Introduction to Personnel

When I began researching the men and women who served with my grandfather in the 32nd Station Hospital, I had no idea what I would find. I didn’t predict that the project would snowball into one that told the stories of 135 members of the unit (as of April 2019), including every known officer who was a member of the unit from December 1942 through March 1945.

It was only on November 23, 2020 that I finally completed the task of compiling a list of all personnel who served in the unit between activation around June 25, 1942 and V-E Day on May 8, 1945. (Theoretically, some men may also have transferred in and then out between June 25, 1942 and August 6, 1942, when there are no extant unit records.) Approximately 150 officers (including nurses) and 500 enlisted men served in the unit prior to V-E Day. Of those, approximately 148 officers and 453 enlisted men served with the unit overseas between January 14, 1943 and May 8, 1945.

What I learned continues to impress me. Members of the 32nd Station Hospital came from all over the country, but appeared to be especially concentrated from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Some were born in the United States, the members of families who had immigrated from such diverse places as Canada, Russia, Poland, Germany, Japan, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, and Mexico. A few were immigrants themselves, originally from Canada, Ireland, Greece, and even Germany. A significant number were Jewish, including many of the doctors and almost all of the dentists. A quirk of military necessity meant that the unit had three pediatricians at the same time from 1942 through August 1944 (and two thereafter).

I also learned that many members of the unit were truly amazing individuals, like Dr. Louis Linn, the psychiatrist who continued to practice right up until his death at age 95. Or Dr. Richard Kainuma, who served in the predominantly Nisei 100th Infantry Battalion before joining the 32nd Station Hospital. Then there’s Neta Zinn (Purks), the nurse who survived the sinking of a hospital ship prior to her service in the 32nd Station Hospital and who, during the Korean War, was a member of the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (the basis for the novel, film, and television show M*A*S*H). Though her name was not Houlihan, the hospital did have a nurse with that name, who as a civilian nurse responded when Worcester, Massachusetts was devastated by a tornado. There’s also Mildred Truitt, the physical therapist who continued to volunteer helping breast cancer survivors for years after her retirement. Or Mary Wood (Traub), who spent years keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive.

The enlisted men of the 32nd Station Hospital are underrepresented on this site thus far, but without the efforts of Willard Havemeier, who created the first website about the 32nd Station Hospital, my own project may never have come to fruition. Dwight McNelly’s exceptional collection of photographs (and unpublished manuscripts), now archived at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, also proved quite helpful for this project. Finally, Don Sudlow, who made drawings of his comrades during his spare time (which, when gifted to them, proved to be among the most prized souvenirs of their wartime service) also provided a major impetus to this project. The very first biographical research I did for what ended up being expanded into this Personnel section of the website occurred because I wanted to learn more about the artist who created the artwork that I’d worked to restore.

There are so many others whose stories, despite my best efforts, will never receive the recognition they deserve.

Research Starting Points

When I started my research, all I had were three officer rosters (December 31, 1943, May 1, 1944, and December 31, 1944) that I obtained from the surviving unit reports in the National Archives. These rosters listed name (last, first, middle initial), service number, rank, organization (i.e. Medical Corps, Dental Corps, Medical Administrative Corps, etc.) and duty. In addition, I soon found a list of survivors as of 1994 compiled by Willard Havemeier in the Dwight McNelly collection at the Pritzker and eventually received a copy (sent to me by the daughter of Hank Knitter) of an especially comprehensive list of unit members, living and dead, compiled for the unit’s 1982 reunion.

The course of this project somewhat resembles a branching tree. At the time of this writing in April 2019, I have successfully made contact with the relatives of approximately 60 different 32nd Station Hospital families (and two found me via this website); the site already features content contributed by over 20. Frequently, as I contact a new family, I obtain a document or photograph that leads me to be able to identify another member of the unit and in turn, contact their relatives.

Items in the Dr. William A. Carey, Jr. and Ina Bean Carey Collection proved especially valuable. These included lists with names of some of the 32nd Station Hospital’s officers, nurses, and N.C.O.s as of November and December 1942, a signed program from the unit’s 1943 Thanksgiving celebration, and a list of 32nd Station Hospital survivors compiled in 1981 prior to the unit reunion the following year. A postwar nurses’ reunion photo from the Ruby Milligan (Hills) Collection accompanied by a list of names of attendees also proved useful.

