Madhulika Bruce

Leah Halper

History 2

May 13, 2008

Norma M. Martinetti, The Great Depression, and Army Nurses in World War II

At the age of 86, Norma is leading a prosperous, healthy, and active life. She was born in San Martin on December 21, 1921. She is a part of the rich heritage of the Hazel Hawkins Hospital and the San Benito County region as well as an Army nurse who served during the World War II. Her father, Louis Trebino, was an immigrant from Italy who came to United States at the age of seven. Her mother, Josephine Corbari Trebino, was born in United States and her heritage was also Italian.

Her grandparents from her father’s side were Italian immigrants who came to California and lived in Contra Costa County. They raised vegetables for restaurants in Contra Costa County. When the vegetable did not sell, they would go in horse-buggies to Martinez to sell their vegetables in residential areas. They worked hard and did well financially, so they were able to acquire 12 rental units in Contra Costa County. Her grandparents from her mother’s side were also Italian and had several ranches in Morgan Hill. They had a winery. They were active participants in Santa Clara county politics. They had eight children. According to Norma, “every weekend they had a get together with baseball theme, and they would have big parties at their ranch which included music and dances.”

Norma’s parents moved to Hollister from San Martin in 1921 when they bought a ranch. She spent her childhood and teen years in Hollister. She started working at an early age. She worked for other farmers in Hollister whom her parents knew very well. She picked prunes and walnuts and cut apricots during summer months. She also worked on her parents’ ranch after school. She use to love to work with her father because he told her stories while they were working, so she was really fond of her father and has wonderful memories of her precious moments spent with him. According to Norma, her father was teaching her life lessons through the stories, which she was able to understand later in life.

This was the era of Great Depression (1929 – 1939) when people raised their own gardens of vegetables and fruits, grew their own wheat and corn, washed their clothes on “wash boards,” ironed their own clothes, cooked their own food, baked their own breads, bottled their own fruits, baked their own desserts, and stored food items like potatoes, cabbage, and carrots in their basements or storage rooms for winter in order to conserve and save money to spend it only to buy goods and food item that were essential and were on ration such as sugar, flour, gas, and shoes (Hunt and Peterson). They also raised their own chickens, pigs, sheep, and cows (Hunt). They milked the cows, so they could have milk, and they made their own butter (Hunt). They recycled everything including the clothes (Peterson). They used bicycles to get to places that were far away or used buses and trains as means of transportation to get to one place from another (Martinetti). They spent their money wisely because they had to save money for their children’s education and to buy expensive items such as a car (Hunt and Hansen). The children helped their parents in raising gardens and farms as well as doing many other chores at home (Hunt). Many children also worked to support their families (Hunt).

As a result, many people learned the value of hard work, learned to survive by having only the minimum resources, learned to recycle everything that they could to cut back their expenses, learned to save money, learned to protect themselves from going hungry and lacking necessities in life, and be very resourceful (Hunt and Peterson). However, Norma’s family was fortunate to have their own ranch, but all of them worked hard and learned the values that were created by hardships that people faced during the Great Depression because these values reflected a shift in American values from extreme individualism and pursuit of self-interest to having the awareness to be helpful to their community, be cooperative, have good relationship with members of their community, be compassionate towards others, and have empathy for others (Martinetti and Hunt).

At the age of 16, Norma began her portentous relationship with Hazel Hawkins Hospital when she became sick with rheumatic fever. She was in the hospital for nine months. Norma explained how the nurses in the hospital cared for her, fed her, and nursed her back to health. When she went home and regained her strength, she wanted to do something special for the kind nurses who took care of her during the time she was sick, so she asked her mother if she could volunteer at Hazel Hawkins Hospital. This was in 1938, when Hazel Hawkins Hospital had no organized volunteer program, but they decided to let Norma help the hospital. She provided generous and kind services to the patients, such as getting water for patients, fluffing patient’s pillows, and straightening up their rooms. She also took flowers for the patients. Later on, she got promoted and was responsible for washing surgical instruments. Back then they did not use gloves. This was her first exposure to the medical field and to nursing. Norma says, “in my days women didn’t really think in terms of careers, but I was intrigued. I made up my mind to become a nurse” (Martinetti).

