The Women’s Air Raid Defense: Protecting the Hawaiian Islands

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By May 1942, the WARDs could see signs of preparations for the Battle of Midway in the intense air traffic, which frequently required extra shifts or no relief, and in the false air raid alarms caused by new pilots missing approach corridors. On May 15, the military governor of Hawaii, Lt. Gen. Delos C. Emmons, warned the public in the Honolulu Advertiser of possible attacks on Hawaii. Civilian evacuation plans were developed and publicized. Later that month, Maj. Gen. Clarence L. Tinker, Hawaiian Air Force commander, and General Davidson briefed the assembled WARDs. ‘General Tinker…provided general outlines of a major encounter that might bring the action to Hawaii,’ Hedemann later recalled. ‘General Davidson said that, since there would be no assistance available to us during an attack, the WARDs would be required to stay on post and prepare with fire fighting equipment (ladders, buckets of sand and water), practice litter-bearing and generally get ready for independent self-care.’ Davidson’s flight surgeon provided WARD supervisor Mary Erdman with some of the new sulfanilamide wound powder.

By June 4 the women knew the battle was on. ‘They asked us to stay put,’ shift captain Joy Shaw wrote, ‘and I gave no relief to the girls on the [plotting] board. As a matter of fact, they did not want to be relieved. The usual procedure was to relieve each plotter at least four times each shift.’ Katie Huber recalled that they vectored ‘Air Force bombers — many with injured men aboard — into blacked-out airfields with voice direction through UHF radio. We received a citation for a job well done.’

Nell Larsen remembered that she was plotting ‘records from a desk above the board, so I was aware of military movements shaping up from actions on the board….When the news came in that we had won a great victory at Midway…the Air Force threw their hats in the air….Not too long after…WARDs were told that the handsome and very personable General Tinker had been lost…on a bomber attempting to attack Wake Island.’

Right after Midway the Army decided to establish air defense operations centers on Maui, Kauai and Hawaii (the ‘Big Island’), where it had already located radars and where there also were fighter airfields. Although smaller than the Oahu ICC, which had moved into a location known as ‘Lizard,’ an underground facility a short walk from the WARD quarters, the new centers were no less labor intensive. Maui, for instance, required six plotters, a record plotter, a filterer and a supervisor, plus a switchboard operator and a teletype operator on a direct line to the Puunene Naval Air Station for each of three shifts. The WARD organization was asked to staff these centers, and two senior WARDs accompanied each team of Signal Corps training officers and sergeants, led by an Army Air Forces lieutenant colonel, to set up each one.

Recruiting had to be by word of mouth, as it had been on Oahu, but was more problematic on the neighbor islands. The Oahu WARDs had been drawn from Hawaii’s 105,000 haoles (Caucasians), plus military wives. The Army had put the island’s 160,000 Japanese — more than half the population — off-limits for sensitive jobs, even the 60 percent who were Hawaiian-born. The neighboring island populations were heavily Japanese, with few haoles and no military dependents. Recruiting from the close-knit Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese communities, with unnumbered houses on unnamed streets, would have to follow personal recommendations from local teachers, physicians and clergymen. The key was to quickly identify a respected local woman willing to serve as head supervisor.

Kauai, with the smallest population, presented the greatest challenge. Judge and Mrs. Philip Rice, second-generation kamaainas who were active in Hawaiian folklore, the church and a benevolence society, were esteemed by all the island folk. Florence Rice was appointed head supervisor, while Judge Rice donated their estate for an operations center and WARD quarters, moving into an apartment in Lihue. Mrs. Rice and her three new supervisors quickly discovered that to fill a quota of about 50 girls without lowering standards, younger girls would have to be accepted. The Army had to hire a scholastic tutor and provide guards for the dormitory, which Mrs. Rice personally supervised.

The neighbor island operations centers were located in main towns, so most WARDs could live at home. They could not reveal what they did or even where they worked, however, and had to be dropped off for work away from the centers. On Maui the recreation building and rectory of Wailuku’s Good Shepherd Church, sandbagged and camouflaged, served as the ICC. Before moving to the Rice estate, the Kauai WARDs spent two months at the Lihue Grammar School learning plotting, filtering and how to vector Barking Sands airfield’s Curtiss P-40 fighters.

After Midway, the threat of another attack on Hawaii receded. Everyone breathed easier. Social life picked up, and the WARDs found themselves in great demand for armed forces’ parties and dances. However, Lizard was busier than ever coordinating the increasing air traffic headed for the western Pacific, air-sea rescue operations and interceptor pilot training. ‘Pilots drill night and day with the operations unit until they are sent to the forward bases,’ wrote Tanya Widren. ‘As WARDs we get a tremendous satisfaction out of the role we play in rescue work. There isn’t a WARD who hasn’t been, at one time or another, partly responsible for saving the life of a young airman in distress.’

