[orchestra plays softly] (male narrator) In the fall of 1940 in Orange California 4 nuns of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange embarked on a long voyage to the missions of the South Pacific.

The focus of this missionary work for sisters Irene, Isabelle, Celestine, and Hedda was to heal the sick and provide education to the indigenous peoples of the Solomon Islands.

Sister Hedda was charged with keeping written records and reports of their work.

Following the events of Pearl Harbor her journals transformed from daily life as missionaries to keeping one step ahead of the Japanese who have begun to establish dominance in the South Pacific including the Solomon Islands.

This act of power by the Japanese naval forces pushed the sisters to take refuge in the deep jungles of the island.

No one could have predicted the need to flee.

No one could've predicted the urgency to do so.

No one could've predicted the method of their salvation from danger.

[a woman reads...] [sound of the waves of the ocean] (male narrator) Before the rescue, before the war, and before the long journey across the Pacific, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange formed in Eurika California in 1912.

And from their first days had paid attention to the needs of their communities.

They had served their communities with a wide variety of social services, but most importantly, healthcare and education.

Over time, the Sisters of St. Joseph developed close ties with the Society of Mary, also known as Marist priests.

The Marists are a congregation of Catholic priests and brothers based out of New England devoted to spreading The Gospel through mission work throughout the world but primarily focused on the islands of the Pacific Seeing the need to provide better education and healthcare to the indigenous peoples of Buka and Bougainville the Marists looked to the Sisters of St. Joseph.

The Marists had been in Melanesia from certainly the late 1800s.

And the Marists who were in the South Pacific, when they came back, they always came back through the Golden Gate.

They stayed with their men in San Francisco and then right next door it was the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph.

So their always meeting these Marists.

The sisters trusted those Marist priests.

They liked them, they identified with them.

The sisters saw themselves as partners to the Marist Priests.

The Marist sisters were already there in the province.

And the bishop was an American bishop who knew our sisters, and the Marists weren't able to cover all of the mission stations on Buka island, so he asked our community if we would send some sisters over there to help out.

In 1939 a letter came out from the Superior General of the congregation saying who would like to volunteer to go to the Solomon Islands?

We need 2 nurses and 2 teachers.

Just send a letter letting us know that you will volunteer.

(male narrator) The sisters Irene, Celestine, Isabelle, and Hedda were chosen from 29 nuns who volunteered to become missionaries to the Solomon Islands of Buka and Bougainville for the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Knowing the dedication and spirituality of our sisters I can imagine that their hearts and minds were feeling the call of Christ to bring them in to a place that they have no idea what they're getting into but a group of people who need to hear the word.

And they're being asked to bring that to them.

And what a great privilege that would be.

They had no idea of what was going to be happening, and they were sort of going for life.

It was sort of like, we've made our departure, we are going into the unknown, and with God on our side, we can do it.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "The group included "Sister Isabelle Aubin, the superior of the new mission, "Sister Irene Alton, RN, "Sister Celestine Belanger and Sister Hedda Jaeger, RN.

2 were teachers and 2 were nurses."

(male narrator) Each of the 4 sisters were selected for her ability in one of the 2 goals of the mission-- education, and improving the healthcare of the indigenous peoples.

The 2 selected to be teachers were sisters Celestine and Isabel.

Sister Isabel was born in Lowell Massachusetts.

in 1891, and started her training as a nun in 1911.

In 1912 she traveled to Eureka, California where she would become a founding member of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange.

Sister Isabel, she really, really wanted to be a missionary.

In her mind, she wanted to help people whose life was not all settled and easy.

So she was begging from the time she got here in 1912-- when are we going to the missions?

When are we going to go to the foreign missions?

I thought you told me we were going to the missions.

How come we're not in the missions yet?

And I think they wanted to shut her up in one way, and then they also were saying, if she's so eager to go to the missions-- let's go!

She's filled with zeal, she's filled with energy.

She can't think of anything she'd rather do than that.

(male narrator) At 50 years old, at the start of their missionary journey she was the oldest and most experienced of the group and appointed as the superior in charge of the new missionaries.

Sister Celestine was born in 1899 and joined the Sisters of Orange in 1930.

Sister Celestine was 43 when she volunteered to venture to the South Pacific and was known for her resourcefulness and generous spirit.