Thus, when she finished high school, she wanted to go to nursing school, but her family could not afford the $75.00 annual tuition fee required for nursing school for three years, so she worked for two summers (two years) to save $75.00 by cutting apricots for 0.08 to 0.10 cents a box, which was about 0.80 cents per day for the Bill Renz family in Hollister and saved enough money to pay for her nursing training. After finishing high school, she went to Junior College in Hollister for a year, which was known by the name of San Benito County College and was a forerunner to Gavilan College. In 1940, when she was 19 years old, she went to attend Santa Clara County Hospital nursing college in San Jose, CA and stayed in the nursing school for three years, where they provided food and dormitory to live in. During the daytime, she had to go to work in the hospital where the hospital staff trained her to bathe the patients, give patients their medicines, monitor their health, and take care them. She attended nursing classes in the afternoon and also sometimes in the evening.

Norma needed money to buy her books, shoes, bicycle, and maintain her bicycle, so she asked the nursing school Superintendent if she could have part of the land of the orchard that belonged to the nursing school. In that land, she raised her own vegetables and some fruits, which she sold it to the nurses, teachers, and employees of the hospital to earn some money. She also worked for a store for four hours where she sorted dried apricots for $1.35 per hour. She rode on her bicycle each day about half an hour from the nursing school in Moore Park Ave to go to work in Santa Clara during the evening hours to earn some money. She would usually get back from her work to nursing school about 11:30 P.M., so she did not have any time to study, but her friend explained her all the pertinent and important information that she needed to know for the next day by using a radio light, so she could get by during the weekdays. She studied during the weekends to catch up. Norma helped her friend in the hospital to take care of the patients along with her own working duties because her friend was a little slow in doing the work. Thus, Norma worked very hard and long hours in order to survive on her own and complete her nursing training because she was determined to achieve her goal. In her interview, Norma said, “Nothing was going to stand in my way of becoming a nurse.”

This was the time of World War II (1939 – 1945) when thousands of Army and Navy nurses served both at home in United States and overseas to save as many lives as possible and worked closer to the “front lines” than they had ever done before (The Army). Although American women were never forced to participate in World War II, hundreds of thousands of women volunteered, and there were about 77,000 nurses who risked their lives to provide medical care and comfort to combatants who were fighting overseas as well as to those who came home wounded (Jackson 109). World War II “deserves to be called a global conflict” and “really consisted of two parallel though interconnected conflicts of major proportions – one in Europe and the Atlantic, the other on the Asian mainland and in the Pacific” (Lyons 48). Hitler’s government “envisioned a vast new empire in Eastern Europe” and for Germans to dominate Europe required a war whereas Japanese expansion in East Asia began in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria and continued in 1937 with a brutal attack on China (Lyons 48). Lyons explains how the crisis during 1930s led to the war.

The decade of the 1930s witnessed a long series of crises that marked the world’s gradual descent into war, both in East Asia and in Europe. These crises unfolded against a background of economic distress created by the Great Depression and the rise of political extremism that was to a large extent the result of these economic problems. Hitler rose to power primarily as a result of the disastrous condition of the German economy in the early 1930s, although he also took advantage of the widespread hatred of the terms of the Versailles Treaty among the German people……The Japanese military leaders exploited the economic turmoil in Japan to push for ever greater penetration into China in pursuit of raw materials and a huge market for Japanese goods (48).

United States was on the side of Britain and France in the European war against Germany in 1939. According to Lyons, “Rainbow 5 plan” that stated: “U.S. intervention in the European war was necessary to achieve their aim. At the same time, it insisted that American forces would have to assume a defensive stance against Japan in the Pacific” because of growing friction between the United States and Japan in the Pacific (147 – 149). United States declared war on Japan because Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Also, United States declared war on Germany after Germany’s declaration of war on the United States (Lyons 153).

