Second Lieutenant Mayo C. Onken’s story is not the typical farmgirl story. This farmgirl, from a farm near the then-small town of Porterville, California, becomes a university woman and graduates from Stanford University. Taking her call for nursing into the China-Burma-India Theater, she loses her life there.

Just fifty miles north of Bakersfield, California, the Onken family lived on a farm they owned in Porterville. It was the start of the Roaring Twenties. Edward Bennett Cornell was raising stock to support his wife, Edith M. Dalby Cornell, and their baby boy, Edward “Ted” Bennett Cornell. The couple had married around 1917. They started off the year 1920 with the birth of a daughter, Mayo Cornell, on February 6.[i] Additionally, Mayo had four stepsiblings from her father’s first marriage: Edward A. Cornell, Richard J. Cornell, Mary Marguerite Cornell and Kenneth Shepherd Cornell.[ii]

By the time Mayo turns ten, her parents are no longer living together. Her father is living in Churchill, Nevada and farming a farm that he owns. Meanwhile, Mayo and her brother, Ted, are living with their mother on the farm in Porterville.

During her time in high school, Mayo was the president of the Minervian Society and involved in the Panadelphic Club.[iii]

In 1936, Mayo, then a high school senior, found herself the center of attention beginning with an article and her picture in the newspaper. She was featured on Christmas Eve on the radio stations KMJ of Fresno and KERN of Bakersfield reading an essay she wrote titled A Tribute to Porterville. The winner of an essay contest, sponsored by the Porterville Chamber of Commerce, she was the best essay out of 40 entries.[iv]

Mayo Cornell graduated from Porterville High School in 1937.[v]

HER LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

As the war years loom, 1940 finds Mayo in her second year of college at Stanford in Palo Alto, California. When she is home, she is living with her brother, Ted, who is in his last year of college and an assistant librarian, her mother, who is farming and her maternal grandmother, Didie A. Dalby.

During her first year of college, Mayo was active in theater. Her performance in “The Night of January 16,” a courtroom drama by Ayn Rand, won her applause and was one of two players noted in the newspaper’s review.[vi]

Mayo graduated from the Stanford University - School of Nursing.[vii] She received her R.N. degree in 1942.[viii]

In early fall of 1942, she was the maid of honor for Ted’s wedding.[ix] By this time, he was a first lieutenant in the Army.[x]

Following graduation, she was with the Palo Alto Hospital.[xi]

HER MILITARY STORY

A Palo Alto newspaper reported, in April of 1945, that 42 nurses had joined the service. The list, provided by Palo Alto Hospital included Mayo.[xii]

Mayo entered the Army Nurse Corp as a Second Lieutenant and was stationed at Moses Lake, Washington. It was there she met her future husband.[xiii]

Mayo and her fiancé, First Lieutenant Edwin S. Onken of Easton, Illinois, applied for a license in Sioux Falls, Iowa in February of 1944.[xiv] They were married on February 21, 1944.

Just three months later, her husband, an Army Air Corp bombardier in the 508th Squadron, is a German prisoner of war. He’d first been reported missing while on a mission over Germany. It was later learned he had been wounded.[xv] He was shot down May 28, 1944.[xvi]

That same spring, Mayo was sent overseas. She was stationed at a hospital on the Lido road.[xvii]

2nd Lt. Mayo Cornell Onken served as an Army nurse. Her number was N-788129.

The Ledo area of India, where Mayo eventually died, was known to be one of the worst areas of malaria in the world. In addition, there was ward after ward of typhus patients. Lice, tape worms, maggots and other parasites were common. Horribly wounded men would arrive from all over and many amputations were done due to gangrene developing over their days-long journey to get care.[xviii]

In an oral history record, “Voices of the Past,” Brigadier General Anna Mae Hays recalled “… our nurses were well prepared. We had a fair amount of equipment and supplies… And has history has proven, the whole theater was sadly neglected. But, as I said, we did the very best we could.”[xix]

At the time of the war, Hays was a nurse in the operating room in India. In 1970, she was the first woman in the United States Armed Forces to wear the stars of a general officer when promoted to Brigadier General.[xx]

“Of course, the heavy rains would pour in seven to eight inches of water in 24 hours in the monsoon season. You can imagine the mud problems. Each building was made of bamboo and our roofs were palm fronds so when it rained, water came through the roofs,” she said in her oral history. Without secure doors, snakes, sacred cows or wild jackals would run or slither through the wards or nurses’ quarters. They also cared for ill and wounded Chinese soldiers, American allies, which brought language and cultural differences for the nurses in trying to provide the best care.[xxi]

During Mayo’s time at the hospital in Ledo, she nursed men from Merrill’s Marauders.[xxii] The Marauders worked in the China-Burma-India Theater behind enemy lines with the Chinese to attack the Japanese from the rear. Their treacherous march and battles through jungles and swamps often let to wounding, injuries and tropical diseases that were not able to be adequately treated on site. Often the injured had to ride a pack animal to a clearing to be flown out to get care.[xxiii]

One patient in her care, Sergeant Gilbert Copper of Iowa, was wounded and in the hospital for a month. He was released to rejoin the Marauders’ efforts only to be injured yet again and return to the hospital. During his stay, Mayo took the time to pen a letter to Gilbert’s mother.