After this article was initially published, I received a photo of an organizational chart from the collection of Dr. Gayland L. Hagelshaw, who commanded the unit from May 23, 1943 until June 23, 1943. This chart was different from the other documents in that it only listed ranks and last names (and only male officers, not nurses). Since there were no first names, middle initials, or service numbers, I had to cross-reference the names with other lists. One interesting aspect of the chart was that, unlike the rosters, which listed one assignment, the chart listed as many as four duties for a single officer, and sometimes the assigned wards in the case of the unit’s doctors. This chart also made it possible to finally learn the assignments of some of the doctors who transferred out of the unit prior to December 31, 1943.

In early 2020, I obtained scans of some microfilmed rosters and payroll records from the 32nd Station Hospital for the years 1942 and 1943. I also obtained the unit’s morning reports from the entire war, which recorded personnel matters like arrivals and departures from the unit and promotions. There appears to be no extant rosters of the 32nd’s enlisted personnel after 1943, but I have built a fairly comprehensive list by combining rosters (when available) with the data in the unit’s morning reports.

Personnel Breakdown as of January 14, 1943

Members of the unit came from all walks of life. I have focused this analysis on the composition of the unit at the time it went overseas, although many personnel rotated in and out during subsequent years.

The enlisted personnel were largely working class men drafted into the Army of the United States (some before Pearl Harbor, but most after). Of the enlisted members of the unit at the time it went overseas on January 14, 1943, only about 4% were Regular Army or volunteers. At this time, I do not have hard data on age and geographic distribution. My impressions are that a majority of enlisted personnel came from the Northeast or Midwest.

Similarly, it appears the majority of the medical officers (doctors and dentists) were not career military personnel. Most joined the U.S. Army only after Pearl Harbor and were directly commissioned as officers, joining the 32nd Station Hospital after brief courses at a Medical Replacement Training Center. Although it is possible that some of them were reservists or guardsmen before the war, of the 21 medical officers who went overseas with the unit on January 14, 1943, I have been unable to find any evidence that any specific member of the unit was a reservist except the commanding officer, Colonel Theodore Burstein. (A few reservists did join the unit later, however.)

Of the 21 medical officers with the unit as of January 14, 1943, the youngest (Dr. William A. Carey, Jr.) was 25; the oldest, Colonel Burstein, was 47. The average age was 34 and median age was 36. Eight were from the Northeast (38%), six from the South (29%), six from the Midwest (29%), and one from the West (5%).

The ten Medical Administrative Corps and Sanitary Corps (including the unit’s sole warrant officer for the sake of simplicity, though he was not technically a M.A.C. officer) were younger than the medical officers. 2nd Lieutenant Herman C. Needles was the youngest (20) and 1st Lieutenant Adam R. Resendez was the oldest (32). Average age of these officers was 23 and median age was 24. According to my research, three were career officers (members of the prewar Regular Army). I believe the remaining six M.A.C. officers were originally enlisted personnel who attended O.C.S. prior to joining the 32nd Station Hospital.

Not surprisingly, the unit’s two chaplains were a bit older, 42 and 43 respectively. Chaplain Shearer was a World War I veteran (albeit before he was a clergyman).

Since women were not subject to the draft in the United States, the unit’s 55 nurses were all volunteers. At the time that the unit went overseas, 2nd Lieutenant Kathleen M. Donahue was the youngest at 21, and 2nd Lieutenant Cecilia M. Gallant was the oldest at 43. The average age was 28 and median age was 26.

54 nurses of the unit’s original 55 nurses entered the service in the Northeast (though at least three were born in Canada and one in Ireland). Just under half were living in New England when they joined the Army Nurse Corps, with most of the rest from New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. The largest single group to join the unit were 25 nurses living in New England who had been stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. Others joined the unit from Camp Upton, Pine Camp, and Fort Ontario in New York as well as Raritan Arsenal and Fort Dix in New Jersey, and Fort DuPont, Delaware. It appears that Principal Chief Nurse Helen W. Brammer was the only nurse of the 55 who had been a member of the Army Nurse Corps before Pearl Harbor. Brammer was also one of only two nurses born in the Midwest, as well as the only nurse who entered the A.N.C. outside the Northeast.

Research Challenges

I performed most of the research based on the rosters and documents with Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, Fold3, and GeneologyBank. The greatest challenge in building a list of biographies is in matching a name on a roster to other records, especially when the name is fairly common. It is rare to find documents that include an individual’s full name, date of birth, address or place of birth, and service number, a combination that makes it possible to match with absolute certainty a name on the 32nd Station Hospital roster to biographical information found in other sources. In the case of enlisted service numbers, they can usually be cross-referenced to an enlistment record which provides data like year of birth, state of birth, occupation, induction point, and residence at time of enlistment. This sometimes meant that I could identify enlisted men with very common names, like Kenneth M. Robinson.

