LOCAL

Topeka woman was among 'Angels of Bataan'

Tim Hrenchir
threnchir@cjonline.com
Seaman High School students Katelynn Glenn, left, and Allyson Shehi visited nurses' graves this week at Arlington National Cemetery during a trip in which they are taking part in National History Day competition at the University of Maryland with a documentary film they made about U.S. military nurses captured by the Japanese in 1942 in the Phillipines. [Submitted]

U.S. Army nurse Blanche Kimball, who was from Topeka, received what was considered to be a desirable assignment when she was transferred in 1941 to the tropical city of Manila in the Philippines.

But then World War II broke out, and Kimball was captured by the Japanese.

This week's History Guy video at CJOnline.com focuses on Kimball and her fellow nurses, who became known as the "Angels of Bataan and Corregidor."

Seaman High School students Allyson Shehi and Katelyn Glenn are taking part this week in National History Day competition at the University of Maryland with a documentary film they made about the angels.

Shehi and Glenn were among 11 Seaman students who submitted history-related projects that qualified for nationals. Their film tells how 77 U.S. military nurses were taken prisoner in 1942 when the Japanese captured the Philippines. Those women were all still alive and working as nurses when they were liberated in 1945.

One was Kimball, who had been born in 1901 at Leavenworth and became a nurse for the Army in 1929. She was 39 years old when she was assigned to Manila.

During their time in captivity, the nurses cared for American prisoners of war.

Kimball gained the attention of her fellow nurses with her flair for telling fortunes using playing cards, author Elizabeth Norman wrote in her 2013 book "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of the American Women Trapped on Bataan."

Kimball suffered from malnutrition and lost 60 pounds, her niece, Harriet Ochs, told The Capital-Journal in 2001.

"Mentally, I don't think it harmed her at all," Ochs said. "Aunt Blanche was pretty strong. I think she accepted (the experience) better than some of the others."

After the war, Kimball came home to Topeka, arriving before her father died in July 1945.

She lived with her mother until she died in 1952, then lived in an apartment in downtown Topeka's Kansan Towers before moving to a nursing home at Alma.

Kimball died at age 77 on Dec. 1, 1978. She is buried in Topeka Cemetery.

Kimball was the only nurse from Topeka to be captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. A different Topeka woman later portrayed herself as having been among those prisoners — and even said she took part in the Bataan Death March — but that woman admitted in 2004 that those claims were false.