“Today while I was on duty in our hospital, your son, Gilbert, was awarded The Silver Star. At 9:15 a.m., patients from other wards all over the hospital gathered in our hospital ward, were called to attention and our Commanding Officer, Lt. Col. DeYoung, accompanied by the Chief of the Surgical Service, the Chief and Asst. Chief of Medical Service and representative officers from other departments made the formal presentation of the medal your son earned last June.”

Mayo then goes on to describe the ceremony, adding “The medal is beautiful but Sgt. Copper’s deed is more beautiful than any reward. Some of the men had tears in their eyes - I cried. Many of us thought of you during the ceremony… It has been my gain and privilege to know your son. May God bless and care for him always. Sincerely yours, Mayo C. Onken, 2nd Lt. Army Nurse Corps.[xxiv]

HER LAST DAY- March 4, 1945

On her last day, Mayo was in flight from a hospital along the Ledo road.[xxv] Her Douglas C-47 Skytrain (#41-18554), assigned to Air transport Command, 11th Combat Cargo Squadron,[xxvi] took off from Dinjan Army Airfield in Assam, India on a mission to ferry passengers. The plane came in too low during the last turn in the process of landing and crashed. Twenty-five passengers, including Mayo, plus the crew of two were killed. Most of the passengers were Army nurses and medical personnel.[xxvii]

She was 24.

In 1948, Mayo’s body arrived back in the states aboard the Dalton Victory, a transport ship.[xxviii]

COMMENDATIONS

World War II Victory Medal

Nurse Corps Badge

American Campaign Medal

Army Presidential Unit Citation

Army Good Conduct Medal

Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal[xxix]

MEMORIALS

In January of 1948, Mayo C. Onken is listed as one of the many “men” who died and will be listed on a Memorial Redwood Grove set aside by the Forestry Service in the High Sierras.[xxx]

Stanford University lists Mayo among the men and women from Stanford who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II.[xxxi]

Fifty years after her death, Mayo Onken is remembered in the Fresno Bee newspaper by a letter writer who had attended her funeral. Under the heading of A-Bombs, War’s End Still Near, a collection of readers’ letters, is one that remembers the “bright, young nurse from Porterville.”[xxxii]

HER FUNERAL AND GRAVE

Funeral services were held for Second Lieutenant Mayo C. Onken on January 8, 1949.[xxxiii] She is buried in the Porterville Cemetery, Porterville, California. Plot D-194-4. Memorial ID 88939307.[xxxiv]

LIST OF THOSE KILLED IN THE MARCH 4, 1945 LEDO, INDIA AIR CRASH

Capt. John J. Lukaszczyk, Co-Pilot
Capt. Nicholas J. Mandoukos, Pilot
1st Lt. Walter S. Amsler, Jr.
2nd Lt. Francis W. Blalock
2nd Lt. Julia S. Barnes
2nd Lt. Jane M. Blevins
2nd Lt. Evelyn M. Bruton
2nd Lt. Thomas E. Dellinger
2nd Lt. Rita F. Erard
2nd Lt. Evelyn M. Gerdrum
2nd Lt. Lyndell A. Glisson
1st Lt. Henry D. Hammack, Jr.
2nd Lt. Eathel L. Harris
2nd Lt. Helen J. Henley
1st Lt. Catherine M. Larkin
2nd Lt. Joseph R. Launier
1st Lt. Kathryn L.Lloyd
Capt. Charles W. Loucks
1st Lt. Grady A. Masters
2nd Lt. Kathryn L. McCarthy
2nd Lt. Ann L. Merrill
2nd Lt. Genevieve R. Monahan
Capt. Edward R. Moore
2nd Lt. Mayo C. Onken
Lt. Col. Jack P. Scott
Leona A. Thomey, Civilian, Red Cross
1st Lt. Robert W. Tibbetts

AFTER THE WAR

Mayo’s husband, Edwin S. Onken, survived his crash, wounding and capture as a German Prisoner of War. After World War II, he returned home, married a second time, had a family and lived a long life.[xxxv]

Sgt. Gilbert Copper, the wounded member of Merrill’s Marauders cared for my 2nd Lt. Mayo Onken, lived through the war to return home, marry and have a family. He lived to age 86.[xxxvi]

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

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