Women (WWII)

Learn about Women in World War II with these old magazine articles. Find information on the working women of the 1940s.

The U.S. Army Nurse Corps (Think Magazine, 1946)

The Army Nurse during World War II was at work in every quarter of the globe, serving on land, on the sea in hospital ships and in the air, evacuating the wounded by plane. Because of the rugged conditions under which she served, she was trained to use foxholes and to understand gas defense, to purify water in the field and to crawl , heavily equipped, under barbed wire.


By the time VJ-Day rolled around, the Army Nurse Corps was 55,000 strong.


(From Amazon: G.I. Nightingales: The Army Nurse Corps in World War IIstyle=border:none)

The Aerial Nurse Corps of America (The American Magazine, 1941)

To read the U.S. magazines and newspapers printed in 1941 is to gain an understanding as to the sixth sense many Americans had in predicting that W.W. II would soon be upon them – and this article is a fine example. One month before Pearl Harbor the editors of AMERICAN MAGAZINE ran this column about Lauretta Schimmoller (1902 – 1981) who established the Aerial Nurse Corps of America, which, at that time, was composed of over 400 volunteers:

All air-minded registered nurses, they stand ready to fly with medical aid to scenes of disaster…Now established on a nation-wide scale, ANCOA, with its 19 national chapters, has already handled more than 3,000 emergency cases.

Badass (The American Magazine, 1943)

For those who survived it, the Second World War changed many lives – some for better, some for worse. Gale Volchok was rescued from a dreary job in New York retail and delivered to the proving grounds of two different infantry training camps in New Jersey. It was under her watchful eye that thousands of American soldiers learned to throw their enemies into the dirt and generally defend them selves.

The Women of the U.S. Navy (Think Magazine, 1946)

The attached is a short article from THINK MAGAZINE that sums up the contributions made by the 87,000 American women of the U.S. Navy during World War II. These women were organized into a body called WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service):

In 500 shore establishments of the United States Fleet, women in navy blue released enough men from non-combatant duty to man all of America’s landing crafts in two important operations: the Normandy landings on D-Day and the invasion of Saipan.

Created July 30, 1942, the Corps completed more than three years of service while the nation was engaged in war. The director was Captain Mildred H. McAfee (1900 – 1994), former president of Wellseley College.

‘Sand Diego – A Woman’s Town” (Click Magazine, 1944)

Sand Diego wanted women for its war industries. Since the beginning of the war boom San Diego has cajoled, bribed and appealed publicly for women. And San Diego got women, not only for the war industries, but for every other conceivable job. They became letter carriers, bus drivers, high-altitude window washers, milk deliverers, office workers.

The Cadet Nurse Corps (Think Magazine, 1946)

Youngest and largest of the the women’s uniformed services, the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps, has made nursing history in the brief span of it’s existence…the corps includes more than 112,000 women between 17 and 35 who enrolled to help meet the emergency demand for nursing service and at the same time prepare themselves for a post-war profession.

Distributing Women Throughout Industry (The American Magazine, 1942)

One of the seldom remembered branches of the War Production Board was the Women’s Labor Supply Services which served to eradicate the various draft deferments that were keeping too many men out of the military. Thelma McKelvey was the woman in charge of this body:

This captain of industry expects to see women workers in factories and farms increase from 700,000 today to 4,000,000 by mid-1943.

Women Worked the Railroads (Click Magazine, 1943)

Nearly 100,000 women, from messengers aged 16 to seasoned railroaders of 55 to 65, are keeping America’s wartime trains rolling. So well do they handle their jobs that the railroad companies, once opposed to hiring any women, are adding others as fast as they can get them…

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