NAS Lake Washington

Jean Clark was stationed at NAS Lake Washington for the duration of the war. The facility is no longer a Naval Air Station, but is a public park. It’s located in Seattle, along the shores of the lake near the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

Jean was in charge of the Link Trainer Instructors.

I think probably because I was one of the first ones there.  I had a little more training than, I guess, well I had been retained for instructor, too, there. So the commander decided I was going to be in charge of the whole group. We didn’t have that many at first, only four. But then we increased to nine. We had a full complement of all we could use. By that time, when we had nine, we were pretty loaded with personnel.

We were all good friends. All nine of us, still, went out to Seattle when we had liberty and we also after we were discharged, I was the first one to be discharged, we were writing letter. I think we wrote letters for 35 years probably. They came maybe twice a year. We called them a round robin letter. They were sent to the next person you know and we had a mailing list that you followed. It’s interesting. I used to keep all these letters, but I don’t have them any more.

The photograph comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Link Job Description

Link Trainer Instructors also got a “ratings description” booklet which told them of the details of the job.  Jean Clark’s booklet has her name typed on the front cover.

One of the things they trained pilots was in a skill known as a “square search”:

The go up in the air, some of these 90 day wonders (officers trained in 90 days), they’re flying around on a flight, wherever they’re going and they come back. They can see the field and make a landing. OK. Another day they go out and they go out and it fogged in.  They can’t see the field.  And they can really get into trouble. So we had to teach them what they call the square search. Where they were to fly in a direction for one minute and make a turn and fly, a left turn and fly in another direction until they could finally spot the field.  If they were lost in the fog and didn’t know where they were and were coming down and didn’t see it. That was mainly extra protection to keep them from flying into a mountain.

This booklet comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Learning the Ropes

Jean Clark was sent to Atlanta in order to learn how to give proper instruction to potential pilots via the Link Trainer. But it wasn’t enough to simply learn how to give instruction. They had to learn everything about the trainer from top to bottom.

We also had to check the trainer. While we were at the air base, not only did we learn how to operate the trainer, we also learned how to repair it if anything went wrong.  There was an engine just outside of the building, the main, that had to be dismantled and cleaned every now and again so it was operating efficiently.  That was part of our duty.

At the end of the training session, the women received a certificate saying that they were qualified in their ranking.

This certificate comes from the Jean Clark collection.

Coveted Assignment

WAVES worked in a wide variety of jobs, but many of the women with teaching experience like Jean Clark ended up in instructional positions. Jean wanted to become a Link Trainer, which used an early form of flight simulation to train men in piloting skills.

We had to take aptitude tests.  Now, I’m going to brag a little bit. Partly, I think, because I’d been a teacher. All of the girls who were chosen to go to Link School had been in education. I think they felt, “They’ve already learned how to teach.  After that, we can teach them the subject matter and they can teach it.” That was their theory I’m sure. They said it was the top thing and if it was the top thing, that’s what I want (laughs).  So, everybody was envious if we got it. There were only 50 of us I think that got it. So not too many.

This is a photo of Jean training a man in the Link flight simulator. It comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Indoctrinization

Jean Clark was in the first class of recruits to be trained at Hunter College in the Bronx. The women were bunked in what were formerly civilian apartments surrounding the campus. There were 12 in her room, all sharing a single shower.

We had to take turns taking showers. One day it was my turn to take my shower and they called — while I was in the shower, hey called from the downstairs “Inspection!”  We had been there a little while and we were supposed to have the room shipshape. Everything neat and clean and dusted and at attention in full dress.  Here I am in the nude in the shower and here it is five floors down. My bunkmates all start handing me clothes (laughs). I thought, “I’ll make it” and I did, except I didn’t’ get my shoes tied.  And I was standing there at attention with my shoelaces dangling.  The WAVE officer didn’t notice (laughs).

This photograph shows the WAVES-in-training standing outside of the Bronx apartment building where they were stationed. It comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Enlisting in the WAVES

Jean Clark enlisted in the WAVES in December of 1942 at a recruiting station in Portland, OR, after her husband was sent overseas for the war. She heard about the WAVES through an article in her local newspaper.

And I just thought, “That’s what I’m going to do.” My husband said,  “Please don’t join the WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps), because that’s what was going on around right then. He says they’ll probably send you overseas and you’ll be overseas when I get home!

Clark told the recruiter that she was teaching in Sweet Home, a small town in central Oregon. She asked the recruiter to let her finish out the school year, which would end in May.