Teaching at Notre Dame des Victiores and Jeanne D'Arc, a French learning language school in San Francisco, her ability to speak French was a desirable quality for one of the teachers to have.

The nuns who had been there right before our 4 nuns went there, they all spoke French, and they did not speak English.

The people on Buka wanted their children to learn English.

What they had was mostly men who spoke pidgin, a kind of combination of trade language in the islands of the Pacific.

The women in those families tended to speak a very indigenous tongue in a particular village or the next village.

I think the folks felt like if their kids could learn English they would have an edge on trade with the Australians.

They could kind of lift themselves up a bit if they learned English.

So I think when the Marist priests were saying to our congregation can you send us some sister teachers who speak English?

They felt that people wanted that, and they wanted to do that too.

(male narrator) Nursing was the other focus for the missions needed on the islands.

The nurses would provide care for wounded indigenous peoples and also provide vaccines and care for common illnesses such as malaria and yaws.

They had some ideas about what they might see.

One tropical disease that was very prevalent there was called yaws.

It was not leprosy, however, it was a very severe skin infection that got under your skin and into the bone.

So multiple people suffered from that.

They wanted help, and the sisters did have some medicine to begin to treat people.

When I think about it, they wanted people who had outstanding medical training as an RN.

I think they chose the very best they could have found (male narrator) Sister Irene was born in 1905 in Huntington Beach, California and began her training to become a Catholic nun when she was just 15 years old.

Sister Irene was 35 years old and the administrator of Trinity Hospital in Arcata when she volunteered to serve as a missionary in the Solomon Islands.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) Sister Irene Alton, she started at 16 getting trained as a nurse.

She got her nurses training in a very rural setting in the far north of Humboldt County California The chief industry in Humboldt County was lumber, it was redwoods, huge forests.

So what sort of injuries did they have?

Men falling from high trees, breaking legs, needing to have to amputate the finger.

When she was over in Buka, Bougainville, that's what she was doing all the time.

There were no doctors; she amputated the fingers.

And she did that because that's what she did up in Northern California.

(male narrator) Born in North Dakota in 1901 and the newest addition to the Sisters of St. Joseph, Sister Hedda had grown up in the Northern Plains of the United States.

As a young child she and her family had moved across the prairies and into Canada.

Wanting a better life for herself and to help others Hedda struck out on her own and was accepted into the Kahler Hospitals School of Nursing in Rochester, Minnesota.

Kahler Hospital would later become known as The Mayo Clinic.

When you think about the 1920s and the opportunities for women at that time, for sister Hedda to come from Canada to Rochester, Minnesota by herself, she was kind of a maverick actually.

I think that she had to have a sense of adventure in her.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) I don't think there was a better place you could have gotten trained as a nurse The nursing program was taught by Franciscan nuns.

That was a cutting-edge hospital in every way.

If there was a new medication out, if there was new something that was going to happen it was going to happen there before it spread into any other part of the United States.

So I think Hedda got the very best forward-looking nurses training that she could've had The Mayo Clinic value is the needs of the patient come first.

It's not so much what we can do for ourselves, but how can we serve others.

You really needed to have faith and hope your personality.

And I would say Sister Hedda had that in her.

After she went to nursing school she moved to Los Angeles to be with her sister Vita who had completed cosmetology school.

The story of the family was that Vita was a hairdresser in Hollywood, and Hedda was quite the socialite party girl according to her sister, my grandmother.

She was a "flapper," is what my grandmother called her.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) So she's in Los Angeles.

She must have been going for a walk one day, And she goes up to this Catholic church, and she rings the doorbell and asks to see the pastor, and he comes out, and she says "I think I need to be Catholic."

Now where in the heck did that come from?

She met nuns in that nursing program.

But, "I need to be Catholic?"

And the priest, he spends a lot of time with her helping her understand this faith.

This is giving her so much meaning and joy in her life.

And it's the height of The Depression in Los Angeles, and he says to her I think I can find you a job.

And it's these nuns, these Sisters of St. Joseph, they have hospital in Pasadena, it's called St. Luke's, "I think I can get you a job there."

Well he gets her a job there.

Okay, good!

Who else got a job in the middle of The Depression?

