Eighty Years Later, Asian American WWII Nurses Still Await Congressional Recognition
- Kelly Kimball, More to Her Story
- 5 hours ago
- 10 min read
This piece was published in partnership with The 19th and More to Her Story.
When Maria Batulan Taguba died of cancer at the age of 81 in her home in Wahiawa, Hawaii, her son, retired Maj. Gen. Antonio “Tony” Taguba, sat beside her, trying to memorize every detail: the rhythm of her breath; the way she still barked orders from bed; the brief eruptions of laughter among him, his father, and his siblings; and the pieces of Maria’s life she managed to share until her final moments.
To Tony, she was not just Mom. She was the first war survivor he ever knew.
Maria was just sixteen during World War II when Japanese forces invaded the Philippines, striking multiple locations across northern Luzon where her family lived. Maria scattered south to Manila once she caught her first sight of Japanese ships across the Philippine Sea. Shortly after arriving in Manila, Maria was beaten and imprisoned in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp by Japanese forces after trying to give water to captured POWs.
While inside the compound, she joined American military nurses — who were captives themselves — as a volunteer nurse’s aide, helping care for wounded soldiers and civilians. Over three years, she witnessed atrocities few could imagine. The stories, Tony said, came out of her in pieces throughout his childhood: brief, sharp, unvarnished, and without preamble.
“She talked about the horrific bayoneting of children,” Tony said. “She talked about the wounds [and the] beating of civilians.”
In Santo Tomas, titles mattered far less than survival. “They didn’t know what to do with her,” he said of her captors. “So she just became a nurse’s aide.”
She had never been a nurse before, nor trained as one. But she worked in lock-step with them, doing unglamorous yet necessary labor like helping carry sick patients, getting supplies, fetching water, and disposing of contaminated materials.
Col. Rich Prior, a former historian of the Army Nurse Corps Association, said the U.S. Army never had an official cadre of nurses' aides. In wartime, especially in places like POW camps, they improvised. Anyone with a skillset that could help, “I’m sure they welcomed.”
That chaos was Maria’s world until the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division liberated Santo Tomas in February 1945, freeing over 3,700 detainees, many of whom were near death from abuse and malnutrition.
Nearly eighty years later, Maria never received formal recognition of her service. But a coalition led by Asian American women is working to change that — incrementally.
Led by Filipino American advocate Cecilia Gaerlan, the Bataan Legacy Historical Society is lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass two bipartisan bills to award the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor Congress can bestow, to tens of thousands of U.S. Army and Navy nurses, all of whom were women, who served under fire during WWII. It was Gaerlan who made sure S. 2195 and H.R. 4901 specifically recognized Asian American nurses, who weren't in the bills' original text until she joined the effort.
Maria would not qualify under current legislative definitions due to her being a nurse’s aide, not a nurse, but there are at least five known remaining WWII nurses, ranging from ages 102 to 107, who do qualify.
Gaerlan was driven to this work by her father, Luis Gaerlan Jr., who fought with the 41st Infantry Regiment.
“My father was a Bataan Death March survivor,” said Gaerlan. “He survived. That’s why I’m here.”
Growing up, Gaerlan rarely heard her father talk about his service. And when he did, he told it “like a cowboy story.”
“He was so funny, you know, with sound effects of bullets and things like that,” she said. “My father, he was Mr. Macho.”
Only later, while conducting research on the Bataan Death March, did Gaerlan learn the scale of the suffering he endured.
“When I started reading [about it], I cried,” she said in an interview for the Filipino Veterans and Recognition Project in 2019. “I didn't know what he really went through during the war. And then it turned out that my experience was not unique, because a lot of these men never told their children about what they went through because it was just too painful.”
After the fall of Bataan in April 1942, the Japanese forced 64,000 Filipino soldiers and 12,000 American POWs to relocate in a forced march of about 65 miles through wild jungle from Mariveles to San Fernando, then to Camp O’Donnell, during which thousands died from starvation, abuse and disease.
“I asked him, point-blank, ‘Is this true that you guys were starving? Is that true? Did that really happen?’”
He didn't answer, said Gaerlan. He simply broke down into tears.