United States government needed nurses for Army, Navy, and Marines to take care of the wounded and injured soldiers involved in the World War II since there were so many soldiers who were evacuated from the combat fields that were coming home wounded, injured, and sick with infectious diseases such as Dengue fever, Malaria, Trench-foot, etc (Kauffroth). They also needed nurses to go overseas to be near the battle-sites where they had to take care of dying soldiers as well as wounded and sick soldiers such as in Europe and Pacific Theater. According to Jackson, “nurses were classified and recruited through the joint efforts of the American Red Cross Nursing Service and the National Nursing Council for War Service” (2). Although women were never forced into the military service during the war, but “every patriotic and guilt-evoking ploy was used to encourage them in a recruitment campaign unprecedented in nursing history” (Jackson 2). Nursing campaigns used heavy advertising through the newspapers, magazines, and radio to recruit nurses. Jackson describes that even the First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who had four sons in the service, assisted the recruiting of nurses with a “heartrending plea” by saying “I ask for my boys what every mother has a right to ask – that they be given full and adequate nursing care should the time come when they need it. Only you nurses who have not yet volunteered can give it ……..You must not forget that you have it in your power to bring back some who otherwise surely will not return” (2).

Army nurses had to be between the ages of 21 and 40, but the age limit was later raised to 45 (Jackson 4). When “World War II was raging in Europe and the Far East,” nursing schools were asked, “to recruit nursing students who were in the last six months of their training” (Kauffroth). These recruited nursing students were “sent to military hospital to complete their training,” and after their training they were “encouraged to join the Army or Navy Nurse Corps for the duration of the war” (Kauffroth). Later, these Army or Navy Nurse Corps were elected to join the “Nurse Cadet Corps” (Kauffroth). They were not required to work in the military to fulfill their obligation as Cadet nurses after they finished the Cadet course, instead they could work in hospitals at home, so many nurses would return home and take their State Board Exams after completing their six months assignment (Kauffroth).

Norma was also recruited as a military nurse during her last six months in the nursing training. She signed up for the Cadet course in her senior year to become an Army nurse. After Norma graduated from the three year nursing training, she went to San Francisco to complete the Cadet training course, which only paid her $35.00 per month. She was sent to Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco where thousands of wounded and injured soldiers were being brought in military planes from Europe and Pacific Theater in their “battle fatigue” to Crissy Field, which was previously a United States’ army base (Martinetti). Soldiers were usually bandaged and given the first aid at the battle-sites because the army medical teams did not have the accommodations and equipment for further treatment, so they sent these soldiers in military planes to United States for further treatments and surgeries (Martinetti). She worked at the Letterman General Hospital as the bed-side nurse by taking off their uniform and boots, getting them comfortable, getting them ready for the treatment and surgery, and giving them everything to eat and drink that they wanted such as milk, orange juice, etc.

According to Jackson, the wounded soldiers who were evacuated and flown into United States were brought in the hospitals on very small stretchers, with all their worldly possessions in a paper bag, and these soldiers looked as though “they had been bled, starved, and thoroughly mistreated” since they sailed away from home many months ago (102). These soldiers were “fighting, sleeping, eating, dying in the jungle mud,” and “lived with a fox hole for a bed and a bomb for an alarm clock” (Jackson 102). Also, there were many soldiers who became sick with infectious diseases such as “malaria, schistosomiasis, hepatitis, pneumonia, diphtheria, gonorrhea, syphilis, and galloping tuberculosis” (Jackson 112). Once they arrived at the hospital, they were given medicines, comfortable beds to rest, baths, shaves, haircuts, and further proper medical treatment. They enjoyed the warmth of the hospital, the familiar home-side food, and the importance of joy of being at home and breathing American air again, which contributed to their psychological and physical comfort of care at home (Jackson 101). They made phone calls, sent telegrams, and after few days in the “debarkation ward,” they were transported to the general hospital nearest their home or to a specialized hospital for surgery or prostheses by planes, ambulances, trains, or buses (Jackson 101).

