Of all the names of Brown graduates known to have died in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, only one belongs to a woman.
Dorothy Antoinette Dowell, Pembroke 1918, was beheaded by the Japanese Dec. 19, 1943, on the island of Panay, in the Philippines.
Dowell, the principal of the Baptist Missionary Training School, was among 16 people who died that day after Japanese soldiers surrounded the mission called Hopevale.
An Associated Press news report at the time described the gruesome event. "During Sunday services, 250 Japanese soldiers surrounded the camp" and seized the 16 Americans, including Dowell, the AP report stated. "Eleven times that day at that spot [the Japanese captain's] sword fell. Eleven Americans were beheaded. In another house, the same fate befell five others. ... Then fires were set in an effort to blot out the crime."
Another Brown alumnus, James Covell, Brown 1920, a teacher at the school, was among those beheaded.
The remains were buried in a common grave at the foot of the pulpit in the mission.