The USS Comfort

By Mary Lewis nee Smith

I became a RN from the Oklahoma General Hospital (later Mercy). and joined the AMC, ( Army Medical Corps) in 1945, then served in the South Pacific.

When I went over to the Philippines. I was on a ship called “Comfort". The ship was late in picking me up. When I got on board. I talked with a man who had already been on the ship and found out the reason they were late was because they had been hit by a Japanese Suicide Plane.

Apparently the Japanese pilot was so high when he started his dive that the force when he hit the ship was great enough to send him through 5 decks of solid steel and end up in the surgery room. Twenty-seven doctors and nurses were killed immediately. One patient woke up, and found he was the only person in the room still alive.

This article was originally published in the June 1997 issue of The Legacy Magazine,

a division of US Legacies .

Wartime Memories