Japanese Female POWs Expected to Be Left in the Blizzard — U.S. Troops Carried Them for Miles

 

February 18, 1944. The wind screamed across the desolate rock of Attu Island, Alaska, with a ferocity that felt alive, like some ancient force sweeping down from the Arctic Circle. The snow didn’t fall so much as it flew sideways—sharp, biting, unrelenting. The horizon blurred into a single shade of gray, sky and earth indistinguishable beneath the storm’s wrath.

Corporal James William crouched at the entrance of a half-collapsed Japanese bunker, his gloved fingers tightening around a flashlight slick with frost. The beam flickered once, then steadied, cutting through the black. Inside, he could see the curve of a tunnel carved into the frozen earth, its walls slick with condensation, its air thick and stale. He expected to see what he’d seen in every other bunker they’d cleared over the last week—silence, death, and nothing else.

But then, the beam caught movement.

Eyes. Dozens of them, glinting from the shadows.

His body went rigid. For a second, he thought it was a trick of the light—ice crystals, maybe, reflecting back. Then one of the figures moved. Not the deliberate, jerking motion of a soldier reaching for a weapon, but something slower, weaker. A hand. Thin. Trembling.

And then the realization hit him like a shock.

They weren’t soldiers. They were women.

Fifteen of them. Huddled together beneath layers of torn blankets and what looked like shredded army coats, their faces hollow, eyes wide and sunken. One woman, her hair streaked gray beneath a mat of soot and dirt, stood slowly, swaying on her feet. She wore what was left of a nurse’s uniform—white fabric turned gray, a red cross barely visible beneath grime.

When she bowed, she did it with the grace of someone who had once lived by discipline, even now, at the edge of death. Then, in halting English, she said, “We are nurses. Please… mercy.”

The words barely reached him over the howl of the wind.

Behind him, the sky was turning white. The storm was closing in—one of those brutal Aleutian blizzards that could erase an entire landscape in minutes. William turned his head toward the ridge where his squad was waiting. They had maybe two hours before visibility dropped to nothing, two hours before anyone left outside would freeze to death.

He looked back at the women. None of them could walk far. Some clutched at their sides; others had their legs wrapped in makeshift bandages. Their skin was pale, bluish, their breaths shallow and uneven. They had no weapons. No food. No strength left to even stand.

It hit him then with awful clarity—these women hadn’t been captured. They’d been abandoned.

By their own army.

Attu was the edge of the world. The westernmost island of the Aleutian chain, it was closer to Tokyo than to Seattle. A place of endless fog and cold, where winds reached 120 miles an hour and temperatures could drop thirty degrees in a single hour. It was a land of jagged cliffs, treacherous passes, and valleys filled with snow deep enough to swallow a man whole. Even the foxes looked starved.

The Japanese had seized it in June 1942, part of their northern offensive. It had been the first occupation of American soil since the War of 1812, and it infuriated Washington. A year later, in May 1943, the U.S. launched Operation Landcrab to take it back. The battle that followed was one of the most brutal and least known of the Pacific War.

For three weeks, soldiers fought in conditions that defied comprehension. The cold bit through uniforms. The fog blinded gunners. Frostbite claimed fingers faster than bullets. Entire squads froze in their foxholes. When the fighting finally ended, 549 Americans were dead, 1,200 wounded, and nearly every Japanese defender was gone. Out of almost 3,000 men, only twenty-eight were captured alive.

The rest had either been killed in combat or committed suicide.

What few people realized was that among those defenders were fifteen women—nurses from the Imperial Japanese Army’s medical corps. They had volunteered for what they knew was a near-impossible mission: to tend to the wounded on a remote island where the wounded often didn’t last long.

They had worked in tunnels carved into volcanic rock, serving as field hospitals. The air inside those bunkers was always damp and foul with rot. Their patients screamed through amputations performed without anesthesia. They dressed wounds with strips of their own uniforms when supplies ran out. They boiled snow to wash the dying. They burned scraps of paper for heat.

When the American invasion began, Japanese command issued the same order they always did when defeat was certain—no surrender. Every man was to fight to the death. The final banzai charge on Attu became infamous for its savagery. Hundreds of wounded Japanese soldiers, unable to walk, pulled the pins on grenades and rolled toward advancing Americans. The nurses were ordered to stay behind to care for the dying—and then to take their own lives when it was done.

But something went wrong.

The officers were killed. The final messages never reached the bunkers. And when the smoke cleared and the last gunfire faded, the fifteen women found themselves trapped—overlooked, forgotten, sealed into the frozen belly of the earth.

