Women began serving in the U.S. Navy in 1862—80 years before the formation of the Navy Women’s Auxiliary Reserve—when they worked as civilian nurses on board the Navy’s first hospital ship, the USS Red Rover.' The first official women in the Navy were those in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps, established in 1908.2 In 1916, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels foresaw the need for nonmedical female personnel for future conflicts. These service women were first deployed at the advent of World War I, when nearly 13,000 women served with the same status as men in the Navy and Marine Corps.
As the United States escalated its involvement in the European conflict, Daniels grew convinced that the Navy would suffer a shortage of administrative and clerical per- sonnel as men were siphoned off to meet fleet needs. To fill the anticipated void, Mr. Daniels directed Navy lawyers to look for any loophole that would allow the Navy to accept women. They found it in the wording of the Naval Reserve Act of 1916, which authorized the Navy to enlist “citizens.” On 19 March 1917, the Navy Department approved recruiting women for the Naval Reserve in necessary ratings. These enlisted “yeomanettes,” as they were popularly known, worked as “draftsmen, translators, camouflage designers, and recruiters,’” in addition to their clerical duties, thereby releasing able-bodied men for overseas combat service. By war’s end, their numbers rose from 194 to 11.275.4
After World War I, the women were demobilized quickly, and servicemen took their vacated positions. In 1925, Congress took the additional step of closing Mr. Daniels’s legal loophole to prevent the enlistment of women in the Navy and Marine Corps without its authorization. It amended the Naval Reserve Act of 1916 and changed the wording from “citizens” to “male citizens.”5
Although the revision prohibited the enlistment of women without congressional approval, Army war planners were well aware that in the event of a future conflict that would embrace the concept of total war, the potential for a critical manpower shortage would find the military scrambling to mobilize as many people as possible. In 1926, Anita Phipps, Army Director of Women’s Programs, submitted a plan to the War Department6 that called for the induction of 170,000 women to meet menial needs in the event of war. The War Department rejected the plan—not because it did not recognize a need, but because many perceived the plan as an attempt by Phipps to build her own power base. Upon becoming Chief of Staff, General Douglas MacArthur dismissed her and dissolved her position and her office.
Although Phipps’s plan met rejection, Chief Army Planner, Major Everett S. Hughes, made another attempt in September 1928.7 He called for the direct inclusion of the women’s corps in the Army rather than as an auxiliary attachment.8 Hughes proposed that “the Army accept the inevitability of large numbers of women taking part in the next war—the more total the war, the greater the part.”9
Hughes focused on ways to make that participation more effective. He considered advanced training essential for both men and women, so that women setting up the corps in wartime could comprehend Army thinking, and men making decisions about women could understand the ramifications of militarizing them.”10
Regrettably, Hughes’s plan fell into an Army black hole, destined not to see the light of day until well after the United States had entered World War II and many of the mistakes predicted by his plan already had been committed. If Army planners could predict a future manpower shortage, then so could Navy planners.
Rather than open itself to the ridicule and pressures of various women’s groups, the Navy allowed the Army to chart its course. By doing so, the Navy avoided many of the political and social pitfalls that seemed to plague the Army’s efforts to free men for active service in any future conflict. For example, to avoid negative publicity, the Navy did not support the Army’s WAAC bill, which would have established women as part of an attached auxiliary. Navy personnel planners anticipated the difficulties the Army would have in persuading Congress to pass this bill. By mid-1941, the Navy was looking into incorporating women to free stateside men for service in the fleet and forward bases around the world.
The Japanese attack and the concept of total war brought a newfound sense of urgency to the mobilization of women, and the government had to act quickly and efficiently to incorporate women into the war effort. Legislation made it legal and desirable for women to work in traditional, male-oriented jobs and changed the public’s perception of women’s roles through a recruiting and public relations campaign. To deal with the crisis at hand, social boundaries temporarily had to be put aside.
Consequently, when the U.S. government projected a shortage of men for service in World War II, society quickly redefined acceptable behavior for women. It was suddenly acceptable—even patriotic—for women to serve in the military, and at the end of the war to give up their new jobs cheerfully and go back to their old ones. The traditional societal balance was expected to return to normal after of the war.
The Pearl Harbor attack forced the Bureau of Personnel into action. The Navy’s plan for incorporating women called for them to serve as members of the Naval Reserve. Unlike those in the Army, these women would be part of the Navy—not attached as an auxiliary group. The Navy bill, P.L. 689, authorized the establishment of the Navy Women’s Reserve. Congress, however, succeeded initially in banning the WAVES from overseas duty when it passed the bill, which also prohibited service in any area subject to possible enemy attack.11 Congress feared that the capture and possible torture of women would result in the demoralization of the war effort.
