A Medal for Nurses?

Time Machine

Posted: May 01, 2026

Alice Darrow, at her home in Danville, California, shows a photo of herself from when she was a nurse during World War II. (AP/Laure Andrillon)
Alice Darrow looks at pictures of herself and her late husband, Dean Darrow. (AP/Laure Andrillon)
Alice Darrow looks at an X-ray from World War II. It shows the bullet lodged in Dean Darrow’s heart. (AP/Laure Andrillon)
First Lieutenant Elsie Chin Yuen Seetoo accepts a Congressional Gold Medal during a virtual ceremony in 2020. She received the honor for being one of the Chinese Americans who served the United States in the war. (House Television via AP)
Elsie Chin Yuen Seetoo next to a photo of herself. It is on display at an exhibit at the Army Historical Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, in May 2017. (Elaine Yuen via AP)
Congressional Gold Medals wait to be awarded during a ceremony. These are for U.S. service members who were killed during the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Will WWII nurses receive medals like these? (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

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Did you know some nurses from World War II are still alive? Several are over 100 years old.

During that big war, some nurses were killed by enemy fire. Others spent years as prisoners of war. Those who returned home didn’t get medals and parades.

The war ended 80 years ago. Now some lawmakers want to give more World War II nurses a huge honor: The Congressional Gold Medal.

Is it too late? Only a handful of the trailblazing nurses remain.

Meet Alice Darrow

Alice Darrow is 106. But she remembers World War II clearly. Like other nurses, she hauled packs of medical supplies. She treated burns and wounds. She dodged bullets. She saved lives.

Young Alice cared for a soldier wounded in Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Before surgery to remove the bullet in his heart, he asked if she would go on a date with him if he made it through.

“I said, ‘Well sure, you can count on me,’” she says, and laughs. “I couldn’t say, ‘No, I don’t think you’re going to make it.’”

Dean Darrow did survive. The couple kept the bullet. They married and raised four children. He died in 1991.

Meet Elsie Chin Yuen Seetoo

Most World War II nurses were white. Those who were not often had to fight for the right to serve.

In 1941, only 56 black nurses were allowed into the U.S. Army. Japanese American applicants were not allowed to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps until 1943.

Elsie Chin Yuen Seetoo is 107. She was born in Stockton, California. She spent her teens in China but later returned to the United States. She applied to the Nurse Corps. They said she had to serve her country. They didn’t mean the United States. They meant China.

But Ms. Seetoo is a U.S. citizen. A Chinese American medical officer stood up for her. She became the first Chinese American nurse to join the Army Nurse Corps. She earned the rank of lieutenant.

“We answered the call to duty when our country faced threats to our freedom,” she says.

Lieutenant Seetoo did receive a Congressional Gold Medal. It was awarded in 2021. But it wasn’t just for her. She accepted it for herself and about 20,000 other Chinese American men and women who served the United States in the war.

Why? As the United States turns 250, we remember the sacrifices of those who served the nation in wartime.