Laura Mae Cobb (May 11, 1892 – September 27, 1981) was a member of the United States Navy Nurse Corps who served during World War II. She received numerous decorations for her actions as a POW of the Japanese, during which she continued to serve as chief nurse for eleven other imprisoned Navy nurses—known as the "Twelve Anchors.[1] She retired from the Nurse Corps as a lieutenant commander in 1947.[2]
Early years
Laura Cobb was born in Atchison, Kansas, on May 11, 1892, and moved with her family to Mulvane, Kansas (near Wichita) the following year. She graduated from Mulvane High School in 1910, taught school for a time, entered the nursing training program at Wesley Hospital in Wichita in 1915, and graduated from that program in 1918.[3]
Interwar service
Cobb served as a nurse in the United States Navy from July 5, 1918, to July 21, 1921 (including brief service at the Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila at the end of World War I), and then worked in civilian hospitals in Iowa and Michigan for three years. She rejoined the Navy in April 1924 and served in naval hospitals throughout the US in the 1920s and 1930s.[3] After serving for more than a decade in a naval hospital in Washington, D.C., rumors of war prompted her to request "to go overseas because someone had to go."[4] She was subsequently transferred to the naval hospital on Guam in April 1940, where she received a commendation for "continuous duty for forty-eight hours, during which she repeatedly risked life and limb in her efforts to insure the safety and comfort of the patients..." during the typhoon of November 3, 1940.[5]
World War II
Cobb transferred from Guam to the Philippines in February 1941, where she was again assigned—now as Chief Nurse—to the Canacao Naval Hospital in Manila (located next to the Cavite Navy Yard).[6] When the Japanese attacked the Cavite Navy Yard on December 10, 1941, Cobb and ten other navy nurses remained with the wounded in Manila until the US Military there surrendered to the Japanese on January 2, 1942. Cobb's quiet, professional manner was reassuring to the other nurses and apparently respected by the Japanese.[7] When ordered by their captors to inventory medical supplies, Cobb instructed the nurses to mislabel valuable quinine as mere soda bicarbonate to preserve the quinine for the treatment of malaria patients.[8]
Santo Tomas
After capture, Cobb and the other eleven navy nurses were eventually transferred to and imprisoned by the Japanese at Santo Tomas University, and became known as the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. During the transfer, Cobb hid the nurses' records under her uniform to hide them from their guards.[9] Eventually, Cobb was named superintendent of the Santo Tomas hospital.[10] The navy nurses continued to serve as a nursing unit at Santo Tomas, caring for the more than 3,500 civilian internees there, and eventually being joined by 66 Army nurses captured after the Battle of Corregidor in July 1942.[11]