Ethel "Sally" Blaine Millett, 90, one of the "Angels of Bataan," Army and Navy nurses held captive by the Japanese in World War II, died Tuesday of congestive heart failure.

The nurses were held at the Santo Tomas internment camp in Manila from 1942 until they were liberated in 1945.

Their story of heroism and devotion to duty despite chaotic wartime conditions was told in the 1999 book "We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan," written by Elizabeth Norman.

When the book came out, only 18 of the 99 Angels were known to be alive. It is not known how many still are living.

The women experienced the battles of Bataan and the shelling of Corregidor before their surrender.

On Bataan, Millett told Norman, there was a tent over the records but no tent over the patients in the field hospital where she worked.

"I guess the Army thought the patients would dry up quicker than the records," Millett said.

Norman wrote that when Millett became bedridden with malaria on Bataan, she "set herself up on a cot in the middle of her ward and directed the work of her staff from there."

When she was released from Santo Tomas, all of "her worldly possessions could be put in one pocket of her uniform," said her stepdaughter, Nancy Zelenack of Escondido, Calif. "They consisted of one well-worn comb and a very used lipstick."

After waiving all her rights as a POW, Millett received a dollar from the U.S. government for each day - 1,003 - she was held by the Japanese.

Years later, she was one of two lead plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking reparations from the Japanese government.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, was thrown out by a judge who said it should have been filed in Washington.

It has not been re-filed.

Born in Bible Grove, Mo., on Feb. 19, 1915, Millett was the 10th of 13 children. She graduated from nursing school in San Diego, Calif.

She was 25 when she joined the Army in November 1940 as a second lieutenant. In June 1941, she was sent to Manila. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Clark Airfield, Philippines, she was transferred to Bataan.

Millett and 20 other nurses were to be evacuated to Australia but the amphibious craft they were on capsized and they went on to Mindanao.

After the war, the then-captain married George V. Millett Jr., who took part in the Normandy invasion as the commander of a paratrooper unit and later was a prisoner of war in Germany.

He died in 1955. A second marriage ended in divorce.

She also is survived by two sons, Dr. George V. Millett III of San Antonio and William M. Millett of Clinton, Md.; six grandchildren; four stepgrandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; and four siblings.

A funeral service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Porter Loring Mortuary North Chapel at 2102 North Loop 1604 East. Interment in Arlington National Cemetery will be at a later date.