The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Mary LaCroix. LaCroix joined the Army Nurse Corps in February 1945, just after she graduated from nursing school. She received basic training in map reading, rifle shooting, and the use of gas masks, including live drills with mustard gas. She was assigned to oversee the orthopedic ward of Camp Lee's hospital until her transfer to Hawaii in April 1945. There she worked in the operating room, primarily on casualties from the invasion of Okinawa. She deployed to Okinawa with the 318th General Nurses just as the war was ending. The women were unwelcome there and suffered terrible living conditions at a former concentration camp with polluted water, a food shortage, and the ever present danger of snipers. She survived two typhoons before being transferred to Japan, where she set up a Red Cross Hospital. She was prohibited from boarding a ship back to the States by an admiral who refused to transport women. But eventually she boarded a ship and returned home to be discharged in February 1946.