He grinned and said, “Don’t worry about that.”  (laughs).  Well, then in January, I think it was, I got my first letter. It told me what things to expect. In February I got one, “Report.”

This photograph comes courtesy of Jean Clark.

Sneaking Onto Base

Jean Clark’s husband, Lou, had enlisted in the National Guard before the war. By December of 1941, he was in training at Fort Lewis outside of Tacoma, Washington. They got word they were shipping out in February, so Jean decided to head up to the base and visit.

At night they called a muster and they lined up with all their gear in line and we just watched them as they marched by. They came close enough that they could give us a hug and say goodbye but that was it. I stood there thinking, “Boy, I feel like I’m in a movie just (laughs)”

But there was a problem with this cinematic scene. The base was shut down and Jean was stuck inside with another woman who had also come to see her husband off.

We decided, “We might as well stay here. There’s no bus at this time of night.”  So, went into the place. There wasn’t a scrap of anything.  We found an old blanket. We said we didn’t want to sleep on the floor because it looked a little bit chewed (laughs).  My friend said, “My husband says they have rats in this place.”  So we got up on the meat block and spread out and put the blanket over us and went to sleep until morning when we heard this guard going — he was supposedly guarding. I don’t know what he was guarding, but everybody was gone (laughs).  But he was on guard duty.

He’d go one side of the building. Click. Turn in a military manner. Down the other side of the building. Click.  Down the other side. We watched him. We thought, “Wheres’ he going to be?” So while he was on the back side, we went out the door.  (laughs) And headed to the gate. She said, “Maybe they’ll think we’re civilian employees.”  And I think they did. We just walked out and got a bus.

This photograph comes the California State Military Museum.

Love During Wartime

While in school to become a teacher Jean Clark met her husband, Louis.

He was in one of my psych classes and he was a year ahead of me.  He had grown up in Corvallis (Oregon) on the farm there, and he decided that he needed to earn some money, some extra money for school, so he joined the National Guard. He was the youngest of six in his family and he had four brothers who were in the National Guard. He wanted to be in and as soon as he was 16 he joined the National Guard.  He was still in in college, at Monmouth.  In 1940, the United States decided to mobilize the Guard because of the trouble in Europe. So he spent a year in training. In the meantime we had developed a sort of a relationship.  When I was teaching at Brownsville (Oregon), we became engaged in 1940. So I was waiting for him to come back from his training.

They got married in July of 1941. Jean was just 19 years old.

This photograph comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Becoming a Teacher

Jean Clark’s family eventually moved to a farm on the outskirts of the town of Stayton, OR. There was a one-room schoolhouse nearby, but her father wanted her to get a better education, so he sent her into town to live with her great-grandmother, a very strict woman who walked from Virginia (where the family was from) to Oregon along the Oregon trail right after the Civil War.

 I wasn’t awfully happy with it because it was “Sit up.”  “You have a backbone you know.” And “Young ladies do not cross their legs. If you must cross anything, cross your ankles.”  And then one day I came home, I began to realize she was of a different ilk.  I mentioned that today was Lincoln’s birthday.  “Oh!” she said, “He freed the slaves and ruined the south!” So you knew where she was coming from.

Clark was a talented student. She got a scholarship to Reed College in Portland, but her father wanted her to go someplace less experimental, so she ended up at the Oregon College of Education in Monmouth, OR (now Western Oregon University) when she was just 16. She completed her Bachelor’s Degree in three years instead of the usual four and became a teacher.

This photograph comes from the collection of Jean Clark.

Edna Jean Clark

Meet Edna Jean Clark, who goes by Jean. Jean was born and grew up in Stayton, Oregon, which she called “a family town.”

My great-great grandfather came there in the early 1800s and founded the town.  The town is named for him. Stayton, Oregon.  My family all grew up there.  My brother and I and my cousins.

Jean’s mother was a Murphy and her father a Richardson. related to that original Stayton who founded the town. They got married 1911.

Stayton was a logging community, and Jean’s family all worked in the industry. That meant the family often moved around the area as her father got new jobs.

He was always a logger or a farmer depending on which was the best. We did a lot of moving from one log camp to another. I grew up, my first grade class was in a logging camp where there were just eight children in the first grade and only one in the second grade and then several along scattered through. It was a one-room school. Pot bellied stove on the floor.  We played on the the sawed off logs as a playground.

The certificate of marriage comes from the collection of Jean Clark.