And she is there maybe 2 maybe 3 years, and then inside herself, I think I need to be a nun.

Where is that coming from?

Really.

And so she comes here to Orange, and she is now 29, 30 years old.

She's just in the beginning processes still when this letter comes out, Who wants to go to the Solomon Islands?

Send me, I want to go.

I think Hedda was grateful for the opportunity to go there and do the work that she felt was the right thing to do.

She was full of love for everybody in the world and wanted to help everybody.

And this was a fabulous opportunity, and I think inside Hedda was a good person, and I think she wanted just to do all the good that she was able to do, and volunteering to go to the Solomons was as far-reaching as she could find at that moment.

(male narrator) Hedda's personality can be felt in her assignment to keep the written record of the work the sisters would do in the missions.

Without these journals, the details of these courageous women would have been lost to history.

When somebody is starting a new mission, wherever they're going to be, whatever they're going to do One of the sisters is assigned to keep a journal.

She was an incredible writer, and I don't know that she knew that, and I don't think that they knew that.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "So much joy filled our hearts to know that we are really on our way to the new mission."

(male narrator) As the sisters depart on their long journey across the ocean on the SS Mariposa, they are prepared for almost any challenge that they will face upon their arrival at the missions on Buka Island.

Not only are they packed with their belongings but their ship is packed with over 5 tons of freight from medical supplies and medicines to supply a clinic, but also modern conveniences for their mission and home.

So you put all those personalities together, and I think you have a great mix of personalities and skills.

They had humor-- these were great women.

None of them had ever traveled, so they didn't know anything about the tropics.

They didn't know anything about jungles.

I think they had just wired themselves inside that said, we can do this, we're going to do this.

(male narrator) But there was one thing that the Sisters were not prepared for or could have predicted would eventually find them in the remote islands of the Pacific-- the invasion of the Japanese navy.

As the Sisters are at sea, the Japanese sign the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy becoming the 3 main countries in the Axis powers.

The Empire of Japan has already been at war with China after its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and is starting to assert its military might into French Indochina.

As a result of this militarism by Japan, the United States of America, Australia, Britain, and The Dutch East Indies (the Netherlands) place an embargo on selling Japan oil, iron ore, and steel in an effort to deny the Japanese government the raw materials it needs for its military activities against China and French Indochina.

Feeling the strain on its resources from its activities in the region, Japan saw these embargoes as an act of aggression.

As a result of the pressure against it, Japan plans for war against the United States.

Not knowing the dangers that will await them in the future, the Sisters take every advantage they can to prepare themselves on the 3-month voyage across the Pacific as the USS Mariposa makes stops in ports along the way.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) So they'd stay with some of the nuns in Hawaii.

There was a hospital in Honolulu.

Can we see the hospital?

What kinds of diseases are you dealing with here in the beginning of the tropics?

Do you have a leper colony here?

They wanted to see everything, and next stop, Samoa.

Oh, there's missionary nuns here in Samoa.

Do they have hospital, a clinic?

What kind of diseases are they dealing with?

So they're filled with energy, they're not kind of just saying this is just a neat cruise.

What can we learn on the way?

(male narrator) After a month at sea aboard the SS Mariposa the sisters reach Sydney Australia.

Here they spend almost another month before they board the next boat to their destination in the Solomon Islands.

Finally on November 15, 1940 the sisters board the SS Malaita for the last half of their journey.

On board they meet Father Lebel, a Marist Priest from America.

He had been in the Solomon Islands for many years and was making his way back to the missions after a 6-month stay in Sydney Australia.

[a woman reads...] (male narrator) Father Lebel would travel with them for the rest of their voyage by sea as the SS Malaita makes its way North along Australia's coast into Papua New Guinea, and eventually to the North Solomon Islands and finally to the Marists mission headquarters in Kieta, Bougainville.

Bougainville and Buka are located at the northernmost point of the Solomon Island Archipelago with Bougainville being the largest island of the Solomons.

The much smaller island of Buka is separated from Bougainville by a strait called Buka passage.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "By 8 am we were able to see the red roofs of Kieta.

"No one lingered over breakfast.

"We were all dressed in our freshly pressed whites and were "anxiously scanning the shore for the mission buildings.

"At last we saw them, and several priests and sisters "were waving to us from the top of the hill.