The U.S. Army Center of Military History quoted one nurse who said that many women who were in nursing were “more likely to raise their right hands, take the oath, put on their white uniforms and find themselves, in no time flat, on the ward up to their ears in the work” (Jackson 7). The Army nurses received very little military training when they joined the Army and they were usually groups of graduates and staff members of medical schools and hospitals (Kauffroth). They did not know anything about Army regulations until they encountered an incident where they broke the rules and they were notified about it, so they learned through their every day experience (Kauffroth). The nurses that were members of auxiliary surgical teams assisted evacuation hospitals in combat zones because they were fully staffed and fully equipped groups (Jackson 8).

Norma spent six months in San Francisco working at the Lettermen General Hospital. She also studied for her State Board Exam for nursing during her Cadet training course and passed the exam. After completing her assignment at Lettermen General Hospital, she came home and spent six months working at the local hospital in Hollister as floor duty nurse where she earned about $125.00 per month, which was good amount of money during the 1940s. Her mother and mother’s friend who worked at the Red Cross inspired her to sign up for Army nursing. Her mother told her that it was her duty because two of her brothers were serving the country in World War II – one was in the Navy in South Pacific and the other was a paratrooper. Even though Norma was very reluctant to leave her well-paid job and go to the military, she listened to her mother, packed her belongings, took a train from Hollister station. and started her journey to Washington Ford Louis.

In Washington, she had to learn the military training, which was somewhat similar to soldiers such as marching uphill and downhill, marching in the forest for 10 miles, camping in the forest, sleeping in a four feet tent, and learning to cook in the forest with limited amount of pots and pans. The first mandatory basic training centers for Army nurses did not open until July 1943 (Jackson 9). The nurses received training in “gas casualty preparation,” “field operations,” “bivouacs,” “marching uphill and downhill,” “marching through obstacle courses,” “survival courses,” “marching through jungles,” “road marches,” “living in camps,” and “belly crawling” (Jackson 8). They also received special training in tropical medicine and chemical warfare, close-order drills, gas-mask training, lifeboat training, field training, and they had to exercise from morning till night (Jackson 8).

While Norma was in Washington, she saw the sign on the bulletin board to sign up for either an anesthetist nurse or psychiatric nurse, so she decided to become an anesthetist nurse. During the World War II, “nurse anesthetists were in short supply in every theater of operations, so the Army developed a special training program for nurses interested in that specialty” (The Army). It was a yearlong course designed to teach nurses “how to administer inhalation anesthesia, blood and blood derivatives, and oxygen therapy as well as how to recognize, prevent, and treat shock” (The Army). Norma was so determined to sign up as an anesthetist nurse that she went every day to the office even though they had told her to come back in three days. Finally the person in charge let her sign the list because Norma was so determined once she had decided to pursue the field of anesthetist nurse.

Since she had to wait for the classes to begin in another two months, she was sent for an assignment in Palm Springs to work in Orthopedic ward, where wounded soldiers were coming back mainly from Europe. She had to learn about her duties and patients in about 15 to 20 minutes once she arrived at the hospital in Palm Springs. She had to work a twelve- hour night shift from 7:00 P.M. till 7:00 A.M. The nurses at the hospital warned her that she should never go near a soldier’s bed until she made sure that the soldier was awake because the soldier could attack her since soldiers were coming back from the battle-field and were in the frame of mind to fight constantly and kill enemy soldiers. Penicillin “was just found and developed during 1945,” an amber colored liquid packaged in little bottles, which doctors and nurses “aspirated” through needles and used for irrigating soldiers’ wounds (Maritnetti).

After few months, Norma was called back to the State of Washington to attend anesthesia school. Thus, she went back to Washington to complete one-year course of anesthetist nurse. Major Wageman was the anesthesiologist from Minnesota, who had five students – four nurses and one corpsman and taught them to administer anesthetics, check respiration and pulse of patients, and look into the pupils of patients to check the depth of anesthesia. By this time, the medical field started using curare as a natural muscle relaxant, which was a jungle drug – “a black resinoid extract prepared by the South American Indians from the bark of several species of Strychnos,” and has “little effect when taken internally, but is quickly fatal when introduced into the blood, and used by the Indians as an arrow poison” (One Look Dictionary). Norma was told to only give one drop of curare at a time to the patient when needed for muscle relaxation during the surgeries, such as gall bladders, appendicitis, or “when doctors had to work on big muscles” (Martinetti). Curare’s impact lies principally in the way it is taken into the human body because it can be a deadly killer if injected into the bloodstream and a soothing muscle relaxant when ingested orally (THE MEANING).

