Women a permanent part of the military, we are we wait just a few short years and we are faced with war on the korean peninsula. There was such a concern that it would be a world war, like world war ii was that we recalled people to service, to be sure we had people in place to be part of this war and many of them were women as well for the first time. It didnt turn out that way that we needed that many. At any rate, most of the women who served in korea on the ground were army nurses. It was a horrendous situation with, they would barely get established and set up a hospital and they would have to move. We have one diary from a woman, a nurse, who talked about setting up a hospital in an abandoned school. It was dirty, and it was hot but they needed to close the windows because rats crawled up the outside of the building. And those were the conditions under which someone served. There were long hours of duty for all of us. We worked from 18 to 24 hours, 36 hours around the clock. This was the whole crew . The entire crew. How many operations could you do at one time. We first could make good use of our six tables, six operating room tables, and they were in full swing at all times, and patients were taken care of as soon as they came in, and we had three and some of us could hold down two or three tables at a time. That was your job, you handled the anesthesia, right . Thats right. We had women on the hospital ships as well. Off the coast, and we had women who served as flight nurses, flying the wounded into japan out of the battle area into japan. They were the army, navy, as well as air force, which were by this time, air force had been created in 1947. By this time, we had air force nurs nurses as well, who were serving in the theater. We had other women serving of course around the world as well. But on the ground in korea were primarily army nurses. So we can see how uniforms and how the military was beginning to be more accepting and realizing that women were here to stay and fashioning uniforms under the conditions under which they would serve. So this would have been the fatigue uniform, so to speak, of the nurses, army nurses in korea and it was very familiar, looks like the mash ones that we have seen on television. These were flight nurse uniforms, our air force uniform. We have a hospital chest that would have been carried with the nurses into the, you know, as part of the hospitals that they were setting up. There was a considerable effort to recruit women, well, everyone, but certainly for women. I dont know if the nation was maybe battle weary. They wanted to get back to their normal lives, so when korea came on the heels so quickly of world war ii. There was a great effort to try to recruit everybody but certainly for bwomen as well. Molly, certainly, there are a lot out there, a lot of girls watching this program who we would like to see become army nurses. This is your opportunity to talk to them, molly. There they are. Yes, we need nurses and very badly. Especially nurses with critical moss, specialties, as the np, mos, the surgical and most of all anetisist. We are not doing what the army used to do saying join and see the world. In fact, we have given them a pretty rough picture right here but i think more important than anything else is the fact that crow get a great deal of satisfaction out of your job, dont you. Yes, we do. We save lives and cant think of anything more important than to save lives. One of the efforts that the Postal Service even became part of was to create a stamp that with the profiles of military women only four of them, they had left out the coast guard, but so here is our first stamp ever that speaks to the to military women. When we dedicated the memorial in 1997, we were honored to be able to work with the Postal Service to create a second stamp to celebrate the story of Womens Service to the nation. But this time we concluded all five services so we were quite proud of that, and in fact the date of issue was october 18, 1997 and they very generously brought in, the post office did, little kiosks that people could get stamps and have them stamped for the womens memorial. So we were very excited about that. Also part of the recruiting effort, the department of defense established an Organization Called dacowits, Defense Advisory Committee on women in the services, which is still in existence today, and it was comprised of individuals from across the United States, influencers, business leaders, education leaders, things of that sort. Community leaders who came together to provide advice and assistance to the secretary of defense on the utilization of women. And that was created in 1952 as part of the effort to, you know, this recruiting effort to bring folks into the women into the military, and its still providing advice and assistance, of course its a little bit different now as the laws have fallen away with utilization of women. But nevertheless, the dacowits was a force for sure. So now we move forward to vietnam. Again, it was primarily a nurses war. We had some 7,500 women, we believe, on the ground, and certainly most of them were nurses. The interesting thing about that is that how other women, those who were not in the medical side of the house ended up being in vietnam was that general westmoreland wanted some clerical sport to support the senior staff there in saigon, so thats in 1965. That sort of broke the log jam, because women wanted to serve. They were expecting to, you know, go to these areas just as they had in the other in previous wars. So the waacs were the first one to get on the ground in vietnam. Now, it was interesting when you hear the stories of the women who served there. I love talking with them because what they tell me is that they, you know, when they so do we, are you going to train us on a weapon, no, you dont need a weapon. So you think about that, sending, you know, a person to a war zone, and you dont prepare them even to protect themselves. We have one woman who says when she reports, when she got orders to go to vietnam, she asked if she could go to the firing range to qualify. And so she got a little bit of training from her brotherinlaw and then she went to the firing range. They let her go, and she qualified. And so she gets to vietnam, of course they dont issue her a weapon, however, it was just after the tet offensive, and she was living in a hotel in saigon. Thats, you know, where they used as some barracks, i guess, were in civilian facilities, and the woman she was replacing in the room kind of gave her a little tour, and then she opened up the bureau drawer and there was an ak47 and ammunition