We all hurried down the gangplank to meet our own Bishop Wade."

(Sister Eileen McNerney) Bishop Wade was a Marist priest.

He had been in those islands a long time.

He would have had jurisdiction over a certain amount of territory, certainly Buka and probably most of Bougainville was his territory to watch over.

Bishop Wade was also in charge of making sure the nuns had what they needed, they weren't getting sick and dying and that they were safe while they were there.

So they would have admired him and listened to him and trusted him.

(male narrator) As the sisters step onto the island of Bougainville they are introduced to their new life as missionaries before they reach their final destination on Buka island.

On Bougainville the sisters get their first experiences with life on the islands.

Buka and Bougainville the Solomon Islands are not too far south of the equator, so you can imagine how hot and humid it would be.

It would have been very uncomfortable for those sisters wearing those very thick, heavy habits, then several layers of slips and undergarments Also the sisters wore a habit, so they had kind of a covering around their neck and a vale on their head.

So all of that would've made it just really uncomfortable in that very hot and humid weather.

(narrator) Once again the sisters do not spend this time idley, they visit local hospitals and help treat wounds and administer medicines to people suffering from leprosy, yaws and malaria.

After a week at the missions in Kieta, they finally make their way by boat once again on a 2-day voyage up the coast of Bougainville to reach their final destination of Hanahan on Buka Island.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "The whole village had gathered there to look in wide-eyed wonder at the new sisters."

(male narrator) As soon as the sisters arrive at the Hanahan missions they set to work immediately getting to know their new home.

The mission compound was made up of a large two-story house for the sisters, a church that could accommodate up to 700 people, a small dispensary, a school, and a nursery.

The first challenges the sisters discovered were getting to know the people of Buka and communication.

The culture in Papua New Guinea is so totally different from anything we can imagine here.

It's a tribal nation, and they all have different traditions, each group of people.

Each group has their own language, their own customs.

I think the local people knew more about the sisters and how they were than the sisters knew about the people, because they were brand-new.

And they didn't understand, and they couldn't speak enough to be able to work with them at that time.

But they did, they went through all the obstacles of saying, look, this is new to us, this is what God is asking us to do, and this is where we are going to be.

(Sister Christine Schleich) When the sisters first arrived in Buka, while they only spoke English, some of them spoke French, so communicating with the local people was difficult at first.

Very quickly depending on their ear for hearing other languages would've picked up the local language of the people at Hanahan which was called Halia.

Also, many of the men because of their meeting up with the Europeans and Australians would've picked up what is called pidgin English which is a combination of English and words from German and French and Spanish depending on who the traders were that came around to these countries.

So the sisters would've had to almost learn 2 languages, and they would have had to do it pretty quickly.

It was one of these things that you didn't have any practice in until you came.

You would hear it, and you would try to copy it.

It's very similar to English but not quite all the same words.

It's how we put things together.

So I like to say the "Our Father" in pidgin English and knowing that the sisters, it would've taken them maybe about a year to really be able to go through the whole prayer and be able to say it.

[speaking pidgin English] (male narrator) The next challenges for the sisters were setting up the clinic and schools and gaining the trust of the people of Buka to better serve them.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) Let's start a clinic right off, so were loading up boxes trunks of medicine that they are going on the ship with you.

All you need to do is set up the clinic.

You are ready to go, so whether they felt ready or not they had the supplies they needed, and the priests who were there, they knew the sisters were coming to build the clinic, so they helped them with that part.

The first sisters, when they went to Buka, had to depend a lot on their own ingenuity in dealing with the illnesses and the accidents to different people.

And even the sisters as teachers, a lot of the teaching would've been challenging-- a lot of creative thinking on their part too to teach the children to speak in English and read and write in English.

Because at that time everything was done in English, it wasn't the local language.

They didn't learn to read or write in their local language.

They learned to read and write in English.

I would imagine that those sisters in particular would've gained the trust of the people very quickly by paying attention to the people, listening to them, and trying to be not above or other than, but with the people that after a while the people began to see that, oh, you are one of us.

And you are part of us, you are part of our family.

(male narrator) Over the next year, Sister Hedda would keep up her journals and send them back to California every 3 months as the Sisters of St Joseph work tirelessly performing their tasks of tending to the sick, teaching in the schools, and performing the duties of the church.

