The Women Merchant Mariners, Dolores Martinez

We tend to forget the Merchant Marines who served during World War II. We also forget that Hawaii, and the seas around it, were under attack for the duration of the war.

On December 19, 1941 the unarmed Hog Islander, SS Prusa was about 150 miles south of the Big Island. (Hog Islanders was a Merchant Marine slang for ships built in the Philadelphia Hog Island ship yard. These ships were cargo and transport ships. They were originally built by the government for service in the first World War. Ironically, no Hog Islanders saw action in World War I, but many ships were active in World War II, and were sunk in that conflict.)

Eight of the 34 crew of the Prusa were killed when the ship was torpedoed by the Japanese. Among the dead was Dolores Martinez, a Fireman/Watertender. On December 27, 1941, fourteen survivors were rescued from a lifeboat by the Coast Guard cutter Tiger . A second lifeboat group with eleven survivors on board reached safety after a 2,700 mile voyage, and was rescued by a Fijian ship. (A ninth crewman died of exposure.)

(To read the ship's log for the Tiger during the December 7, 1941 attack, go to: http://www.uscg.mil/history/docs/PH_Tiger_Action_Report.asp and http://www.usmm.org/women.html )

Women of World War II Hawaii

Cornelia Fort's Article 'At the Twilight's Last Gleaming'

I, for one, am profoundly grateful that my one talent, my only knowledge, flying, happens to be of use to my country when it is needed. That's all the luck I ever hope to have.--Cornelia Fort
At the Twilight's Last Gleaming
By Cornelia Fort Ladies Home Companion, July 1943

I knew I was going to join the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron before the organization was a reality, before it had a name, before it was anything but a radical idea in the minds of a few men who believed that women could fly airplanes. But I never knew it so surely as I did in Honolulu on December 7, 1941.

At dawn that morning I drove from Waikiki to the John Rodgers civilian airport right next to Pearl Harbor where I was a pilot instructor. Shortly after six-thirty I began landing and take-off practice with my regular student. Coming in just before the last landing, I looked casually around and saw a military plane coming directly toward me. I jerked the controls away from my student and jammed the throttle wide open to pull above the oncoming plane. He passed so close under us that our celluloid windows rattled violently and I looked down to see what kind of plane it was.

The painted red balls on the tops of the wings shone brightly in the sun. I looked again with complete and utter disbelief. Honolulu was familiar with the emblem of the Rising Sun on passenger ships but not on airplanes. I looked quickly at Pearl Harbor and my spine tingled when I saw billowing black smoke. Still I thought hollowly it might be some kind of coincidence or maneuvers, it might be, it must be. For surely, dear God ...

Then I looked way up and saw the formations of silver bombers riding in. Something detached itself from an airplane and came glistening down. My eyes followed it down, down and even with knowledge pounding in my mind, my heart turned convulsively when the bomb exploded in the middles of the harbor. I knew the air was not the place for my little baby airplane and I set about landing as quickly as ever I could. A few seconds later a shadow passed over me and simultaneously bullets spattered all around me.

Suddenly that little wedge of sky above Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor was the busiest fullest pieces of sky I ever saw. We counted anxiously as our little civilian planes came flying home to roost. Two never came back. They were washed ashore weeks later on the windward side of the island, bullet-riddled. Not a pretty way for the brave little yellow Cubs and their pilots to go down to death.

The rest of December seventh has been described by too many in too much detail for me to reiterate. I remained on the island until three months later when I returned by convoy to the United States. None of the pilots wanted to leave but there was no civilian flying in the islands after the attack. And each of us had some indication of what brought murder and destruction to our islands.

When I returned, the only way I could fly at all was to instruct in the Civilian Pilot Training program. Weeks passed. Then, out of the blue, came a telegram from the War Department announcing the organization of the WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) and the order to report within twenty-four hours if interested. I left at once.

Mrs. Nancy Love was appointed Senior Squadron Leader of the WAFS by the Secretary of War. No better choice could have been made. First and most important she is a good pilot, has tremendous enthusiasm and belief in women pilots and did a wonderful job in helping us to be accepted on an equal status with men.

Because there were and are so many disbelievers in women pilots, especially in their place in the army, officials wanted the best possible qualifications to go with the first experimental group. All of us realized what a spot we were on. We had to deliver the goods or else. Or else there wouldn't ever be another chance for women pilots in any part of the service.

