Japanese POW Women Had Lice for 18 Months — U.S Soldiers Shave Their Heads

March 17th, 1945. San Francisco Harbor. The fog hung so thick you could taste salt and diesel on your tongue. A rusted transport ship groaned against the dock. Its hall stre with rust and Pacific brine. Below deck, 47 Japanese women stood in the darkness, waiting. They had been prisoners for 18 months. 18 months of scratching until their scalps bled. 18 months of feeling things crawl through their hair in the night. They expected torture when the Americans opened the hatch. They expected humiliation. What they got instead was a young nurse with kind eyes who said five words that shattered everything they believed. We’re going to help you.

If this story moves you, like the video and subscribe for more untold World War II accounts. Comment where you’re watching from. These forgotten moments deserve remembrance. Return to that morning when everything these women knew was set to crumble. And in that moment, as American hands reached down to help them climb from the hold, each woman realized something that terrified them, more than any beating ever could.

The enemy wasn’t behaving like an enemy at all. The steel deck was slick with morning dew. 47 women emerged into California sunlight they hadn’t seen in months. Their uniforms hung loose on skeletal frames. Nurse Yoko Tanaka was 23 years old. She had served in Manila when the city fell. She remembered the propaganda posters in Tokyo.

Americans were monsters, they said. Demons with blue eyes who would torture Japanese women for sport. But the soldier standing before her wasn’t a demon. He was a boy, red-haired, freckled, maybe 19. He held down a blanket. His hands were shaking. The women clustered together like frightened birds. Some had been nurses.

Others were clerks, radio operators, teachers. All had believed they would die far from home. The smell hit them first. Coffee, fresh bread, frying bacon. The aromomas drifted across the water from the port facilities. One woman whimpered. Another began to cry. They hadn’t smelled real food in so long that their minds struggled to identify each scent.

Lieutenant Sarah William approached with a clipboard. She was use Army, 26 years old, from Ohio. She looked at Yoko’s matted hair and bleeding scalp. Lice were visible even from 3 ft away. Tiny dark specks crawling through tangles that had become solid masses. Sarah’s eyes filled with something Yoko had never expected to see in an enemy’s face. Compassion.

Through a translator, Sarah spoke. “Welcome to the United States. We’re going to take care of you now.” Yoko didn’t understand the words, but she understood the tone. It was the same tone she had once used with frightened patients in Manila before the war had turned her into something less than human.

They were loaded onto buses, clean buses with intact windows and cushioned seats. No chains, no ropes, no guards with bayonets. The women sat in stunned silence as the buses rolled through San Francisco streets. Buildings stood whole. Windows gleamed in the pale sunlight. People walked on sidewalks carrying packages, shopping as if there was no war at all.

Yoko pressed her face to the glass. In Japan, cities were burning. Her mother’s last letter received a year ago had described food shortages and blackouts. Here, cars filled the streets. Here, shop windows displayed goods behind clean glass. Here, the war seemed like something happening on another planet. The facilities sat on the city’s outskirts.

low buildings surrounded by wire fencing. But even this was different. The buildings were painted. Gardens grew near the entrance. Flowers, bright spots of color that seemed almost offensive in their cheerfulness. One of the guards was chewing gum. He blew a small bubble as they passed, then grinned at his own foolishness.

Yoko had never seen a soldier do anything so casual while on duty. Inside they were divided into groups of eight. Dr. Yamamoto, a Japanese American woman in a medical uniform, stepped forward. Her presence was itself a shock. A Japanese face speaking with American authority, wearing an American uniform, treating Japanese prisoners with Japanese courtesy.

She explained what would happen next in perfect Japanese. The lice infestation was severe. They would need to cut the women’s hair. For some, complete shaving would be necessary. The room fell silent. In Japanese culture, a woman’s hair was precious. A shaved head meant shame, punishment, adultery. Yoko touched her matted hair protectively.

So this was the cruelty. This was how the Americans would break them. But then Lieutenant William entered carrying a basket. She began removing items one by one. Soft towels, bars of soap and paper wrappers, small bottles that smelled like medicine, and then something that made several women gasp.

Cotton robes, white and clean, folded neatly. William spoke through Dr. Yamamoto. These are for you to wear afterward. We want you to be comfortable. The first woman sat in the chair. She trembled so violently the chair shook. The American nurse moved slowly, gently, explaining each action through the transl. The electric clippers hummed to life.

The first clump of matted hair fell to the floor. With it fell dozens of lice visible, scattering across white tiles. The Japanese woman let out a sob, but the American nurse simply paused, placed a hand on her shoulder, waited until the trembling subsided, then continued. When the clippers nicked the scalp, the nurse stopped immediately, cleaned the small cut, applied a bandage, and apologized.