As they were growing more and more comfortable in their new surroundings and the people of the islands were getting to know them, the realities of the world and the news of the unthinkable attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor would make its way to Buka Island and the 4 Sisters of St. Joseph.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "And it is hard to visualize the destruction of American ships "that were peacefully anchored there.

"We are glad our sisters are not traveling "in these dangerous waters.

"We know too that you were feeling some concern about us way out here."

The South Pacific is really the last place you would think that modern mechanized warfare would actually arrive in.

It must've been a complete shock to be able to find that instead of a tropical backwater of the world, it's now center stage for the latest conflagration.

And the fact that both sides are bringing all kinds of equipment and attention to the area must have been a total shock for everyone including the native population there.

To suddenly find themselves thrust into the middle of the 20th century.

The Japanese were extremely well-prepared for the war that they had started.

They wanted to create an empire.

They were enamored of Buka for a couple of reasons.

One is, it was not tiny, but it was also relatively flat.

And what the Japanese wanted was an air base.

Buka was their ideal island to take over first.

The sisters would not have had a clue that they wanted their island.

(Karl Zingheim) The Japanese, of course, were intensely interested all of a sudden in the topography of the area because they needed to know where they could put future bases, where garrisons of troops could be landed, and of course, by this time they were thoroughly familiar with the Australian Coastwatcher network and were quite desperate to track down any fugitive Coastwatchers and deal with them.

The Australian Coastwatchers comprised of many naval officers who were part of the Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve Force.

These Coastwatchers were part of the Allied Bureau of intelligence, and this information they provided was quite vital.

(Sister Eileen McNerney) They landed almost on every island, not so much to protect but to track.

Where were the Japanese ships going?

How many Japanese planes are in the sky right now?

Where are they headed?

They are going south, they are coming back north-- what's going on?

So they all had kind of a tele-radio.

It was a big piece of heavy equipment they had to drag with them.

They were not to be involved in combat at all except for probably extreme self-protection.

They were really there to be watchdogs for the allies, for Australia, and for the United States of America, and they did an incredible job.

(Dr. Peter C. Teller) Well, the Islanders was the concept that the Japanese were going to be invading their islands probably got them pretty concerned because Japanese in general were horrendous in terms of the treatment of the local peoples.

I think one of the most incredible contributions of the locals in support of the war, security you might say for the Coastwatchers because they were hidden up in the hills and constantly under scrutiny.

The Japanese were looking for them all the time, and the natives were instrumental in keeping the Coastwatchers safe.

Bougainville may have had 2 Coastwatchers, one more toward the north and one toward the south.

Jack Read had a big portion of Bougainville and all of Buka.

Lieutenant Jack Read served his country as part of the Naval Volunteer Reserve Force in the Solomon Islands.

His purpose was to advise the Allied forces of impending air attack from the Japanese, and he did his job quite well.

I think the sisters met Jack Read on Buka, because I believe he was the one who came to them urging them early on to, after Pearl Harbor, want you to consider getting off of this island, you may not be safe.

We can get you off now, we won't be able to get you off later.

I think they really misunderstood his role.

They were used to taking orders from Bishop Wade, their higher-up.

But who was this guy?

We don't even know if he's Catholic, you know?

Here he is, he's talking to us trying to get us off the island.

We understand the Bishop's role with us but this Jack Read guy, he has no power over us.

In their minds, they had just got there.

They had been there a year.

They were just learning pidgin English, they were just feeling more competent, they were just feeling more at ease.

At the same time, the Marist priests, which would've been a very common image for priests to think about and including Bishop Wade to think about, in the Scripture when Jesus talks about the sheep and the shepherd, he's saying to his apostles, when there's trouble, the shepherd does not leave his sheep, the shepherd stays there.

The shepherd doesn't walk away from trouble.

No we are not going.

We're staying!

And the sisters are saying, we are not going either!

We're doing what you do!

And they felt very confident about that.

That's the right thing to do.

And Bishop Wade kept believing that because they were all noncombatants, they were going to be safe during this war.

That they would be respected by the Japanese as noncombatants.

What Bishop Wade failed to figure in is that they were all Americans.

Wade was an American.

