When We Had Wings

Manila, August 1941

Eleanor Lindstrom arrives in Manila. She was a nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but after confessing her feelings for the local pastor and learning that he was engaged to someone else, she hastily enlisted in the Navy Nurse Corps. She’s greeted by Ensign David Mathis, who directs her to the Cavite Naval Yard and the Army Navy Club (ANC). She feels that this assignment is what she was meant to do.

As Lita Capel makes her way to the ANC to meet her friend Penny, she thinks about her sisters, who immigrated to New York City, and daydreams of when she’ll be able to follow them. Lita reacts sensitively to the attention of men on the street, since she’s a “mestiza”—the daughter of a Filipino woman and an American missionary—and worries that American men see her as “easy” while her Filipino peers look down on her. Though she’s often praised for her work as a nurse, she feels like an impostor.

As Penny Franklin waits for Lita, she’s greeted by Captain Charley Russell, the “quartermaster, source of unrelenting aggravation” (8). When Penny submits the hospital inventory requests, the quartermaster never fails to find some error in her reports that forces her to come to his office and redo the work.