy deployed 38 physicians, 5 dentists, and 348 hospital corpsmen to France; nurses went as well. What they encountered were trench warfare’s frightful realities—trench foot, disease, rats, vermin, the complete absence of the most rudimentary hygiene, and the terrifying results of gas warfare—mustard, phosgene, and chlorine.
Those medical personnel with the Marine Brigade in France also had to deal with other war trauma—shrapnel, blast injury, high velocity projectile wounds, and psychiatric disorders, then collectively known as shell-shock. From that terrible conflict in Europe, medical personnel became skilled in trauma resuscitation, the treatment of wounds and infectious disease, and war’s psychological wounds. disease, and the psychological wounds of war.
Because of the prevalence of communicable diseases, preventive medicine was a major component of a Navy physician’s daily routine. Indeed, illness could be acquired in places other than the battlefield. According to one Navy physician, venereal disease in wartime France increased because control of licensed prostitution had become less rigid. By his account, 50 percent of French prostitutes were infected with syphilis in its primary or secondary stages.
Aviation and submarine medicine were born during World War I. Both fields should not have surprised anyone for the airplane and submarines were, for the first time, used extensively by the combatants. During the 1920s and 1930s, these new technologies would keep many Navy personnel busy learning how to protect the human body in both hypobaric (aviation) and hyperbaric (undersea) environments. To support the American Expeditionary Force in Europe, the Navy established five hospitals. They included Navy Base Hospitals Numbers 1 and 5 at Brest France, Navy Base Hospital No. 2 at Strathpeffer, Scotland, Navy Base Hospital No. 3 at Leith, Scotland, and Navy Base Hospital No. 4 at Queenstown, Ireland.
Notable among these medical facilities were the base hospitals in Brest. That city served as a major port where American troops disembarked and thousands of wounded were sent home. Navy Base Hospital No. 5 had a minimum capacity of 500 beds and throughout the war it averaged 400 patients. During the influenza epidemic that number reached 800. The hospital had all the facilities necessary for providing advanced medical and surgical care and received patients from other naval stations in France, from the Merchant Marine, and from U.S. naval facilities of all classes. The hospital remained in operation until March 1919.
The Navy added to its “fleet” of hospital ships in 1918 with the acquisition of two former steamships, Havana and Saratoga, which became USS Comfort (AH-3) and USS Mercy (AH-4), respectively. Although provisions of the Geneva Convention protected hospital ships, Navy officials feared that the German government would not abide by these agreements. As a result, both vessels remained in American waters until the final month of the war when they were used as troop transports.
Navy medical personnel exhibited great valor during World War I. A total of 60 Medical Corps officers, 12 Dental Corps officers, and 500 hospital corpsmen were assigned to field service with the Marine Corps. By the time the war ended in 1918, two physicians, two dentists, and two hospital corpsmen had earned the Medal of Honor; 684 citations and awards were awarded to the 331 Navy medical personnel who served in France.
Navy Cross recipient Lena H. Sutcliffe Higbee (1874-1941), Superintendent of the Nurse Corps, was one such honoree. She helped pioneer a new training program to augment the number of nurses being deployed to France when trained nurses were in short supply. The “Vassar Training Camp” served as a finishing school for many of these nurses. During Higbee’s tenure, the Navy Nurse Corps grew from 160 in April 1917 to 1,386 by the Armistice in November 1918.
It has been said that the “war to end all wars” closed not with a bang but a “cough.” Even after the Armistice was signed, Navy medical personnel, including Higbee’s nurses, continued to combat the so-called “Spanish Flu” in the pandemic that ultimately killed between 22 and 40 million people worldwide.
A year after the Armistice, Navy medical personnel found themselves involved in another conflict that grew out of the Russian Revolution. When Allied forces intervened in a civil war between “Whites” and “Reds in post-Czarist Russia, the Navy went with them. Navy Medical personnel participated in other post-war foreign interventions, most notably in Haiti. During the U.S. occupation, which lasted from 1915-1934, Navy medical officers and hospital corpsmen served in the public health arm of the newly created Haitian gendarmerie supervising the drainage of low-lying areas, the cleaning of streets in cities and villages, and the control of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Even though the period between the world wars saw a shrinking military, the United States was the only nation to maintain hospital ships. The aging and obsolete Solace was decommissioned in 1921 and replaced by Relief (AH-1), the first U.S. vessel to be built as a hospital ship from the keel up. She was commissioned on 28 December 1920 with a bed capacity for 500 patients, and served as the largest, most modern, and best equipped hospital ship up to that time. Relief also became the first Navy hospital ship to allow Navy (female) nurses aboard as regular staff.
The inter-war period also saw swift developments in military and civil aviation, which solved many problems concerning human endurance and the adverse effects of accelerative forces, anoxia, fatigue, and psychological stress. To deal with these aviation related issues, the U.S. Naval Medical School instituted a course in aviation medicine.
Japanese aggression in China, the rise of Nazism in Germany, and the threat of a new world conflict initiated a rebuilding program for the U.S. Navy in the 1930s. In a message to Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt recommended a 20 percent increase in our naval strength, and Congress took heed. From June 1939 to June 1941, the number of active duty Navy physicians went from 841 to 1,957; the Dental Corps increased from 255 to 511; the Nurse Corps increased its rolls from 439 to 524; and the Hospital Corps increased in size from 4,467 to 10,547. By the summer of 1941, the Navy had 23 hospitals in commission and two hospital ships. It was not enough. On 6 December 1941, who could have anticipated what lay ahead for a nation and a Navy unprepared for war.
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