Goldia O'Haver

Goldia O'Haver (1902 to 1997), later Goldia Merrill, was an American Navy nurse who joined the United States Navy as a surgical nurse in 1929. She was serving at Canacao Hospital near the Cavite Naval Base in the Philippines when Japanese forces took Manila in January 1942, and she was interned with eleven other Navy nurses, a group later remembered as the Twelve Anchors. In 1943 the nurses agreed to move to the Los Banos prison camp, where they built up an empty infirmary and cared for fellow prisoners despite minimal supplies and chronic malnutrition. One of the older nurses, O'Haver was a skilled seamstress and used a sewing machine and scrap fabric to make uniforms, sheets, surgical gowns and pajamas for the patients. The camp was liberated in February 1945. She received a Gold Star and a Bronze Star for her service, married fellow prisoner Robert Heath Merrill soon after release, retired from the Nurse Corps in 1946 and died in Apple Valley, California.