December 7, 1941 was a date in history that the United States population and their recovering economy were willfully unprepared for. The 10-year-long Great Depression had ended only a short time before, with everyday life just returning to normalcy for many across the country. Though the number of those in the U.S. military had quadrupled from the previous year (to approximately 1,800,000 members) due to the “peacetime” conscription, they and the U.S. allies were faced with a well-oiled Axis machine with German, Italian and Japanese soldiers hardened by years of fighting in Spain, North Africa and China.
As the numbers of U.S. soldiers continued to climb to more than 12,000,000 by 1945, nearly every man able to go into combat was called to service. With a large percentage of the population in uniform, shortages in both civilian and military hospital staffs became a problem, compounded by the increasing number of wounded coming back from the horrors of the Eastern and Western battlefields. Into these nightmares of overcrowded, bloodied and
