TEEN PREGNANCY PREVENTION

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, May 2, 2004 by SUSAN FAHLGREN ROTHSCHILD/SPECIAL TO THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Helping teenagers

Juanita Smith has the perfect comeback to teenagers who complain about peer pressure to have sex: She slept in a barracks with 79 Marines for nearly three years and came home a virgin.

"I got propositioned up to my eyeballs!" she laughs. "But after a while, they knew I wasn't going to do it."

But she doesn't use that story.

In fact, the 86-year-old director of the Topeka YWCA Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program rarely talks about her World War II service as a Navy nurse and the years she spent as a Japanese prisoner of war in the Philippines after the Bataan Death March.

"Although that was a dreadful experience and one that I don't recall with joy, certainly, it was helpful to me," Smith said solemnly. "When I returned to this country I thought, 'I must have been saved for something because so many weren't.' So I have been working with youth."

Smith will talk about her wartime experiences May 19 in "Bataan and Beyond," when she addresses the Washburn Women's Alliance's Ninth Annual Scholarship Luncheon on the Washburn University campus. She said she agreed to the speech because she believes in helping other women as she has been helped.

The seventh of 12 children, Juanita Robley was an unlikely candidate for a Stanford University degree. Although Juanita was smart --- she graduated high school at 16 after skipping several grades in her one-room school --- the Depression was in full swing and money was tight in her California home.

Her father was a physician, but often was paid in chickens, produce or home repairs. Still, both her parents encouraged all their children to go to college. When Juanita mentioned her interest in nursing, her father insisted she get a university degree rather than attend a diploma program.

"My father was very forward-looking," she said. "He said, 'Nurses will not receive the recognition they deserve unless they begin to be educated in colleges.' "

Stanford was the only university in the area offering a nursing degree.

"Very few women were going to college then and Stanford was horribly expensive," Smith said.

The Stanford Ladies Support Coalition began offering scholarships for women.

"I managed to squeeze one out of them for the first year," she chuckled.

The group --- and her parents --- continued to support her all through her four-year degree.

"I think every woman who wants to and is willing to work deserves a college education," Smith said.

Smith enlisted as a Navy nurse after finishing at Stanford, while her then-boyfriend Lowell Smith enlisted in the Marines. She was shipped to the South Pacific, while he was sent to the European Theatre of the war. They had agreed not to marry before their service duty was up "just in case."

She was among nearly 11,800 American and 66,000 Filipino troops who were surrendered to the Japanese on the Philippine peninsula of Bataan on April 9, 1942. Together, the troops were forced to march at bayonet and gunpoint 55 miles from Mariveles north to San Fernando. The troops were then loaded on railroad boxcars to Capas and then marched another eight miles to Camp O'Donnell. About 9,300 Americans and about 50,000 Filipinos reached the camp. In the first 40 days at the camp, another 1,500 Americans would die.

"It's just not easy to talk about," Smith said, tears welling in her eyes. "It's not so much that I felt so mistreated. We all were and there were certainly men who were tortured more than I was. But we were not permitted to help others who were being mistreated. It tears me up to think about it."

Juanita Robley's parents were told she was missing in action and presumed dead in 1944. They had a funeral service for her and Lowell attended. Later, after her release, the pair was married in the same churchyard and 46 of her fellow Marine bunkmates attended the service.

She credits her firm stand against many of the Marines' sexual advances as protecting her from her captives, as well.

"There were only a few women in this situation," Smith said. "I think I may have been the only one who said no to everybody and (the Japanese guards) noticed that. I've always thought the only good thing I know about STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) is they probably thought I had one."

Smith has spent much of her life encouraging other women.

Today she and protegee, Debra Rukes, 38, meet with at least 10,000 Topeka-area youngsters each year to help prevent teenage pregnancies and the spread of STDs. Some are students at elementary and middle schools while others are teens who are young parents, struggling to change their own behaviors while raising their children.

It is a job Smith began at 73. Lowell had died and she moved from Washington state to Topeka to "retire" and be closer to their 23- year-old daughter. Their two elder sons --- by then in their mid- to late 40s --- had long since married and were raising their families in other states.

"They're my greatest accomplishment," she said of her children. She and Lowell, an environmental engineer with the U.S. Department of Interior, had lived in 12 states and three foreign countries while raising their family, adding their last child as she turned 50.