During the war, there were four types of Army hospitals: general, regional, station, and convalescent. “By June 1945, many of the general hospitals had been designated as special treatment centers for one or more fields: amputations, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, thoracic surgery, trench foot, or vascular surgery” (Jackson 100). This kind of concentration of specialists made the treatment more effective and easier (Jackson 100). Also, the military medical teams made the attempts to send the patients to the extended-care facility near their homes if they needed long-term care (Jackson 100).

After one year training, Norma was posted in Brigham City, Utah in the military hospital in 1944 where she was put in charge of the Amputation Center and worked from 1944 to 1946. In Brigham City, Utah military hospital Norma was in charge for giving anesthesia to the soldiers as well as German prisoners of war who needed surgeries and amputations. She was also in charge for collecting blood for transfusions from the soldiers as well as from German prisoners of war. Since there were no blood banks in those days, the collected blood was given to patients the same day or the next day. Bushnell Army Hospital near Brigham City, Utah was a “400-bed amputee/psychiatric center. Most of the patients were soldiers who had been wounded in combat,” and the medical staff were “faced with the reality of the war and the reality of good people coming with life-changing wounds” that changed the lives of all the medical staff as well the lives of the soldiers at the hospital (Kauffroth).

According to Norma, there were many soldiers in the military hospital in Brigham City, Utah who got amputated, such as both their legs, one arm, one leg, or both arms. Amputations were done on a daily basis because there were so many soldiers in the hospital and many were admitted every day (Martinetti). Amputations were necessary to save soldiers’ lives because sometimes their bone would have three or four splinters, which got infected (Martinetti). Sometimes they were amputated at the combat-site, but since the medical team at the combat-site did not have the right equipment and accommodations, the soldiers had to be re-amputated once they were brought into the hospitals in United States or corrective surgeries were needed to save their lives (Martinetti). Although the nurses at home did not have to go overseas and were not exposed to enemy fire, but they still found themselves in situations where extraordinary courage was required to perform their duties (Jackson 100). These nurses learned early on that their responsibilities were just as important as the nurses who served overseas in combat areas because they were responsible to carry on the essential part of the treatment once the soldiers arrived in United States in their battle fatigues (Jackson 102).

Many soldiers who were brought back to United States for further treatment were in severe shock, had hemorrhages, sustained multiple wounds, and required traumatic amputations (The Army). The nurses at home treated soldiers with all types of injuries such as the soldier who got hit by a mortar shell that exploded two feet behind him, the soldier who suffered from a two-day-old machine gun wound to the head, the soldier who lost an arm after helping to pick up wounded soldiers in Germany, and an older soldier who lost a leg when walking in a mine field (Jackson 101). There was a Marine who had his right arm amputated, both legs amputated, and had a brain injury due to which he could not speak although he was alert (Jackson 201). There was a very young sailor maybe 16 years of age who was a “mass of scars” because most of his body was burnt since his ship, an oil tanker sank and caught on fire, and there was flaming oil everywhere (Jackson 203). One of the soldiers got burnt by electrical wires, which burnt his face, head, hair, and was in tremendous pain. Thus, many soldiers who suffered severe injuries and became extremely sick were brought back to United States for further and proper treatment. The reconstructive surgeries were like miracles such as “thumbs were ‘grown’ from fat in the abdomen and new eyelids made that the patient could ‘bat as well as the one he lost,’ and paralyzed face could move” after the tissue was transplanted from his thigh to his cheeks (Jackson 102).

Nurses usually worked twelve-hour per day and seven days a week. They assumed responsibilities that were usually handled by doctors in the Untied States such as giving transfusions, removing debris from the wounds and dressing the wounds, and removing sutures (The Army). They also trained the ward men to give “infusions and change dressings” and duties that were “traditionally reserved for nursing personnel” (The Army). The military hospitals had special wards for the soldiers who had been on oil tankers and were severely burned because Japanese attacked the oil tankers (The Army). “Nurses stabilized burn patients with plasma, blood, and morphine in the shock ward before taking them into surgery for debridement and Vaseline pressure dressings” (The Army).

