Pre–World War I Women worked as nurses for the
Union Navy during the
American Civil War. In 1890,
Ann Bradford Stokes, who during the American Civil War had worked as a nurse on the navy hospital ship , where she assisted
Sisters of the Holy Cross, was granted a pension of $12 a month, making her the first American woman to receive a pension for her own service in the Navy. She was not, however the first woman to receive a pension for her military service. Margaret Corbin and Deborah Sampson both received pensions for their service in the American Revolution. The
United States Navy Nurse Corps was officially established in 1908; it was all-female until 1965. After the establishment of the Nurse Corps in 1908 by an Act of Congress, twenty women were selected as the first members and assigned to the Naval Medical School Hospital in Washington, D.C. However, the navy did not provide room or board for them, and so the nurses rented their own house and provided their own meals. In time, the nurses would come to be known as "
The Sacred Twenty" because they were the first women to serve formally as members of the
Navy. The "Sacred Twenty" were Mary H. Du Bose; Adah M. Pendleton; Elizabeth M. Hewitt; Della V. Knight;
Josephine Beatrice Bowman;
Lenah H. Sutcliffe Higbee;
Esther Voorhees Hasson, the first Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps, 1908–1911; Martha E. Pringle; Elizabeth J. Wells; Clare L. De Ceu.; Elizabeth Leonhardt; Estelle Hine; Ethel R. Parsons; Florence T. Milburn; Boniface T. Small; Victoria White; Isabelle Rose Roy; Margaret D. Murray; Sara B. Myer; and Sara M. Cox. The Nurse Corps gradually expanded to 160 on the eve of
World War I. For a few months in 1913, Navy nurses saw their first shipboard service, aboard
Mayflower and
Dolphin.
World War I , the first Californian
Yeoman (F) The increased size of the navy in support of
World War I increased the need for clerical and administrative support. The U.S. Naval Reserve Act of 1916 permitted the enlistment of qualified "persons" for service; Secretary of the Navy
Josephus Daniels asked, "Is there any law that says a
Yeoman must be a man?" and was told there was not. Thus, the navy was able to induct its first female sailors into the
U.S. Naval Reserve. The first woman to enlist in the U.S. Navy was
Loretta Perfectus Walsh on 17 March 1917. She was also the first American active-duty navy woman, and the first woman allowed to serve as a woman in any of the United States armed forces, as anything other than as a nurse. Walsh subsequently became the first woman U.S. Navy petty officer when she was sworn in as Chief Yeoman on 21 March 1917. During World War I Navy women served around the continental U.S. and in France, Guam and Hawaii, mostly as
Yeomen (F), but also as radio operators, electricians, draftsmen, pharmacists, photographers, telegraphers, fingerprint experts, chemists, torpedo assemblers and camouflage designers. Some Black women served as Yeomen (F) and were the first Black women to serve as enlisted members of the U.S. armed forces. These first Black women to serve in the navy were 16 Yeomen (F)—the total would rise to 24—from some of "Washington's elite Black families" who "worked in the Muster Roll division at Washington's Navy Yard...." Many women were demobilized when hostilities ceased, and aside from the Nurse Corps, the uniformed Navy once again became exclusively male.
World War II and after until the Korean War .
World War II again brought the need for additional personnel. The Navy organized to recruit women into a separate women's auxiliary, labeled Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (
WAVES), which was created in 1942. WAVES served in varied positions around the continental U.S. and in Hawaii. Two groups of Navy nurses (Navy nurses were all women then) were held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Chief Nurse Marion Olds and nurses
Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty and Doris Yetter were taken prisoner on Guam shortly after
Pearl Harbor and transported to Japan. They were repatriated in August 1942, although the newspaper did not identify them as Navy nurses. Chief Nurse
Laura Cobb and her nurses, Mary Chapman, Bertha Evans, Helen Gorzelanski, Mary Harrington, Margaret Nash, Goldie O'Haver, Eldene Paige, Susie Pitcher, Dorothy Still and C. Edwina Todd - some of the "
Angels of Bataan" - were captured in 1942 in the Philippines and imprisoned in the
Los Baños internment camp there, where they continued to function as a nursing unit, until they were rescued by American forces in 1945. Other Los Baños prisoners later said: "We are absolutely certain that had it not been for these nurses many of us who are alive and well would have died." The
Angels of Bataan (also known as the "Angels of
Bataan and
Corregidor" and "The Battling Belles of Bataan") were the members of the
Navy Nurse Corps and the
Army Nurse Corps who were stationed in the Philippines at the outset of the
Pacific War (a theatre of World War II) and served during World War II's
Battle of the Philippines (1941–42). When Bataan and Corregidor fell to the Japanese in 1942, they, 11 Navy nurses and 1 nurse-anesthetist (and 66 army nurses) were captured and imprisoned in and around Manila. They were freed in February 1945. In October 1942, Navy
Lieutenant, junior grade Ann A. Bernatitus became the first American recipient of the
Legion of Merit. She was also the first person authorized to wear the "V" Device with the award. She was one of the
Angels of Bataan and the only U.S. Navy nurse to escape from Bataan and
Corregidor during the war. Also in 1942,
Susan Ahn Cuddy, who was Korean-American, became the first Asian-American woman to join the U.S. Navy. By 1946, she had become the first woman gunnery officer in the U.S. Navy and the first Korean-American in U.S. Naval Intelligence. In 1943,
Thelma Bendler Stern, an engineering draftsman, became the first woman assigned to perform duties aboard a United States Navy ship as part of her official responsibilities. In 1944, Lieutenant
Harriet Ida Pickens and Ensign
Frances Wills were commissioned as the first African-American female navy officers. Three other African American women—
Edith Mazie DeVoe,
Helen Fredericka Turner, and Eula Lucille Stimley
—also became ensigns in the Navy Nurse Corps during the war. World War II ended in 1945. The
Women's Armed Services Integration Act () is a United States law that enabled women to serve as permanent, regular members of the armed forces, including the Navy. Prior to this act, women, with the exception of nurses, served in the military only in times of war. However, Section 502 of the act limited service of women by excluding them from aircraft and vessels of the Navy that might engage in combat. On 7 July 1948 six women, former WAVES, were the first enlisted women to be sworn into in the regular Navy: Chief Yeoman Wilma J. Marchal, Hospital Corpsman First Class Ruth Flora, Aviation Storekeeper First Class Kay L. Langen, Yeoman Second Class
Edna Young, Storekeeper Second Class Frances T. Devaney, and Teleman Doris R. Robertson.
Edna Young was the only Black woman out of those six, and thus the first Black woman to be enlisted in the regular Navy. On 15 October 1948, the first eight women officers were commissioned in the regular Navy:
Joy Bright Hancock,
Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King,
Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant took their oaths as naval officers.
Korean War Women in the Naval Reserve were recalled along with their male counterparts for duty during the Korean War.
Vietnam War Nurses served aboard the hospital ship USS
Sanctuary. Nine non-nurse navy women served in country; however no enlisted navy women were authorized.
Iraq War Women in the navy served in the
Iraq War from 2003-2011. ==Women in the navy since 1970==