The Woman with a Purple Heart
November 7th, 1941: Japanese planes attack Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. Annie Fox, a career Army nurse with the rank of first lieutenant, has been assigned to Hickam Field, a base beside Pearl Harbor, arriving a couple of days before the attack. Suddenly she and everyone on the base find Japanese planes attacking without warning, wrecking buildings and strafing people. Immediately Annie goes into action, triaging the wounded and organizing medical care. Annie, no longer young, nursed during WWI, and has experience dealing with large numbers of severely wounded men. This stands her in good stead as she uses the full range of her abilities – everything from calming the dying to inventorying the pathetically inadequate medical supplies and personnel, then strategizing and scouring the city to locate requirements. Her administrative abilities and resourcefulness are reminiscent of Florence Nightingale a century earlier. Helping her is Kay, a young Japanese woman, who faces increasing prejudice and discrimination, ending with her family’s incarceration in a detainment camp in the western U.S. This injustice infuriates Annie, who works relentlessly to bring them home.
While much has been written about the attack on Pearl Harbor, this book explores more deeply the simultaneous attack on nearby Hickam Field, as well as the indiscriminate removal of Japanese people from Hawaii. By linking these two – the frenetic activity after the attack and the slower process of removal and incarceration – the author brings to light unfamiliar and uncomfortable aspects of this historic event. She develops Annie’s character meticulously and believably, melding her heroism and competence with her deep personal and ethical concerns. The author also maintains the reader’s interest in her story through strong secondary characters. This is certainly a book to deepen one’s understanding of the widespread effects of war physically and emotionally on both combatants and civilians.