We have no hopes of replacing men pilots. But we can each release a man to combat, to faster ships, to overseas work. Delivering a trainer to Texas may be as important as delivering a bomber to Africa if you take the long view. We are beginning to prove that women can be trusted to deliver airplanes safely and in the doing serve the country which is our country too.

I have yet to have a feeling which approaches in satisfaction that of having signed, sealed and delivered an airplane for the United States Army. The attitude that most non flyers have about pilots is distressing and often acutely embarrassing. They chatter about the glamour of flying. Well, any pilot can tell you how glamorous it is. We get up in the cold dark in order to get to the airport by daylight. We wear heavy cumbersome flying clothes and a thirty-pound parachute. You are either cold or hot. If you are female your lipstick wears off and your hair gets straighter and straighter. You look forward all afternoon to the bath you will have and the steak. Well, we get the bath but seldom the steak. Sometimes we are too tired to eat and fall wearily into bed.

None of us can put into words why we fly. It is something different for each of us. I can't say exactly why I fly but I know why as I've never known anything in my life. I knew it when I saw my plane silhouetted against the clouds framed by a circular rainbow. I knew it when I flew up into the extinct volcano Haleakala on the island of Maui and saw the gray-green pineapple fields slope down to the cloud-dappled blueness of the Pacific. But I know it otherwise than in beauty. I know it in dignity and self-sufficiency and in the pride of skill. I know it in the satisfaction of usefulness.

For all the girls in the WAFS, I think the most concrete moment of happiness came at our first review. Suddenly and for the first time we felt a part of something larger. Because of our uniforms which we had earned, we were marching with the men, marching with all the freedom-loving people in the world.

And then while we were standing at attention a bomber took off followed by four fighters. We knew the bomber was headed across the ocean and that the fighters were going to escort it part way. As they circled over us I could hardly see them for the tears in my eyes. It was striking symbolism and I think all of us felt it. As long as our planes fly overhead the skies of America are free and that's what all of us everywhere are fighting for. And that we, in a very small way, are being allowed to help keep that sky free is the most beautiful thing I have ever known.

I, for one, am profoundly grateful that my one talent, my only knowledge, flying, happens to be of use to my country when it is needed. That's all the luck I ever hope to have.

(The most comprehensive account of the story of Cornelia Fort is by Rob Simbeck,
Daughter of the Air: The Brief Soaring Life of Cornelia Fort by Rob Simbeck, in the Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999.)

Women of World War II Hawaii

Cornelia Fort

On December 7th, 1941 Cornelia Fort, a young civilian flight instructor from Tennessee, and her regular Sunday-morning student took off from John Rodgers Airport in Honolulu. Fort's apprentice was advanced enough to fly regular take-offs and landings and this was to have been his last lesson before going solo. With the novice at the controls, Fort noticed a military aircraft approaching from the sea. At first that didn't strike her as unusual; Army planes were a common sight in the skies above Hawaii. But at the last moment, she realized this aircraft was different and that it had set itself on a collision course with her plane. She wrenched the controls from her student's grasp and managed to pull the plane up just in time to avoid a mid-air crash. As she looked around she saw the red sun symbol on the wings of the disappearing plane and in the distance, probably not more than a quarter mile away, billowing smoke was rising over Pearl Harbor. The disbelieving Fort had just unwittingly witnessed the U.S. entry into World War II. A little more than a year after this near miss, Fort would be flying military aircraft for the U.S. and a mid-air collision would tragically make her the first American woman to die on active military duty.

Fort flew for her country for just a few brief months. On March 21, 1943, she was one of a number of pilots, both male and female, who had been assigned to ferry BT-13s to Love Field in Dallas Texas. During the course of that mission, one of the men's landing gear clipped Fort's airplane, sending it plummeting to earth. Fort didn't have time to parachute to safety. Her commanding officer, sent a compassionate letter back to the young pilot's mother: "My feeling about the loss of Cornelia," wrote Nancy Love, "is hard to put into words -- I can only say that I miss her terribly, and loved her...If there can be any comforting thought, it is that she died as she wanted to -- in an Army airplane, and in the service of her country."

Despite the words of sympathy, Fort and the other 37 female pilots who died flying military planes during the war, received no military recognition. The army didn't even pay for their burial expenses because the women were considered civilians. Fort's achievements as a military pilot are commemorated by an airpark named after her that was built in 1945 near her family farm. Her own words on an historical marker at the site simply and modestly sum up her wartime contribution: "I am grateful" she wrote, "that my one talent, flying, was useful to my country."

FLY GIRLS is a PBS documentary. The website is: www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flygirls/
CHeck it out for a capsule history of women in aviation during World War II.