The Navy, through Congress, acted in 1944 to push through a modification to the overseas service ban.12 Admiral Chester Nimitz was quoted in Time to have said that he “could send 332 officers and 4,906 enlisted men from Hawaii to sea if he had that many WAVES to replace them; furthermore, barracks were ready for the WAVES’ occupancy.”13 The WAVES could then serve outside the United States, but only in the Western Hemisphere,14 including Hawaiian, Alaskan, and Caribbean bases.15 Since Navy nurses were not a part of the WAVES, they were not subject to the same congressional legislation and were allowed to serve on board hospital ships away with the fleet.
At the time of the WAVES formation bill, Congress noted that the Army had failed in its bill to provide protection for women. The WAACs did not have full military status, as opposed to the naval women’s units, which did. This difference meant that WAVES received higher pay and benefits than WAACs—WAVES earned $50 a month compared to the $21 a month that WAACs earned.16 Theoretically, Navy women had full status with men and were not considered auxiliaries; however, Captain Mildred McAfee wrote in 1942 that women in the Navy were “not entitled to receive . . . death gratuity, retirement pay, or pensions . . . . The Army and Navy Nurse Corps do have servicemen’s benefits.”17
The amendment also included a provision restricting the highest attainment of military grade for WAVES to that of lieutenant commander, but the restrictions on grade were loosened slightly in 1943, allowing women to rise to the grade of captain. Eventually, the Navy repealed the regulation that forbade the social mingling of WAVE enlisted personnel and naval officers as well as the ban against a WAVE marrying a man in the Navy.18
As part of the Navy, WAVES had to live up to established naval traditions and standards. A Newsweek article described the minimum requirements: “. . . officers and midshipmen must be 21 to 50; apprentice seamen 20 to 30 and unmarried. All must have either baccalaureate degrees or at least two years of business or professional experience and at least two years of mathematics in high school or college.”
The Navy indicated further that it “especially desired women who had studied engineering, astronomy, metallurgy, accounting, statistics, physics, languages, and similar technical subjects.”19 Officer candidates also had to pass mandated aptitude tests for administrative or technical billets; enlisted personnel had lesser educational requirements.20 Still, prospective enlistees were forced to meet higher educational standards and were older than male enlistees.
Eventually, the WAVES lowered their minimum entrance age to 20, which was still older than the male enlistee requirement of 18 (or 17 with parental consent). Waiting up to three years to join the service was a major deterrent to women graduating from high school, because they could find other things to occupy their interests and keep them from joining.21
WAVES had to abide by strict conduct rules that covered such things as drinking, fraternization, and promiscuity. (Fraternization involved having a relationship with someone in the same service; promiscuity denoted a relationship with a person outside the service.) Violations of these rules resulted in immediate dismissal. Ladies of that era—especially WAVES—did not become inebriated; it was not socially acceptable behavior from a proper woman. All of these regulations and standards served as ballast: women would serve, but without overstepping the bounds of propriety.
With the establishment of the WAVES, the Navy turned its attention to recruiting women to fill available billets by convincing 20-year-old women to join. In its advertising and recruiting efforts, WAVES had to overcome not only male resentment at having women in the military but also female nervousness. The recurring themes ranged from red-white-and-blue patriotism to sex. In magazine and other articles, service women admitted to “having more dates and a better time”22 than they did in civilian life. Wearing designer uniforms that emphasized the figure and improved “poise and carriage”23 made them recognizable as representatives of American womanhood at its best.
This type of you-can-still-be- a-woman-in-the-Navy approach was often employed in magazine articles that gave great attention to what the “girls” wore, what they ate, their social life, their fortitude, their motivation for joining the Navy, the condition of officer’s and enlisted’s quarters, their pay, and their amazing ability to perform their varied tasks well.24 Military recruiting depended upon magazine illustrations and advertising photographs to lend an air of glamour to military life.25 Photographs in these magazines, while obviously posed for, showed WAVES performing their jobs while still retaining their femininity.
Lieutenant Commander Mildred McAfee was sworn in as the WAVES’ commanding officer during the week of 10 August 1942. She came to the Navy from Wellesley College, where she had become president at the age of 36. Her academic background proved instrumental in shaping WAVES’ training, housing, and organization. With McAfee’s academic background, it is not surprising that the WAVES would receive their officer-candidate and basic training on the grounds of colleges and universities. The loss of young men to the war effort and young women to vacant and well-paying jobs left behind many empty college and university campuses.26
New recruits had six weeks of basic training, during which they made the transition from civilian to military life. Many enlisted women received their training at Hunter College in New York City. A lease between the Navy Department, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, and the Board of Higher Education resulted in a name change to USS Hunter.27 The first class of recruits reported to the Hunter in February 1943, and each deck of the Hunter housed a platoon of 34 WAVES. Upon arrival, the new recruits were issued uniforms and housing assignments and were given medical and dental examinations and inoculations. They stood watches and went to lectures on naval organization, personnel, ships, and aircraft. The original assumption was that military women would perform clerical and administrative tasks primarily. Because of manpower shortages and necessity, however, 246 shore jobs opened to female personnel, and they made their presence felt from aviation to clerical to supply management. WAVES were also involved in every phase of training naval aviation cadets: as air traffic controllers; parachute riggers; aviation machinists mates; and instructors of mathematics, celestial navigation, and instrument flying.
