I had the opportunity to meet with Margaret Smith White at the end of May of 2002 at her home in Canton. Margaret enlisted in World War II in 1943, as soon as she was eligible, and when her period of service ended in 1944 she ranked First Class Yeomen Waves. Mrs. White gave me an excellent idea of the role women played in war the past, which is different than today. Margaret went to Hunter College for boot comp in December of 1943, to Oklahoma A&M College to study as part of her training, in March of 1944, she then lived in Washington D.C. while she worked at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Virginia, and finally she lived in the barracks at Arlington, Virginia and continued to work at the Bureau of Naval Personnel.

Women in War: an Interview with Margaret Smith White

Brandi: So, really what I’m looking for is for me to ask you a couple questions and you to really like paint a picture for me... tell me a story. Um, when you went, do you start in the beginning of the war or towards the end?

Mrs. White: At the time, it was W.W.II, you had to be eighteen, no nineteen, twenty. So um, I was twenty in October of 1943 and I went to boot camp in December. We went to boot camp at Hunter College. I remember that... at five in the morning in the Winter time we would have to be out and on the street in full uniform. And we would have to march to the mess hall for breakfast. At that time, there, we had like a suite. You came into the room to a sunken living room and in that room there were, there were four bunk beds, and in the next rooms, which was divided we also had four beds, and I had for a room mate I had, uh, a girl from Jersey, and she was pretty comical. She was funny. And with that we had...we had one bathroom, and either someone would be in, on, or at you know (both chuckle) and then it was, I’m not sure now whether there was another room... anyhow that wasn’t bad. So we, we, we had to learn customs and names of districts and stuff like that.

Brandi: So, was that like in a classroom atmosphere?

Mrs. White: Yeah, yeah, it was kinda like college, you know. That was like three months. And then from there I was transferred to Yeomen School, Yeomen means clerk. That was a school in Oklahoma, Oklahoma A & M College I think. I lived in a dormitory there. And of course the fun about that was that uh, there were also like the, uh, army air dorms in the next set of buildings and they used to serenade us as they walked by (more chuckling). There we had, we had like Professors, just like a real college, who taught us. We had, uh, English, Math, History, and of course we had classes where we learned typing and shorthand. Which, um, was one of the main reasons I was interested in going. I am the next to the youngest of nine children... (B mumbles “wow” in the background) so there was no chance that I would go to college. You know we got the brochures from the colleges and we did know what to do with them. And we would say, “Oh, whoever is going to go here. But from there, you know, I was able, I was able to get through there. If you pass that then you went on, you got your seamen, and you were third class rating. If you didn’t pass then, haha, you would go to Norfolk, Virginia. And I don’t know what the heck they did to them there, but they had a great Cafeteria there, I musta gained about fifteen pounds there. They had a really good—but you know we had to exercise, we had to drill every day. The, the, weather was different out there, yeah I went out there probably in, probably in the end of March and I... there you would have snow in the morning and you’d have all this stuff on, but by the afternoon, if you didn’t get back to your room to change you’d have to carry all this stuff and you’d be marching and you know it was so hot. And, uh, some of the kids who didn’t feel good... they were probably miss matched, in other words that wasn’t there thing, so they didn’t do so well. But if you didn’t pass the test, uh you know, this week, than next week you couldn’t have the weekend off to go into town. Not that there was much to do, it was definitely Stillwater Oklahoma, there was a USO in town, but we used to laugh because the kids who didn’t pass would dye there hair. Because that was there activity, they couldn’t go, and we called them the “Rainbow Platoon” because there would be blondes and red heads. There was one girl from California, came there dishwater blonde and you’d see them fixing the stuff in a bowl, and this one, I don’t know what she did, she did something wrong, but her hair came out purple (laughing).

B: Oh no! (laughing)

Mrs. White: They sent her into town, to have it dyed like a brown, you know, and let it grow out. But, uh, we had a lot of fun there.

Brandi: What’s uh, what’s a USO? You said they had it in town.

Mrs. White: It was a service organization. But they were like people, they donated their time, I guess they brought food there for us and threw a dance, and we would dance and socialize They had like, the civilians would, you know like the women... and some men. It was fun, I enjoyed it there. And from there I went to Washington DC, I lived, they didn’t have room for all of us at the time so I lived at the Washington Hotel, in Washington where I worked, you know, at the Bureau of Naval Personal um, and there we had an apartment in this Washington Hotel. And um, there was one bedroom, we had twin beds. There were two women who shared it, I don’t know their names, (chuckle) and I lived there for I don’t know how long. But we all worked different, you know, different times. And there was one bathroom and then in the living room there was a Murphy bed, you know that, that closed up into the wall

Brandi: Oh really?

Mrs. White: And one girl had that, and there was another girl had a cot. There was this little tiny kitchenette type of thing. And that’s what I got a cot there... and there was a line there, we used to (laughing) hang our nylons there... and they would come dripping down. It was kinda nice there, you know, we were young. And then we never, very seldom did we take the bus, we used to go, the cabs were cheap, you know we would go in groups and everyone would pay a dime or something and we would all hustle down in the morning, get into a cab, in the morning to go to work. And then later on, they built new barracks for the women, and we were given new barracks in Arlington. Um, over there, I can’t remember why, I guess there, I guess there wasn’t room and no one had heard of Arlington Farms in Washington... that’s where most of the wave’s where stationed. An interesting thing there was, well then we transferred down to Arlington Farms, you know. A big dormitory. And there, well I worked at the Bureau of Naval Personal, and I did clerical work, so it in my dep-- my section-- we prepared the orders for the officer personal. Those that were coming back from being over seas or who were coming in and from school out to sea, or wherever they would be transferred. So I was there for seven months, I would say. We had a lot of fun, you know, I think you have to be young and, uh, kinda carefree to do it because I know, like any of my sisters, they oh, they couldn’t stand being told what to do all the time. I didn’t care (both laugh), you know. And, but, you know, we had time off, and we went into New York, and saw some shows, you know, and the night clubs in Washington DC In harbor, one of the naval personnel, one of the sailors, and he was in charge of the mail delivery, but he was a concert pimp, so we used to get to go to some concerts...

Brandi: Oh, cool. And what was a concert like?

Mrs. White: It, it, was great. He played piano, and there would, like, be he and there would be several others. They were like, they were not to huge for the room. There were very nice, and you know, we got a little culture in. And we went, we went for, the next camp to ours, I think it was Queens, and they would have dances there. And we would go down to, to Virginia, but the bus would take us down there to to uh the dance.

Brandi: So what was the dance like? Where would they hold it? How many people would come?

Mrs. White: There would be, it would be in the hall on their base, you know, and uh, well it would be crowded, you know bus loads would come in from our place and all the other ones and of course, I guess there were civilians, of course probably some of the soldiers wives were there.

Brandi: So of all the people you met, did you have a best friend?

Mrs. White: Yes, well I did make a friend, matter of fact. After all these years I still e-mail the friend.

Brandi: Oh cool!

Mrs. White: She just moved into an assisted living home, so, um . Some of the others, we kept in contact but then we all had children and started doing other things. We lost track.