Women in World War II Hawaii

Let's Go to the Movies! Tora! Tora! Tora!

The poster to the left is the original for the 1970 movie Tora! Tora! Tora! This movie and From Here to Eternity (mentioned in a previous blog labeled "Video" are the two best depictions of World War II Hawaii.

It's not exactly a "chick flick" but it gives the wide scope of the story from both sides of the equation. There are two things I want to point you to in the film. The first is a very short clip of Cornelia Fort, a pilot instructor, who was in the air during the attack. The "real life" Cornelia Fort was in the air during the attack, and I'll tell her story in my next post.

The other point is that famous/infamous line of Admiral Yamamoto saying, "I fear that all we have done is awakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve." This quote has worked itself into the American myth of World War II. The words "sleeping giant" were brilliant, but, in fact, the quote is considered a fabrication.

The film weaves authentic footage with dramatizations, but the "truth" of the footage is based in reality.

The Salvation Army Doughnuts

When World War I and World War II veterans think of the Salvation Army, they may instinctively think of doughnuts! The Salvation Army made doughnuts famous in 1917. In Hawaii, the Salvation Army started serving doughnuts the day of the attack--feeding volunteer workers, firefighters, police and military family evacuees.

On the morning of the attack, Mrs. A.M. Holbrook (in photo) wife of Salvation Army Major A.M. Holbrook opened up the new fire station at Wahiawa, got the stove connected, borrowed dishes and kettles, then kept turning out doughnuts by the platter full until the next Wednesday afternoon. “There never was a crumb left over,” she said. “Girl Scouts helped on the night shifts, but I didn’t peel off my clothes for ten days running. I just dropped on a couch for an hour or so of rest then went back to the stove again”

For the duration of the war, Mrs. Holbrook's canteen was established in the Wahiawa Methodist Church. It was open from five p.m. until 7 a.m. In the first three weeks of operation, 18,000 doughnuts were handed out.(Honolulu Star Bulletin, December 3, 1942)

PHOTO: The USO-Salvation Army mobile doughnut canteen at top. In the lower photo, Salvation Army's Major and Mrs. A.M. Holbrook are in the background. (Salvation Army Archives)

Women in World War II Hawaii

Random Acts of Kindness

The evacuation of the military families swelled the Red Cross centers beyond their capacity. Women throughout the island opened their homes to stranded military wives and children.

Here are some of the random acts of kindness:

Mrs. Victoria Bates of 3257 Kaimuki Avenue, wife of Gunner’s Mate 1st Class John Buel Bates, USN, was highly praised by Arthur Keller, Assistant Executive Secretary of the Army and Navy YMCA. Mrs. Bates, acting as a volunteer, and assisted by a group of navy wife friends, found homes for 600 women and children in Kapahulu and Kaimuki homes. Most of these dependents were evacuated from the Pearl Harbor base. (HonoluluStar Bulletin, December 9, 1941)

Sometimes in an emergency, food is the first thought of aid. During the first week after the attack, women would anonymously bring food to canteens, shelters and hospitals. Police radios announced streams of offers of food and thanks. Simple messages were broadcast: “Thank you for what you’re doing. I have coffee, soup and sandwiches at 133 Liliukolani.” “Come for food. 1069 Ilima Drive.” “664 South King Street had soup on the stove." (University of Hawaii. An Era of Change. Vol 1)

Mrs. A.A. Fernandez of Mott-Smith Drive put an ad in the paper offering to share her newly built home with someone who was evacuated under the emergency laws. She indicated a preference for needy persons with a baby.

The first evacuation center was set up by noon of December 7, 1941 at Hemenway Hall of the University of Hawaii. Some evacuees came with no belongings. A call went out for clothes and Mrs. George Angus took it upon herself to sew pajamas for the children. (On December 22, 1941, the last 25 evacuees who had been housed at Hemenway Hall University of Hawaii returned home. As a Red Cross evacuation center, the university served as shelter for about 210 evacuees. 125 of these evacuees were from Hickham Field. Honolulu Star Bulletin, December 22, 1942, Honolulu Advertiser, December 9, 1942)

PHOTO: American Red Cross volunteers with Admiral Hoskins

Ruth Cope missed the evacuation of Hickam

I first met Ruth Cope at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial. She and her husband Bill volunteered there every Friday morning signing books about the Women’s Air Raid Defense (Ruth was one of the original members of the Women's Air Raid Defense. I have several posts about them later) and aviation histories of World War II. I had previously talked to Ruth by phone; she sent me photographs of and articles about herself, but we didn’t come face to face until May 2002. I spotted her sitting at a table in the atrium right outside the book store. She and Bill were wearing the teal Pearl Harbor volunteer shirts and Ruth had on her signature snap-peaked white cap. I waited in line to talk to her. The line was twenty deep but seemed never ending; so many people wanted to take pictures with them, and ask detailed questions about December 7, 1941.