For nine months, they survived on whatever they could find. Frozen rice, melted snow, scraps of rations scavenged from corpses. The air in the tunnels grew so thick they could barely breathe. One by one, they buried their dead beneath the floorboards, whispering prayers in the dark. They heard the American soldiers above for a time—boots crunching on snow, engines growling—but no one came for them. Eventually, the sounds stopped. They assumed they had been left to die.

By early 1944, Attu was a quiet graveyard. The U.S. Army had moved on to the next campaign, leaving behind small details to clear mines, recover bodies, and dismantle abandoned fortifications.

Corporal James William was part of one of those details—a four-man demolition crew assigned to destroy old Japanese bunkers before they collapsed on their own. He was twenty-four years old, from Dayton, Ohio, the son of a steelworker and a schoolteacher. Before the war, he had dreamed of becoming an engineer. Instead, he’d found himself crawling through ruins on an island most Americans couldn’t find on a map.

The work was monotonous but dangerous. The Japanese had booby-trapped their tunnels with grenades and mines, and every door had to be approached as if it could explode.

The first two bunkers they cleared that morning were typical—empty except for the frozen bodies of men who had chosen death over surrender. The walls were lined with rotted crates, the smell of rust and mold hanging thick. But when they reached the third, something felt different.

William noticed it first. Steam—thin and wavering—rising from a crack in the entrance.

He froze, raising his hand in a silent signal. The others stopped immediately.

Steam meant heat. Heat meant fire. And fire meant life.

“Could be holdouts,” muttered Sergeant Davis, the oldest of the group, his voice low and tense.

They’d been warned about Japanese soldiers who refused to believe the war had moved on. Some of them fought from hiding for months, even years. If that bunker was occupied, the men inside could be waiting with rifles, grenades, or worse.

William nodded. He motioned to Private Chun to move left, keeping low. Chun was thirty-two, a Chinese American from San Francisco. His family had fled Shanghai before the Japanese invasion in 1937, and he carried that history like a scar. He understood enough Japanese to recognize orders, curses, or surrender pleas—but he also knew that most of the time, the enemy didn’t use words.

On the right, Sergeant Davis crouched low behind a snowbank, rifle ready. Private Kowalski—barely twenty, his breath fogging in nervous bursts—stayed back, covering the entrance with his BAR.

William switched off the safety on his M1 and took a breath.

“On three,” he whispered.

He didn’t make it to two.

A sound came from inside. Faint, fragile. Not a shout. Not the click of a weapon.

A cry.

He clicked on his flashlight and stepped into the opening.

The beam sliced through the dark, past broken crates and mounds of earth, until it caught the first face. Then another. And another. Pale faces. Eyes wide and reflecting the light like glass. Their lips were cracked, their skin raw from cold and starvation. One of them raised a trembling hand to shield her face.

Not soldiers. Not killers.

Women.

“Dear God,” Davis whispered behind him.

William swallowed hard, the realization sinking in. These weren’t stragglers or holdouts. They were survivors.

He looked back toward the horizon. The storm was closing fast, a wall of white swallowing the mountains in the distance. In less than two hours, it would be on them. No one caught outside would live through it.

He turned back to the women, who were staring at him as though he were both their savior and their judge. The one in front—the one with gray-streaked hair and the tatters of a nurse’s uniform—took a hesitant step forward.

She bowed deeply, then straightened, her voice shaking.

“We are nurses,” she said. “Please… mercy.”

The wind outside howled like a living thing, and for a long moment, Corporal James William didn’t move at all. He just stared into those eyes—fifteen pairs of them—knowing that nothing in his training, nothing in his orders, had ever prepared him for this.

And as the blizzard swept closer, blotting out the world beyond the doorway, he realized with a chill that the battle for Attu Island wasn’t over.

Not yet.

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February 18th, 1944. At 2 Island, Alaska, the wind howled like a living thing. Corporal James William crouched at the entrance of a collapsed Japanese bunker, his flashlight beam cutting through darkness. Then he saw them. Eyes, dozens of eyes staring back from the shadows. Not soldiers ready to fight.

 women, 15 of them, barely alive. William lowered his rifle. Behind him, the temperature was dropping fast. A blizzard was building on the horizon. They had maybe 2 hours before visibility dropped to zero. 2 hours before anyone caught outside would freeze to death. The women huddled in torn blankets and ragged army coats. One stepped forward.