All these sisters were Americans.

The Japanese wanted the Americans off of those islands and gone.

Their commitment put them in that situation where then they were in danger and had to make sure that they weren't found if the Japanese would come on the island.

I think that first initial realization that they could be captured and end up in prison if they were found would've been the start of oh my God, did we make the wrong decision?

Should we have gone earlier, and now what do we do?

So fortunately, the priests who were there, and the local people realized the need to keep them safe.

[a woman reads...] They would not have known how to survive in the bush.

It was only because the local people were solicitous for them and took them into the bush and created a space for them and made sure they had food.

On their own, it never would have happened, That bush is too dense, the people who live there know it, they know where it can be safe, and they know how to find food.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "And even in the face of danger, we are happy to be missionaries."

When everyone on Buka and Bougainville began to be more afraid of what was going to happen, The Australian government took their people back to Australia.

So at that point there was no medical care between Buka and Bougainville.

There were just the 2 sisters that provided any medical care.

So I think that they went about their work because that's what they went there to do.

When they began hearing about the dangers of the war, I think that they were very grateful that they were together.

(male narrator) With the threat of Japanese aircraft overhead, the Sisters continue their duties on Buka.

After weeks of only seeing the Japanese planes reports start to come in that Japanese ships have started to anchor at Buka and soldiers are coming ashore to investigate the villages and mission.

Soon the Marist Priests and the Sisters of St. Joseph learn about the murder of Percy Good, a plantation owner, and the capture of Father Hennessy by the Japanese who saw them as spies.

With these events, the Marist priests begin to consider how best to protect the Sisters of St. Joseph.

The Japanese were improvising their presence in the South Pacific from the beginning.

Their initial attacks in Hawaii and the main attacks in East Asia were proceeding well ahead of schedule and beyond their wildest dreams in December of '41.

So it was decided to extend their defensive perimeter by heading south of the equator from their base in Truk, which is located in the central Pacific and start invading Australian holdings with the potential of perhaps isolating, if not invading Australia, right off the bat.

Then when the Marist priests became aware that from the Japanese ships they could see where the missions were, and I think Bishop Wade must've been talking with the priests on Buka and said, they are not going to be safe on Buka.

We need to get them onto Bougainville.

We can hide on Bougainville, there's no way to hide on Buka.

So they took all their 4 bikes and biked down to Buka Passage, and from there we'll get you on to Bougainville.

(male narrator) In the early morning the sisters finally make it to their destination at the mission station of Father Lebel, who they traveled with from Sydney to the Island of Bougainville so many months ago.

In a week's time, the Sisters are moved further inland from the harbor of Tinputz to Asitavi as the Japanese take control of Buka.

The Bishop at one point, he had made the decision that those 4 sisters should be split.

If the Japanese came, he did not want them all killed at the same time.

They had heard that nuns had been killed on Guadalcanal, which was maybe 100 miles away.

Hedda sort of expresses, we were close to tears.

We learned how to do this together, the 4 of us, and now we were splitting up, and it was scary now.

(Sister Louise Micek) When they realized that they had to be separated during the war, 2 sisters in one place and 2 sisters in another, that probably was the hardest time for them.

They had been working together so long, and they had had all these experiences together.

And I would find that very difficult too, that we went as four, and then we had to become two.

Now they were separated.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "They made all speed "to get beyond the reef while it was light.

"Two sad hearts hurried to the chapel to say a prayer for their safety."

(male narrator) Sisters Hedda and Celestine remain in Asitavi and Sisters Isabelle and Irene are moved to the mission near Kieta, even separated, and the threat of the Japanese presence looming over Bougainville, the sisters continue their work as nurses and teachers.

Throughout the summer of 1942, the Japanese Empire suffered significant losses to the United States military at the Battle of Midway and Battle of Guadalcanal.

The Japanese are now 4 months into having to fight for the Solomon Islands with a desperate campaign at the southern end of the island chain.

So that meant more and more military infrastructure is making its way into the region as the Japanese are retrenching and they are building up bases.

They're sending in naval reinforcements, and they're trying to get ahold of the security apparatus inside the Solomon Islands such as the Coastwatcher network and eliminating that and establishing defensive garrisons at other points now that it looks like the Allies were gaining the ascendancy in the region.

