But by late 1942 many of the original WARDs were leaving. For Hedemann, "the war [had] moved on and we felt safer in Hawaii" following Midway. Married, she became a town reserve early in 1943. When she became pregnant, she recalled, "They moved me out of the WARD with a rapidity that suggested I might have the plague." Lornahope DeClue felt that "the urgency of serving was over" and resigned to continue her education. Chief supervisor Mary Erdman resigned to accompany her evacuated daughter to the mainland; she came home to Hawaii but rejoined the Red Cross. Dottie Beach resigned to pursue her flying and join the Women's Air Force Service Pilots. Joy Shaw left when her husband was transferred to the mainland. "Perhaps I should have stayed with the WARD," she later mused, "as during his three years' absence he was in and out of Pearl a number of times. [But] I had to sign a release with the stipulation that I not try to return for the duration of the war." Bill and Ruth Cope -- now married for 62 years -- served during World War II. Bill was a bomber pilot and Ruth was a Women's Air Defense volunteer on Oahu. At the same time, new radar stations were coming on line. "Every new station or job meant one more girl for each of the four shifts," wrote Bertha Bloomfield-Brown, and "it was not long before all recruiting efforts struck rock bottom in the islands, where the employment situation was critical anyhow." The age limit was officially lowered to 17 to qualify girls just graduating from high school, special shifts were arranged for some University of Hawaii students, and the list of town reserves stretched to 25. But by January 1943, WARD still counted about 110 employees, while the number of positions had increased to 33, for each of four shifts. The 7th Fighter Command reluctantly decided to recruit for the WARD on the mainland. Mainland recruiting started in San Francisco, where Colonel Lorry Tindal of the 7th Fighter Command had gone to see the Air Defense Wing's recruiting officer. Tanya Widrin, who had previously served in the Los Angeles air defense filter center, met Tindal through a friend while on her way to join the Women's Army Corps. She later said, "When Colonel Tindal told me that the WARDs operate a filter center and do the same type of work as the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in England…I was on my way [to Hawaii] within ten days." The Army still classified air defense top-secret, however, and later recruits experienced cloak-and-dagger meetings, loyalty tests and FBI background investigations. But one Army personnel specialist in the Presidio was able to process her own application. "As I shivered in the fog," wrote recent Stanford graduate Jean McKellar, "I thought about what I told young women in my recruiting work for the WARD; ‘Hawaii is so beautiful, so warm; the work is vital to our security.'…Hawaii seemed to offer several solutions in one!"  Pearl Harbor veterans Ruth and Bill Cope speak to an Advanced Placement American history class in North Canton, Ohio, via a videoconferencing link from Hawaii. The first 34 mainland recruits arrived in Honolulu in February 1943 aboard a crowded U.S. Navy transport after a stormy passage in a zigzagging convoy. They had signed a one-year contract, renewable for another year. With 143 women, plus four to eight replacements arriving each month, Hawaii's WARD had adequate strength for the first time. By early 1944, with the war distant from Hawaii, and Oahu's operations center able to cover the whole territory, the Army closed down the neighbor island centers -- first the Kauai unit on January 15 and then Maui's and the Big Island's on April 1. V-J Day seemed to arrive suddenly. Four days before, on August 11, 1945, the Air Defense commander, Brig. Gen. John Weikert, notified the WARD, "It is expected that military personnel will take over all WARD duties within fifteen (15) days after V-J Day and that the WARD as an organization will be completely disbanded within twenty days after V-J Day." The War Department offered the WARDs equivalent civil service positions in the islands. Of approximately 165 on duty, 87 elected to return to the mainland.  Responding to a May 1945 editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser praising the WARDs, General Howard Davidson, their first commander, wrote chief supervisor Kitty Coonley, "I have seen many fighter control [centers], have several under me now, but the one in Honolulu manned by the WARDs is the best I have seen. I understand that the war has moved on and left Honolulu behind ... but you can take great pride in the fact that while it did threaten Hawaii you maintained the best Air Raid Defense system in the world." Nell Larsen's appraisal of her WARD experience was more personal, yet offers a telling insight into the prevailing attitude toward women in the American workplace in the 1940s. "The most memorable aspect of my service was the respect and admiration for American women I came to have as a result of my total war experience in Hawaii," said Larsen. "We were so often pictured as spoiled, hysterical and shallow. The women I came in contact with disproved all of that in spades."  The WARDs stood their last shift in Lizard on September 27. More than 650 women had served in Hawaii's control centers, representing all the islands' races except the Japanese and nearly all the states in the Union. For the most part young, hastily trained and not widely appreciated, the "shuffleboard pilots" who volunteered to help protect the Hawaiian Islands by staffing its plotting boards had filled a vital need at a critical time. |
