Women in the Navy before World War II

The WAVES were not the first women to serve in the US Navy. Women assisted as volunteer nurses as early as the American Revolution, during the Civil War, and in World War I, when women officially joined the Navy as Yeoman (Female), also known as “Yeomanettes.” As the Navy expanded during World War I, the US Naval Reserve Act of 1916 allowed enlistment of “citizens” and “persons” “capable of performing special useful service in the Navy or in connection with the Navy in defense of the coast.” The ambiguous language of the act allowed women to enlist. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels asked whether there was “any law that says a yeoman must be a man,” and concluded that the language did not prohibit women from joining the reserves.[3] Daniels declared that women may enlist in the Navy as Yeoman (F) and serve in clerical and administrative positions. Approximately 12,000 women, including African American women, served in the Navy during World War I. After the war ended, Yeomen (F) were demobilized, and, except for the Navy Nurse Corps, the branch became all-male again until World War II.

Women in the Navy during World War II

In May 1941, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts introduced legislation to establish the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), a US Army auxiliary unit that allowed women to serve as switchboard operators, mechanics, postal clerks, drivers, typists, and medical personnel. In December 1941, Nourse called Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, asking if he wanted a bill for the Navy like the Army’s, pending legislation for the WAACs. Nimitz asked all departments in the Navy about the possible usefulness of women in the service. The responses were mostly negative, but Nimitz received positive responses from the Chief of Naval Operations, the Bureau of Aeronautics, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. On these responses, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who had the final say in the establishment of a women’s branch of the Navy, insisted that “if women were going to work with classified or sensitive information, they must be an integral part of the naval reserve—not an auxiliary to it.”[4] But the Bureau of the Budget denied Knox’s request unless the Navy agreed to have the women’s branch be auxiliary: “with, not in, the Navy.”[5] 

While Congress debated whether to allow women in the Navy, Elizabeth Reynard, a professor at the all-women Barnard College, became a special assistant to Rear Admiral Randall Jacobs, the new chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, on the recommendation of Virginia C. Gildersleeve, dean of Barnard College. Reynard was one of several female university administrators who met to form the Women’s Advisory Council, which was tasked with organizing and planning how best to run the women’s branch of the Navy, should Congress agree to its establishment. As Congress debated signing off on the Navy’s women’s branch, Reynard was tasked with coming up with an appropriate name. She came up with the “nautical sounding” WAVES: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service. The Women’s Advisory Council then chose Mildred McAfee, then president of Wellesley College, as director for the burgeoning branch. 

In late May 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the Senate Naval Affairs Committee’s proposal to make the WAVES auxiliary. This caused several educators to weigh in. Dean Harriet Elliot of University of North Carolina and Gildersleeve wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt urging that the WAVES be an integrated part of the Navy, not auxiliary to it. The First Lady forwarded Elliot’s letter to the president and Gildersleeve’s letter to Undersecretary Forrestal. Dean C. Mildred Thompson of Vassar College and President Herman Davis of Smith College wrote letters to Roosevelt echoing Elliot’s and Gildersleeve’s sentiments. These letters may have been the deciding factor, because on July 30, 1942, President Roosevelt signed a bill officially establishing the WAVES, in, not with, the Navy. On August 3, 1942, McAfee was sworn in as the Navy’s first female line officer. Two days later, Reynard was commissioned the first-ever female lieutenant in the Navy. 

Recruiting and Challenges

Congress, military officials, and directors of women’s groups were worried that women would lose their femininity by joining the military. Many believed that women did not want to take on male jobs, much less that women could even perform them. Others feared that women would replace men, not just release them for duty. Still others feared that women would become immoral, destroying the traditional image of the wife-mother-homemaker. Imposing femininity on women who wanted to join the Armed Forces illustrated the disconnection between societal expectations of women and the demands of military service, but it also illustrated fear of challenging the status quo. Women were supposed to take care of the home; men were supposed to take care of the country. Of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs), for example, Drew Pearson’s 1944 nationally syndicated column read: “Arnold faces Congress uproar over continued use of the WASPS; Miss Cochran’s lady fliers now replace instead of releasing men.” But while some women in the service were pilots, weather forecasters, and gunnery instructors, most performed clerical jobs that were no different from the jobs performed in civilian life. This softened the blow for the military in reassuring parents that their daughters would not lose their femininity. In selecting McAfee, a highly educated university president, as director of the WAVES, the Navy wanted to convince parents that it would care for their daughters for in a respectable environment.

Despite fears of women taking on traditionally masculine roles and replacing men, the Navy turned to female educators like McAfee to determine how best to organize and run the WAVES. By September 1942, the Navy recruited 108 additional women to the Navy from the education and business worlds to become officers. McAfee, heading the group of highly educated women, insisted on tasteful advertising for the WAVES as she was determined that the Navy’s women would project a ladylike image. When an ad came out in the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1943 featuring a woman in a pinup-style pose beckoning readers to join the WAVES, McAfee was furious. The flirtatious ad gave the impression that women who joined the WAVES were not there to serve their country, but rather to seek out male attention. Within a month of the ad, an order was issued prohibiting the use of “cheesecake” images to attract women to the Navy. Following the order, ads for WAVES recruitment featured elegant women and focused on patriotism and winning the war.

