Wartime Midwife

by Father Eric Forbes

It’s not just a matter of surviving wars; it’s also a matter of bringing new life into this world in the midst of a war. This was the laudable contribution of one Chamorro midwife on Guam during the Japanese Occupation from December 1941 to July 1944. Emeteria Quichocho Dueñas midwifed ten babies during the war, without the aid of doctors, nurses, electricity or medical supplies, all under the watchful gaze of Japanese soldiers.

Better known as Tera, Dueñas was born in Hagatña, Guam on June 1, 1921. She was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters. Tera had an aunt, Joaquina, who became a nurse and, in time, a head nurse in Guam’s only hospital, which was run by the United States Navy. She inspired Tera to follow in her footsteps, so Tera enrolled in the Navy’s nurses training program in 1938 when Tera was seventeen years old.

The training program lasted three years and, on July 1, 1941, she received her nurse’s diploma. Now that she had a career, she could take her next step in life. She married Antonio San Nicolas Dueñas very soon after graduating from the nursing program. Husband and wife were all set to begin a family of their own.

Then war broke out. Less than five months into her marriage, Tera’s world was turned upside down as the people of Hagatña fled from the invading Japanese forces to the relative safety of their rural ranches and fields. With the war interrupting normal commerce, the people had to grow their own food. Although the Japanese were everywhere, they had a smaller presence in the farmlands compared to the capital city.

It was in the countryside of Barrigada, where the couple had a ranch, that expectant mothers came to Tera asking her to help them deliver their babies. Guam had always had midwives, called pattera, but Tera’s nursing skills would come to the rescue. She would need all the skills at her command, as she had no other nurses, nor doctors, in the neighborhood to help her.

Lacking medical supplies, Tera used rubbing alcohol to sterilize her hands. If that ran out, she resorted to bootleg liquor, called agi, to do the job. To her credit, not one of Tera’s deliveries had any complications arising from infections. She did have the help of her husband Antonio, who was called on by Tera to help push a breech baby in the right direction. The most challenging delivery Tera assisted at was the birth of twins, which was a success. In gratitude for Tera’s help, the parents of the twins chose Tera to be godmother for the two of them.

But far from just delivering other women’s babies into the world, Tera was having her own! She gave birth to two children during the war. By the time her secondborn came along, it was May of 1944. The Americans were preparing to invade Guam soon and the Japanese knew it. The shortage of food and wartime stress had gotten to Tera. She was not able to produce the normal amount of mother's milk to feed her baby. Lacking sufficient calcium from milk, the baby had weaker bones and teeth. The baby girl was also very fair-skinned, so Tera would hide her in a shoe box, fearing that the Japanese might mistake the baby for an American child.

Tera, her husband and two young children survived the war and were blessed with long and prosperous lives afterward. The parents of the children Tera delivered during the war never forgot her help under trying circumstances. All through the years, either a parent, or the child him or herself, would pay a visit to Tera, even when time had passed and the child grew to adulthood. Tera’s story is not very well-known, but to the ten couples whose babies she delivered, Tera’s presence meant a baby lived to see days of peace after being born in time of war.

*Funding has been provided to Pacific Historic Parks from Humanities Guåhan and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the federal ARP Act of 2021.*