ON FEBRUARY 19, 1945, 20-year-old William Wyckoff was on his way to Iwo Jima. He was one of 40,000 young marines who were the first Americans heading for the small volcanic island. Little could grow there, and only a few Japanese civilians had lived there before their government evicted them, as the Americans approached.
US military strategists were determined to have Iwo Jima in US hands. Since their decisive win at the Battle of Midway in 1942, the United States had been taking Japanese-controlled Pacific islands in one grindingly bloody victory after another. Iwo Jima was closer to the Japanese home islands than any other island currently under US control. And it was only 660 miles south of Tokyo, Japan’s capital city, a major target for US air raids.
But this battle wasn’t going to be easy. Although Japanese military leaders realized they didn’t have the means to repulse the US invasion, they were still determined to fight for Iwo Jima: unlike the other islands under American control, Iwo Jima was technically Japanese soil. To defend it was to defend their national honor.
Jane Kendeigh surrounded by US marines, April 7, 1945, minutes after becoming the first navy flight nurse to land on Okinawa. US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) Library and Archives
So they went to work, well before the approach of the Americans. Below Iwo Jima’s ashy surface were hundreds of natural caves. The Japanese commander in charge of the island’s defense ordered his men to enlarge and link these caves with tunnels. The caves were then manned by approximately 20,000 Japanese fighting men ordered to defend their positions—to the death.
As young William approached and saw the anti-aircraft fire from the island shooting down the US carrier planes, he knew the Americans were in for a furious fight.
He was right. When he and the other marines scurried up the beach, they were attacked with an endless torrent of ammunition fired from a well-hidden enemy who could obviously see them clearly. Confused and deeply frustrated, the young marines sometimes fired back aimlessly.
The only available shelter was the occasional crater from the US Navy’s earlier bombardment. But these craters didn’t always provide sufficient protection. After crawling into one, William’s shoulder and forehead were grazed by an onslaught of bullets. A marine sharing his crater was shot and killed. By the beginning of March, thousands of young marines were dead or wounded.
One evening, after William’s superior officer ordered him to lead his squad in an assault the following morning, William told one of his men he “had a bad feeling” about the next day. The man was surprised; William wasn’t usually so negative.
The next day, William led the charge. He heard a shout in Japanese. Then everything went black.
When he regained consciousness, he was lying on his back. His left shoulder was in excruciating pain. It was difficult to hear. It was difficult to see. Even so, he was alarmed by a sudden flash of bright light. He tried to jump up. He couldn’t. Then he heard something that surprised him even more than the light: the voice of a woman. “Don’t worry,” said 22-year-old Jane Kendeigh. “It’s only Navy photographers.”
Jane Kendeigh had wanted to become a nurse for as long as she could remember. After graduating from nursing school and joining the navy, she was accepted into a training program for something new: flight nursing.
Flight evacuation came about during World War II because of speed—or the lack of it: severely wounded men had a better chance of surviving if transported by air rather than the usual hospital ship. In 1942, American casualties of the Pacific War were evacuated via cargo planes, the first ones with no trained medics on board. Pharmacists were added, then flight surgeons.
Jane Kendeigh attempts to comfort William Wyckoff, Iwo Jima, March 6, 1945. US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) Library and Archives
The US Army was the first branch of the military to open its own flight nursing school. The US Navy followed, and in January 1945, its first graduating class included 24 female navy nurses and 24 male pharmacist mates. Jane was one of the nurses.
During the flight school’s two-month training course, Jane and the other trainees learned how high altitudes could damage the bodies of already wounded men.
They were also taught what to do if forced to evacuate over water. To qualify for this part of the course, each trainee had to swim a mile, swim underwater (to escape burning oil if the ship crashed), climb onto a life raft, and jump into water from a distance of ten feet.
Jane’s first flight into a combat zone began on March 6, 1945, when her plane took off from the US-controlled island of Guam. Besides Jane and the plane crew, a male pharmacist’s mate, Silas Sturtevant, was also on board and would be taking orders from Jane. Accompanying them was Lieutenant Gill DeWitt, a very disappointed navy photographer. He had been assigned to photograph the first navy flight nurse to land on Iwo Jima but had missed the first plane’s takeoff by a few minutes. The next best thing, he thought, was photographing the nurse on the second flight.
“There’s Iwo,” announced the plane’s radioman as they approached the island. But it wasn’t yet safe to land. The plane had to circle Iwo Jima for an hour and a half while US ships just offshore pounded the island in an attempt to destroy the caves and bunkers sheltering Japanese snipers.
Meanwhile, the plane’s passengers could clearly see the front line of fighting: the fire of weapons left a cloud of smoke and dust. The “bursting shells” fired from the many US battleships reminded Lieutenant DeWitt of “firecrackers on the Fourth of July.”
Although the plane was high enough to be clear of the US bombardment, it was certainly visible to the Japanese snipers below. Jane knew that Japanese anti-aircraft guns on the island had already shot down US carrier planes. One of those guns might still be in action. But an anti-aircraft gun wouldn’t be necessary to take them down; a single bullet hitting the fuel tank would cause the plane to explode.