just in case she needed it. So when she finished her year of tour of duty, and went to the mps and said, how do you turn in a weapon that you were never issued. So one of the beloved female general officers, general pat foot, and she says when she went to vietnam, they issued her a hang bag so she could swing it and protect herself, so this is how the women, this is how they dressed. They, you know, there were very few. I guess there were some occasions where they ended up in fatigues, so to speak, and so the nurses certainly did, but the women the line women were primarily in their dress uniforms on a daily basis because they were there kind of as clerks and things of that sort, but nevertheless, they were there. An important thing to point out is that this, by the time were getting, were in vietnam, the Womens Movement has already started so betty ferdan is doing her thing, and women are beginning to sort of chafe against all of those restrictions that were placed upon them as a result of the 1948 integration act. One of which was benefits. And a young First Lieutenant in montgomery, alabama, air force was suffering financially because she was married to a civilian, and women at that time were not afforded the opportunity of quarters allowance or quarters, so she talked about this. And they told her she should sue, so she did and she lost. And she was encouraged to keep going. And the American Civil Liberties union picked up that case, and carried it to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for women not to receive the same benefits as men, and the woman who took that case forward to the Supreme Court was Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a young lawyer. So were very proud to know that were part of her story as well. But that didnt just affect military women. It affected women across the United States. In asking the court to declare a suspect criterion, amicus urges a position, forcibly stated in 1837 by sarah gremke noted abolitionists advocate of equal rights for men and women. She spoke not eloquently but with unmistakable authority. She said, i ask no favor for my sex. All i ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks. We had other things for the pregnancy issues. That fell away. Women sued because they were put out of the military who had long careers, successful careers, and ended up having to get out of the military. So there were a lot of things going on at that time, and in the same time, the American Public was chafing against the draft, they had to look at what they were going to do to bring more people in and, again, like in world war i and world war ii, they turned to bringing more women into the military. So they knew that some of those rules had to go away. The 2 ceiling on the number of women who could serve, the restriction on grade at Lieutenant Colonel fell away, the restrictions on where women could serve on combat ships or combat aircraft stayed, and in fact, they stayed well into the 90s following desert storm, but you can see some of the things were doing, where women were serving. This is sharon lane. Sharon lane was a nurse, army nurse. She was the only woman to be killed as a result of enemy fire in vietnam. We had other women who lost their lives. We had women who were awarded the purple heart. We can see here a bronze star. These uniforms by the way, they had to be starched. You can imagine a hot climate like vietnam. We called ourselves strak lax. You had to be strapped. You ironed your uniform and pressed it and were presentable at all times. This is a picture of president johnson signing the legislation that removed the restrictions on grade in 1967. Here we are, the chiefs of the Womens Services components are there to include the nurses. In 1970, the first women were promoted to general officer. We sort of end this journey of Womens Service to the nation with women serving today in the global war on terror. This is a unique exhibit in that we at the time we established it, there was a woman who was a command major in afghanistan. We asked her if she could help us tell the story of what women were doing on the ground in afghanistan and iraq. She very generously reached out to the women, the very women who were serving to help us tell this story. We have their email diaries. We have pictures. We have stories of what they did on the ground and certainly the uniforms that they wear today as opposed to what you saw during world war ii, and certainly think about American Revolution, when women werent issued uniforms at the time. So we have women wearing 60 pounds of gear as they go out. We used to have a placard here, and it keeps disappearing. It was for aviators. But it kind of applies to women who are on convoys and things of that sort. It was to pee or not to pee. It was a whole story about what women are doing in order to be part of these operations. To take care of themselves. So, you know, you have to think about those things for sure. To pee or not to pee. The placard, i guess people are interested in having that for themselves. So anyway. We have these women serving in afghanistan and iraq. Theres a real cultural issue with men and their contact with the local female population. The military formed these groups of women. The first called lioness. Where they would go, they would partner with a team that was going into a village, or doing a night raid or whatever, they were going into a home where they would have contact with local women which was, of course, cultural. And we wanted to be able to honor this culture. So we had women from all the services who were doing that. But if you think about the law that said where women could serve or not serve and the restrictions on that, they were really kind of violating that. And later, we formed these female engagement teams that were really out in the countryside. Some of them on their own. But again, theyre also part of raid teams with the marines and the Army Soldiers going into homes. The establishment of the outfits or units really kind of expanded where women were on the battlefield. I kind of think back about the progress of women over time, and its always been about need. You know, things moved forward because they needed women to do these jobs. And it was the very same case with women in afghanistan and iraq. They needed them because they could get good intelligence from sources that they could never get near and were very very successful. So that sort of kicked open the door again with the laws and the rules about where women were going to be. Finally, it became such a burden to commanders as they thought about they had a mission to accomplish, but they had