The worst cases of wounded soldiers in the war were “the men with no faces” who never left their ward such as some soldiers had “no nose, no jaw, no ears, or no face,” few soldiers “only had a forehead left,” some soldiers were “horribly disfigured” and were assigned private areas because they were like the “living dead who could spend the rest of their lives in closed section of some Stateside hospital,” and some who cried desperately that they did not want to die, but the medical staff could only hold their hand until they died because they were unable to save them (Jackson 115).

Many of the student nurses thought that they “would not be able to take care of the terrible wounds,” but “the doctors, the nurses, and the patients themselves, patiently taught” them how to care for the wounds, so they “became skilled in evaluating, cleaning, medicating, and bandaging” the awful amputations (Kauffroth). Also, the nurses developed an understanding that helped the young wounded soldiers such as the importance of developing positive attitudes that would help the soldiers cope with their injuries, so they can go on with their lives; use of humor, which urged the soldiers to see that life still held many joys and promises despite their total awareness about their bodies’ disability and disfigurement; perseverance, positive attitude, humor, and ability to seek happiness were the emotional tools that nurses used to help the soldiers heal and get well physically (Kauffroth). Besides providing medical care, nurses tried their best to provide what they called the “special nursing” by doing the little things such as “giving a backrub, reading a letter, playing a game, or just listening,” which made a big difference in soldiers’ recovery in the hospital (Jackson 120).

Norma stayed in Utah and worked for military hospital in Brigham City until after war. After the war was over, she was discharged and came back home to Hollister, where she spent a year working for the County Health Officer, Dr. Hull. Then she moved to Pittsburg to work for Martinez County Hospital as an anesthetist on-call nurse for 24 hours, and stayed for five years. While living in Pittsburg, she met her husband and after dating for couple of years they got married in 1952. After she got married, she left her job because her husband did not want her to go to work late at night and work 24 hours, which was a hard decision for Norma. In 1956, she decided to attend UC Berkeley to earn a Bachelor of Science in Public Health. She also completed Bachelor of Science in Nursing Education in UC Berkeley in 1957. Then she worked as a Public Health Nurse for Contra Costa County until 1982. She also became the first woman to be a board member of one of the banks in Pittsburg as well as the shareholder of that bank. Norma learned from her husband how to invest money in stocks and properties. Her husband passed away in 1976. After 1982, she moved back to Hollister to live in her family home and be close to her family although her father had passed away in 1970. Her mother passed away in 1985, but all of her siblings lived next to her house in their own homes, which they built on the land that they inherited from their parents. Norma is an extra-ordinary and brilliant woman who is very brave, independent, compassionate, and extremely hard working, and still grows her own vegetables at the age of 86.

Norma and other nurses will always be remembered and acknowledged by thousands of soldiers because the Army, Navy, and Marine nurses helped these soldiers tremendously and taught them to “banish the clouds of eternal inner suffering, self-pity, and self-consciousness” as well as helped them to find the “cheerful, warm, radiant sunlight of self-assurance” that will always be with the soldiers who took part and survived the World War II (Jackson). The skills and dedication of these nurses contributed to the “extremely low post-injury mortality rate among American military forces in every theater of the war” (The Army).

The extreme demand for nurses during the World War II also created “numerous new social and economic opportunities for American women” because the whole society of United States as well as the military of United States “found an increasing number of roles for women” (Oral Histories). During World War II, “a large numbers of women entered industry and many of the professions for the first time” as well as the need for the nurses “clarified the status of nursing profession” because people became aware of importance of nursing profession (Oral Histories). The Army also reflected the change in its attitude towards nurses “in June 1944 when it granted its nurses officers’ commissions and full retirement privileges, dependents’ allowances, and equal pay” (The Army). The government reflected the change by providing free education to the nursing students “between 1943 and 1948” (The Army).