(male narrator) With the presence of the Japanese on Bougainville becoming more and more dangerous to the other foreign inhabitants on the island, the leaders of the Marist Priests and the Coastwatchers decide to work together to organize a rescue of the remaining civilians on the island.

I think there were 2 people who really facilitated that rescue.

I think Jack Read was one of them and Father Albert Lebel was another one.

I think they had a high estimation of each other.

I think they understood the war better than Bishop Wade understood the war.

So ultimately it was the 2 of them that I think really pushed that through.

These are American women.

We need the United States Navy to rescue its own women, get them off this island take them to safety.

(male narrator) With Jack Read's successful communication to the Allied forces, orders are given from the very top by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, for the rescue of the civilians off Bougainville.

For this dangerous mission in enemy waters Nimitz selects one of his best boats to conduct the rescue, the submarine USS Nautilus.

Well, the Nautilus, of course, wasn't designed for evacuations.

She happened to be a deliberately oversize design.

However, her extra capaciousness inside meant that she had the capacity to take on additional personnel other than a crew, because submarines are notoriously cramped inside.

So having her in the region at the time of the crisis when all those people had to be evacuated from northern Bougainville was really fortuitous because she had the capacity and the boatcraft on board to be able to handle that kind of evacuation.

They were also very lucky in having Bill Brockman in command of the Nautilus and in charge of this evacuation.

From the start with his first combat patrol he was in the thick of the fighting at the battle of Midway, the only American submarine to actually make affective contact with the Japanese fleet.

And he was able to continue his aggressive tactics and success on his new assignments in the Southern Pacific.

So overall, having someone who had the aggressive instincts, but enough tactical sense of knowing how far to push it, as well as having an immediate on call-- hey, by the way, can you pick up some people from Bougainville, was of the job for Bill Brockman.

(male narrator) With the orders for the evacuation given, the Marist Priests and the Coastwatchers set about gathering the remaining civilians and preparing them for their flight from the dangers of the war.

Sisters Isabelle and Irene are ordered back to Asitavi.

So make it safely they travel by outrigger canoe and arrive at 3:30 AM to reunite with sisters Hedda and Celestine.

It has been 7 months since they were separated.

The Sisters reunion is short- lived as they must quickly prepare for more missionary refugees to join them.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "It was a hard trip over mountains and rivers "and through rain and mud, but they finally got here.

"They left everything behind except what each could carry in a suitcase."

(male narrator) Soon after the arrival of the Marist sisters in Asitavi, more Japanese ships are spotted in the harbor and it is decided that the 4 Sisters of Orange and the 7 Marist sisters move to a safer location in the mountains near Tinpuz .

This is an arduous journey the now 11 sisters must make on foot guided by indigenous peoples, they cross swamps of ankle deep mud, mountain streams and rivers full of stones.

That whole year after war was declared and they knew they had to be on the run, I can imagine that it was terrifying for them.

They just had to pick up a little that they could carry and bring it with them.

I think the scary part would've been how far behind us were the Japanese soldiers?

Because they really had no way of telling except word-of-mouth from the local people.

Thank God for the local people because they really were very attuned to the needs of the missionary sisters and the priests.

First realization, then having to keep changing hiding places-- that's where I think would have been the strongest fear and on the other hand the strongest show and a test of their faith.

And according to what Sister Hedda wrote, they held onto that faith and their prayer and that God would take care of them.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "Our guardian angels and prayers helped us safely to the level trail."

(male narrator) December 30th, 1942 after months of moving from place to place and hiding in the bush from the Japanese, the Sisters finally receive word from Lieutenant Jack Read that the United States will soon arrive to rescue them from Bougainville.

They are given instructions that they must make one last journey to Teop Harbor by dusk on New Years Eve, December 31st.

Along with the 4 Sisters of St. Joseph there are now 25 other evacuees, consisting of several Marist sisters, two Marist priests and a number of island plantation owners, traveling with them to be rescued.

The group is led through the bush by Jack Read to guide them to their destination, and Father Lebel continuously makes his way through the evacuees, making sure everyone keeps pace and urges on the exhausted group.

The last week of them hiding up and down those hills, it's Jack Read and Albert Lebel going up and down carrying some of the sisters who could no longer walk.

