Edythe Goldstein Pallin Papers

Edythe Goldstein Pallin served in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, posted in Japan, during the last months of World War II. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, but as a teenager, moved with her family to Los Angeles. There she graduated high school and then went on to attend UCLA, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in 1936. She graduated from the Jewish Hospital Training School for Nurses in Philadelphia in 1942 and was appointed a Reserve Nurse, Second Lieutenant, of the Army Nurse Corps in January, 1943. She served at Fort Lewis, Washington from January until April when she was transferred to Hawaii. Almost two years were spent on Kauai, working at several hospitals, doing further training, and adjusting to the life of a young adult in the Army. Beach scenes and tropical settings are framed by barbed-wire fences, firearms and military structure. Goldstein and her fellow nurses spent some of their time shooting, crawling through live fire, swimming with full packs and climbing up and down cargo nets. During training, she met Ralph Parker Pallin, whom she married in early 1945. Ten days after the wedding, Ralph was deployed to the Philippines and Edythe, to Japan. Pallin was stationed at Ie Shima with the 156th Evacuation Hospital. The object of her training, caring for those stricken on the field of battle, is presented in far fewer photos than was the training environment of Kauai. Images of damaged tanks, trees, equipment and people are shown in her pictures, to be sure, but the relative scarcity of these images is eloquent. The work she and her fellow nurses, doctors, and corpsmen did is not revealed in a comprehensive documentary. Instead, most pictures show the more tolerable aspects of life on Ie Shima. In an interview from 2004, Pallin described the need for her and her Army colleagues to exceed the traditional boundaries of nursing practice. Due to the severe and challenging conditions, they trained with rifles, worked with jury-rigged equipment and carried out medical procedures normally prohibited for nurses. Pallin also revealed the core of the experience; hunger, infection, brief periods in which to treat her patients, and the general struggle to make scarce resources meet intense demands. Pallin revealed much about her state of mind, even sixty years later, “And you have red, white and blue running through your veins. Don’t forget World War II was ‘The Good War.’ That’s what it’s known as ‘The Good War’… so you are out there to protect your god and your country.”