“I realized, I couldn’t wait for someone else to tell this history. I had to do it while my father was still alive. And then, later on, before the vets died.”
In 2024, Gaerlan received a draft of the Senate bill by the office of Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin that mentioned Bataan, but omitted Filipino nurses entirely. Gaerlan would later help rewrite the bill’s language, expanding the text to include Filipino nurses, as well as Chinese American, and other Asian American nurses.
Last congressional session, the Senate bill had eight co-sponsors; the House bill had six. In June, the Senate bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, where it remains today. The House bill, which was introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik in August, has been referred to two House Committees and hasn’t advanced further.
“We need the support,” Gaerlan said. “We have this coalition. … A lot of them are nurses, or used to be nurses and veterans, both.”
But getting the bills passed by Congress will demand significant effort from the coalition, which includes retired Rear Admiral Clara Adams-Ender, retired Rear Admiral Cynthia Kuehner, senior officers of the Army Nursing Corps Association, the Navy Nursing Corps Association, the Military Officers Association, and the Arizona Veterans Hall of Fame Society.
Gaerlan said Congress’ behavior was familiar to her: politicians often publicly express an urgency around an issue, only to kick it further down the list of political priorities. “Some politicians sponsor bills year after year just to get votes from certain groups. They don’t [actually] work on it. It’s happened so many times.”
Part of the reason lies in a broader pattern of how American society and Congress recognize service, historians say: Once one group is acknowledged, momentum to recognize others often stalls.
“Some politicians sponsor bills year after year just to get votes from certain groups. They don’t [actually] work on it. It’s happened so many times.”
Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, a historian at the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National WWII Museum, explained the experience of Japanese Americans in the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.
“There was this tendency to say, okay, we as American society recognize Japanese Americans … and then that's that,” she explained. “What about other Asian American groups? What about Chinese Americans? What about Filipino Americans?… American society looked at one group as just being representative of all of Asian American society and experiences.”
Col. Prior, of the Army Nurse Corps Association, noted that another part of the challenge is structural. “The Army is oriented around units, significant leaders, and actions,” he said. “The framework that the military uses isn’t around minorities or individuals, so it’s very easy for that sort of thing to get lost over time.”
Gaerlan’s campaign unfolds alongside a broader reckoning with Asian American legacy and service surrounding WWII. Among the most pivotal figures in that shift is Chinese American journalist, author, and documentarian E. Samantha Cheng, who helped lead the successful 2018 Congressional Gold Medal effort honoring Chinese American service members. Since then, Cheng has spearheaded a massive undertaking to identify every Chinese American who served during the war, an effort that has so far documented more than 22,000 veterans.
“All I care about is that these people are remembered, that their names are recorded somewhere,” she said.
Her team spent years reconstructing service histories scattered in federal archives and community-held collections across the country. Hawaii proved one of the most difficult states to document, because many WWII service records stored at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis were destroyed in a 1973 fire.
“All I care about is that these people are remembered, that their names are recorded somewhere.”
To fill the gaps, she and her collaborators combed through lists from the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, wartime news clippings, family scrapbooks, and archival materials uncovered during intake trips to Chinese American communities across the country.
“We went to Chicago, to Northern and Southern California, to Texas — we went everywhere,” she said.
Cheng’s project was largely complete before major funding supplied by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) was cut last year. Cheng was told by NHPRC that the final year of her three-year grant would not be fulfilled, a sudden loss she attributes to Trump-era efforts to reduce the program, leaving years of research without a permanent institutional home.
“It would be a crime — an absolute freaking crime — if this data just stayed here at this stage,” Cheng said. “Because we are so close.”
Much of the project’s early work was self-funded. “We did this out of love, out of commitment, out of the importance that we need to remember these men and women who served,” Cheng said. “My intention is to make all of this public domain and hand it back to the people … on a platform that will never go away.”
Recognition becomes even more complicated for those who served in non‑combat roles. Take, for example, telephone and radio operators from the Army Signal Corps: Though they wore Army uniforms and served overseas, they were long classified as civilian employees rather than service members. It wasn’t until 1979, more than sixty years after their service, that surviving operators were finally granted veteran status, honorable discharges, and access to benefits.
