Rose Bayuk was born in 1915 on a plantation in northern Minnesota. The fourth of five children, she lived the greater part of her early life with her family in Buhl, Minnesota, a small, congenial, active community. She graduated with honors from high school, attended junior collage and the Kahler School of Nursing at the Mayo Clinic [Annotator's Note: in Rochester, Minnesota] on a scholarship, where she graduated with honors. While she was in nursing school, the older nurses talked about the developing war and were convinced that the United States would eventually be involved. Bayuk was visiting fellow nurses in California when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. She said Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] was a "dead place"; she and her friends were told to stay home with their curtains pulled. She got a call from her worried family asking her to "come home." She went back to Buhl, where her sister Pat was working, and the two enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps in October 1942. They were inducted in Saint Louis [Annotator's Note: Saint Louis, Missouri], then trained at Fort Leonard Wood [Annotator's Note: Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri]. She lived in barracks, dressed in "all whites," and was placed in charge of a ward of colored [Annotator's Note: African-American] men for six months. Then she traveled to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey to wait for an overseas assignment, and moved to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] "to wait some more." She was eventually assigned to the RMS Queen Elizabeth I, a "huge and fast" ship that was loaded with "about a thousand good, healthy soldiers" that needed shots. She worked constantly for six days to get them ready "for war and England." Nurses were berthed six to a room, and were issued two buckets of fresh water and two meals a day. "Nobody complained," Bayuk says, but it was not a happy voyage; the soldiers knew they were going to war. When she arrived in Scotland she boarded a train that took her to the outskirts of London [Annotator's Note: London, England]. They arrived around midnight, and Bayuk says everybody "ran for a shower." There, the medical unit once again waited for orders, and was sent back to the United States on a French liner that traveled in convoy, and had great food and nice accommodations. She went once more to Camp Kilmer and again to New York, where she learned she would be assigned to a hospital ship [Annotator's Note: the USAHS Thistle].

The nurses were not told much about their upcoming assignment on a hospital ship [Annotator's Note: the USAHS Thistle], according to Rose Bayuk, but they had a "trial run." They were put on a ship run by the Merchant Marine, but one doctor and a nurse had to be removed because they became violently seasick. The rest, including Bayuk and her sister, were fine. The nurses were issued uniforms that consisted of a top and pants made of washable seersucker, and a little hat. Bayuk was in charge of a 60 bed ward, taking care "all types of people," including prisoners. The ship was "neutral," carried no guns, and traveled at night with "all the lights on." Bayuk says as they approached various countries like Italy, France, England, and North Africa, she could see the flares, and in some cases the lights of the battles. They took on injured soldiers who could not go back to duty. Some had gastric problems; some had mental conditions. There was a ward just for them. The ship had a surgery and a laundry. There were dentists and morticians on board as there were often one or two deaths per voyage. Ports that received them in the United States were at Charleston [Annotator's Note: Charleston, South Carolina] or New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. The ship made 11 round trips, caring for 154 people each trip, and it took about two weeks to get to a destination. Bayuk noted that although their quarters were segregated, the military men got along very well with the Merchant Marines. In port, the nurses might get a couple of days off, but they didn't leave the ship; rather, they were cleaning and setting up for the next trip. The nurses and the patients, who spoke different languages, somehow understood each other. Bayuk says she practically worked 24 hours a day. She describes some of the more difficult emotional problems some of the patients faced, and notes that the only means of communication at the time was by telephone or cable. The dead soldiers, she remembers, were taken off the ship draped in a flag. Bayuk says that after a patient was released from ship, the medical staff never again had contact with them. Bayuk was a general nurse with one nurse and a number of "wonderful" corpsmen under her command. Once, she remembers, their ship met another ship in the middle of the ocean to transfer a patient with a ruptured appendix. He had surgery "just in time," and was sent back to his unit. Many of the patients got "routine a.m. and p.m. care," then took care of themselves. Bayuk says most of them were so happy to get away from the war, they didn't complain.

