Dorothy Davis Thompson was an American civilian RN who was interned in Santo Tomas POW Camp w/ the American Army and Navy Nurses. She worked alongside these women until she became so sick that the Japanese decided to release her in a prisoner exchange. After her recovery she joined the Army Nurse Corps and was sent to the the 49 General Hospital in Leyte so that she could participate in the release of the Army and Navy Nurse POWs.

The commanding saga of a real-life World War II heroine. Dorothy Davis Thompson was born and reared in Shanghai, the daughter of an American business man and granddaughter of missionaries. In 1937 she left Shanghai to attend nursing school at Columbia University in New York. Shortly thereafter, the Japanese invaded China, and her family fled to the Philippines. Graduating from Columbia, she rejoined her family in Manila. With the city's fall to the Japanese in 1942, Thompson and her family were taken prisoners and interned in nearby Santo Tomas. There, they struggled to survive and to cope with ever-mounting concerns for missing friends and other loved ones, including Thompson's fiancé, a captured Philippine Scout officer. Putting her newly found nursing skills to the test, Thompson managed to establish a hospital in the camp. Yet, twenty-two months later, she was herself so very ill that she and her mother were released in a prisoner exchange. Recovering in the United States, Thompson was determined to see her family reunited. With few resources other than her own tenacity, Thompson began her most dramatic journey yet, the return to Santo Tomas for the liberation of the camp.