The Navy fostered an elite image in its dress and mannerisms as Navy women trained at universities, while other women’s branches were trained on traditional bases or airfields. Winifred Quick Collins, Chief of Naval Personnel for Women, recalled that “the Navy wanted a ‘classy’ image to reflect a special group of educated, prestigious women.”[6] Despite their sophisticated reputation, WAVES were nevertheless subject to the slander campaign against military women launched in 1943, though not nearly as harshly as WACs and WASPs. Rumors spread that military women were promiscuous, and many families at home were vehemently opposed to their daughters, sisters, and girlfriends enlisting. In a letter to his future wife, Sergeant Alexander Bell warned: “What ever you do don’t you dare join [the Army or the Navy]…One of the Waves stationed at the navy base here, says the work she is doing and the place isn’t fit for a decent girl,” and “that he would never marry a woman who had performed military service.”[7] Investigations ruled out Axis involvement and determined that enlisted servicemen “thoughtlessly” started and maintained the rumors to hinder military recruitment of women. 

Who They Were and What They Did

Ads to join the WAVES focused on patriotism and the need for women’s assistance in the war effort, stressing the academic training facilities and stylish uniforms designed by French couturier Mainbocher. Helen Gilbert, in her memoir, wrote that the WAVES uniform made her feel “very proud and elegant.”[8] Joy Bright Hancock, one of the first women officers in the Navy, wrote that WAVES held their heads high “because they believed themselves to be the best-dressed women in America.”[9] The WAVES uniforms established them as a refined group of women and attracted many women from farming or working-class families who saw enlisting as their route to an education and middle-class life.

WAVES were predominantly middle-class, and at first exclusively white. Civilian groups pressured the Navy to change its racial policies, and in October 1944, President Roosevelt approved accepting women of color into the Navy. Two months later, Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills became the first Black female officers in the Navy. By September 1945, 72 Black women had joined the WAVES and five had joined the Navy Nurse Corps on an integrated basis.

Entry requirements for the WAVES were notably higher than men entering the Navy because the military felt that 18- and 19-year-old women were too young, despite allowing men of the same age to enlist. The military wanted mature women, not young, enthusiastic women. Both WAVES and their families acutely felt this double standard, and many wrote letters recommending their late-teenage daughters for service. One veteran father wrote, “As I have no sons to give to the Marines, I would be more than happy if you…would recommend my daughter. ... She will be 18 this June.”[10] A bill was introduced to allow younger women to enlist, but it was quickly defeated, and the higher standards remained in place. Women who wanted to enlist in the WAVES had to be between the ages of 20 and 35 with a high school or business school diploma. Officer candidates had to be between 20 and 49 and have at least two years of college and professional or business experience. Especially wanted were women with degrees in “engineering, astronomy, meteorology, electronics, physics, mathematics, metallurgy, business statistics and modern foreign languages.”

After their training, WAVES served at 900 shore stations throughout the United States, with the majority serving in Washington, D.C. WAVES were initially not allowed to serve overseas, despite Navy nurses having served abroad in World War I and WACs having gone overseas since 1942. On September 27, 1944, Congress passed an act allowing WAVES to serve in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Caribbean.

The WAVES’s mission was to release men to fight, but many women filled roles that were created by the demands of war. WAVES served in mostly clerical jobs across the shore stations, but some served as nurses, physicians, storekeepers, weather forecasters, aeronautical engineers, parachute riggers, cryptographers, and pigeon trainers, among many other jobs. Rosemary Fagot recalled that she was required to carry a gun because she could, at any given time, be carrying secret documents relating to the atomic bomb and had to be able to defend herself and her documents. 

Despite their various positions in the Navy, when the war ended, most WAVES wanted to return home and get on with their lives. But the United States’ role in a global war made women’s full-time involvement in the postwar Navy necessary. Military leaders therefore agreed that women should remain in the regular Navy and in the reserves.

Discharge and Return to Civilian Life

The Navy’s decision to allow women to serve during World War II was a success. Forrestal, now the Navy Secretary, wrote that the WAVES’s “conduct, discharge of military responsibilities, and skillful work are in the highest tradition of the naval service.”[11] Following discharge, many returned to civilian life. Helen Gilbert wrote that her time in the WAVES was the proudest, most satisfactory time of her life.[12] Lillian Hoover said that it was a very special part of her life. Bettylu Davis felt proud because she felt like she and her fellow WAVES “gave what [they] could give.”

Following the war, the Navy shrank by almost 90 percent, but some WAVES opted to remain in the service. By September 1, 1946, of the nearly 90,000 WAVES during the war, only 1,715 officers and 3,926 enlisted women remained. When McAfee resigned from the Navy in 1945, she appointed Lieutenant Commander Jean Palmer as her successor. Palmer advocated, alongside Joy Bright Hancock, for allowing women to serve in the Navy as a career, both actively and in the reserves. When Palmer resigned in 1946, Hancock replaced her. Hancock, working with Colonel Mary A. Hallaren and Major Julia E. Hamblet of the WAC, spoke at congressional hearings in support of women’s permanent place in the military. One of the questions raised during the hearings concerned menopause incapacitating women. When asked if menopause affected a woman’s ability to serve her country, Rear Admiral Clifford Swanson, surgeon general of the Navy, replied in support of the women: “The commonly held idea that many women are invalidated in their middle years by the onset of menopause is largely a popular fallacy. It is well known that men pass through the same physiological change resembling that in women.” This ended the physiological conversation, but many Navy men still considered women less competent than men.

 Nevertheless, on July 7, 1948, with the passage of Public Law 625, the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, six WAVES—Kay L. Langdon, Wilma J. Marschal, Edna E. Young, Frances R. Devaney, Doris R. Robertson, and Ruth Flora—were duly sworn in as regular Navy enlistees. A few months later, on October 15, 1948, eight women were commissioned as the first female officers in the US Navy: Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant. Despite challenges since the outset of the war, the WAVES made significant contributions to the war effort, served their country proudly, and helped pave the way for women’s careers in the Navy.