The Pearl Harbour attack was an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in Honolulu, Hawaii during World War II.
The Pearl Harbour attack resulted in an increased number of patients with hospitals near the naval base overflowing with injured military men and civilians. Statistics show that 2,403 people were killed and 1,000 people were wounded during the attack, however, the Naval hospital on the base was only a 250-bed hospital resulting in significant overflow of the hospital.
In this scenario, nurses worked tirelessly treating the injured and remained unaware of the severity of the Japanese attacks until days later when the injured military men had finally been stabilized. However, the memories of the devastation of the Pearl Harbour attack remain in the nurses’ minds. The nurses working through the Pearl Harbour attack recall the surprise received by the attack and the frightful injuries received by army men. Mary Doody was one of the nurses on duty during the Pearl Harbour attack and in an interview with The Library of Congress she recalls, “The sound of sawing bone, I don’t think I can stand, so I’m going to faint,” relating her experience treating a severely injured man that had to be amputated. Additionally, Kathryn Mary Doody stated that “And some of them (wounded patients), during the night, had released their tourniquets they had on so they so they would die. You know, they didn’t want to live with whatever wound they have received. So we had all sorts of things happening,”, this further affects the nurses’ mental health as research studies have shown a relationship between death and grief and bereavement especially with nurses.
Mary Doody now lives a civilian life in Britain, however, from her interviews it is safe to say that the memories and dangers of the war are far from forgotten and continue to mentally affect nurses serving during the Pearl Harbour attack.