| Original caption: “Black-veiled Filipino women kneeling at benches before the altar where the priest conducts mass, while a badly burned American Army officer lies swathed in bandages as he convalesces on a cot in Cens Cathedral, turned into a makeshift Army hospital.” Original caption: “In their church, which has become a hospital, barefoot Filipino women worship only a few feet from the expressionless mask of a burned American officer.” In Palo, 2 field hospitals, unable to unload their equipment, joined forces with the 36th Evacuation Hospital, which had set up its operations in the Palo Cathedral, formerly the Metropolitan Cathedral of Our Lord’s Transfiguration, which the Americans called the San Salvador or, later, Cens Cathedral, which may have been a reference to Sens Cathedral in France. This hospital was part of a 20-unit medical group sent in to serve the X Corps, United States 6th Army. Casualties were fresh from the fighting that began on October 20, when the 1st troops landed. During the fighting, thousands of Filipinos sought refuge in Palo Cathedral. They were evicted when the church was turned into a hospital. By then, the fighting near the Cathedral had subsided, and a line of American infantry dug in and formed a skirmish line to protect the nurses and the patients. Filipinos volunteered to help after the Priest rang the church bell. The church was mostly undamaged, but shellholes pockmarked the church grounds. 3 hours after they landed at Tacloban under air attack on October 29, 1944, a Nurse Corps unit of 17 women under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Nola Forrest (June 19, 1900 – July 30, 1999), Director of the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) was at work. The arrival of women in the combat zone was nationally reported. “The nurses proceeded to the improvised hospital wards and commenced bathing and dressing the patients,” Forrest later reported. “When we arrived, the patients were haggard and harassed. The Medical Department staff had done a wonderful job, but could not provide individualized care to the patients. The next day, it was a transformed hospital. The patients were smiling, smoking, and had lost that worried look. Many said it was the first bath they had had in twelve days.” 150 of the most seriously wounded men were placed in the main body of the Palo Cathedral, and the rest of the patients were in tents outside. The surgeons used the baptismal font to scrub. The 200-year-old cathedral, 1st built on that location in 1596, was said to be the oldest Christian church in the Philippines. The church was still being used for worship. Every morning at 0730 Hours, a priest conducted Mass, and 3 Masses were held on Sundays. Bishop Manuel Mascariñas y Morgia (January 17, 1897 – May 8, 1980) was appointed to the diocese on December 16, 1937, and ordained on March 25, 1938. He served throughout World War II until November 12, 1951, when he was installed as Bishop of Tagbilaran. Forrest wrote to United States Army Colonel Florence A. Blanchfield (April 1, 1884 – May 12, 1971), Superintendent of the Nurse Corps, that it was a colorful sight to see the Filipinos in their white starched suits and dernas [Ternos – a traditional Filipino dress with puffy sleeves) with the black and white veils taking communion while the nurses were serving the patients breakfast.” “For the first two days, we didn’t have control of the air,” Forrest explained. “Still we had to go in line to get our food. They had soup in a great big drum, and they’d scoop it out and give it to you. There was a Japanese chap, a reconnaissance officer, one they used to call Charlie the Washing Machine Man, who would chug, chug, chugging over us, looking over the place. We’d kind of laugh at him.” Charlie went away, but “one evening,” wrote Forrest, “a lone Zero dropped a bomb and strafed people a half block from the hospital, and about twenty were mutilated. This same plane dived and strafed the front door of the hospital. However, the bullets, instead of going in the door, struck the outside and ricocheted, causing small nicks in the shoulders and arms of some patients.” “As I looked up,” Nola recalled, “I could see the fellow’s face. He dived down to our nurses’ [working] tent outside the hospital. We all dropped to the floor inside. I guess I was at the bottom. Finally, one of the nurses said, ‘Are you all right, Colonel? I haven’t felt you breathing for a long time.’” The staff was certain the enemy would come over in full force when darkness fell. That night, the nurses, who were billeted nearby in a nipa hut raised up on stilts with a carabao grunting beneath it, moved into the Cathedral. They tried to sleep on the marble floor of the altar, and they were joined by several Filipino civilians seeking shelter. Forrest’s head was under the Bishop’s chair, and she still remembered the dust in her nostrils. By her account, “No one got any sleep with the noise of our [M2] ninety millimeter [(3.5 inch)] guns and the ack-ack. The Jap[anese] came over every five or ten minutes regularly all night. I counted about forty raids altogether.” The hospital cared for injured Filipinos and wounded Japanese soldiers along with the Americans. Forrest was surprised to find movie actor Lewis F. Ayres III (December 28, 1908 – December 30, 1996) among the corpsmen. As a conscientious objector, he was assigned as a chaplain’s assistant, and he was 1 of the few hospital workers who were kind to the helpless Japanese. He was 1 of 16 medics who arrived under fire during the invasion of Leyte to set up evacuation hospitals. He consulted with Forrest and devised a way to get the prisoners off the wet and muddy ground by hoisting their litters between adjacent trees. Doctors and nurses incorporated the church’s fixtures into patient care. Benches served as stretchers and beds; fountains served to dry towels; blood was hung from the walls. As fighting moved onto Luzon, the hospital expanded its medical services to civilians on Leyte. Leyteños lined up outside Palo Cathedral for medical examinations. SWPA Director Forrest felt the decision to bring nurses into a combat zone had been vindicated. By sending them into a forward area before it was safe, the 6th Army’s Chief Surgeon had departed from official policy, despite the objections of General Walter Krueger (January 26, 1881 – August 20, 1967). Nola wrote to Colonel Blanchfield, “…the girls in this invasion certainly proved the value of post-operative nursing care…I was so proud of the way the nurses operated through all the noise and enemy action…[They] are doing a wonderful job. We hope to get more hospitals in soon.” All of the nurses were awarded the Bronze Star for their performance during those critical days and nights. Private 1st Class Henry L. Burton (March 1, 1922 – January 30, 1996), of Tupelo, Arkansas, landed on Leyte on October 20, 1944, with the 24th Infantry Division and was shortly wounded by a Japanese sniper. Burton recovered from his wounds at Palo Cathedral. Olava Caridad (???? – ????), a Filipino volunteer nurse, assisted in his recovery, and they were photographed by the United States Air Force 6th Combat Camera Unit. A photo series about the Palo Cathedral hospital appeared in LIFE Magazine on December 25, 1944. The article featured 2nd Lieutenant Florence M. Jones, née Vehmeier (March 7, 1917 – June 14, 2007), Nurse Corps, who wrote home about the fruits available while stationed in Australia. “There are so many pretty, strange birds. We have a baby kangaroo, a possum, and a puppy for pets,” she wrote home in a letter published by the Freeport, Illinois Journal-Standard on December 9, 1942. United States Army Captain Edward D. Campbell (December 1, 1913 – October 17, 2004) of Cape Girardeau, Missouri, served as a specialist in colon and rectal surgery with the 36th Evacuation Hospital. He was commissioned on July 1, 1942, and discharged on February 3, 1946. Saint Francis Hospital’s Critical Care Center in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, was named for him in 1983. United States Army Major Captain Catherine M. “Kay” Acorn December 24, 1906 – January 20, 1964) of Belmont, Massachusetts, had survived numerous Japanese air attacks while treating casualties on Bataan and Corregidor with the Nurse Corps. She was at Clark Field in Manila when the Japanese wiped out the United States Army Air Forces in the Philippines. She was able to evacuate from the last submarine to dock at Corregidor on April 29, 1942, so she did not share the fate of several nurses on Corregidor and other places in the Philippines when they were taken prisoner. She spent 5 years in the South Pacific, feeling she had to return to the Philippines. Captain Acorn’s photo at Palo Cathedral was nationally circulated in December 1944. After her return to the United States after World War II, she dedicated her life to paraplegic veterans. United States Army Major General Richard J. Marshall (June 16, 1895 – August 3, 1973), Deputy Chief of Staff, United States Armed Forces Far East (USAFFE), and United States Army Major General Charles P. Stivers (October 10, 1891 – June 2, 1966), Assistant Chief of Staff, USAFFE, visited the hospital to greet some of the patients. The LIFE article depicted Lew Ayres ministering to wounded Japanese Prisoners of War. Outrage over the famous actor’s refusal to serve in combat dissipated when he volunteered to be a medic and a chaplain’s assistant. Nevertheless, Lew Ayres’s Hollywood career never regained the levels of success he had enjoyed before the war. Photographer W. Eugene Smith (December 30, 1918 – October 15, 1978) became a war correspondent photographer in September 1943. Smith flew with the American naval aircraft assaulting Truk in February 1944. He then photographed the invasions of Saipan, Guam, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Seriously wounded by a Japanese mortar in 1945, he recovered for 2 years before taking photos again. He continued to publish photos in LIFE Magazine until 1955. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1473.jpg |
| Image Size | 554.50 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1971 x 2000 |
| Photographer | W. Eugene Smith |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | December 10, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Palo |
| State or Province | Leyte |
| Country | Philippines |
| Archive | Museum of Modern Art |
| Record Number | 584.1953 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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