Lieutenant Colonel Juanita Redmond Hipps, A Soldier's Story
Lieutenant Colonel Juanita Redmond Hipps, A Soldier's Story
Lieutenant Colonel Juanita Redmond Hipps was born on July 1, 1912, in Swansea, South Carolina. She received her nursing education at the South Carolina State Hospital, entering a profession that would soon place her at the center of some of the most harrowing medical conditions of World War II.
In 1936, Hipps joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, beginning a military career at a time when the Corps was still small, and women’s roles in uniform were narrowly defined. She was initially stationed at Hot Springs Army Hospital in Arkansas, where she gained valuable experience in military medicine before being assigned overseas.
Hipps was later transferred to the Philippine Islands and was serving there when World War II erupted in the Pacific following the attack on Pearl Harbor. During the early months of the war, she provided medical care under extreme conditions at military hospitals on Bataan and Corregidor. Supplies were scarce, casualties were constant, and nurses often worked while under direct threat of enemy fire.
As Japanese forces closed in, Hipps was among only eight Army nurses who managed to escape Corregidor before its surrender in May 1942. Many of her fellow nurses were captured and endured years of internment as prisoners of war. Hipps’s escape placed her among a small group whose firsthand experience of the Philippine campaign would later inform military medical planning and public understanding of the war.
Following her return, Hipps played a key role in establishing the U.S. Army Air Forces Flight Nurse Program, a groundbreaking initiative that transformed the evacuation and treatment of wounded personnel. The program proved vital to reducing mortality rates and reshaping battlefield medicine, extending the reach of skilled nursing care far beyond stationary hospitals.
For her wartime service and endurance under fire, Lieutenant Colonel Hipps was awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, and three Presidential Unit Citations, a rare combination reflecting both individual sacrifice and unit-level distinction.
Hipps later documented her experiences in her memoir I Served on Bataan, which became an important firsthand account of Army nursing in the Pacific Theater. The book served as the basis for the 1943 film So Proudly We Hail, bringing the experiences of military nurses to a wider American audience during the war.
She married retired General William Hipps, and their son, William Jr., was born in 1949. After retiring from active military service, Hipps remained deeply engaged in civic and veteran life. She was active in the St. Petersburg Women’s Club, the Welcome Wagon Club, the Suncoast Auxiliary of Goodwill, and the Retired Officers’ Club, continuing a lifetime of service beyond the Army.
Lieutenant Colonel Juanita Redmond Hipps died on February 25, 1979. She is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Her legacy endures as that of a nurse who served under siege, survived one of the darkest early chapters of the Pacific War, and helped reshape how the U.S. military cared for its wounded, on the ground and in the air.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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