My mother was a proud veteran who served in the United States Navy during World War II.
Family background: She was the third of four daughters, first-generation Americans, raised during the Great Depression in a working-class family in New York. Her father deserted the Tsarist Army due to pervasive anti-Semitism. He made his way alone across Europe to the Port of Odessa, then to Cuba and finally New York. Her mother emigrated at 13, accompanied only by her 16-year-old sister. The sisters got work in the sweatshops in New York’s garment district. Later, another sister and their mother joined them. The rest of the family was killed during the Nazi occupation.
As a girl, my mother was shy but an excellent student. She dreamed of going to college and becoming a teacher. The death of her father when she was 16, along with the family’s poverty, seemed to put an end to these dreams. Scholarships were a rarity in those days and usually reserved for men. So after finishing high school she trained as a bookkeeper and began a humdrum life working in offices, until World War II broke out.
Determined that her all-female family would be represented in the war effort, she first joined the Civil Patrol, but found that was not enough. My mother was determined to join the Armed Forces, a process that proved more difficult than she had expected.
Her first choice was the Marines. The Armed Forces still administered IQ tests on recruits. The sergeant whispered to my mother that they were not supposed to disclose results, but she had the highest score he’d ever seen. All went well until the vision test. My mother was extremely near-sighted and wore strong glasses. While her corrected vision was within acceptable range, her uncorrected vision was not. The doctor said that since she was such an excellent candidate, he would apply for an exemption.
The exemption was denied, but the letter suggested she join the Army, as the Army only tested corrected vision. This time she hardly got past the door before being told, "Our New York quota is full". A "New York quota" had nothing to do with being from New York. In those days, the first question on the recruitment form was name. The second was religion. "New York quota" was understood to be a euphemism for Jews. The Army, you see, did not want a whole bunch of Jews out there fighting Hitler!
By now the shy young woman had become a very determined young woman. She tried the Navy and this time was accepted. She was sent to Georgia for basic training. The South was a far more foreign country to my mother than Europe!
Because the military had so few women officers, they appointed women who had been personnel managers at big companies, the ones that did not hire Jews or Catholics, let alone Blacks, Puerto Ricans, or Chinese. All the Jewish women in her unit were assigned to work in accounting, under the old stereotype that Jews are "good with money". For my mother, who had been a bookkeeper, this was not a problem, but some of the other women were "depression daughters" who left school at 13 or 14 to seek any kind of work they could get to help their families. Some of them could barely add 2 + 2. On her own time and initiative, my mother tutored her comrades in basic math and accounting so they could do their jobs. She finished basic in the top 10% of her class, making her eligible to remain and train the next class. However, her commanding officer nixed this, writing that she was "definitely not teacher material". She also applied for a job with that strange new machine, the computer. As no one had experience, the requirements were at least one year high school science and two years math. My mother had taken two years of science and three of math, and everyone was sure she’d get the job. But a less-qualified Protestant woman was selected instead.
Despite these annoyances and prejudices, my mother’s Navy service was a transforming experience for a shy young woman who until then had barely been out of her own immigrant neighborhood. While women were not sent into combat, they often were stationed quite near combat zones, and the war would not have been won without the women who kept the supplies coming. She traveled all over the world, working and living closely with people whom she otherwise would never have met. Her success in meeting every challenge gave her life-long confidence, and overcoming prejudice made her a fighter for justice everywhere. She also had the opportunity to meet and shake hands with one of her heroines, Eleanor Roosevelt, when Mrs. Roosevelt was visiting U.S. Servicewomen.
Like most women of her generation, after the war my mother married and began to raise a family. However, she never gave up her dream and, with the determination that brought her into the Navy after two other services rejected her, began taking night classes towards her degree. With the help of the GI Bill, she eventually graduated, earned her Masters and Teaching Credential, and fulfilled her dream of being a teacher. This "definitely not teacher material" was later Teacher of the Year for all Los Angeles County.
Although a proud veteran, she was not blindly militaristic. My mother protested U.S. wars in Korea and Vietnam and U.S. support for military dictatorships and contra forces in Latin America.
After retiring, my mother became an active member of Jewish War Veterans of the United States, the only woman in her post. (My father was the only male member of the auxiliary!) Many men had written accounts of their experiences as Jews in the Armed Forces during World War II, but no women had done so. At her post commander’s request, she wrote an essay, which was displayed in the Jewish War Veteran Museum in Washington, D.C., together with her photograph in uniform.
My mother died in 1997, and as an active duty veteran was entitled to a flag-draped coffin and a final salute.