March 23, 2016 • 44 mins
The duties of the women of the WASP evolved over time, and some of them were quite dangerous. And once the program ended, there were -- and still are -- controversies over whether the women involved should be recognized as military veterans.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry. We are back today with Dr
Katherine sharp Land Deck of Texas Women's University, who has
(00:22):
been studying the Women Air Force Service Pilots or WASP
of World War Two for the last twenty years. These
were women who flew military aircraft all over the United
States during World War Two, doing everything from ferrying aircraft
and people from one place to another to towing targets
to be used for live ammunition practice. This program was
(00:43):
both an experiment to see what women could handle and
an effort to free up mail pilots for the war.
Kate really graciously agreed to sit down to talk to
me about the WASP, their history, their work, and their legacy,
and she had such marvelous things to say that we
are airing the interview in two parts. Today is the
second part, and this is gonna start by talking about
(01:04):
what the duties of the women that were part of
the WASP program were during the war and how they evolved.
And it may surprise you to learn which of them
were more dangerous than others. Just this first answer that
Kate gives Tracy is packed with information on the WASP
and the aircraft they flew and what it really took
to fly them. So a lot of the first duties
(01:31):
that were assigned to the WASP were basically pretty basic
things like let's let's we need to move the aircraft
from where they were built to where they need to go,
or we need to move the chaplain from this base
to this base to do Sunday service, like just basically
moving people and equipment from one place to another so
that the mail pilots could be freed up for more
(01:54):
intense combat duties. But over the time that the program
was going on, women started doing things like towing targets
to be shot at with live ammunition. Or Paul Tibots,
who would later go on to pilot the Inola Gay,
actually recruited to WASP to demonstrate the B twenty nine bomber,
(02:14):
which was prone to catching on fire if it was
not if it didn't take off properly, and and so
the men were kind of scared to fly it, and
so Paul Tipots recruited these two wasps to demonstrate it
for the men, sort of circle back to what you
had said previously about the airplane so easy even a
woman can fly it. So to me, it's a startlingly
(02:34):
short amount of time between we're basically going to use
women to to move people and stuff around, too, we're
going to use women to literally tow targets to be
shot at. How did that evolution actually take place, to
go from being really reluctant to have women flying at
all and doing extremely basic stuff to being shot at? Well,
(02:56):
And I think this is good, And I think there's
a couple of things here. First, it's important to recognize
that the work of ferrying the planes was actually um
in some ways more dangerous than the work of towing
the targets and being shot at. It's hard to just
think of those terms, right the firing with live ammulation,
(03:17):
it always sounds worse. But a couple of things. So first,
the ferrying jobs, the women were brought in because we
needed ferry pilots. That was that was the part of
the Army Air Forces that was the most desperate um
and needed pilots most because we're building hundreds of thousands
of airplanes at factories, factories in California, factories in Detroit
(03:41):
factories in you know, oh Maha, and then and you know,
all over the country we're building these planes and they
have to get to training bases all across the countries
for pilots to learn to fly. And then the bigger planes,
the bombers and the pursuit aircraft have to be flown
two different coasts, right. I mean a lot of the
pursuits were built in Long Beach, California, and we were
(04:04):
finding a war in Europe, you know, so they had
to be flown all the way across the country. And
I think it's important to think, take yourself back and
put yourself into the reality of navigation in the nineteen forties.
They don't have GPS is on board, right, They have
very limited navigation, and they have to these these pursuit planes,
(04:27):
especially are single pilot planes. So you're in this plane alone,
and you're flying this plane over mountains, uh and across
the country with very limited navigation. So it's much of
its see to your pants flying getting from point A
to point B, finding the proper airfields to land that
to get fuel because that only lasts so long, and
(04:50):
and it's very independent work. It's very you know here's
the airplane, go flyt uh. Many of these h airplanes,
the very pilots men and women, right because remember their
men doing these labs too. But these ferry pilots, they
would be the first one to fly an airplane, right
they would. They would literally roll off the end of
(05:10):
the assembly line and the pilot would be handed the
keys basically and told here you go. Uh. So they're
they're test flying these brand new airplanes and hoping rose
through the riveter had really riveted it. Right, So this
is important flying that had to be done, and and
it's dangerous uh and and takes a lot of independent
(05:31):
thinking and skills. But then you're quite right that the
job of the women expands because the Air Army Air
Forces wanted to see what women could do. Okay, well,
women are good at ferry pilots. And and again they
had started with just light trainer airplanes, little piper cubs
and things like that. Uh. And then we're put into
(05:53):
the and PT and these really high horsepower you know,
the moll uh sophisticated air place of a day very
quickly because they proved themselves. Um. But the Army Air
Forces said, well, let's see what else women could do,
and Jacqueline Cochrane was a big bunch of that. So
they One of the big jobs that needed to be
(06:15):
done was you have to train men to fire weapons
at moving planes, right, whether it's ground gunners or gunners
on bombers. Right, if you're on a B seventeen, you've
got to shoot at the enemy plane out the side
of out of the side of the your B seventeen.
You've got to learn how to do that. You can't
take a nineteen year old boy and expect him to
(06:37):
figure that out on the job, right. So you take
women and and have them fly their planes along a route,
and you have the gunners on the ground, you know,
firing at the banner and and um. A way to
a way to think of the tow targets is if
you've ever been to the beach and you see the
(06:58):
plane flying down the beach with the banner behind it,
or to a sporting event or something, and they've got
their advertisements vote for so and so, eat so and
those pizza or whatever. It's it's that kind of thing,
um and uh, except the targets were much longer, um
and and uh and yeah, they shot with live ammunition.
(07:18):
Because they've got to figure out how to really use
the guns. They would often have the ammunition color coded
so they could figure out which which gunner was shooting
which which bullets. Um. But this was very mundane flying.
It was dangerous because you're being shot out. Um. It
was dangerous because you're flying slowly often times. But it
(07:40):
was very boring flying. It was it was basically flying
up and down and you know, up and then turning
around and flying back down and listening on the radio
and doing the same thing every day. Um. And and
you have to be precise and you have to you know,
do what what has to be done. But it's not
exotic flying. Um. And so the Air Army Air Forces
(08:05):
was kind of excited to have women do this job
because the men hated it because it was so boring, um.
