Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, Third Platoon, Company 1, Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Photographer unknown, ca. August-September 1942. Oveta Culp Hobby Papers (container 14). Manuscript Division. LC-MS-26146-1. full caption | bibliographic record

In many respects, World War II marked the watershed of women's participation in the United States military. The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC)—later the Women's Army Corps (WAC)—was established in May 1942. Two months later, the Navy began recruiting women into its Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES). Women also entered the U.S. Marines and Coast Guard, and women pilots became members of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Service (WAFS) and the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).²⁰

Before becoming a state legislator and first secretary of health, education, and welfare, Oveta Culp Hobby (1905-1995) [catalog record] was a United States army colonel and the director of the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Correspondence, photographs, and printed matter (2,200 items; 1941-52) document her career with the War Department and the mobilization of American women for military service. Correspondence with Hobby may also be found in the papers of high-ranking Air Force officer and aviation pioneer Ira Eaker (77,300 items; 1918-89; bulk 1942-82) [catalog record] , who supported the training of women pilots; who successfully lobbied Hobby and his superiors for a WAC Company to be assigned to his command, first in England and later near the front in Italy; and, who, despite his own reservations, put before his commanders the request of Dixie Tighe, a woman war correspondent who wanted to go on a bomber mission as her male counterparts had. Of the WACs in Italy, Eaker wrote of their “superb” work habits, suggesting that “one girl is worth three men,” and raved that despite “extremely unpleasant conditions . . . this little group of American girls is exhibiting the best and most cheerful type of morale of any soldiers I have ever seen.”²¹

As part of the American Folklife Center's Veterans History Project, the Library is collecting letters, diaries, and oral history interviews of women who served in the military and on the home front during this country's twentieth-century wars. Available online are clips of an interview with Mary Louise Rasmuson, who was a member of the first WAC class to graduate from officer training school in Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1942. During World War II, she was the school's director, and later in her twenty-year career she became director of the entire Women's Army Corps [moving image]. Also interviewed was Violet Hill Gordon, who was one of the first African American women to join the WAC and receive training at Fort Des Moines. She later became the commanding officer in the 6888th Central Postal Directory [audio].

Army officer Henry Harley Arnold (160,000 items; 1903-89; bulk 1940-46) [catalog record] saved among his papers letters from mothers whose sons served in the Air Force during World War II and many subject files relating to the WAC, the WASP, the Women's Flying Corps, women nurses, and career opportunities for women after the war.

Air Force officer Noel Francis Parrish (29,500 items; 1894-1987; bulk 1930-87) [catalog record] is best known for overseeing the training of African American male pilots at Tuskegee Army Air Field during World War II, but he was also interested in the work of the Women's Army Corps and corresponded with Pam A. McClellan about the training of women pilots.

Dixie Tighe was just one of many women covering the war for news media (see Janet Flanner and May Craig in the Literature and Journalism section). Another was Betty Wason (b. 1912) [catalog record], a Columbia Broadcasting System war correspondent in Europe from 1938 to 1941, who for part of that time was stationed in Greece and made nightly broadcasts from there to the United States. Of note among Wason's papers (21 items; 1941-43) is a diary with brief entries describing the German invasion of Greece and her evacuation from Athens via Berlin and Lisbon to New York.

Among the many collections that describe the home front during World War II (see especially Congressional Collections) are the papers of labor relations consultant Maurice F. Neufeld (12,000 items; 1919-90; bulk 1932-87) [catalog record], which include correspondence from his wife Hinda Cohen Neufeld, an administrator with the New York State Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage.