Existing comment:
Jewish Women in the Navy:
Throughout our nation's history, women have played a role in supporting, and then serving in, the United States Navy. Jewish women had performed their fair share of this duty.
Nursing was the first role that women were assigned, and at first religion played a key role. During the Civil War, Catholic nuns boarded hospital ships to tend to wounded men. The Navy recruited professional nurses to serve at the Norfolk Naval Station during the Spanish-American War (1898). In 1908, the Navy Nurse Corps became an official unit.
The urgent need for "manpower" in World War I convinced Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels to enrole female yeomen in the Naval Reserves to fill non-combat roles. These women held the rank of Yoeman [sic] (F), and were commonly known as "Yoemanettes." More than 12,000 women, including a number of young Jewish women, volunteered as administrators, fingerprint experts, camouflage designers, medical researchers and intelligence experts.
The Yoemanettes became a precedent for the World War II Waves, or Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service. From 1942 to 1944, thousands of WAVE recruits attended boot camp at the Bronx campus of Hunter College in New York City, completing a six to eight week course. They were not allowed to serve at sea or command men, but the WAVES performed admirably at more than 500 stateside naval shore installations. Significant numbers of Jewish women volunteered to do their part in the fight against Nazism in Europe and North Africa and against Japanese aggression in the Pacific.
In 1982, the first Jewish female midshipman graduated from the Naval Academy, and many other Jewish women have now graduated and gone on to distinguished careers. |