 Gray streted black hair. She wore the remains of a nurse’s uniform. She bowed with precise dignity. Then she spoke in broken English. We are nurses. Please, Mercy. If you’re moved by these forgotten stories of courage and mercy, take a moment to like this video and subscribe. Drop a comment telling us where you’re watching from.

 These moments deserve to be remembered. They remind us what humanity looks like even in war’s darkest hours. And in that moment, William realized something that would haunt him forever. These women had been left here to die. Not by the Americans, by their own side. At two was the edge of the world, the westernmost island in Alaska’s illusion chain.

 A place where wind never stopped and fog swallowed men whole. where temperatures could drop 30° in an hour, where the cold killed as efficiently as any bullet. The Japanese had seized it in June 1942, part of their northern offensive, a strategic foothold in American territory. By May 1943, the US had launched Operation Land Crab to take it back.

 What followed was one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific theater. Nearly 550 Americans killed. Over 2,300 wounded. Of the 2,900 Japanese defenders, only 28 were taken alive. The rest died fighting or killed themselves rather than surrender. What few knew was that among those Japanese forces were 15 women, nurses from the Imperial Japanese Army nurse cores.

 They had volunteered for this assignment. One of the most dangerous in the entire war, tending to wounded soldiers in the most remote and hostile environment imaginable, the nurses worked in underground bunkers that offered little protection from the elements. They treated frostbite, gang green, and wounds infected by constant damp.

 They survived on rice rations that dwindled with each passing week. They melted snow for water. They burned scraps of paper for heat. When the American assault came, Japanese command made a decision that sealed thousands of fates. Rather than surrender, they ordered a final bonsai charge.

 The nurses were told to remain behind, to tend the dying. And when the Americans came to take their own lives, it was expected. It was honorable. But the battle ended in chaos. Communication lines were cut. Officers were killed. In the confusion, the 15 women found themselves trapped in a bunker that had been overlooked during the American sweep.

 For 9 months, they survived on scraps. On hope that rescue would come. It never did. Their own military had forgotten them. Or perhaps assumed they were already dead. The bunker became their tomb. Or so they thought. By February 1944, ATU was considered secure. The Seventh Infantry Division had moved on to other battles. What remained was a skeleton crew assigned to weather station duty and cleanup operations.

 Corporal James William from Ohio was part of a four-man team sent to Japanese bunkers for demolition. William was 24, son of a factory worker and a school teacher. Before the war, he had planned to study engineering at Ohio State. Now he spent his days cataloging the remnants of battles fought by men long dead. The first two bunkers held exactly what they expected.

 Frozen corpses, rusted rifles, spoiled rations. But the third bunker was different. Steam. Thin wisps of it rising from cracks in the entrance. William raised his hand. The patrol stopped. Steam meant heat. Heat meant life. His finger moved to the trigger of his rifle. They had been warned about holdouts. Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender and would attack without warning.

 He motioned to Private Chun to go left while he and Sergeant Davis moved right. The fourth man, Private Kowalsski, provided cover from behind a snow drift. Chun was 32. a Chinese American from San Francisco who spoke some Japanese. His family had fled Shanghai in 1937. He had personal reasons to hate the enemy.

 Sergeant Davis was from Alabama, a career soldier who had seen action in North Africa. Kowalsski was 20, still green, still believing in clear lines between good and evil. William crouched at the entrance, clicked on his flashlight. The beam cut through darkness. What he saw made him freeze. Eyes. Dozens of them staring back. Not the eyes of soldiers ready to fight, but eyes filled with terror.

 And something else. Hope, desperate and fragile. Don’t shoot, William yelled. He kept his rifle raised but did not fire. behind him. He heard Chun moving into position, heard the click of Davis’s safety being released. Slowly, figures emerged from the darkness. Women, thin, hollow cheicked, wrapped in ragged blankets and torn military coats.

 They moved like ghosts, their faces blank with exhaustion. William had seen plenty of horrors in this war, but the sight of these women, barely alive, hit him harder than any combat. One woman stepped forward. She was older than the others, perhaps in her 30s. Gray streted black hair. She wore the remains of a nurse’s uniform beneath a Japanese army coat several sizes too large.

 Despite her condition, she carried herself with dignity. She bowed. Then she spoke in halting English. We are nurses. Please, mercy. The word hung in the frozen air. Mercy. William lowered his rifle. Behind him, Sergeant Davis let out a low whistle. Jesus Christ, he muttered. They’ve been here the whole time. William counted.