When I finally got to the front of the line, I introduced myself to Ruth. On the phone, Ruth’s voice had sounded strong, with the gravely undertones of a lifelong smoker. In person, she looked frail, her skin mottled with bruises and her bones protruded from sun-leathered arms, but her eyes were intensely clear, and her smile was warm and welcoming. She took my hand into hers and asked, “So, dear, what do you want to know?”

She told Bill she was taking a break to talk to me and he said, “Just as long as your friend leaves me her phone number and hotel key.” Ruth turned to me and said, “He’s still my ‘Bad Billy.’”

Ruth and I walked to a bench at the edge of the harbor. She began her story by looking over to her husband. “It’s really a story about Bill and me. Our love story is better than any in the movies.” And it is. We talked, interrupted by tourists asking questions from directions to the restrooms to her memories of World War II. “It’s non-stop the whole time we’re here,” Ruth said. “Sometimes I sign so many books, my hands cramp the next day and since 9-11, the interest in the attack on Pearl Harbor has rekindled. Bill and I are grateful to tell them the story. It’s so important.”



That night, I wrote in my journal: "Today I met Ruth L. Cope. My life has changed forever." Ruth is one of The Ladies who inspired this website. The excerpt below is her story of how she "missed the boat" of evacuation.

On Christmas Day, Ruth was alone in their quarters. (The photo above is of junior officer apartment house at Hickam where Bill and Ruth lived. It is still junior officer housing.)“I had my bags packed,” she said. “We all had to be ready to be evacuated within 24 hours. And since I didn’t receive any evacuation notice that day, I decided to drive across the island to Bellows Field to spend part of Christmas with Bill. It took me hours to get there. We had just about enough time to have lunch together at the mess hall then I had to head back to Hickam before curfew.


“When I drove home and got up to the main gate at Hickam, the sentry asked me where I was going and I answered that I was going home, that I lived on Signer Boulevard. He told me not anymore because there had been an evacuation and all the other wives had been shipped out.”

Ruth said, “I missed the boat—literally. I went back to my quarters and sure enough all the other units were empty and Signer Boulevard was a ghost town. The army didn’t give the wives advance notice that day.” Ruth explained, “They figured out that too many wives had plans on not being in their quarters the day of their evacuation so they could stay in Hawaii with their husbands. So on Christmas Day they came in, unannounced and evacuated all of my area.

“And so, I was evacuated. A civilian family, Mr. and Mrs. Moody of Grossman-Moody Jewelers took me in. They were so gracious and kind. They had a lovely home in Nuuanu where I stayed until before I moved us into our Hibiscus Drive apartment.”





The photos above were taken at Bellows Air Field in Waimanalo. The upper photo is of officers' housing during World War II. The lower is of the captured Japanese midget two-man submarine. The sub got lost, and was beached on a reef. Air Force personnel dragged the midget sub off the reef and onto the beach. One of the crewmen was dead. The other, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki, was washed ashore and captured. He was the first prisoner of war of World War II.

If you visit Bellows Field, you will see a small collection of photos and memorablila of World War II, among them is this image of the Main Gate of Bellows Field during World War II.
PHOTO: United States Air Force

Women of World War II Hawaii

Civilian Evacuation

The Federal government authorized an emergency evacuation of 60,000 civilians from Honolulu to the mountain areas of Oahu. The remaining 160,000 persons were to remain scattered through the well spaced residential district. (Honolulu Advertiser, December 10, 1941)

Molly R. Kenny, then a young housewife living in Aiea Heights, could see Pearl Harbor and Ford Island from her window. She and a few friends decided it was safer to hide in a cane field about 100 yards away. But half way to the fields, a shell hit nearby. Some of her friends went back to their houses, but Molly stayed in the field for most of the day.

Women in World War II Hawaii

The Evacuation of Military Families, 2

The above photo is of one of the sugar cane fields on Oahu about 1940. If you go to that area now, you'll see community after community of housing developments. It looks more like Los Angeles County than any sugar cane field.

