The Angel of the Concentration Camp

Omaha Steaks Ad

0:00You already know dad doesn't actually want another tire watch. So this Father's Day, gift him the tender, juicy taste of his favorite cut of steak from Omaha Steaks. Their high-quality steaks and proteins are perfect for summer grilling. Plus, you'll get an extra $35 off with promo code AUDIO at checkout. Omaha Steaks is a family-owned company with over 100 years of expertise in the meat industry. That means premium meats for premium dads. Every steak is flash-frozen and vacuum-sealed at the moment of peak freshness.

0:32So every bite is as delicious as the day it was carved. Try the fan-favorite Butcher's Cut Filet Mignon that has earned the coveted distinction of USDA-certified fairy tender. Give the dads in your life something to savor. Visit OmahaSteaks.com and get an extra $35 off with promo code AUDIO at checkout. That's OmahaSteaks.com and get an extra $35 off with promo code AUDIO. Terms apply. See site for details.

GameTime App Ad

1:00We have the tech to get food delivered in 15 minutes, but we all have horror stories about buying tickets. The GameTime app gives fans the advantage. Get amazing tickets in just a few taps. Fees are included, so what you see is what you pay. And the GameTime guarantee means authentic tickets at the best price every time. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets to concerts, sports, comedy, and more with GameTime. Download the GameTime app and create an account for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply.

1:30In December 1941, nurse Laura Cobb found herself trapped in a bombing raid in the Philippines. She was working at an American naval base in Manila when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Declarations of war followed, and Cobb's base became an early target for Japanese bombers. When the raid began, Cobb and the nurses under her command hid in a shelter beneath their dormitory. Blast after blast rained down, shaking the building. Shrapnel battered the base, and screams sounded outside,

2:01a preview of the mass casualties that would soon overrun the hospital. At last, the all-clear siren sounded. Cobb sprang up and sprinted across the base to the hospital, her fellow nurses a step behind. They had people to tend to, lives to save. They had no idea that their bravery would soon land them in a concentration camp, where they would be the ones needing medical care. They would be beaten and starved, shot at, and threatened with death. But through it all, Cobb never flinched.

2:33And her heroics would soon vaulter into the ranks of Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale as one of the most courageous war nurses in all of history. This is The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Keen, a topsy-turvy, sciency history podcast where footnotes become the real story. Laura Cobb was a prim, slender woman with glasses who usually wore her hair in a tight bun.

3:11She was born in 1892 near Wichita, Kansas. Unusually for women at the time, her parents insisted on sending her and all of her sisters to high school. After a stint teaching, Cobb attended nursing school and joined the Navy. She bounced around for a few years, then ended up in the U.S.-run Philippines. As chief nurse of her unit, she commanded 10 other nurses. They ranged in age from 27 to 40, and mostly hailed from heartland states like South Dakota and Iowa. Eventually, Cobb also hired a Filipina nurse named Basilia Torres-Stewart,

3:45the former head nurse of a hospital in Manila. Collectively, Cobb, Torres-Stewart, and the others would become known as the Twelve Anchors. Pearl Harbor, in its aftermath, took the anchors completely by surprise. And the bombing of Manila in December 1941 plunged their entire base into chaos. The hospital there had 78 beds, but hundreds of sailors and Filipino citizens arrived over the next few hours. Some were carried in on makeshift stretchers of doors or metal roofing.

4:15To make matters worse, the base cut its electricity after the raid to prevent fires. As a result, nurses could not use the elevator to take patients up to the third-floor operating theater. Surgeons began operating in the stairwell instead. Even triaging patients became a problem. Given the crush, nurses could not remember who they had checked and who they hadn't. So they invented a system on the spot, marking patients' foreheads with lipstick to denote their status and keep things organized. Adding to the chaos, the Japanese military sent word that their bombers would soon return and would bomb the hospital.

4:52The rules of war be damned. Cobb's crew began evacuating patients to wherever they could. Local schools, convents, a racquetball club. Given the Japanese threat, the U.S. military decided to abandon Manila in late December. But the 12 anchors stayed behind with their patients. All were taken prisoner in Manila in early January 1942. Their captors sent them to a former women's college-turned-concentration camp. Cobb and her nurses joined the inmate medical staff.

