DOROTHY MILDRED STANKE
An article appeared in the Colfax Gazette-Commoner on Friday, June 9, 1944 with a lovely picture of Lieutenant Mildred Stanke in the uniform of the Army Nurse Corps. Dorothy, as she was commonly called, had been assigned to duty on the U.S.S. Comfort, the first non-converted hospital ship ever built by the Army. The ten thousand ton Comfort was the first hospital ship to be completed of the three ordered constructed by the Army. All other Army hospital ships had been converted from other types of ships. She was commissioned for service May 5, 1944 at Los Angeles Harbor in a joint Army-Navy ceremony. Stanke boarded the Comfort on May 26, having received her assignment while at Camp Stoneman, California. When she wrote her parents on May 28, the sailing of the ship was still awaiting orders. Dorothy mentioned to her family that her quarters were more roomy than any others she had enjoyed while serving on other converted transports or in military camps.
The Comfort was designed as an ambulance, but it was in reality a nine-deck floating hospital. She flew only the Red Cross banner, an the Christian and American flags. She carried no secret devices or arms but was subject to being stopped and boarded by the enemy for inspection and traveled the sea lanes fully lighted. The mercy ship had two operating rooms with beds for more than seven hundred patients. Her medical and surgical accoutrements were comparable to those contained in the finest modern first-class shore hospital of the day. Its dental operating units were designed to handle all types of plastic surgery. There was even a psychiatric ward to handle mentally disturbed patients and a pharmacy equipped with needed drugs.
Born in Oakesdale, Stanke graduated from Colfax High School with the class of 1938. Since her childhood days she had planned to become a Nurse. Lieutenant Stanke received her early training at St. Luke's in Spokane and was at the Bryant & Weisman clinic in Colfax for three months awaiting her call. She was one of thirty-two Nurses on the ship's staff, each of whom had already seen action overseas.
Less than a year later, on May 1, 1945, an articled headed "Colfax Nurse is Feared Lost" appeared in the Colfax paper. It went on to say, "Lt. Mildred Stanke was last reported on bombed ship." Her parents believed her to be serving in the surgery of the Comfort when it was attacked by a Japanese suicide pilot about fifty miles south of Okinawa on a Saturday night. No word from her or the War Department had been received by relatives since the attack, but Stanke had still been on the ship when she last wrote a letter to her parents postmarked April 25. The Lieutenant had reported in her letter that there were thirty-eight women on the ship, thirty-four of whom were Nurses. News reports on casualties said nine women were killed and one was missing.
On May 7th, the War Department announced to her parents by telegram that First Lt. Mildred Stanke, 25, Army Nurse on the Navy hospital ship Comfort was killed in action April 28 near Okinawa. She was known to have been working in the surgery when the attack plane crashed and exploded, destroying part of that section. It was later reported by Army Nurse Muriel Nelson, "Death occurred quickly after the attack." Many other people who knew her were quoted in local papers.
First Lieutenant Ruby D. Lewis wrote, "Dorothy was the hardest working Nurse I've known. Naturally she was on duty when we were hit. Those who died didn't suffer or know what had happened."
Captain Etta M. Larson was quoted as saying, "It may truly be said Dorothy died in the service of her country and humanity."
And Barbara Munter, a Red Cross worker, summed up what all of the other writers expressed in this tribute: "Dorothy had so many sweet and lovable qualities that it was always a pleasure to be around her either at work or at play. Her real friendliness toward everyone made us all respond whether that person was a patient, a corpsman, a doctor, or a Red Cross worker like myself. I have heard the other girls praise her nursing highly and that is the highest tribute one Nurse can give another."