the Reminiscences of WAVES, vol. II

Based on eight interviews conducted by John T. Mason, Jr., and Etta-Belle Kitchen from May 1969 through September 1970. The volume contains 369 pages of interview transcript. The transcript is copyright 1979 by the U.S. Naval Institute; any restrictions originally placed on the transcripts by the interviewees have since been removed. The Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service—better known in history as the WAVES—were the crucial women’s Naval Reserve component of the U.S. fleet during its most epochal years—World War II. The WAVES were in many ways unprecedented, and the obstacles they faced, both minor and significant, were numerous. From 1969 to 1971, Naval Institute oral historian John T. Mason Jr. and his West Coast operative, Etta Belle Kitchen, sought to recapture some of this unique aspect of the story of the Navy in the Second World War, and in the process preserved some vital insights into what amounted to a precursor to the gender-integrated force of today. The WAVES recollections they gathered comprise two volumes of essential primary-source history.