Because many WAVES had experience as former teachers, some underwent ten weeks of basic fundamental flying and— if they had the fortitude to teach all-male classes—became instructors.28 WAVES also worked as gunnery instructors, meteorologists, communications officers, messengers, aviation metalsmiths, aerographers’ mates, photographers, and blind-flying instructors.
Better-educated WAVES were soon present at the Washington headquarters, where they comprised more than half of the uniformed personnel in the Navy Department. “Their work classifications often called for intelligence testing and security clearances. Once qualified, they could be in on the ground floor of exciting changes .... The government was financing research in a number of areas that would lead to a postwar explosion of knowledge.”29
During the war, a shortage of nurses became so severe that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called for the drafting of nurses. Opposition to this amendment to the Selective Service Act came not because it called for the drafting of women, but because it singled out nurses.
Representative Andrew May of Kentucky introduced a bill, H.R. 2277, that would allow for the drafting of any eligible woman. The House passed his bill, and the Senate Military Affairs Committee gave it favorable consideration. The committee, however, wanted to strike the House’s exemption of drafting married women.
Other opposition centered on the military’s mismanagement of the medical personnel it already had and the underutilization of male and black nurses. Overall, the Navy’s record in its acceptance of black women into the WAVES was remarkably poor. Not until October 1944 did the Navy enlist the first black woman, and the WAVES’ plans called for less than a dozen black officers.30 Ultimately, however, the need for black women and the overall draft was forestalled by the end of the war.
At the end of World War II, the military demobilized as quickly as it had after World War I, and women were discharged and encouraged to seek traditional and appropriate employment. The directors of the different women’s military groups were in favor of demilitarizing women as soon as possible at the conclusion of the war, but because the Navy, Army, and Marine Corps could not face the immediate shortage of skilled labor, their women’s groups were not disbanded on time.
No one can deny that the WAVES performed a valuable service for the United States and the Navy. “The Navy estimated that the WAVES had made available enough men to man the ships of a major task force including a battleship, two large aircraft carriers, two heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, and 15 destroyers.”31
Because of the speed of demobilization, no study was ever done to show the efficacy or efficiency of any of the women’s branches during World War II. Had such a study been made, the integration of women into the armed forces probably would have happened a lot sooner.
Women who entered the military, and to a greater extent the women who flooded the work place, provided the means for victory—from freeing men for combat duty to making armaments necessary for the successful prosecution of war. As World War I and World War II together changed the world map forever, they acted also as catalysts for later social, demographic, and economical evolutions that would occur in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to this day.
1. “Women in the Navy," 1989, United States Navy, Navy Recruiting District, Jacksonville, Florida.
2. Ibid.
3. S. H. Goodson, “The WAVES in World War II,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 1981, pp. 137-139.
4. “Permanent WAVES,” Newsweek, 10 August 1942, p. 31.
5. J. Holm, Women in the Military, Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1982, p. 17.
6. Ibid., p. 18.
7. G-1 Staff Study, “Participation of Women in War,” G1/8604-1, 21 September 1928.
8. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II, New York: 1990.
9. J. Holm, Women in the Military.
10. Ibid., p. 19.
11. S. H. Goodson, “The WAVES in World War II.”
12. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II, p. 80.
13. “Waves Unbound,” Time, 25 September 1944, p. 74.
14. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II.
15. S. H. Goodson, “The WAVES in World War II.”
16. “Pay of Members of Army and Navy Women’s Corps," Monthly Labor Review, September 1943, p. 577.
17. M. McAfee, “Women’s Reserves,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, May 1943, p. 153.
18. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II.
19. “Permanent WAVES,” p. 31.
20. R. Birdwell, Women in Battle Dress, New York: The Fine Editions Press, p. 187.
21. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II.
22. S. H. Goodson, “The WAVES in World War II.”
23. L. J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978, p. 89.
24. V. Clay, “Bounding Waves,” Newsweek, 1 November 1943, p. 48.
25. L. J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War.
26. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II.
27. M. B. Alsmeyer, The Way of the WAVES, Conway, Arkansas: Hamba Books, 1981, p. 11.
28. J. Allison, “The Air WAVES,” Flying, June 1944, p. 57.
29. D. Weatherford, American Women and World War II.
30. Ibid., p. 40.
31. J. Holm, Women in the Military.