Jack Read had a lot more common sense in the beginning than our sisters had, inviting them or encouraging them to leave.

Fortunately, Jack didn't give up on them.

R If they had listened to him in the beginning, they may have felt guilty about abandoning the people.

But I'm sure as time went on they realized that was really the commonsense advice that they should've listened to.

Now they were a burden.

And we're just finally going to gather together on December 31st.

New Year's Eve and the next morning 1942, 1943 At this Teop harbor.

It was very carefully planned out.

You can see that in every way.

The signals have been carefully transmitted to the submariners.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "In a few minutes, "a dozen native outrigger canoes came up on the beach, and we were taken out to the launch."

After their long jungle trek under the stress of trying to evade Japanese patrols and being detected had to go out on native outrigger canoes before they could finally meet the US Navy boats who were also bobbing along in the surf, So you have to transfer in the surf with the reef and all the crashing waves onto another small craft and then be conveyed to this iron monster that's awaiting them in the darkness.

And then clamber aboard a submarine, which is no easy task.

Submarines are not designed to be boarded.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "...for those of one's own country, especially when "one is miles from home and running away from the Japanese.

"We were happy to see our American boys.

"We climbed the convex sides of the boat aided by outstretched hands from the deck."

You could feel the tension in all of them but also the joy that they were experiencing in that rescue.

They could not have treated those women better.

They must've known their terror and their fear that the sisters had, so can we make you comfortable-- you're going to be safe, you're going to be okay, you are with us now.

Even though they are not out of danger in any way, they feel like they're out of danger.

They feel rescued, they feel at ease, they feel joyous in their hearts, their spirits.

And yet they are told, you will not be safe until your feet touch the ground in San Francisco.

Don't think of yourself as safe.

until your feet touch the ground in San Francisco.

(male narrator) As the last of the evacuees make their way into the submarine Nautilus, it quietly slips back under the waves and away from the island of Bougainville.

Including Sister Hedda, Sister Irene, Sister Isabelle and Sister Celestine, the Nautilus rescued 29 refugees.

They would spend 3 days on board the submarine until it transferred them to an American patrol craft.

[a woman reads...] And they were then moved to a ship on Guadalcanal.

They went from Guadalcanal to New Zealand, and they were in New Zealand for a couple of weeks and got back on the ship finally to come back to San Francisco.

[a woman reads...] (woman) "Everything we held dear seemed to be "wrapped up in that foggy picture.

"We wanted to fold it all up in our arms and hug it tight.

"Unless you are a refugee, you cannot know "the emotions one experiences on seeing the Stars & Stripes "flying gloriously and free from the tops of the highest building."

(Sister Eileen McNerney) Sister Hedda says at that point, "All our bottled up emotion, "everything we have held together for months-- "we just started crying.

"We just shed copious tears, and we could not stop."

And that made me realize how much they had held together, tried to give courage to each other.

But finally in San Francisco in their own convent with their own sisters, they just let go.

(male narrator) Thanks to Sister Hedda's tireless writing of her journal, we are able to know the stories of the 4 Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, both of their harrowing journey to escape the Japanese and their dedication to their duties as missionaries to the people of Buka and Bougainville.

(Sister Theresa LaMetterey) So some of the lessons that I think people might learn from being exposed to Sister Hedda's journals, it could be a lesson on the dedication that a sister, no matter who she is, has towards serving the people of God and the commitment and the lengths she'll go to to do that.

I think it could also teach people about the human spirit and how we can come together in hard times and help each other and be supportive of each other and also maybe an insight into people from a different culture, that there is a richness there and nothing to be feared, but much to learn and grow from.

(male narrator) After the war, Sisters Isabelle, Irene, Celestine, and Hedda all returned to continue their missionary work on Buka and Bougainville.

Knowing what they had experienced before, going back to Buka I was in greater admiration of their determination to return.

They had a mission that was unfulfilled.

To be able to go back and do what they had endeavored to do-- I can just imagine what a great festival it would've been.

For the people to see them returning and knowing that-- Wow!

You love us so much that here you are again?

And they spent a good number of years being there on Buka.

For me, their labor of love was an inspiration to future sisters that followed after them.

So they paved the way really got us started.

[orchestra plays softly] [orchestra plays softly]