And the women were tended to be more patient or
happy to be flying anything. So so that was an
evolution to expand to that. And then yeah, it expands
to all these different jobs, test flying claims after they've
(08:26):
been um, you know, worked on or had a little crash, uh,
flying you know, personnel from place to place, doing all
these different jobs. And basically this was just an expansion
of the women to see what they could do, and
and they took it. We actually have a loss to
the first American jet. You know, well could she do that?
(08:49):
She can? We had women flying um remote control aircraft,
you know, so you know essentially some of the first drones,
and they were all top secrets flying some of those
where they be in the remote aircraft with somebody behind
them and another plane flying that plane. Uh, but that
(09:11):
they didn't want to plane crash, so if the person
must up, the women in the drone airplane could could
take over the controls, you know, so that they're doing
all these different jobs and really, uh, Jacqueline Cochrane has
a phrase for it that I just I just love.
She she said that the wash do all the aerial
dish washing right, all the aerial dish washing jobs that
(09:33):
that uh, it's the jobs that nobody wants that everybody
it has to be done right, the jobs that nobody
wants to do, but that have to be done, just
like doing the dishes his home. And you know, of
course she she domesticates the work that they're doing. I know,
they're just they're just dishwashing and they're not threatening anybody
flying these fancy military planes are just just doing the dishwahing,
(09:56):
the aerial dish washing jobs. And and uh know, it's
it's interesting the terms that she used to justify the
work that women were doing. But again, you know, after
the war, we have all these really extensive reports of
the jobs that the women did and the the success
that they had. They did well at all the jobs
(10:17):
they were asked to do. Uh. The only one that
was questionable was flying a glider. Right, they had these
big gliders that they used in World War Two, and
the aircraft would tow the glider and the women weren't
quite strong enough for that. So that's the only job
that they said, well, let's not have them do that.
But but everything else, these were all jobs that had
(10:39):
to be done. So you have women who are out
there and who are doing jobs that if they hadn't
been doing them, two men would have had to do
them because they were jobs that had to be done.
And um, I think part of this is it starts
with we don't know where the war is going to
(11:00):
know what's going to happen in this war? What jobs
are women going to have to do? You know? What
is our our pool of potential pilots here. Uh. And
then as the war progresses, they wanted to have final
numbers on these experiments. Basically, and they saw the Cold
(11:20):
War coming, you know, I was like, well, if we
have another war, what can women do? So it really uh,
they had women doing all these jobs because these jobs
were all there to be done. Um. And they kept
trying different things. They were giving the women they were
they were doing a good work. They were flying and
(11:41):
and uh, their accident rates were comparable with men doing
the same jobs there. Uh, you know, delivery rates on
the bearing of the aircraft was in some cases better.
It just you know, on some basis, the commanders preferred
to women because they wanted to fly. Uh. So I
think it's it's interesting how their role expanded. Uh. And
(12:05):
it's you know, you ask keep in mind that they
were considered an experiment. Unless you have an experiment to
try as many things as you can. Man, there was
so much information in the answer to that question number one.
I had no idea that ferrying a new plane from
the factory to an airfield could in some ways be
(12:28):
a lot more dangerous than towing targets for life. Am
a practice that still seems completely counterintuitive to me. Even
having been explained, I understand now rationally why it's so
much more dangerous, But in my head, it's still way
more dangerous to be shot at than just to fly
a plane. Uh. Number two, I had no idea until
(12:48):
talking to Kate about this that part of the mindset
behind this whole program was like, what if there's another war?
What all are we gonna need women to already know
how to do? And what are we gonna need to
have demonstrated that that women can handle. That to me
was bleak and fascinating. Uh. And coming up, Tracy's interview
with Kate gets into some more specific cases of women
(13:12):
that were part of this program. But before we do that,
we're gonna pause and have a word from one of
our sponsors. Next up, we're going to talk about one
WASP in particular. He was one of two Chinese American
women who served with the Women Air Moorce Service pilots.
(13:39):
As I started researching the WASP, like, I know that
the United States military wasn't integrated until which was after
the Wasp bird disbanded, so I assumed that only white
women were in the WASP that but then I found
a photo of Hazel Yan Lee, who was a Chinese
(13:59):
American woman from Oregon who was actually the last of
the WASP to be killed in the line of duty.
So it's clear that number one, it was not exclusively
white women. Uh. The number two and is this a
story that you know a lot about Hazel Yang lady?
Know what can you share with us about her? Well,
you're quite right that the WASP were we're white. There
(14:22):
were there were two exceptions, uh, Hazel a Yang Lei uh.
And then there was another Chinese American woman who's Maggie
g Uh and she was out of California. She's in
one of the later classes. Uh. And those were the
UM only two non white women in the groups. Uh.
We know that several African American women who were qualified
(14:44):
did apply to the program UM and they were turned
down because they they were worried about desegregating the group. UM.
And that's a long, long conversation they have. UM. But
but so when you're thinking about Chinese Americans, Hazel especially
(15:06):
was very highly qualified. She had a pilot's license since
nineteen She had gone to China when Japan attacked China
and the nineteen thirties to try to fly for the
Chinese Air Force UH, and they turned her down because
she was a woman. So she actually had been flying
UH for some Chinese airlines, was one of the very
few Chinese women pilots UH. And then she came back
(15:30):
and and UH when the WASP program began, I was
one of the earliest classes and fairy pursuit aircraft. So
it's important to remember that the United States was allied
with China, and so having Chinese American women in the
program was good for appearance's sake to a certain extent. UH.
(15:53):
And Hazel especially, she was incredibly qualified. UH was all
of a flight time, so I think that was a
big part of it. And of course she is Uh.
She's killed in November of Thanking forty four, quite tragically.
Where that's one of those things that you know, she's
in a pursuit aircraft and another pursuit it's coming in.
(16:14):
They're both landing, the control tower has some confusions and
the one of the plane's radios wasn't working UH, and
so the the other pursuit plane landed on top of
Hazel UH and and she was she was killed. UM.
But but yeah, there were there were two Chinese women. Uh.
(16:35):
There's a story associated with Hazel that in one of
her pursuit trips the plane had had failed and she
had to stop in a farmer's field. Right, she found
a place to land when then and clip and landed
in a farmer's field. And the farmer, when he saw her,
came after her with a pitchfork because she thought the
Japanese were landing in his field. Uh. And she, you know,
(16:58):
had to stand her ground. And you know, as she's
running in the round the plane avoiding him, she's saying, no,
I'm an American, and you know, and and finally ordered
him to put the pitchport down and he did. But
but uh, that was a story that she loved to tell,
and she had a great sense of humor. The stories
go and love love telling that story about the man
(17:21):
who thought she was Japanese. The last training class for
the Watts graduated on December seven, and then the program
itself was disbanded on December the twentie, which was I
think heartbreaking for a lot of the women who had
been involved. They were basically all told to go home,
and a lot of cases told to go home basically
(17:42):
at their own expense. Um. Did any of that last
lost class get to actually serve in the couple of
weeks between when they graduated and when the program was disbanded. Yeah. Yeah,
So as we call that the last the lost last
class because they they went through training no wing they
were going to be disbanded. Um. The announcement was made
(18:03):
in October of n that they would be disbanded, but
those who were already in training could finish. So the
tradition was when a class graduated to be given some
time off to go home or or just rest before
they started their um their active duty. Uh. And this
(18:24):
class didn't. They just went straight from graduation to different
bases across the country. So they had almost three weeks
of service. It's not going to be the same. And
as you know somebody who was in the third class. Uh,
and the women of the last class are very humble
about the work that they did compared to their sisters
(18:46):
who had gone before them. Um. I want to take
on another point that you said that when when they
were disbanded on December twentieth, the women are all across
the country on these different basis, hundreds of different basis,
and the Army Air Forces Half Arnold, the general at
the time that you know, you can take a military
(19:08):
plane nearby, right, you can catch your wife basically on
a military plane if if one's going near your home.
One wasp actually got a ride home with her fiance, right.
He was a male pilot on the base, and he
flew her all the way home and met the family.
Other wasp, you know, one wasp, Shoy Reynolds. She was
(19:31):
out in in out West and was assigned to ride
along with some men and they stopped in Las Vegas
for fuel, and all of a sudden, the men said
the planes didn't work and she'd have to find her
way home to Pennsylvania from there. So she has this
long story of you know, the coins that she had
(19:52):
in her pocket and she and another girl, um, you know,
trying to get home and calling her mother and saying
send us money, but then catch arrived and missing the
money and uh, you know, the long, arduous trip home.
So this was this is one of the biggest problems
with the WASP program because they were technically civilian, but
(20:14):
they were living in the army world. If they each
had a different experience on some basis, the commanders were
thrilled to have them and treated them like bold and
on others they just didn't want to have anything to
do with the women and and we're happy to see
them go. So it's this very um, very different experiences
(20:36):
for all these women, everything from when they were killed.
You know, some of the thirty eight Wasps were killed
and as some of those women, their bodies were escorted
at home and uh, they were given us a proper funeral.
Others the fellow WASP had to pass around the hat
(20:58):
to help send the body home. It just depended on
the commander at that particular base. Um. So it was
really um really give my experiences all the women. So
Kate just talked about what happened after the women were
(21:20):
killing in action, as well as what happened after the
program was disbanded. We didn't really touch in our conversation
on why the WASP were disbanded there and it's kind
of an important part of the story. So Holly and
I are going to hit the highlights. Since its inception,
the WASP program had operated under the belief that the
WASP would eventually be militarized. A lot of the women's
(21:42):
training was patterned off of military training, and the women
who went through it thought that eventually they'd have military
status along with the benefits and veteran status it would
come along with that. Instead, when House of Representatives Bill
four to one nine was introduced on February seventeenth to
do exactly that, this subject became extremely contentious. By this point,
(22:05):
the tide of the war had really turned. Male pilots,
who previously had just been desperately needed in Europe weren't anymore.
Air Force training programs had been shuttered, and training programs
for men had been cut way back. When it came
to the Air Force cadets, Suddenly it didn't seem like
women were relieving men for other wartime work. In terms
(22:27):
of the WASP program, it seemed like women were replacing men.
The idea of women freeing up men to do more
dangerous work was not a threatening one, but the idea
that women were taking men's jobs absolutely was. The media
and public opinion shifted against the WASP as well. On
June twenty one, ninety four, House Bill for nineteen was defeated,
(22:51):
and instead, the announcement that came on August fifth, ninety
four was that the training class that was currently in
session would be the last one for the WASP. That
class graduated on December seven, and the program ended on
December twenty. And now we are going to take another
quick break for a sponsor word before we get into
(23:13):
what happened after the WASP program was disbanded. So now
we'll get into what happened after the WASP program was
over and why. The idea of whether they should be
recognized as military veterans continued to be controversial for decades
(23:37):
after the end of World War Two. So once the
program was disbanded, it seems like the WASP were pretty
quickly forgotten, and forgotten so thoroughly that when the United
States Air Force announced that it would be training eighteen
women as pilots in nineteen seventy six, the announcement was
(23:58):
worded as though this was the first time ever history
that a woman had flown US military aircraft. What was
it that led the WOP to return to the public
eye after having been so thoroughly erased from it? I
think that's a great question, um, And they I don't
know if they were erased so much as they were
just forgotten, Uh, you know, the war ends, and they
(24:20):
just don't don't talk about their their experiences. You know,
all these combat pilots are coming home and they actually
flew combat and someone when they started to tell their
stories of their flying, were dismissed as oh yeah right.
You know, people just didn't believe them, so they didn't
talk about it, and that entire generation tried to move
(24:42):
on past the war. So skip forward to the nineties sixties,
and these women are starting to hit retirement. Uh. Those
who continued to serve in the military, which which some
of them did, they joined the reserves and they they're
facing retirement or from the civil service, and their points
(25:04):
from their time in the WASP aren't counting towards their retirement.
So you've got that practical reason of hey, we we
need our time and the wants who have been recognized
so it can help us with the retirement. Um. But
then you've got even more importantly, these women are are
hitting their late forties and their fifties and they're realizing
(25:25):
that they've been forgotten. And not only have they been forgotten,
but those thirty eight lost who died have been forgotten.
And they they just are hitting that point in life
where you know, their kids are grown and they're starting
to reflect on their own experiences and and then yeah,
the military is coming out saying, oh, look at all
(25:46):
these women for the first time, and they're saying, wait
a minute, we did this and it was important. Um
and and so it's it's it's timing as much as
anything else. But they just didn't want those thirty eight
who they have lost their lives and nobody remembered them,
so that was really important to them. President Jimmy Carter
(26:10):
did finally sign a law that gave the last veteran
status in ninety seven, and I found that consistently described
as being over strong objections. What were the objections in
place there? Well, there was the battle for recognition of
the nineties seventies was controversial and and some people say
(26:30):
that Jimmy Carter opposed it. I haven't found hard evidence
of that, so um, I'm not going to speak to that.
But there were groups that opposed the women gaining veteran status,
um who who argued that it would demean the word
veteran if these women who had served as civilians were
made veterans, and and uh that that they hadn't been military,
(26:53):
so they shouldn't be veterans and different things like that.
UM and a lot of people were worried about how
expensive it was going to be if you recognize the
women as veterans. So they were given veterans status, but
in a in a limited way. They you know, the
g I Bill was gone by the UM and they
(27:13):
were just given recognition for purposes of the Vestans administration,
so it wouldn't be too expensive, uh to take care
of them. So Holly and I joined this podcast in
and for the first two years after we did, we
got constant requests from people to talk about the Soviet
night bombing regiment that became known as the Night which
(27:36):
is like, it was the most requested thing we've ever had,
And once we actually did that episode, nothing else has
become nearly as as heavily requested. UH. The WASP, on
the other hand, we've only gotten a few requests to
talk about, and most of them have been in response
to recent news about Arlington National Cemetery. Do you have
any thoughts on why the Night Whiches have become so
(27:59):
much more fame us in the United States then the Wasps,
who actually have some pretty similar stories aside from the
fact that the Wasps were not flying in combat. Well,
I think the the Soviet women are pretty amazing. Uh.
You know, they did fly combat. They did fight and die,
and they did shoot down planes. And I think, um,
(28:21):
our modern times have women military aviators serving in combat.
And so maybe that connection between you know, we've got
women who are in combat, uh, ties directly to those
Soviet women who did it so long ago and under
such horrible conditions. And the Wasps were very humble. They
(28:45):
love these the Soviet women. They're they've had meetings. There
was a group of worlds who went to Russia, um
and then in the nine nineties, uh and and just
admire them so much for the things that they did.
And again, the Wasps are very humble about their actions
compared to the actions of the Soviet women. Um. You know,
(29:05):
why people wouldn't ask for more information about the loss,
I don't know, but but you know, I think I
think people keep forgetting them, you know. And uh, and
they didn't fly combat, so so I don't I don't know.
I I can't speculate on why people wouldn't wouldn't ask
about them, But but you know, we've we've got them
(29:27):
a lot of publicity they we had the Rose Barraide
float in I got you know, millions of people I
saw that, and of course they got the Congressional Gold
Medal in got a lot of great press coverage from that. So, um,
maybe maybe people are learning about them or they have
a complicated story, and I think it's been told quite simply,
(29:51):
quite quite beautifully. But but it really is a little
more complicated than and it seems on the surface. Um,
I don't know. I don't know. So, as I alluded
to earlier, most of the requests that we've gotten recently
have followed headlines about the WASP, whether people who have
passed away and we serve in the WASP, whether they
(30:13):
can be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Can you catch
us up on on exactly what's going on with that?
Where that whole debate has come from. Well, the distinction
about Arlington National Cemetery versus other veteran cemeteries is Arlington
is run by the Army, where other national other national cemeteries,
(30:36):
veterans cemeteries are read by the Veterans Administration. So the
Arlington National Cemetery, the Secretary of the Army has argued
that well, aren't eligible for Arlington's because the law that
gave them that veterans steps that recognized them as veterans
or two said that they were veterans for purposes of
(31:00):
the Veterans Administration. So this is this is quite the technicality. UM.
They have been brought in to Arlington. There are wasps
at Arlington National Cemetery. UH. In two thousand two, the
cemetery came out and said, not only should they be here,
but they should get status of honors, you know, they
(31:21):
should get taps, and they should get a flag, and
they should you be treated treated in this way. So
this is a reversal of what's what's been done for
the last you know, ten years for sure fifteen years.
But but they've ineligible to be there and they expecting
to be there for decades now. UM. So you know
(31:42):
this has caused quite the up for There've been two
lost uh who were turned down. One whose son fought
very hard with today who's just lovely and wanted to
be there so badly, UH, and her son just couldn't fight.
It was it was too much of a fight. He'd
tried very hard, UH, and then he lay in harmon
UH daughters uh and granddaughters have picked up the fight
(32:07):
for all of the law. Uh and and right now
there's a bill before Congress, but both the House and
the Senate to make the US was eligible, you know,
to to make them able to be in Arlington National
Cemetery and represented Martha McSally, who was among the first
female combat pilots in modern times. She is leading that
(32:30):
charge um to recognize these wass She's taken it very
personally that these women have been essentially uninvited. We will
be sure to update listeners when there's news on that.
As as a last note before we wrap up, I
met you at the American Historical Association Annual meeting earlier
(32:52):
this year, and it was on a panel that you
were on about why historians should write op eds and
in age the media about history. And a lot of
what you have to say really parallels a lot of
what's on Holly's in my mind when we talk about
things on the show sometimes. So I wondered if you
could take a minute to just talk about why you
think it's important for history for historians to talk to
(33:16):
the public about history. Well, this is something that I'm
fairly passionate about because I believe that historians know things.
We know stuff. We spend a lot of our lives,
all of our professional lives, learning about things and and
making connections. And if we only talk to each other,
(33:36):
it doesn't do a service, uh, to to our country
or to the world. I think, uh, we can help
people understand why today is the way it is by
helping them see those connections to the past and in reality.
If we don't do it, you know, those of us
who really know the stuff and and have spent our
(33:58):
lives uh learning it and and thinking about it than
other people will uh, and they won't do as good
a job. You know. There there are a lot of
very good amateur historians out there, but there are a
lot of people who who studied history very shallowly and
and don't have the depth of understanding that that we
(34:18):
could share. UM. So I just think it's really important
for for historians to engage with the public and and
help the public understand because people love history. Right, you
talk to people, they're like, oh, I hated history in
high school, but look at your show. I mean, it's
so popular because people really do love history. They just
(34:39):
don't like the way they've been talked to about history
in the past, um, and so I think as professional
historians we need to engage with the public and and
help them see that they really do love history and
history really is important to understanding the world around them
each and every day. So I one agree with Kate's
(35:08):
statement that a lot of people think they don't like history,
but they really just don't like the way that history
has been presented to them. That completely mirrors my experience
with Kay through twelve. Yeah, We've talked about this a lot,
but I'll say it again. I think when you're doing
the here's a date, remember it, here's a date, remember it.
Even when they get into like the mechanics of what
(35:29):
caused things, it's usually pretty dry. But if you actually
dig in and see all of the influences that are
going into what creates those moments in those dates, then
it gets a lot juicier and more interesting, and you
find yourself really engaged. And I wish that there was
a setup in education that that could happen more regularly well,
(35:49):
And I also, to be fair, I know there are
people who do love the names and the dates and
like the the rote memorization that a lot of it
is involved with, Like, I know someone who is a forensic,
a countant who loves spreadsheets and numbers in a way
that I simply do not. But it would be cool
if history could, you know, school pot through both of
(36:09):
those approaches for the people who needed to learn them
in both of those two different ways. Well, And I
think for the people that do love the memorization part
and the dates and the names for them. And I'm
just speaking extemporaneously, so I could be completely off base,
but I think those people have this innate ability at
pattern recognition where they're able to kind of pease out
(36:30):
that juicy cause and effects stuff from looking at all
of those dates and places and names that is maybe
not always immediately apparent to other people. And that's part
of how they get engaged. It's like a puzzle game almost. Yeah,
I think you and I are maybe more big picture
recogn machine people and the like extrapolate the big picture
from a list of names and dates unless it involves
(36:51):
Star Wars, and then I like all the memorization of
nates and dates anyway, Yeah, to get back to get
back to the wasp. Kate also referenced a Rose Parade float.
This actually happened in twenty fourteen, and the float was
called Our Eyes Are on the Stars. It won a
National Trophy award, and it was created to both honor
(37:11):
and celebrate the WASP and to try to educate people
about their contributions to World War Two and to women
in aviation and armed forces and their legacy today. So
it was basically like a work of public history to
try to honor, honor people, and educate people as well.
Eight surviving Wasp wrote on the float. Fourteen people walked
along with it, including many women from the United States
(37:32):
Armed Forces who had been inspired by the WASP and
their story. So in our show notes for the episode,
we will include links to some pictures some more about
this float. It really is pretty astounding to look at.
Its beautiful. Also in the show notes is going to
be a link to the National WASP World War Two
Museum in Sweetwater, Texas and to the official archive of
the WASP, which is housed at Texas Women's University. Jacqueline
(37:57):
Cochrane's name came up a few times in these two
POT casts, and you can find more about her in
the episode four Flights of Female Aviators, which we will
also link to you in our show notes. And I
want to just thank Kate again so much for agreeing
to be on the show, for giving us so much
marvelous information. Uh, there were things that I asked her
that I sort of already knew the answers too, But
(38:19):
then there were so many things that her answers included,
nuances and details that not only had not occurred to me,
but they had not been present in any of the
work that I had read and reviewed and watched to
prepare for this interview. So thank you, Thank you so much.
It was such a pleasure to talk to you. Kate.
Do you have some listener mail to finish this one
out with? I do, and this is from Wendy, and
(38:43):
Wendy says, I just want to thank you for covering
the Vanport flood. We bought a house in the Kenton
neighborhood of Portland, and Vant Vanport would have been our
neighbor to the north, canon is located in the historic
al Buying a red line. I've obviously heard of the flood,
however I never can did the dots about the racial
undertones that led up to it, including the whipping laws
(39:04):
and black band written into the Oregon Constitution. I've shared
your podcast with my friends on Facebook and neighbors on
next door. Many have been surprised and intrigued to learn
these details about Oregon. As a white resident of historically
non slave state, I grew up feeling pride about my
state because we were never a slave state. I'm so
glad as an adult I have the opportunity to understand
(39:26):
and learn more about the history of my state. You're
right when you say it's not just an in the
South thing. The road into my southern Oregon hometown even
had a quote street patrolled by vigilantes for justice into
the early two thousands. Thanks again for opening our eyes
a little more every week. I love your podcast, Wendy.
Oh And then, coincidentally, when you talked about having to
(39:49):
having listened to the podcast while in the yard removing
river rocks from the dirt, you know, so you can
still see that this area was once a floodplain before
they you a walled off the water to let people
build stuff there. Thank you so much for writing, Wendy.
I wanted to read this for a couple reasons. One
is that I am glad that this experience on next
(40:11):
door posting the podcast was it seems like it came
off pretty positive. Yeah, I have not had that experience
in some of my next door conversations about things that
are related to racism in some way. And the other
thing that I wanted to to that made me want
(40:31):
to read this letter is that Wendy talks about um
about having felt pride that Oregon was never a slave state,
but sort of realizing that a lot of things that
went on the word in the South. This is something
that we've been talking about on the podcast lately pretty
much on purpose, and and we're we have I have
some upcoming episodes in the and the Pipeline that are
(40:51):
going to revisit the same territory, because I think the
the way a lot of people learn about slavery in
the United States, and a lot of ways that people
learned about the Civil War is really oversimplified. And there's
a sort of idea that the northern states were the
good guys because they had stopped allowing slavery and the
Southern states were the bad guys because they had to
be forced to stop allowing slavery at gunpoint, basically. But
(41:17):
that's not that glosses over a lot of Northern history
and a lot of history from other parts of the
United States where sure, slavery had been abolished prior to
the Civil War, but a lot of those places had
allowed slavery previously, and a lot of them still were
doing things that were not okay in terms of the
(41:39):
treatment of their own citizens. So, um, that's definitely something
that we have tried to address on the podcast to
give people a richer understanding and a more complete understanding
of like how you you don't get to say that
the North was blameless just because the North had already
abolished avery before the Civil War started, Like that's pretty
(42:03):
low bar. Yeah. I think there is sometimes a false
perception that there was never slavery in the North, and
it's like no, no, no, no, no, no no, uh,
which gets into some problems and people get kind of
a little bit twitchy about it, like they feel somehow
(42:28):
that they're being blamed a little bit. But we're just
trying to examine all of this because it's only in
really looking at the facts of how the past unfurled
that we're really going to have the clear picture. And
if it's rey to look at, there's probably even more
reason that we should be taking a gander. I agree
(42:49):
with you, so uh. Thank you again Kate for talking
to me on this podcast and for sharing so much wonderful,
wonderful information, than to Wendy for writing that wonderful email.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where history podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash missed in History and on Twitter at miss
(43:11):
in History or Tom blur is miss in Hisstory dot
tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest at pentriest dot
com slash missed in History. You come to our parent
company website, which is how stuff Works dot com. We
have all kinds of information about aircraft and airplanes and
military aircraft, all kinds of aviation history, lots of stuff
at our at our parent company's website. Also at our
website we will have shown for all of our podcast
(43:33):
people have lots of cool links to stuff about the
Washpeat can have more information about about Dr land x
work lots of cool stuff that we will have linked
from there. We also have an archive of all on
our old episodes on our website, so you can learn
all kinds of stuff at our parent company's website, which
is how stuff Works dot com, or our website which
is Missed in History dot com. For more on this
(43:58):
and thousands of other topics, is how stuff works dot com.
In
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from dot Com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I am Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fry. We are back today with Dr
Katherine sharp Land Deck of Texas Women's University, who has
(00:22):
been studying the Women Air Force Service Pilots or WASP
of World War Two for the last twenty years. These
were women who flew military aircraft all over the United
States during World War Two, doing everything from ferrying aircraft
and people from one place to another to towing targets
to be used for live ammunition practice. This program was
(00:43):
both an experiment to see what women could handle and
an effort to free up mail pilots for the war.
Kate really graciously agreed to sit down to talk to
me about the WASP, their history, their work, and their legacy,
and she had such marvelous things to say that we
are airing the interview in two parts. Today is the
second part, and this is gonna start by talking about
(01:04):
what the duties of the women that were part of
the WASP program were during the war and how they evolved.
And it may surprise you to learn which of them
were more dangerous than others. Just this first answer that
Kate gives Tracy is packed with information on the WASP
and the aircraft they flew and what it really took
to fly them. So a lot of the first duties
(01:31):
that were assigned to the WASP were basically pretty basic
things like let's let's we need to move the aircraft
from where they were built to where they need to go,
or we need to move the chaplain from this base
to this base to do Sunday service, like just basically
moving people and equipment from one place to another so
that the mail pilots could be freed up for more
(01:54):
intense combat duties. But over the time that the program
was going on, women started doing things like towing targets
to be shot at with live ammunition. Or Paul Tibots,
who would later go on to pilot the Inola Gay,
actually recruited to WASP to demonstrate the B twenty nine bomber,
(02:14):
which was prone to catching on fire if it was
not if it didn't take off properly, and and so
the men were kind of scared to fly it, and
so Paul Tipots recruited these two wasps to demonstrate it
for the men, sort of circle back to what you
had said previously about the airplane so easy even a
woman can fly it. So to me, it's a startlingly
(02:34):
short amount of time between we're basically going to use
women to to move people and stuff around, too, we're
going to use women to literally tow targets to be
shot at. How did that evolution actually take place, to
go from being really reluctant to have women flying at
all and doing extremely basic stuff to being shot at? Well,
(02:56):
And I think this is good, And I think there's
a couple of things here. First, it's important to recognize
that the work of ferrying the planes was actually um
in some ways more dangerous than the work of towing
the targets and being shot at. It's hard to just
think of those terms, right the firing with live ammulation,
(03:17):
it always sounds worse. But a couple of things. So first,
the ferrying jobs, the women were brought in because we
needed ferry pilots. That was that was the part of
the Army Air Forces that was the most desperate um
and needed pilots most because we're building hundreds of thousands
of airplanes at factories, factories in California, factories in Detroit
(03:41):
factories in you know, oh Maha, and then and you know,
all over the country we're building these planes and they
have to get to training bases all across the countries
for pilots to learn to fly. And then the bigger planes,
the bombers and the pursuit aircraft have to be flown
two different coasts, right. I mean a lot of the
pursuits were built in Long Beach, California, and we were
(04:04):
finding a war in Europe, you know, so they had
to be flown all the way across the country. And
I think it's important to think, take yourself back and
put yourself into the reality of navigation in the nineteen forties.
They don't have GPS is on board, right, They have
very limited navigation, and they have to these these pursuit planes,
(04:27):
especially are single pilot planes. So you're in this plane alone,
and you're flying this plane over mountains, uh and across
the country with very limited navigation. So it's much of
its see to your pants flying getting from point A
to point B, finding the proper airfields to land that
to get fuel because that only lasts so long, and
(04:50):
and it's very independent work. It's very you know here's
the airplane, go flyt uh. Many of these h airplanes,
the very pilots men and women, right because remember their
men doing these labs too. But these ferry pilots, they
would be the first one to fly an airplane, right
they would. They would literally roll off the end of
(05:10):
the assembly line and the pilot would be handed the
keys basically and told here you go. Uh. So they're
they're test flying these brand new airplanes and hoping rose
through the riveter had really riveted it. Right, So this
is important flying that had to be done, and and
it's dangerous uh and and takes a lot of independent
(05:31):
thinking and skills. But then you're quite right that the
job of the women expands because the Air Army Air
Forces wanted to see what women could do. Okay, well,
women are good at ferry pilots. And and again they
had started with just light trainer airplanes, little piper cubs
and things like that. Uh. And then we're put into
(05:53):
the and PT and these really high horsepower you know,
the moll uh sophisticated air place of a day very
quickly because they proved themselves. Um. But the Army Air
Forces said, well, let's see what else women could do,
and Jacqueline Cochrane was a big bunch of that. So
they One of the big jobs that needed to be
(06:15):
done was you have to train men to fire weapons
at moving planes, right, whether it's ground gunners or gunners
on bombers. Right, if you're on a B seventeen, you've
got to shoot at the enemy plane out the side
of out of the side of the your B seventeen.