 15 women, all in similar condition, malnourished, frostbitten, some barely able to stand. One woman sat against a wall, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. Another had bandages wrapped around her hands, lack with old blood. Chun reached for the radio. Static. The radio was dead. Maybe the cold had killed the batteries. Maybe the mountains were blocking the signal.

 Either way, they were on their own. William looked outside. The sky was darkening. The wind was changing. He could feel it. The barometer had been falling all morning. Anyone with experience on Atu could read the signs. They had maybe 2 hours before the storm hit. And when it did, anyone caught outside would die. He made a decision. “We take them back to base now.

” Kowalsski’s eyes widened. “Sarge, base is 8 m through this.” He gestured at the darkening sky. These women can’t walk 8 mi. William knew he was right. 8 mi in good weather was a long hike. In a blizzard, it would be a death march. But the alternative was leaving them here. And that was not an option he was willing to consider.

 Davis stepped closer, his voice low. William, think about this. We’ve got four men, 15 prisoners, and a blizzard coming. The odds are bad. We might not make it. And if we don’t, that’s four American soldiers dead for the enemy. William met his gaze. They’re not the enemy. Not anymore. Look at them. They’re just people who need help.

 And if we leave them, we’re no better than the bastards who forgot them here. Davis held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded slowly. All right, then. Let’s do it. The nurses understood enough to know they were being rescued. Though the word rescue felt strange to them, they had been taught that Americans would torture them, defile them, parade them as trophies.

 Yet here were these soldiers looking at them not with hatred, but with something that resembled pity. The oldest nurse, whose name was Yuki, tried to organize the others. She spoke in rapid Japanese. Slowly the women gathered what few possessions they had. A medical bag, a torn blanket, a photograph. Yuki had been a nurse for 12 years before the war.

 She had trained in Tokyo at one of the finest hospitals in Japan. She had delivered babies, set bones, held the hands of dying patients, but nothing in her training had prepared her for atu. She had watched women under her care die from starvation, from cold, from diseases that should have been treatable.

 She had held them as they cried for their mothers, as they whispered prayers to gods who seemed to have abandoned this frozen island. And through it all, she had maintained discipline, kept the nurses working, kept them focused, kept them from falling into despair. But now facing these American soldiers, she felt her control slipping.

 This was the moment she had feared and hoped for in equal measure. Rescue meant survival, but it also meant surrender, and surrender meant shame. In her mind, she heard her father’s voice. Death before dishonor. But looking at the young women under her care, some barely 18 years old, she made a choice. life, whatever the cost.

William and his men did what they could. They shared their rations. Hard biscuits that tasted like cardboard. Chocolate bars so frozen they had to be broken with rifle butts. Water from their cantens, though it was already starting to freeze. The women ate slowly, as if the food might disappear if they rushed.

Some cried as they ate, tears running down their hollow cheeks. Yuki insisted on sharing everything equally among the 15. Not a crumb was wasted. As they prepared to leave, William realized the true scope of the problem. Three of the women could not walk at all. Their feet were black with frostbite, swollen and useless. Five more could barely shuffle.

Each step agony. Only seven had the strength to attempt the journey on foot. “We’ll have to carry them,” Davis said quietly. “It was not a question. It was a fact. They fashioned crude stretchers from tent canvas and broken rifles. William distributed the weight as evenly as possible.

 He and Davis would carry one stretcher, Chun and Kowalsski the other, the walking wounded would follow, roped together for safety. Yuki would lead that group. Before they left, William took out his compass and checked their bearing. Base was northwest, 8 mi across rough terrain. In good weather, they could make it in 3 hours. In a blizzard, if they made it at all, it would take five or six.

 He looked at the sky. The clouds were darker now, lower, moving fast. Snow had started to fall. light flakes that danced in the wind. Soon those flakes would become a wall of white. They needed to move now. The blizzard hit 20 minutes into their journey. One moment visibility was perhaps 50 yards. The next it was nothing.

 The world became white, howling, disorienting. Snow blew horizontal, stinging exposed skin like needles. The temperature plummeted. William felt his face going numb. Felt ice forming in his eyebrows and mustache. His hands, even in gloves, began to lose feeling. This was how people died on Atu, not from bullets, but from cold that crept in and stole life one degree at a time.

 William had tied a rope to each person, creating a human chain. Without it, they would have been separated and lost within minutes. Even with it, he could barely see the person directly in front of him. The wind was so loud it drowned out all other sound. He carried the first woman on his back.