“We tend to talk about Asian Americans and the Asian American community and their experiences as being very monolithic. World War II proves how incorrect that is.”
The precedent showed how non-combat contributions were often sidelined, even when the people involved performed vital wartime services. Women’s veteran’s groups in the 1970s and 1980s began to argue that frontline combat shouldn’t be the sole measure of military service, a stance that applies not just to Signal Corps operations but also other support roles like Rosie the Riveters who were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal earlier this year.
In the United States, Asian American WWII history popularly centers on the 442nd Regimental Combat team. But historians and advocates note their story has often overshadowed others. Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Korean Americans, and immigrants across the Asian diaspora caught in the Pacific theater all experienced different, singular wartime realities.
“We tend to talk about Asian Americans and the Asian American community and their experiences as being very monolithic,” Hinnershitz of the National WWII Museum said. “World War II proves how incorrect that is.”
Remembering these groups demands law, academic curriculum, oral histories, family archives, and sometimes sheer persistence.
“If you have a family member who falls into this group,” Prior of the Army Nurse Corps Association explained, “keep their letters, their diaries, their photographs. That’s how we preserve these histories.”
Japanese forces surrendered in the Philippines in September 1945. The hardship of that era shaped the Taguba family’s experience for the rest of their lives.
In 1947, Maria married Tomas B. Taguba, a U.S. Army Sergeant First Class who served under the 45th Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Scouts under the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East, himself a survivor of the Battle of Bataan and the Bataan Death March.
Tony’s father was, in his words, “a WWII veteran in a big ‘W’,” but the U.S. government did not treat him like one.
After fighting from 1942 until his liberation in 1945, Tomas never received the monthly pay he was owed during the war. When the Army finally issued a settlement in 1949, it amounted to a one-time payment of $60.
But even that was reduced when the Army deducted $38.20 for “resettlement cost,” said Tony.
Tomas was caught in the aftermath of the Rescission Act of 1946, a law that revoked American veterans’ benefits promised to most Filipino soldiers, like pensions, healthcare, and a guaranteed pathway to U.S. citizenship. The act declared their service no longer qualified as active U.S. military duty, despite the fact that they fought under the American flag. Instead of individual benefits, U.S. Congress offered a single $200 million lump sum to the Philippine government, which provided little relief. Tomas “never got his benefits," said Tony, receiving only a small later-in-life pension and relying largely on Supplemental Security Income. Tony called the policy “discriminatory.”
Like many Filipino veterans, Tomas had little recourse. Tony once asked his father whether he had ever protested the treatment, and the answer revealed the power imbalance soldiers like his father endured: “Who am I going to protest to? I needed the money.”
Many others faced the same uphill battle. At the age of 99, another veteran, Celestino Almeda, sued the U.S. government after the Veterans’ Association couldn’t accept his documents proving his service as a 1941 member of the Philippine Commonwealth Army, which served as part of the U.S. Army. Only after U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation Act of 2009, offering one-time payments to surviving Filipino WWII veterans, did Almeda finally receive compensation — in 2017. Almeda passed in 2022.
For Maria and Tomas, the lack of benefits meant they raised their children with none of the support other American veterans received. When the Taguba family moved to Hawaii when Tony was 11, they did so without the benefits that might have helped them build stability. Maria’s husband was physically present but emotionally distant. “A man of the house,” Tony said.
It was Maria who mothered, while managing her own post-war battles. She would serve Tony and his siblings bowls of boiled rice mixed with millet, the same food she survived on in the camp. Occasionally, she’d add a sliver of chicken, if she had it.
“She wanted to demonstrate the hardship of war,” Tony said. “She’d say, ‘Tell me how you like that food.’ She survived on that. She survived.”
In Maria’s bedroom in Hawaii on her final day alive, the priest the family had called still hadn’t come to bless her. Hours passed, and it became clear no one was coming. One of Tony's sisters leaned close, telling their mother it was okay to let go.
Then Maria’s eyes fluttered open. She fixed her gaze on her daughter and, with a flash of her old fire, snapped, “I’m trying to die — and you’re talking too much.”
For a moment, the room broke open with laughter.
“I told my sister, let her concentrate,” Tony recalled. “At least she knows where she's going.”