But by late 1942 many of the original WARDs were leaving. For Hedemann, ‘the war [had] moved on and we felt safer in Hawaii’ following Midway. Married, she became a town reserve early in 1943. When she became pregnant, she recalled, ‘They moved me out of the WARD with a rapidity that suggested I might have the plague.’ Lornahope DeClue felt that ‘the urgency of serving was over’ and resigned to continue her education. Chief supervisor Mary Erdman resigned to accompany her evacuated daughter to the mainland; she came home to Hawaii but rejoined the Red Cross. Dottie Beach resigned to pursue her flying and join the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots. Joy Shaw left when her husband was transferred to the mainland. ‘Perhaps I should have stayed with the WARD,’ she later mused, ‘as during his three years’ absence he was in and out of Pearl a number of times. [But] I had to sign a release with the stipulation that I not try to return for the duration of the war.’

At the same time, new radar stations were coming on line. ‘Every new station or job meant one more girl for each of the four shifts,’ wrote Bertha Bloomfield-Brown, and ‘it was not long before all recruiting efforts struck rock bottom in the islands, where the employment situation was critical anyhow.’ The age limit was officially lowered to 17 to qualify girls just graduating from high school, special shifts were arranged for some University of Hawaii students, and the list of town reserves stretched to 25. But by January 1943, WARD still counted about 110 employees, while the number of positions had increased to 33, for each of four shifts. The 7th Fighter Command reluctantly decided to recruit for the WARD on the mainland.

Mainland recruiting started in San Francisco, where Colonel Lorry Tindal of the 7th Fighter Command had gone to see the Air Defense Wing’s recruiting officer. Tanya Widrin, who had previously served in the Los Angeles air defense filter center, met Tindal through a friend while on her way to join the Women’s Army Corps. She later said, ‘When Colonel Tindal told me that the WARDs operate a filter center and do the same type of work as the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in England…I was on my way [to Hawaii] within ten days.’ The Army still classified air defense top-secret, however, and later recruits experienced cloak-and-dagger meetings, loyalty tests and FBI background investigations. But one Army personnel specialist in the Presidio was able to process her own application. ‘As I shivered in the fog,’ wrote recent Stanford graduate Jean McKellar, ‘I thought about what I told young women in my recruiting work for the WARD; `Hawaii is so beautiful, so warm; the work is vital to our security.’…Hawaii seemed to offer several solutions in one!’

The first 34 mainland recruits arrived in Honolulu in February 1943 aboard a crowded U.S. Navy transport after a stormy passage in a zigzagging convoy. They had signed a one-year contract, renewable for another year. With 143 women, plus four to eight replacements arriving each month, Hawaii’s WARD had adequate strength for the first time. By early 1944, with the war distant from Hawaii, and Oahu’s operations center able to cover the whole territory, the Army closed down the neighbor island centers — first the Kauai unit on January 15 and then Maui’s and the Big Island’s on April 1.

V-J Day seemed to arrive suddenly. Four days before, on August 11, 1945, the Air Defense commander, Brig. Gen. John Weikert, notified the WARD, ‘It is expected that military personnel will take over all WARD duties within fifteen (15) days after V-J Day and that the WARD as an organization will be completely disbanded within twenty days after V-J Day.’ The War Department offered the WARDs equivalent civil service positions in the islands. Of approximately 165 on duty, 87 elected to return to the mainland.

Responding to a May 1945 editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser praising the WARDs, General Howard Davidson, their first commander, wrote chief supervisor Kitty Coonley, ‘I have seen many fighter control [centers], have several under me now, but the one in Honolulu manned by the WARDs is the best I have seen. I understand that the war has moved on and left Honolulu behind … but you can take great pride in the fact that while it did threaten Hawaii you maintained the best Air Raid Defense system in the world.’

Nell Larsen’s appraisal of her WARD experience was more personal, yet offers a telling insight into the prevailing attitude toward women in the American workplace in the 1940s. ‘The most memorable aspect of my service was the respect and admiration for American women I came to have as a result of my total war experience in Hawaii,’ said Larsen. ‘We were so often pictured as spoiled, hysterical and shallow. The women I came in contact with disproved all of that in spades.’

The WARDs stood their last shift in Lizard on September 27. More than 650 women had served in Hawaii’s control centers, representing all the islands’ races except the Japanese and nearly all the states in the Union.

For the most part young, hastily trained and not widely appreciated, the’shuffleboard pilots’ who volunteered to help protect the Hawaiian Islands by staffing its plotting boards had filled a vital need at a critical time.

This article was written by Ronald R. Gilliam and originally published in Aviation History Magazine in May 2002.

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Tags: Air Sea, Aviation History, Historical Conflicts, Military Technology, Women's History, World War II

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