all these rules that they had to lay on top of it that would impede the accomplishment of that mission, that the secretary of defense in january 2013 said were going to get rid of all of that, women are serving everywhere anyway. Were not going to do that any more. In 2016, the secretary of defense opened all jobs. So today, there are no restrictions on women. Secretary panetta as well as the joint chiefs of staff copies of the ruling that rescinded those combat restriction policies. It has been certainly a journey when you think about where the restrictions that were placed on women. You even look back just as close as vietnam where women were not even trained in weapons. I can tell you that my class of wac officers in 1973 was the first class of women who were trained on weapons, you know, formally trained on weapons. And ive been told that the next classes they sort of stepped back from that. You think about what women were asked to do, that these restrictions they had to live within these. So again, i would say we just wanted to serve. We come to the very heart of the memorial, the register, which is a place where we tell the individual stories of the women who served. To date, we have some 267,000 womens records of service that can be accessed by the public. And to pay tribute to these women, beginning with the American Revolution to today. Weve identified some folks from each service so that you can so that you can see some of the heroes that every day heroes that live among us that are registered here at the womens memorial. Our first woman was a petty officer initially when we first met sarah vega. Shes a coast guard woman. And she was part of a redeployment assistance and inspection attachment team. Their primary mission is to inspect materials that are being shipped back to the United States from a war zone and for Hazardous Materials and items that shouldnt be coming back into the United States. She was deployed twice. Once to afghanistan and iraq. Since we first met sarah, she has gone to officer candidate school, and is now an officer in the United States coast guard. Our second woman that we are meeting today is a retired Navy Commander tammy jo shultz. We know her as the southwest pilot who just a few months ago successfully landed a southwest airliner that had taken off from laguardia and an engine blew, blowing a hole in the fuselage. And tammy successfully landed that. She was one of the very first women in the navy to fly the High Performance aircraft. And really quite a story for this woman. Sandra spots is one of 36 women marines who were permitted to serve in vietnam. She was a clerk. Obviously you can see from her picture that she did a lot of other things when she was on the ground and volunteering in orphanages and things of that sort. She was one of the few military women besides nurses who are able to travel around vietnam when she worked with Senior Leadership at the Naval Forces Headquarters there in saigon. Emily walker was a flight nurse during the korean war. She flew between japan and korea medevacing casualties from the korean peninsula. She was with one of the storied evacuation units. They were responsible for the evacuation of marines, served with them for 18 months. And our last woman, our Army Representative martha putny. Her story is just amazing. She was one of the first 40 women, africanamerican women to join the womens auxiliary corps. Hand picked by mary macleod methuen. They travelled to ft. Des moines to be it was a great effort on the part of civil rights activists as well as with the support of the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt to ensure that africanamericans were able to be a part of the military. And Martha Putney was one of them. The story she told about what she endured and those women endured. They were segregated. They ate in a separate dining room, at least initially. When they used the pool on the post it was cleaned. It they could only use it once a week. German pows were permitted to go to the club, africanamerican officers were not. She was one of those. They formed a band. Africanamerican formed a band and the army decided they didnt want the band, so i think martha probably reached out, those folks who helped her as well as Eleanor Roosevelt. Because she said eventually Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and they were able to have their band. She used the gi bill to get her ph. D. She taught at howard, she was a senior fellow at howard. As well as various schools here on the east coast. Shes the author of four books. Just an extraordinary woman, and i can see her. Shes passed away now, but i can see her after we had dedicated and had programs here, walking up from the metro. I would say, dr. Putney, let me come get you. No, i can walk she said. Walking up to be part of the ceremony at the womens memorial. I know i made a contribution to the womens army corps, but both in the short run and the long run i also realized that i learned a lot. It was a tremendous learning experience in the army. If they profited from my service, i really profited from having served. Family members can register a Family Member or friends online, at womensmemorial. Org. Click on register. Doesnt cost you anything, but were always very happy for donations. Or we have forms that can be sent or downloaded for people to register. The register itself it is for security and privacy reasons, at least until today, we have chosen not to put those administration registrations online, but visitors certainly can come. She spent a lot of time with journalists, researchers, using the database to help tell the story of Womens Service. So we accommodate wherever we can to help to have other folks tell us the story. What we found is that like so many veterans, the women are the same, they seldom talk about their service. So we have brought that alive for them. It is a very gratifying place to be. This was the second of a twopart look at the womens memorial. You can watch part one and all other American History tv programs at cspan. Org history. There have been more than 1,000 cases of measles in the United States so far this year. The largest number since 1992. The cdc attributes the rising number to unvaccinated International Travelers who bring the disease to the u. S. And its spread in pockets of unv unvaccinated people. Next we travel back to 1964 to learn about the history of the highly contagious disease caused by a virus and the development of the measles vaccine. The Pharmaceutical Company merck with help from the u. S. Public Health Service produced this 20minute film
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