ABSTRACT
A wealth of individual memoirs and offi cial histories are available for those interested in women’s military contributions during World War II. Army nurses were sent overseas to all areas of the world in which U.S. servicemen were stationed, and 85 military nurses became POWs of the Japanese during the war. Six nurses died from enemy fi re at Anzio, and another six died when a Japanese suicide plane crashed into the hospital ship Comfort off the Philippines. Nine fl ight nurses died when aircraft used in medical evacuations crashed due to mechanical failure or bad weather. Although the vast majority of Navy nurses served in naval hospitals in the United States, signifi cant numbers served aboard hospital ships and as fl ight nurses in the Pacifi c Theater. The Army formed the 150,000-strong Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later the Women’s Army Corps) early in the war so that women could perform noncombat-related military jobs such as typing, laboratory work, teaching, truck driving and turret gun and vehicle repair. The Navy quickly followed suit, creating the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). Unlike the WACs, who were sent overseas to the South Pacifi c and Europe, the 80,000 WAVES received home front assignments. Initially reluctant to include women, the Marine Corps fi nally acceded to putting 20,000 women into uniform for administrative jobs. The Coast Guard found jobs for 12,000 women. A small group of women, the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, were even trained to fl y military aircraft in the United States so that pilots could be sent overseas. Ultimately 38 WASPs died in accidents caused by bad weather, mechanical failures and accidents. All told, some 350,000 women served in the Armed Forces “freeing” soldiers, sailors and airmen for combat duty during the war. Before the war was over, more than 500 uniformed women had given their lives in defense of the nation. When Congress passed legislation enabling the Army, Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps to take women into the service, the laws establishing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), the Navy WAVES, the Women’s Reserve of
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the Coast Guard and the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve were to exist only for the duration of the wartime emergency plus six months, at which point, Congress assumed, things would pretty much be back to normal. By normal, it meant that women, who had been engaged in war work in factories and who had been taking the places of men on farms and railroads and in banks, courtrooms and laboratories, would return to the home where they belonged. Because women in uniform, subject to military discipline and barracks-style life was a unique and exciting concept, and because their wartime experiences were so eye-opening and important, this generation of women has inundated commercial, university and private presses with memoirs of all types. In addition to memoirs, offi cial and scholarly histories abound for this time period.