 She was small, perhaps 90 lb. But in this cold, with this wind, she felt like she weighed twice that, her arms wrapped weakly around his neck. He could feel her shivering against him, her breath shallow and rapid against his ear. Every step was a battle. The snow was kneedeep in places. Deeper in the drifts his legs burned.

 His lungs screamed for air. The thin atmosphere of Atu made every breath feel insufficient. But he kept moving. One step, then another, then another. Behind him, Davis carried another woman. This one unconscious, her head lulled against his shoulder, her arms hanging limp. Davis had served in North Africa, had marched through the Sahara in heat that killed men.

 He had thought that was the worst environment imaginable. He had been wrong. Chun and Kowalsski took turns with the third woman, switching every 10 minutes. Chun’s face was a mask of determination, but his eyes betrayed his fear. He knew these odds. Four men, 15 women, 8 m, 20 below zero with wind chill, zero visibility. This was suicide.

 But he also knew that if they turned back now, those women would die. And despite everything, despite the war, despite what the Japanese had done to his family in China, he could not abandon them. The other nurses followed, those who could walk, supporting those who could not. Yuki was everywhere, moving up and down the line, speaking softly in Japanese, encouraging, demanding, refusing to let anyone give up.

 She pushed when they needed pushing, held when they needed holding, and always kept them moving forward. The first hour was hell. The wind cut through their clothes like knives. The snow found every gap, every opening, worked its way inside until they were wet and freezing. William’s feet went numb first, then his hands, then his face.

 He could no longer feel the woman on his back except his weight. He could not tell if she was still shivering, and stopping meant she was dying. He wanted to check on her, but could not spare the energy. Could not stop moving even for a second. The second hour was worse. William lost all sense of direction. The compass was useless in the blizzard.

 He navigated by instinct and memory, trying to remember landmarks now buried under snow. At one point he was certain they were lost. Then Chun shouted. He had found something. a ravine offering a break from the wind. It was not much, but it was enough. They huddled there, packed together for warmth.

 The soldiers formed an outer ring, their bodies blocking the worst of the wind. No one spoke. Speech required energy they did not have. They just breathd in and out, watching their breath crystallize in the air, trying to preserve heat, trying to stay alive. After 20 minutes, they had to move again.

 Staying still meant freezing to death. The cold was insidious. It made you want to sleep. Made it seem like rest was the answer, but rest was death. William hoisted the woman back onto his back. Her shivering had stopped. That was bad. When the shivering stopped, hypothermia was setting in. The body was conserving energy for vital organs, shutting down everything else.

 He needed to move faster, but faster was impossible. Kowalsski fell, just collapsed into the snow like a puppet with cutstrings. Shun grabbed him, hauled him up with strength that surprised them both. “I can’t,” Kowalsski gasped. “I can’t do it. I’m done.” His face was white, his lips blue. William turned.

 Through the swirling snow, he could barely see the younger soldier’s face. “Yes, you can,” William said, not encouraging, not sympathetic, just stating fact. “You will, because if you don’t, you die here, and so does everyone tied to you.” It was harsh, brutal, even, but it worked. Something flared in Kowalsski’s eyes, anger, shame, or just raw survival, and he got up, grabbed the rope, and moved.

 When one of the nurses simply sat down in the snow, Yuki knelt, spoke urgently, then slapped her hard enough to shock her back. She hauled the woman to her feet, and kept the column moving, relentless in a way that stunned William. Exhausted as any of them, she refused to let anyone quit. “We survived together,” she told him in rough English.

 “No one left,” he could only nod. The blizzard worsened. Wind howled, clawing at their clothes and their resolve. Time dissolved into white misery. William saw phantom lights, heard voices in the storm. He forced himself back with a mantra. “My name is James William. I will not die here. The woman on his back whispered something in Japanese prayer or farewell.

 He couldn’t tell. Another nurse collapsed without warning, unconscious, but faintly breathing. Kowalsski said the brutal truth. “We leave her or we all die.” But when William met Yuki’s eyes, he knew the answer. “We carry her,” he said. and they did, rotating every 10 minutes, each shift pure agony, moving only because stopping meant death.

 When the storm finally eased, the supply depot appeared through the white. Thompson nearly shot them before realizing they were human. Medics rushed out. The nurse on William’s back opened her eyes, whispering something he couldn’t understand, but felt deeply. Yuki checked the unconscious girl, then smiled. “She lives. You saved her.

” Even the medics were stunned Yuki was standing. “Death is easy,” she told them. “Living is hard.” Years later, Yuki appeared at Williams door in Ohio to thank him. When she died, he traveled to Japan to place an origami crane beside hers.