5:22It was a grueling job. Thousands of prisoners needed care, both captured soldiers and Filipino citizens. And Cobb's nurses were not allowed to keep their charts or write down anything about their treatment, probably to prevent them from documenting neglect or atrocities. Cobb, therefore, began a secret record-making operation, carefully hiding all papers. Still, the guards beat the inmates daily, including sick patients. Camp officials also sentenced one of Cobb's nurses to death when some patients under her care escaped.

5:53She was eventually spared, but it was a close thing. At one point, Cobb received orders to inventory all the drugs in the prison infirmary. Camp officials claimed that this was routine. But Cobb suspected that guards were searching for valuable medicines, either to treat themselves or to sell on the black market. One valuable drug was quinine, an anti-malaria drug. So Cobb took the infirmary's bottle of quinine and switched the label with a bottle of baking soda. The two compounds look vaguely alike, but quinine tastes quite different.

6:26It's far more bitter. If the Japanese officer seizing the medicine dabbed even a tiny bit on his tongue, Cobb would have been beaten, perhaps executed. But the officer never suspected that a woman could fool him. He simply grabbed the mislabeled baking soda and left the quinine behind. In March 1942, the 12 anchors and some of their patients were transferred to another concentration camp in Manila. Cobb sneaked the secret records out with her, hiding them beneath her shirt. She concealed the telltale rectangular bulge with a lei, a flower necklace.

7:00Conditions at the new camp were awful. Inmates had to wait in line for hours to shower or even to use a toilet. Food was scarce as well. Many women stopped having their periods, a common response to malnutrition. Similarly, many men became impotent. People of all ages suffered bleeding gums and wounds that would not heal, possible signs of scurvy. After 14 months, Cobb's crew and 800 other inmates got transferred again, to a concentration camp 40 miles south of Manila, a place called Los Baños.

7:33Cobb once again snuck records out beneath her shirt, concealed by a lei. During the transfer at the train station, Cobb threw a fit upon seeing all the inmates being crammed into unventilated boxcars. They seemed likely to suffocate in the heat. Bravely, or perhaps crazily, she confronted the guards and demanded they allow fresh air in. Imagine that. A lone American nurse confronting enemy soldiers with machine guns, and doing so with contraband medical records under her shirt.

8:04But the guards had grown to respect Chief Nurse Cobb. They agreed to ventilate the boxcars once they had left the city. And good thing, the stop-and-go trip took seven hours. Even then, the cars were brutally hot. Some inmates passed out, and most lost several pounds of weight as sweat. But, thanks to Cobb, they lived. Los Baños was the most disgusting concentration camp yet. It was set on the campus of an old agricultural college, amid coconut and banana fields.

8:35Some of the barracks were old stables with dirt floors and leaky roofs. The horse stalls inside were infested with flies and maggots. The medical infirmary was hardly better. Each cupboard had been picked clean of goods, and several cabinets had been torn off the wall. The only remaining equipment was an operating table bolted to the floor, and an autoclave oven to sterilize instruments. Except, the oven was broken, because someone had tried using it to steam rice. At least, the previous camps had had basic medical supplies.

9:07Not Los Baños. Cobb's crew had no medicine. No bandages, no plaster, no slings, no stitches, nothing. But Cobb refused to despair. Her twelve anchors would just have to make do. Cobb somehow acquired a bolt of denim. With this, the twelve anchors made new uniforms. Then they cut their old uniforms into bandages and slings. A few electrically-minded inmates also fixed the sterilizing oven and wired it to a bicycle-powered battery charger so it worked again. The Filipina nurse, Basilia Torres-Stewart, proved especially clever.

9:41She had deep knowledge of local resources. She taught her fellow nurses to use the sap from rubber trees as adhesive for bandages. She brewed guava leaf tea to fight dysentery. And she whipped out batches of sugar and onion juice for patients. A recipe that sounds disgusting, but apparently it fights coughs quite well. Other nurses and inmates pitched in with their own innovations. They turned pipes into bed frames and old bottles into call bells. They wove banana leaf fibers into mosquito nets and pillowcases.

