May 17th, 2021, 10:30AM / BY Katherine Fecteau
Alice Tetsuko Kono in her Women s Army Corps uniform, around 1943 (NMAH)
Alice Tetsuko Kono was cleaning her parents house in Molokai, Hawaii, when she heard the news about Pearl Harbor. Her radio began to chirp an urgent broadcast about the Japanese attack. She ran to tell her parents, and the family kept the radio on all day as more reports flowed in. That December day arguably changed the course of Kono s life, as it likely had the lives of many other young people of her generation. Just two years later, she enlisted in the Women s Army Corps and began a journey that would take her to California, Texas, Georgia, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. The experience would test her mentally and physically and ultimately teach her one of her greatest lessons be useful. She shared her experiences in an oral history with the Veterans History Project in 2004.