Apologized. The enemy had apologized for causing minor pain. Yoko watched from across the room. Her turn came. She sat with eyes closed, hands clenched in her lap. She expected mockery, expected rough hands yanking through the tangles. Instead, she felt gentle fingers assessing the damage. “It’s very bad,” the nurse said in English.

“We’ll need to take it all.” Yoko understood enough to grasp the meaning. She bit her lip until she tasted blood. The clippers touched her scalp. The first lock fell away, and with it something broke inside her, not from shame, from relief. The lice had tormented her for 18 months, every moment, every hour, crawling, biting, making her scalp raw from constant scratching.

And now, with each pass of the clippers, they were being removed. The nurse worked methodically, carefully, as if Yoko’s comfort mattered. When a tangle proved stubborn, she didn’t yank. She applied something from a bottle, waited, tried again. When she accidentally pulled too hard, she stopped, murmured something soft in English, continued more gently.

Yoko opened her eyes. The American woman had blue eyes, a color Yoko had rarely seen. Those eyes held no hatred, no contempt, only focus, and something that might have been pity, but not cruel pity. The pity of one human being for another who was suffering. When the shaving was complete, the nurse held up a mirror.

Yoko saw a stranger, hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, a bald head that emphasized how thin she had become. But the reflection was also clean. For the first time in 18 months, nothing was crawling on her scalp. The nurse smiled. Not a mocking smile, a genuine smile. As if Yoko’s well-being brought her satisfaction.

After the shaving came the showers, real showers with hot water that poured endlessly from the ceiling. Yoko had not felt truly warm in so long. The camps had been cold. Always cold. Cold from malnutrition. Cold from fear, cold from the certainty that each day might be her last. But here in this enemy facility, hot water cascaded over her skin. She was warm.

The soap was white and smooth. It smelled like flowers. Yoko held the bar in her hands for a long moment, just feeling its weight, its cleanness. Then she began to wash. The water running off her body was gray at first, then brown, carrying away months of accumulated grime. She scrubbed her arms, her legs, her newly bare scalp.

She scrubbed until hers red until she felt like a different person. Around her, other women were doing the same. Some crying, some laughing, some simply standing in silence as the water performed its miracle. Yuki, a former radio operator, caught Yoko’s eye and smiled. The first real smile Yoko had seen from her friend in months.

After the showers, they were given the clean cotton robes, then medical examinations. American doctors checked their eyes, hearts, lungs. They noted the malnutrition, the infections, the scars. They asked questions through Dr. Yamamoto about symptoms and pain. And then incredibly they provided treatment. Antibiotics for infections, vitamins for deficiencies, ointments for skin conditions.

Each woman received a small bag of medications with instructions translated into Japanese. Yoko held her bag and stared at it, and the camp’s medicine had been almost non-existent. Women had died from infections that could have been easily treated. Now the enemy was handing out pills and creams as if health were something everyone deserved.

But the true shock came in the mess hall. The women were led into a large room filled with tables and chairs. The smell that greeted them was so overwhelming that several stumbled. Yoko’s empty stomach cramped painfully. her body responding to the promise of food with desperate urgency. They were guided to a serving line where American cooks stood behind steaming trays.

The cooks smiled at them, smiled. One woman, plump and grandmotherly, gestured encouragingly. Dr. Yamamoto translated. She says to take as much as you want. There’s plenty. The food was like nothing Yoko had seen in nearly 2 years. White rice, fluffy and perfectly cooked. Sliced meat in rich brown gravy. Vegetables that were green and fresh.

Bread rolls soft and warm. And fruit. Fruit. Yoko stared at a bowl of sliced peaches in syrup and felt tears streaming down her face. She took a plate. Her hand shook so badly that a cook had to help her serve the rice. Another cook added extra meat. nodding encouragingly. When she reached the end of the line, her plate was piled high.

More food than she had eaten in a week at the camps. She found a seat where Yuki and several others had gathered. For a long moment, no one ate. They simply stared at the abundance before them, unable to believe it was real. Then one woman picked up her fork and took a bite of meat. Her eyes widened. She chewed slowly, reverently, and then she began to cry. The crying spread.

One by one, the women broke down as they ate. Tears mixing with food they shoveled into their mouths. They cried from relief. They cried from confusion. They cried because the food was good and plentiful. And nothing, and their experience had prepared them for such treatment from an enemy. Yoko ate through her tears, barely tasting individual flavors, only aware of her stomach filling, of warmth spreading through her body, of strength slowly returning.

When her plate was clean, a cook appeared, offering more, more, as if there were no end to what the Americans would give. That night, Yoko wrote in the small journal she had somehow kept throughout her captivity. Today, they shaved my head. I expected shame. Instead, I felt free. They gave us soap and hot water and clean clothes. They gave us medicine for our sickness.

