identification tag
date: label: associated date
content: 1919 - 1940
notes: label: Description
content: Jefferson, Texas native Hattie R. “H.R.” Brantley commissioned second lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps in 1939 and was issued this military “dog tag” with her name, rank, and service number on the reverse. Stationed overseas in the Philippines, Brantley was one of 99 Army and Navy nurses on duty when Imperial Japanese Forces attacked in December 1941. Following the withdrawal of American and Filipino forces to the Bataan peninsula on the island of Luzon, these nurses found themselves as the first female American military personnel under fire in World War II. Stationed at General Hospital No. 1 at the southern tip of Bataan peninsula, Brantley and her fellow nurses – deemed the “Angels of Bataan - diligently worked amidst with limited resources and under occasional enemy fire to treat the ever-growing number of American and Filipino troops struck down by enemy fire or tropical diseases. Ordered to withdraw to the island of Corregidor on April 8, 1942, Brantley and her fellow nurses thus escaped the surrender of all American and Filipino forces on April 9. Although some of the nurses managed to be evacuated out of Corregidor, Brantley together with 53 other female nurses became a prisoners of war following the island’s surrender on May 6. The women spent the remainder of the war interned with American and European civilians in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. There on February 3, 1945, American forces liberated the camp and returned Brantley to freedom. She continued to serve in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1969 with 28 years of service. Passing away in 2006, her headstone acknowledges her service in the Philippines, proclaiming “I joined the Army to see the world and ride a horse. In a Japanese prison camp I ate the horse.”
label: Description
content: You can learn more about Brantley and her fellow nurses in Elizabeth M. Norman’s book We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese.
label: Location
content: Currently on loan
setName: label: See more items in
content: Military and Society: Armed Forces History, Military
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: AF.76228M
label: catalog number
content: 76228M
label: accession number
content: 301421
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Identification Tag
label: Other Terms
content: Identification Tag; Army
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 1 1/2 in x 1 1/2 in x 1/4 in; 3.81 cm x 3.81 cm x .635 cm