Schofield Barracks was and still is in the middle of the island, near those old fields. There was an "evacuation shelter" built for military dependents in case of an emergency. Some wives thought the shelter was just a rumor, until December 7, 1941 when 400 women and children were evacuated to a cave.

Ruth Dunlop, and her mother, Lucy Ord Mason were among them. (Mrs. Mason was 81-years-old; her husband had killed at the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1891.) Before Mrs. Mason left the house, she put out four-days of feed for her 12canaries.

The cave was less ready than expected. At first there was no potable water, no toilet facilities. Ruth Dunlop and the other women evacuees cleaned the cave, improvised sanitary facilities, making due with only one water spigot, no tables or chairs.

Most families who were evacuated were taken to Red Cross evacuation centers across Oahu. The evacuation centers were set up, but there was no communication system. (Remember, this is before cell phones, and the land line system was to be used only in for emergencies. Besides, most husbands were in the midst of the attack, or in the recovery of it.)

The Red Cross maintained a nursery school for children of evacuees at the Castle Memorial Nursery and Preschool. Diapers were delivered to centers by the Womens Ambulance Corps.

The Red Cross made a master list of evacuation centers and printed it in the newspapers. But, not all centers submitted complete list of names. Mrs. Malcolm MacIntyre and Mrs. S. Harrington Littlell attempted to compile an all inclusive list, but it was an impossible goal.

For a week after the attack, the newspapers ran personal ads for family members looking for each other. The ads were all similar: “Mrs. Norma Mack and five week old baby from Hickam, please contact your husband. Sgt. Parnes of Hickam is trying to locate his wife and baby. Please contact him.”(Honolulu Star Bulletin, December 9, 1941)

Women in World War II Hawaii

The Evacuation of military families

The photo to the left is of navy housing. During World War II, a junior officer's family would have been assigned this type of home. It's single wall (the exterior wall is the interior wall of the home). It is about 1000 square feet, and built on stilts. The construction, materials used, size and paint color were typical of the times.

I hope that by now, I've given you a picture of the confusion and turmoil of that Sunday morning. Families (almost all wives and children) were given conflicting advice. The military wanted to keep the families safe, but there were arguments over whether transporting them in the midst of an attack would put them in even more danger than keeping them in their homes.

Here are snippets of oral histories about the evacuations:

Mrs. Potts, wife of Colonel “Empy” Potts, was told by the military police to “stay in quarters and lie on the floor when the planes flew over. An hour later, an officer from her husband’s unit showed up at the house and told her “to leave the base and go to his (the messenger officer's) house about six miles away.”

Nancy Shea, wife of Colonel Augustine Shea, was told to stay in the garage of her quarters. She and her Filipino maid made a “shelter of trunks topped by a mattress.” When a piece of shrapnel carried away part of one of the trunks, the two of them, ran to the house and crawled under it.

Mrs. “Skinny” Hayes was ordered off Schofield Barracks. She loaded her car with canned goods and sped to the home of friends in Haleiwa on the North Shore. When she arrived, a phone call came from her husband saying she would be safer on base, so she drove back. Back at her quarters at Schofield, a soldier knocked on her door and told her, “Get over to the barracks, you’ll be safer there.” So, she said, “In the middle of the war, I kept moving around.”

Women of World War II Hawaii

All over the island

The map above shows the main attacks of the Japanese on December 7, 1941. Not pictured is the Marine Corps Air Station at Ewa ("west" of Hickam) and Bellows Air Field ("south" of Kaneohe Naval Air Station.)

Oahu has two mountain ranges running "north and south" (Hawaii does not fit neatly in a traditional north/south axis. Directions are still given by your relative position to the mountains, ocean, or particular landmarks. In the center of the ranges [called "Central Oahu"] were the sugar cane and pineapple fields.)

I'm trying to give you an idea of what was going on all over the island. To get a perspective of distance, go to a google map and ask for directions from one place to another. You'll see how close things are. (For example: Kaneohe to Honolulu is about fifteen miles.)

So, you have all major military installations being attacked. Fires, smoke, and military dependents that must be evacuated from that area. There are fires in Iwilei at the gas tanks, fires in Kalihi ("north" of Honolulu) and an evacuation there. There is traffic going into the bases (civilian and military workers trying to get to their posts) and traffic going out (military dependent families trying to evacuate), there are fire trucks coming in from civilian fire houses, there are "bombs" downtown including Iolani Palace, sirens are going off...and yet, there are families in the central, leeward and north shore areas that don't even know there is a war going on.