The First Lady of World War II by Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Author:Shannon McKenna Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

Thanking you for your trouble and attention, I remain

Pvt. Donald E. Blount

USMC

P.S. This is the opinion of all the Marines. They back me in all that I’ve said. We don’t need women in the Marine Corps.

He found no sympathy with Eleanor, who sent this reply:12

February 6, 1943

Dear Mr. Blount:

Women are proving useful in all branches of the Services.

Don’t worry, they won’t bother you!

Very sincerely yours,

Eleanor Roosevelt

The first branch of the armed services to accept women outside nursing roles—and the only one to send them overseas—was the U.S. Army. Eleanor backed a bill proposed by Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers establishing the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), a voluntary enrollment program, which was presented to Congress in May 1941. (The name later changed to the Women’s Army Corps when members were given full military status.) The bill languished with lawmakers, prompting army chief of staff General George Marshall to demand, “I want a women’s corps right away, and I don’t want any excuses!”13 Congress continued to stall, even after the United States went to war. The bill was delayed due to obstruction by shortsighted congressmen more fearful of how the nation’s laundry would get done than they were about addressing urgent wartime concerns. “Who will then do the cooking, the washing, the mending, the humble homey tasks to which every woman has devoted herself?”14 asked one representative.

Congress finally signed into law the bill establishing the WAAC a year after it was introduced. Recruitment posters appealed to a sense of patriotism, asking, “Are you a girl with a Star-Spangled heart?” while others emphasized a “Woman’s Place in War” and promised 239 different kinds of jobs.

“This is the army behind the fighting forces,”15 said Eleanor after touring a WAAC training center in Des Moines, Iowa.

Even in defense of the nation, there was opposition to breaking down traditional social barriers by having women work outside the home in large numbers. Predictably, Westbrook Pegler ranted against the idea. “Mrs. Roosevelt proposed that all of us, men and women, be drafted for war work, which would mean that mothers should be taken out of the homes and the kids taken over by some kind of public mothering authority,” he claimed. “Considering that broken homes are the main causes of juvenile delinquency and crime I am altogether against this proposal.”16

The Catholic Church also took exception. Catholic World deemed “women’s work” evil primarily for alienating “the life of the wife from the life of the husband.” The magazine editorial further claimed that women who worked outside the home “weaken family life, endanger their own marital happiness, rob themselves of a man’s protective capabilities, and by consequence decrease the number of children.”17

Nearly everyone expected that women working in the war-production industries would still have to keep up with domestic duties. Eleanor pushed to ensure that women had the necessary resources and support, such as child care, that would allow them to both balance their households and join the assembly lines and that they receive equal pay.

Eleanor’s encouragement of and support

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