The first few weeks in the Bureau of Naval Personnel in the Arlington Annex are a muddle of complete confusion to me. I was tucked away in a little office somewhere, where it seemed to me there was no way of finding out what the whole thing was all about . . . My first assignment – my first responsibility – was this business of just getting enough women there to start doing something, and what they were to do was a vague to me as it was to all the rest of the Navy at the time.

The greatest advantage I had was the fact that I had worked for so many years in Bureau of Aeronautics, I had been marreid in the Navy, and so had a substantial Navy background . . . it is marvelous to look back on and so darn rewarding because I can see what has been accomplished. Not just my own accomplishments but also being able to view so many things that are continuing to be accomplished.

As I say, if I had any advice to give them, that was it, “Ladies, use your own good judgement.” Actually, even after training, which was a very short period, the WAVES could have never acconplished what they did, had they not been able to use their own judgement . . . These were adult women who had long passed their rote memory learning, and they were accustomed to reasoning and questioning, analyzing, challenging.

Miss McAfee … she called me and said, “Have we any negro women?” … There was an unspoken and certainly unwritten order or policy, how it traveled I will never know, but no negro women ever seemed to be recruited . . . [Secretary Knox] wanted them to be absolutely Mainbocher uniformed, perfect, beautiful . . . We rushed two Negro women into the last Midshipman class. One of them was a “summa cum laude” in history, brilliant woman . . . And this gal was the head of the class having arrived at least a week late if not longer. She was miles ahead of the rest of the class. 

I sold my apartment. I gave up my job and on the 19th day I received my orders I received a commission as a lieutenant junior grade and I was the first WAVE sworn in the state of Oregon. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I would be doing but I cried all night long because sure I would never see home or family again. It didn’t quite work that way. 

[Hunter College] had been set up as the one boot camp for every girl who enlisted in the Navy to go there for her first six weeks . . . We got 1,680 from civilian life every other Thursday, just as regularly as clockwork . . . The great difficulty I found right away was that no one had ever gotten all the heads of the various departments together to talk over their problems. Everyone was kind of operating independently and it was pretty difficult. After one morning session of about two hours everything fell into place.

My first assignment was to this same Bureau of Naval Personnel where [Mildred McAfee’s] office was. I was in the Plans and Policy Division at the time and, although I didn’t attend the conferences with Admiral Randall Jacobs at the time, I had the advantage of hearing all the comments from the men who attended the meetings. And there was no question form these — and they were 99 percent Naval Academy graduates in those days — there was no question in my mind whatsoever that she was on top of every situation.

They had to have the right attitude . . . They had to have a good education. They had to have an appearance we thought was right. They physical requirements were adhered to, meticulously. We adhered to all the directives. We didn’t deviate one bit . . . We lived up to everything right down to the letter. Then we made up a few of our own. One was that just because a girl graduated from college, we didn’t consider her officer material. She also must have had outstanding business experience or a professional background.