10:11They bent scraps of tin roofing into cups and silverware and made tongue depressors of bamboo. All in all, things were humming. Still, guava tea and sugary onion juice only go so far. Some of Cobb's patients needed surgery or had chronic ailments like diabetes, things that clever little medical hacks would not fix. So Cobb began haggling with the guards. The chief Japanese medical officer at Los Baños also had to care for the guards there. But he was just a political flunky. He had to zero medical training.

10:42And Japanese guards were falling ill on his watch. So he and Cobb made a deal. In exchange for medical supplies, Cobb would essentially do the man's job for him. She would offer advice on treating the guards' ailments and diseases. This must have been a tough decision for Cobb, to keep her captors, her tormentors, alive and healthy. But her duty to her patients came first. And by bartering with the officer, she secured crucial stores of insulin, vitamins, anesthesia, and antiseptics. In the end, however, Cobb's resourcefulness backfired.

11:15The soldiers and Filipinos under her care were thriving. So the Japanese military started crowding more and more prisoners into the camp. The inmate population tripled from 800 to 2,400. Diseases like measles and tuberculosis began to spread. Worse, food supplies did not keep pace with the population growth. By late 1944, inmates were eating just 900 calories of mostly rotten food per day. Cobb later said, We didn't especially mind the weevils, but the cockroaches and worms made eating tough going.

11:47All this took a toll on the 12 anchors as well. They struggled through 12-hour shifts, day after day. Several of them grew too weak to lift patients anymore, or even climb stairs. They got sick themselves, too. The 52-year-old Cobb suffered heart strain from overwork, and her joints ached with arthritis. One nurse caught dengue fever. Another, age 40, suffered a heart attack. Worst of all, the 12 anchors' morale plummeted. They began pulling Cobb aside and admitting their fears that the U.S. military had abandoned them.

12:22They'd given up all hope of rescue. But Chief Nurse Cobb refused all such talk. She insisted that they would be liberated soon. And as usual, Cobb was right.

12:34Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls, and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web.

13:05But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it, together, at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash remove. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash remove.

13:35Cobb's infirmary at the Los Baños concentration camp eventually ran out of all medical supplies. People began dying every day of malnutrition, blocked colons, malaria. Another strange ailment also emerged, called beriberi. It's caused by a lack of vitamin B1. Symptoms include heart trouble, twitching eyes, and legs so swollen that the skin can burst. Strangely, another symptom includes telling lies. Patients just make things up and lie, lie, lie their heads off.

14:09It's a compulsion. I've put together a bonus episode about this fascinating disease at patreon.com slash disappearing spirit. In fact, the study of beriberi at Japanese concentration camps actually marked a milestone in neuroscience history. Many doctors back then doubted that the lack of a simple vitamin could cause complicated psychological symptoms, like pathological lying. But secret, underground research at certain camps proved that it could, and revealed a lot about how lying and memories work in our brains.

14:39All that and more at patreon.com slash disappearing spoon. Meanwhile, Laura Cobb's crew at Los Baños was near the breaking point. By early 1945, virtually every inmate there was ailing. So were the nurses. Given the lack of food, Cobb had lost 35 pounds from an already thin frame. And she was one of the healthier ones. A few nurses dropped to 80 pounds. One weighed 68. The lowest point came in February 1945.

15:10The guards at Los Baños began digging trenches and setting up machine guns. Cobb's nurses soon figured out why. They'd been seeing American planes flying overhead recently. One inmate had also jury-rigged a radio from spare electrical parts to get news about the war. So they knew that Allied troops were already liberating much of the Philippines. Cobb's crew deduced that the Japanese trenches and machine guns were preparation for an assault on the camp. Except, then the guards turned the machine guns not outward, but inward.

15:41The full, horrible truth became clear. The guns were not intended to repel an assault, but to murder the inmates. And those were not defensive trenches being dug. Those were mass graves. As soon as another crew of Japanese guards arrived to help out the next day, the executions would begin. When they figured this out, several of Cobb's nurses rushed up to her, asking what they should do. Cobb's answer was simple. Do your duty. Care for your patients. Comfort them in their last hours.