So Jane and the others were relieved when the plane finally swished past the highest point on the island—Mount Suribachi—and settled in for a landing.
Jane’s destination was beside the airstrip: a small sandbagged hospital tent. The roar of guns and artillery was so loud, Jane and Silas could barely hear one another speaking as they hurried inside. There they found doctors and male medics working frantically to save lives in rough conditions. The stretcher-bearers carried wounded men out of the tent and lined them up near the waiting plane. Jane spoke comfortingly to each man, if he was conscious, and checked him as he went aboard.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant DeWitt asked the medics in the tent about the previous plane, the one he’d missed. They told him it was due in very soon; the pilot had lost his way.
This delay meant that Jane Kendeigh had suddenly become front-page news: the first navy flight nurse to land on Iwo Jima, the first navy flight nurse to step onto a World War II Pacific battlefield. Lieutenant DeWitt’s photograph of her speaking to William was transmitted to the United States, where it appeared in nearly every newspaper in the nation.
This would not be the last time she would have her photo taken by military photographers. As the first navy flight nurse to land on Okinawa as well as Iwo Jima, Jane remained big news for the rest of the war. Referred to as an Angel of Mercy and Candy Kendeigh (referring to a popular song of the time), she was always gracious to photographers. But she was much more interested in doing her job than having her photo taken, even though she understood that her image was appearing in newspapers all over America. When she was ordered to go on a monthlong war bond tour to raise necessary money from US citizens for the war effort, she followed orders but was “anxious” to return to her real job: landing in battle zones and caring for wounded men in flight.
Did she ever get used to the danger? On that first flight back from Iwo, Silas asked Jane, “Were you frightened by the firing?” She thought for a moment, remembering how, while on the island, “her knees had quaked and her breath came short.” Yes, apparently she had been frightened, but was too excited to realize it. Explaining later how she was able to function in spite of her fears, she said, “You live on your nerves. It was after I got back to Guam that I got thinking about it. Gee, I really went through that.”
Jane and pharmacist’s mate Silas Sturtevant familiarize themselves with patient information on their way from Iwo Jima to Guam. US Navy Bureau of Medicine (BUMED) and Surgery Library and Archives
She would go through it again and again. The routine on each flight was basically the same. The battle zone medics would explain what each patient would require on the flight. The plane was arranged to hold stretchers strapped to the sides of the plane.
Jane was always very busy on the flight back, keeping constant watch over her patients: checking their vital signs—blood pressure, temperature, etc.—feeding those who needed help, and keeping everyone as comfortable as possible.
Dozens of navy flight nurses treated more than 2,000 men on flights from Iwo Jima in March 1945, and nearly 12,000 from Okinawa the following June; larger planes were gradually used to accommodate more patients per flight. Yet none of these women received any official awards for their efforts. In an article she wrote for a US Navy magazine, Jane explained her take on this oversight: “Perhaps you’re wondering about the compensation in this duty—our rewards are wan smiles, a slow nod of appreciation, a gesture, a word—accolades greater, more heart-warming than any medal.”
Just talking to the soldiers, putting her hand on theirs, helped soothe them. “It was so unexpected for them to have a girl to talk to,” she said later, “they just wanted to hang on to you.” Sometimes the weakened men, nauseated by the high altitude, hung on so close, they threw up on her, which greatly embarrassed the men conscious enough to realize what they’d done.
William Wyckoff was one of these men. Although he survived his wounds and even regained his eyesight, he never fully recovered from the embarrassment of having heaved on Jane Kendeigh during his flight from Iwo Jima to Guam. Forty-one years later, at a reunion of Iwo Jima veterans where Jane was the guest of honor, William thought he finally found his chance to apologize. Jane, now the wife of a former navy pilot, the mother of three, and a nurse in a doctor’s office, had never forgotten William either. But when he tried to apologize for the mess he’d made back in 1945, Jane said to him, “Now just you never mind about that.”
Once Iwo Jima was in US control, it was used as an airfield in support of approximately 2,000 bombing raids until Okinawa, closer to Japan, replaced it. But those airfields were seized at an enormous cost. When American flyer Paul Montgomery first landed on Iwo Jima, he was overwhelmed when he saw the island’s graveyard: “I had never seen 7,000 markers before,” he said. “And when I came to realize that they were just kids like myself and that they wouldn’t be going home … it just took something out of me that I didn’t know was there…. I became traumatized with the price that had been paid so I could have a runway to land on coming back.”
“She hasn’t changed a bit,” said William.
Jane died in 1987.
“Angels of the Airfields: Navy Air Evacuation Nurses of World War II” by Andre Sobocinski, Naval Historical Foundation, www.navyhistory.org/2013/05/angels-of-the-airfields-navy-air-evacuation-nurses-ww2/.
Navy Flight Nurses of World War II by Andre Sobocinski, Naval Historical Foundation, www.med.navy.mil/bumed/nmhistory/Pages/showcase/Innovations/FlightNurses/main.aspx. Contains a photograph slide show.
The First Navy Flight Nurse on a Pacific Battlefield: A Picture Story of a Flight to Iwo Jima by Lieutenant Gill DeWitt (Admiral Nimitz Foundation, 1983).