In some cases, I found an abundance of documents on a given individual; in others, documents were nowhere to be found (or worse, incomplete or contradictory).

On occasion, I was able to confirm likely matches with a newspaper story or obituary that specifically mentioned service in the 32nd Station Hospital. In others, I was able to reach family members who could provide details (or recognize someone in a photograph) that confirmed a match. Still, in some cases I had no choice but to declare a match “possibly,” “likely,” “probably, and “almost certainly” (in increasing order of confidence). More frequently than I’d like (but not as often as I expected) I found no match at all, especially in the case of more common names. I had been especially pessimistic about learning the nurses’ stories thanks to postwar name changes, but successfully learned about almost all of them (to varying degrees).

Ethical Concerns

One additional challenge I faced was deciding what to do with the material I uncovered. As an amateur historian, I was unprepared for various ethical concerns about what to publish and what to withhold. Examples include individuals’ medical histories, marriages that ended in divorce, and statements that were implicitly or explicitly derogatory about an individual’s character.

One of the goals of the project was to preserve the memory of the men and women my grandfather served with. Given that I use materials entrusted to me by the children and grandchildren of 32nd Station Hospital members, I acknowledge a sense of obligation to them in how I use the material. As a result, I feel conflicted about whether these editorial decisions constitute lies by omission, since a historian with more emotional distance might make different decisions.

In terms of medical histories, I have generally erred on the side of not disclosing specific health problems unless I deemed it essential for telling their stories. One example was Colonel Theodore Burstein, whose departure from the unit due to heart attack was already disclosed in at least a half dozen sources.

For the issue of marriages that ended in divorce, I approached each on a case-by-case basis. Even today, this can be a sensitive topic and might be something the individual would not have wanted disclosed. Generally, I tried to take the approach about whether I could adequately tell the individual’s story without it. When marriages were documented in 32nd Station Hospital reports or resulted in children, for instance, they could not really be considered something secret and I typically disclosed them in the individual’s biography.

In terms of derogatory information about members of the unit, I also struggled with what to disclose. One example was what to write about Colonel Goss’s leadership style, which was controversial. I’ve disclosed more information about him for two reasons. First, as the unit’s commanding officer, his leadership is inexorably linked to the story of the unit. Second, because he was a more public figure, multiple assessments (both positive and negative) existed, which I felt made it possible to present the controversy in a fair way.

On the other hand, I generally erred on the side of withholding negative information in mini-biographies about the other members of the unit. As an example, I discovered newspaper articles about one of the unit’s doctors who settled at least two malpractice suits decades after the war. Since this doctor had no known living family members, concerns about embarrassing his loved ones did not enter into my decision (something has potentially influenced me in other cases). On the one hand, I suspected the lawsuits were probably justified, given that the doctor had been stripped of privileges at a hospital even before the incidents in question occurred. However, the news articles did not convey the doctor’s side of the story, nor did the act of settling a lawsuit prove he was indeed at fault, as this is a common legal strategy. Since I could not fairly cover this topic in the space of a mini-biography, I decided to withhold this information.

Additional difficulties pertain to how I should present material from scrapbooks and written accounts that in modern sensibilities would be cringeworthy in their racism, misogyny, or homophobia. An example would be postcards in my grandfather’s collection that depicted residents of North Africa with dark skin and large, bright red lips. (Interestingly, a pre-printed message on the cards proclaimed that they were approved by the base censor.)

On the one hand, withholding this information is arguably tantamount to pretending that these issues didn’t exist, and risks perpetuating the myth that members of the “Greatest Generation” were saints. Although the 32nd Station Hospital treated African American patients, no members of the unit itself were black. This was due not only to systematic racism on a national level that placed severe barriers for black Americans to become nurses or doctors in the first place, but also the fact that the U.S. military was segregated until after the end World War II.

The decades after World War II saw rapid evolution of mainstream attitudes about race, gender, and sexual orientation. As the controversies of recent years have proved, the process is still ongoing. Future articles may touch upon these matters as they pertain to the 32nd Station Hospital’s story, when I’m confident that I can present the information with proper context and fairness.

List of 32nd Station Hospital Personnel Articles

Introduction to Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name A)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name B)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name C)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name D)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names E–F)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name G)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name H)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names I–J)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name K)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name L)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names Ma–Mc)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names Me–Mu)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names N–P)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names Q–R)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names Sa–Sm)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names Sn–Sw)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Name T)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names V–W)
Enlisted Men of the 32nd Station Hospital (Last Names V–W)