A Blog About Women Who Were Homefront Heroines: the WAVES of World War II
The base newspapers not only gave WAVES information about the uniform of the day: they also gave women guidance about how to assemble the uniform.
This comic shows newbie WAVES how to tie the “proper” knot for their uniform tie. It was published in the base newsletter for the Cedar Falls training center.
The image comes from the collection of the University of Northern Iowa archives.
This image comes from the newsletter at the Cedar Falls training station for WAVES. It shows how the daily base newspaper was used to communicate information with WAVES about things like the uniform of the day – in this case women were assigned to wear their grey striped searsucker dresses (the summer uniform) with raincoats.
The image comes from the archives of the University of Northern Iowa.
The first Father’s Day was celebrated in 1910 in Spokane, Washington. It was considered a partner to the older holiday Mother’s Day, which began about two years earlier. The celebration spread, but despite some presidential support (Woodrow Wilson in 1913 and Calvin Coolidge in 1924) and the push by a Senator(Margaret Chase Smith in 1957), the idea of a national holiday to celebrate fathers never became an official national observance.
That was until 1966, when President Lyndon Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation recognizing the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Six years later, President Richard Nixon made Father’s Day a permanent national holiday.
This 1940s-era Father’s Day card come from the website Vintage Holiday Crafts.
Happy Father’s Day to all dads!
This odd snipped from a newsletter is another example of the comic-inspired images used by WAVES. The newsletters were generally run off on a mimeograph machine. For those who came of age after the 1970s, the mimeograph was a forerunner of the photocopy machine that used used a stencil for duplication. The stencil/printing ink combo had a very distinctive smell, and it wasn’t photo-friendly. Hence, the drawings.
It comes from the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
We’re beginning a series on cartoons and other WAVES drawings for the HH blog. This image (from an orientation booklet) is typical of the images made during the time. The WAVE looks young and a little overwhelmed or excited by her new experience at WAVE Quarters D (which was in Washington, DC).
It comes from the Schlesinger Library at the Racliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
June 14th is Flag Day, the day celebrating the adoption of the U.S. Flag in 1777 by the Second Continental Congress. It was officially established in 1914 via a proclamation by President Woodrow Wilson and was reaffirmed by an Act of Congress in 1949.
Flag Day isn’t an official federal holiday, but it is a state holiday in Pennsylvania (the only state to recognize Flag Day as a holiday).
This photograph shows the retreat ceremony at the WAVES Yeoman School in Cedar Falls. It comes from the Naval History and Heritage Command.
Happy Flag Day!
This is a really fascinating document found in the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. It is a receipt for extra pay ($50) disbursed to Lucy W. Pimlott, on behalf of WAVES Lillian Pimlott. WAVES received the same pay as men, and like men often received extra money to pay for uniforms and uniform updates. It’s likely this is for a uniform or other supplement, as the $50 amount is much lower than all but one of the Navy pay rates (only an Apprentice Seaman, the lowest rank in the Navy, made $50 a month).
At this time of this disbursement, WAVE Lillian Pimlott was stationed in Hawaii working in the District Personnel office. She had been in the WAVES since 1943 and would later become a part of the post-World War II Navy.
This disbursement was likely a portion of Pimlott’s monthly base pay, sent home to help support her family.
This is a photo of a commemorative stamp honoring the U.S. Coast Guard. It was released after World War II had ended, on November 10, 1945. The Coast Guard itself was originally founded on August 4th, 1790.
The stamp comes from the Better H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Merrily Kurtz served in the WAVES until 1947, then eventually got married and had a family. She later joined WAVES National, the group for female sea services veterans.
She says of her time in the Navy and WAVES National:
I wanted to get away from home. I wanted to get out and see the world. And I did, I really did. And I have since. I’ve been lucky. I’ve gone to conventions and stuff. Met a lot of good people. That’s something. And I don’t know, isn’t that enough?
This photograph comes from the collection of Merrily Kurtz Hewett.
After boot camp, Merrily Kurtz headed to training to become a Storekeeper, the Navy parlance for a bookkeeper. Training took three months, and then Kurtz got her first assignment, in San Francisco. She had a week before her job began, and was traveling with several other WAVES across country by train. The group stopped in Chicago, and Kurtz and three other women spent a day on the town – and ended up getting left behind.
They were all gone. Except for the four of us girls. Nobody’s there. They hadn’t left a note for us or anything. So we went down to the train and finally got connections. One of the girls took over and asked about it. And then, so, our tickets were gone but they put us on a train. I guess they knew we weren’t lying. We were military or something. So they let us on the train and let us pick out the car we wanted to be on. So we went through two or three and said, “Oh, this will do.” And it was the worst one! (laughs) No air conditioning or anything. Oh, golly, and this was summer! So one of the girls, this Margaret Chan who lived here in Portland, she and I got off the train in Cheyenne. Which is definitely not the thing to do in the Navy. And we took the train home. Instead of going on to San Francisco, we took the train from Cheyenne to Portland and came home that way. Which made sense to a normal person (laughs). We paid for it. Oh, gee. I think we got bawled out for it but they didn’t do anything else to us.
This portrait of Kurtz in her Navy summer uniform comes from the collection of Merrily Kurtz Hewett.
Hinges of History 