A regular day for Rose Bayuk "going over" on the hospital ship [Annotator's Note: USAHS Thistle] consisted of setting up for the return trip. She notes that the ship carried replacements for the men they were taking home. The two weeks it took to reach their destination went by quickly. They had "no social life," Bayuk says; their only entertainment was a radio. But, there was a bridge table for the nurses, she recalls, and the women rotated in and out of play. Bayuk brought some embroidery work on board, and some books. Her father had already passed away, but she says her mother did not approve of her daughters' occupation. There were about 20 nurses and the doctors and other medical officers on board. The medical team worked as a unit, and didn't have to talk much. The letters Bayuk wrote home were simply to confirm her well being, and she and her sister would call home every time they reached port. Once, Bayuk and her sister flew home to visit their family in Minnesota. When they were in foreign ports, they sometimes went ashore, and Bayuk remembers disembarking in England, which was decimated, and she had to wear a "big old gas mask." She says every time they got to a port, they were confronted with beggars. Their stays in port were short, and were mostly consumed with loading and unloading soldiers. Once aboard, the nurses "made rounds" to become familiar with their patients and their conditions. Bayuk says all the Americans wanted to know was that they were going to the United States. The prisoners didn't know where they might end up; and Bayuk didn't know either. Then her job was to care for them every day, and try to assure them that they would "be ok." There were American representatives to receive the patients when they arrived in the United States, at which time they left her jurisdiction. Bayuk says her job was as much "social worker" as nurse. She liked her job, and, if asked, she might make recommendations about a patient's personal problems. The ship took care of a lot of people, Bayuk says.

Backing up to the time when Rose Bayuk first arrived in London [Annotator's Note: London, England], she relates how the mayor of the city entertained the medical team, and she had a "quick" dance with him. She says it was war, and nobody got "close." [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bayuk if she was ever afraid.] Bayuk recalls seeing periscopes come up around the hospital ship while they were at sea, but nobody ever bothered them. She says being around the German and Italian prisoners didn't make her nervous, but she admitts that she didn't have "too much association with them." She mentions that "the war was very bad" at Marseilles, France, and they stayed there only long enough to load and unload quickly. They made three trips to Italy, and things were bad there, too. The worst cases she treated on the ship were amputees and men who had been blinded. "Battle fatigue" was treated in a different, "special ward" that was headed by a psychiatrist and kept locked. Bayuk served on the ship for almost two years. While her sister Pat married an officer and went home sooner, Bayuk stayed with the ship and went to the Pacific after the war was over in Europe. At Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines], the ship "picked up what was left" and went back to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] in March 1946. Bayuk had an opportunity for advancement, but she wanted to get out of the Army and took her discharge. She returned to Buhl [Annotator's Note: Buhl, Minnesota], accepted a job as a school nurse, and reunited with her prewar boyfriend, whom she later married. Retracing her early education, Bayuk confirmed that she was in the last class conducted at the Kahler School of Nursing at the Mayo Clinic [Annotator's Note: in Rochester, Minnesota] before it was discontinued in 1938. While she was there, she nursed "royalty from all over the world," and one man, she remembers, had an entourage. She felt the Mayo Clinic gave her a good background for what she was doing in the Army, and she "applied her knowledge to her service" in different ways. When the war was over, Bayuk says, the medical unit didn't celebrate, but they did get together for reunions until the group got too old and infirm to travel.

When the war ended, Rose Bayuk says she had done her job, and was ready "to get out of there." While it lasted, it was exciting, she met a lot of people, and she learned a lot about human nature. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Bayuk what her six months in charge of a medical ward of colored men was like.] Bayuk says "it was different." She had never been exposed to men of color, and they seemed to have chronic diseases that needed a lot of medication. She observed that some of her patients were not actually taking their pills, and "would rather stay in the hospital than go to active duty." Bayuk began to force them to take their pills, and many went back to service. On the hospital ship, there was no problem with segregation. Bayuk remarks that the returning soldiers would get good medical care, and she hoped they would readjust once they got home. Her most memorable experience from the war was "people, all types." She decided to serve in World War 2 because she was at a transitional point of her life, and she went along with her sister's decision to enlist. The war changed her life by giving her a "great perspective" on different kinds of people which helped her in forming working relations with them. Her service means more to her now than it did at the time. She feels the schools are trying to educate young people about the war, and the topic is more prevalent than ever. She notes that "we are living in dangerous times," and she feels that people don't want to go through another war. She believes institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] are imparting the valuable lessons that came out of the war.