They gave us food until we could eat no more. I do not understand this. We are their enemies. We attacked their country. Our soldiers killed their soldiers. Yet they treat us as if we are worthy of care. Either everything I was taught is wrong, or this kindness is the crulest trick of all. I do not know which possibility frightens me more.

The barracks they were assigned were simple but clean. Each woman received a bed with a mattress, real sheets, two wool blankets. After months of sleeping on bare concrete or wooden planks, the softness felt almost obscene. Yoko laid down and felt her body sink into the surface, cradled by something other than hard ground for the first time in so long.

She pulled the blankets to her chin. They were clean. They smelled clean. Outside, night had fallen over the American camp. The sounds of the facility settled into quiet routine. Footsteps of guards passing by. The distant hum of generators. Somewhere a radio played music, American music. A woman’s voice singing about love and loss. Yuki’s bed was next to Yuko’s.

In the dim light, Yoko could see her friend staring at the ceiling. Yuki, are you awake? I cannot sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I expect to wake up back in the camp. I expect this to be a dream. Yoko understood the comfort felt dangerous, like a trap waiting to spring. But as the hours passed and nothing terrible happened, exhaustion won its battle with fear.

She slept more deeply than she had in 18 months. The days that followed established a rhythm. Wake up was announced by a gentle bell, not harsh shouts. Breakfast was served in the mess. Each morning brought new wonders. Eggs cooked to order. Bacon strips crispy with fat, toast with jam and butter, orange juice that tasted like liquid sunshine.

The women were assigned light duties, nothing strenuous. Some worked in the camp laundry. Others helped in the kitchens. Yoko was assigned to the medical building. Her nursing experience put to use sorting supplies and preparing treatment rooms. For this work, they were paid, not much by American standards, but to women who had labored for nothing under brutal conditions, any payment was astonishing.

The camp had a small canteen. The script they earned could be used to buy items. Chocolate bars wrapped in brown paper, cigarettes, pencils, and writing paper, small mirrors, hair ribbons for when their hair grew back. Yoko saved her first week’s wages and bought a new journal. Her old one was nearly full. She also bought a chocolate bar, her first in over 2 years.

She ate it slowly, one small square at a time, letting each piece melt on her tongue. The sweetness almost hurt. The physical changes came quickly. With regular meals and medical care, the women’s bodies began to recover. Cheeks that had been hollow started to fill. Eyes that had been dull regained some spark. Hair began to grow back, thin at first, then thicker.

Yoko watched her reflection in her small mirror each morning. The skull-like face was slowly becoming human again. The bones that had jutted through her skin were gradually covered with flesh. She was still thin, still marked by her ordeal. But she was no longer dying. The enemy was making her healthy.

They were giving her back her body, her strength, her life. The contradiction gnawed at Yoko every day. At night, lying in a clean bed with a full stomach, she thought of her family in Japan, cold, hungry, unsure of tomorrow. Letters were rare and scarred by centers ink. But the words that slipped through told of rice stretched with sawdust, wild plants gathered from hills, neighbors growing thin.

“The war goes badly,” her mother wrote. But we endure. Guilt settled deep within Yoko. She was a prisoner, yet safer and better fed than her own family. Some women refused extra food. Others ate everything and cried themselves to sleep. They had crossed the Pacific to serve the empire and now survived on the enemy’s generosity. When Yuko’s work detail was sent to an American hospital, she saw a world she had been taught could not exist.

Gleaming halls, clean beds, abundant supplies. Betty, a cheerful nurse from Ohio, worked beside her, showing photos of her garden, her children, her life. After the war piece, Betty said, mimming a handshake. Yoko could barely nod. Then came Private James Walker Young, freckled, earnest.

He taught her English one word at a time, thrilled each time she repeated one correctly. He brought her gum, a pencil, a warm dictionary, a photo of flat Kansas fields. After war, he said, “You visit. See real America.” He was the enemy, yet impossibly kind. As Yoko’s strength returned, so did questions she couldn’t silence.

She had seen how Japan treated its prisoners. Starvation, beatings, death. Yet here she was treated with dignity. Either the Americans were running an elaborate deception, or everything she had believed about them was wrong. The second possibility faded with each passing day. When the emperor announced Japan’s surrender, the women wept, prayed, or denied it entirely.

Yoko felt only hollowess. The war was over, and she was alive because the enemy had chosen mercy. As repatriation neared, fear swelled in her chest. James found her watching a California sunset and sat beside her. “You scared?” he said gently. She nodded. Me, too, he handed her a small flower-shaped brooch. Remember America.

Remember, James, she whispered. I remember. Returning home to a ruined Japan, Yoko found her family alive, but bitter at her comfort in captivity. She rebuilt her life, became a nurse, married, raised children, yet kept James’s brooch, and the memory of unexpected kindness. Decades later, learning he’d treasured her letters, she wept.

“Humanity defeats hatred,” she told her great grandchildren, dying with his brooch in hand.