Abstract
Lt. Commander Laura M. Cobb was a chief nurse in the U.S. Navy during WWII who was imprisoned by Japan for more than three years in the Occupied Philippines. Under her direction, eleven other navy nurse POWs maintained rank and provided medical care to thousands of civilian inmates. Early in the war, Cobb courageously mislabeled quinine as baking soda in order to stop enemy medical corps from stealing the supply. She is credited with saving inmates from malaria. In 1943, she oversaw the creation of an infirmary at the Los Baños concentration camp where her nurses relied on scavenged supplies and local resources to provide medical care to more than 2,400 men, women and children. In U.S. military medical history, she is one of seventy-eight nurse POWs; and the only chief nurse in navy medical history to continue her duties while in enemy captivity. She received the Bronze Star with a gold star device and her citation honored her "dauntless determination, zealous efforts and unselfish devotion to duty in the face of unprecedented hardship."
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