Ruth Erickson

Even as the attack continued and Japanese planes strafed the areas around the hospitals, doctors and nurses in those buildings struggled heroically to care for the enormous number of wounded. Throughout the morning, casualties, including many burn victims, streamed in from all directions. Lt. Ruth Erickson, a nurse at the Naval Hospital, located south of Pearl Harbor, gave this account of the fight to save the injured.

We had vacated the nurses' quarters about 1 week prior to the attack. We lived in temporary quarters directly across the street from the hospital, a one-story building in the shape of an E. The permanent nurses' quarters had been stripped and the shell of the building was to be razed in the next few days.

By now, the nursing staff had been increased to 30 and an appropriate number of doctors...