You've got to learn how to do that. You can't
take a nineteen year old boy and expect him to
(06:37):
figure that out on the job, right. So you take
women and and have them fly their planes along a route,
and you have the gunners on the ground, you know,
firing at the banner and and um. A way to
a way to think of the tow targets is if
you've ever been to the beach and you see the
(06:58):
plane flying down the beach with the banner behind it,
or to a sporting event or something, and they've got
their advertisements vote for so and so, eat so and
those pizza or whatever. It's it's that kind of thing,
um and uh, except the targets were much longer, um
and and uh and yeah, they shot with live ammunition.
(07:18):
Because they've got to figure out how to really use
the guns. They would often have the ammunition color coded
so they could figure out which which gunner was shooting
which which bullets. Um. But this was very mundane flying.
It was dangerous because you're being shot out. Um. It
was dangerous because you're flying slowly often times. But it
(07:40):
was very boring flying. It was it was basically flying
up and down and you know, up and then turning
around and flying back down and listening on the radio
and doing the same thing every day. Um. And and
you have to be precise and you have to you know,
do what what has to be done. But it's not
exotic flying. Um. And so the Air Army Air Forces
(08:05):
was kind of excited to have women do this job
because the men hated it because it was so boring, um.
And the women were tended to be more patient or
happy to be flying anything. So so that was an
evolution to expand to that. And then yeah, it expands
to all these different jobs, test flying claims after they've
(08:26):
been um, you know, worked on or had a little crash, uh,
flying you know, personnel from place to place, doing all
these different jobs. And basically this was just an expansion
of the women to see what they could do, and
and they took it. We actually have a loss to
the first American jet. You know, well could she do that?
(08:49):
She can? We had women flying um remote control aircraft,
you know, so you know essentially some of the first drones,
and they were all top secrets flying some of those
where they be in the remote aircraft with somebody behind
them and another plane flying that plane. Uh, but that
(09:11):
they didn't want to plane crash, so if the person
must up, the women in the drone airplane could could
take over the controls, you know, so that they're doing
all these different jobs and really, uh, Jacqueline Cochrane has
a phrase for it that I just I just love.
She she said that the wash do all the aerial
dish washing right, all the aerial dish washing jobs that
(09:33):
that uh, it's the jobs that nobody wants that everybody
it has to be done right, the jobs that nobody
wants to do, but that have to be done, just
like doing the dishes his home. And you know, of
course she she domesticates the work that they're doing. I know,
they're just they're just dishwashing and they're not threatening anybody
flying these fancy military planes are just just doing the dishwahing,
(09:56):
the aerial dish washing jobs. And and uh know, it's
it's interesting the terms that she used to justify the
work that women were doing. But again, you know, after
the war, we have all these really extensive reports of
the jobs that the women did and the the success
that they had. They did well at all the jobs
(10:17):
they were asked to do. Uh. The only one that
was questionable was flying a glider. Right, they had these
big gliders that they used in World War Two, and
the aircraft would tow the glider and the women weren't
quite strong enough for that. So that's the only job
that they said, well, let's not have them do that.
But but everything else, these were all jobs that had
(10:39):
to be done. So you have women who are out
there and who are doing jobs that if they hadn't
been doing them, two men would have had to do
them because they were jobs that had to be done.
And um, I think part of this is it starts
with we don't know where the war is going to
(11:00):
know what's going to happen in this war? What jobs
are women going to have to do? You know? What
is our our pool of potential pilots here. Uh. And
then as the war progresses, they wanted to have final
numbers on these experiments. Basically, and they saw the Cold
(11:20):
War coming, you know, I was like, well, if we
have another war, what can women do? So it really uh,
they had women doing all these jobs because these jobs
were all there to be done. Um. And they kept
trying different things. They were giving the women they were
they were doing a good work. They were flying and
(11:41):
and uh, their accident rates were comparable with men doing
the same jobs there. Uh, you know, delivery rates on
the bearing of the aircraft was in some cases better.
It just you know, on some basis, the commanders preferred
to women because they wanted to fly. Uh. So I
think it's it's interesting how their role expanded. Uh. And
(12:05):
it's you know, you ask keep in mind that they
were considered an experiment. Unless you have an experiment to
try as many things as you can. Man, there was
so much information in the answer to that question number one.
I had no idea that ferrying a new plane from
the factory to an airfield could in some ways be
(12:28):
a lot more dangerous than towing targets for life. Am
a practice that still seems completely counterintuitive to me. Even
having been explained, I understand now rationally why it's so
much more dangerous, But in my head, it's still way
more dangerous to be shot at than just to fly
a plane. Uh. Number two, I had no idea until
(12:48):
talking to Kate about this that part of the mindset
behind this whole program was like, what if there's another war?
What all are we gonna need women to already know
how to do? And what are we gonna need to
have demonstrated that that women can handle. That to me
was bleak and fascinating. Uh. And coming up, Tracy's interview
with Kate gets into some more specific cases of women
(13:12):
that were part of this program. But before we do that,
we're gonna pause and have a word from one of
our sponsors. Next up, we're going to talk about one
WASP in particular. He was one of two Chinese American
women who served with the Women Air Moorce Service pilots.
(13:39):
As I started researching the WASP, like, I know that
the United States military wasn't integrated until which was after
the Wasp bird disbanded, so I assumed that only white
women were in the WASP that but then I found
a photo of Hazel Yan Lee, who was a Chinese
(13:59):
American woman from Oregon who was actually the last of
the WASP to be killed in the line of duty.