16:12Dawn arrived on February 23rd. The extra Japanese guards were coming that afternoon. But before they did, something extraordinary happened. Cobb and her nurses heard more American planes overhead. They squinted upward and saw specks falling from the sky. Were those bombs? No. Paratroopers. American soldiers. Armored vehicles began landing on nearby beaches, too. Before long, American and Filipino soldiers were smashing through the front gates of the camp. Many of the inmates were so sick and delirious, they didn't even realize they were being liberated.

16:46But even after the soldiers arrived, the inmates and nurses were still in danger. This was still Japanese territory. The nurses got the sickest patients onto armored vehicles near the gates for evacuation. They then escorted the rest to a nearby beach on foot. It was the longest two miles of their lives. Men and women were drooping with exhaustion. Japanese snipers were taking pot shots. Trudging those two miles took two full hours. But Cobb's crew fought through their pain and got all their charges down to the beach safely.

17:17The nurses were evacuated to several Allied bases over the next few days. On the way, they ate their first real meal in over a year. Beans with graham crackers. They finally arrived at the Naval Hospital in Pearl Harbor. Regrettably, newspaper stories about the 12 anchors proved to be cringy even by the standards of the day. The male reporters cracked jokes that, after three years in concentration camps, these ladies sure needed a trip to the salon. Har har. Thankfully, the military knew the women's worth.

17:48For her heroism, Cobb was promoted several ranks from chief nurse to lieutenant commander. The secret medical records that she had snuck from camp to camp also provided crucial documentary evidence of Japanese atrocities. She and her crew won several honors, including bronze stars and gold stars. After the war, Cobb tried to resume her Navy career. Sadly, lingering heart trouble and arthritis from her days in the POW camps forced her to retire from duty in 1947. She worked at a sanitarium in Los Angeles until 1964, then retired to Kansas.

18:21She died in Wichita in September 1981, age 89. To this day, the 12 anchors are among only 78 nurses in all of American history to become prisoners of war. And while Laura Cobb has never approached the renown of Clara Barton or Florence Nightingale, Cobb probably saved more lives, and did so under far worse conditions. When Americans think of what women contributed to World War II, the first image that pops to mind is Rosie the Riveter. Women building airplanes and guns, toiling on the home front.

18:53But let's not forget the likes of Laura Cobb and the 12 anchors. Women who were behind enemy lines like regular soldiers, and who proved every bit as brave.

Women in World War II

19:03This is the Disappearing Spoon podcast. If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a five-star review, or tell friends and family. Reviews, subscriptions, and word of mouth really do help. Also, please support the show at patreon.com slash disappearing spoon. It costs as little as seven cents per day for ad-free shows. You can also get bonus episodes and signed books.

19:34You can find more incredible stories in my books. Check out samkeen.com. You can also inquire about booking me as a speaker at your school or event. This episode was written, edited, and produced by me, Sam Keen. Thanks for listening. A warning from Jace Medical. Even if the war stops, the real shortages won't.

20:06Because of how slow ships move for most of this war, the U.S. was still receiving oil that set sail months ago. But other parts of the world are already feeling it. Asia. Europe. Africa. That's why prices are rising now, because demand is increasing as supply tightens. But the U.S. is just beginning to experience the real shortage. And even if things stabilize, the ripple effects will last for much, much longer. Oil doesn't just power your car. It powers the systems that make and deliver your medications.

20:39And when supply slows, access becomes less predictable. The difference between panic and peace is preparedness with Jace. The Jace case is a doctor-prescribed emergency supply of essential medications and prescription antibiotics delivered right to your door so you're already ready when you need it. Get your Jace case today at Jace.com. The Rita's taste you love. Now with a sour bite. Try Rita's limited-time trolley sour blue pucker. Find your closest Rita's and order on the app. Plus, get a free small ice after downloading and signing up.

21:11The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace case today at Jace.com. The Jace.com. The Jace.com. The Jace.com.