So it's clear that number one, it was not exclusively
white women. Uh. The number two and is this a
story that you know a lot about Hazel Yang lady?
Know what can you share with us about her? Well,
you're quite right that the WASP were we're white. There
(14:22):
were there were two exceptions, uh, Hazel a Yang Lei uh.
And then there was another Chinese American woman who's Maggie
g Uh and she was out of California. She's in
one of the later classes. Uh. And those were the
UM only two non white women in the groups. Uh.
We know that several African American women who were qualified
(14:44):
did apply to the program UM and they were turned
down because they they were worried about desegregating the group. UM.
And that's a long, long conversation they have. UM. But
but so when you're thinking about Chinese Americans, Hazel especially
(15:06):
was very highly qualified. She had a pilot's license since
nineteen She had gone to China when Japan attacked China
and the nineteen thirties to try to fly for the
Chinese Air Force UH, and they turned her down because
she was a woman. So she actually had been flying
UH for some Chinese airlines, was one of the very
few Chinese women pilots UH. And then she came back
(15:30):
and and UH when the WASP program began, I was
one of the earliest classes and fairy pursuit aircraft. So
it's important to remember that the United States was allied
with China, and so having Chinese American women in the
program was good for appearance's sake to a certain extent. UH.
(15:53):
And Hazel especially, she was incredibly qualified. UH was all
of a flight time, so I think that was a
big part of it. And of course she is Uh.
She's killed in November of Thanking forty four, quite tragically.
Where that's one of those things that you know, she's
in a pursuit aircraft and another pursuit it's coming in.
(16:14):
They're both landing, the control tower has some confusions and
the one of the plane's radios wasn't working UH, and
so the the other pursuit plane landed on top of
Hazel UH and and she was she was killed. UM.
But but yeah, there were there were two Chinese women. Uh.
(16:35):
There's a story associated with Hazel that in one of
her pursuit trips the plane had had failed and she
had to stop in a farmer's field. Right, she found
a place to land when then and clip and landed
in a farmer's field. And the farmer, when he saw her,
came after her with a pitchfork because she thought the
Japanese were landing in his field. Uh. And she, you know,
(16:58):
had to stand her ground. And you know, as she's
running in the round the plane avoiding him, she's saying, no,
I'm an American, and you know, and and finally ordered
him to put the pitchport down and he did. But
but uh, that was a story that she loved to tell,
and she had a great sense of humor. The stories
go and love love telling that story about the man
(17:21):
who thought she was Japanese. The last training class for
the Watts graduated on December seven, and then the program
itself was disbanded on December the twentie, which was I
think heartbreaking for a lot of the women who had
been involved. They were basically all told to go home,
and a lot of cases told to go home basically
(17:42):
at their own expense. Um. Did any of that last
lost class get to actually serve in the couple of
weeks between when they graduated and when the program was disbanded. Yeah. Yeah,
So as we call that the last the lost last
class because they they went through training no wing they
were going to be disbanded. Um. The announcement was made
(18:03):
in October of n that they would be disbanded, but
those who were already in training could finish. So the
tradition was when a class graduated to be given some
time off to go home or or just rest before
they started their um their active duty. Uh. And this
(18:24):
class didn't. They just went straight from graduation to different
bases across the country. So they had almost three weeks
of service. It's not going to be the same. And
as you know somebody who was in the third class. Uh,
and the women of the last class are very humble
about the work that they did compared to their sisters
(18:46):
who had gone before them. Um. I want to take
on another point that you said that when when they
were disbanded on December twentieth, the women are all across
the country on these different basis, hundreds of different basis,
and the Army Air Forces Half Arnold, the general at
the time that you know, you can take a military
(19:08):
plane nearby, right, you can catch your wife basically on
a military plane if if one's going near your home.
One wasp actually got a ride home with her fiance, right.
He was a male pilot on the base, and he
flew her all the way home and met the family.
Other wasp, you know, one wasp, Shoy Reynolds. She was
(19:31):
out in in out West and was assigned to ride
along with some men and they stopped in Las Vegas
for fuel, and all of a sudden, the men said
the planes didn't work and she'd have to find her
way home to Pennsylvania from there. So she has this
long story of you know, the coins that she had
(19:52):
in her pocket and she and another girl, um, you know,
trying to get home and calling her mother and saying
send us money, but then catch arrived and missing the
money and uh, you know, the long, arduous trip home.
So this was this is one of the biggest problems
with the WASP program because they were technically civilian, but
(20:14):
they were living in the army world. If they each
had a different experience on some basis, the commanders were
thrilled to have them and treated them like bold and
on others they just didn't want to have anything to
do with the women and and we're happy to see
them go. So it's this very um, very different experiences
(20:36):
for all these women, everything from when they were killed.
You know, some of the thirty eight Wasps were killed
and as some of those women, their bodies were escorted
at home and uh, they were given us a proper funeral.
Others the fellow WASP had to pass around the hat
(20:58):
to help send the body home. It just depended on
the commander at that particular base. Um. So it was
really um really give my experiences all the women. So
Kate just talked about what happened after the women were
(21:20):
killing in action, as well as what happened after the
program was disbanded. We didn't really touch in our conversation
on why the WASP were disbanded there and it's kind
of an important part of the story. So Holly and
I are going to hit the highlights. Since its inception,
the WASP program had operated under the belief that the
WASP would eventually be militarized. A lot of the women's
(21:42):
training was patterned off of military training, and the women
who went through it thought that eventually they'd have military
status along with the benefits and veteran status it would
come along with that. Instead, when House of Representatives Bill
four to one nine was introduced on February seventeenth to
do exactly that, this subject became extremely contentious. By this point,
(22:05):
the tide of the war had really turned. Male pilots,
who previously had just been desperately needed in Europe weren't anymore.
Air Force training programs had been shuttered, and training programs
for men had been cut way back. When it came
to the Air Force cadets, Suddenly it didn't seem like
women were relieving men for other wartime work. In terms
(22:27):
of the WASP program, it seemed like women were replacing men.
The idea of women freeing up men to do more
dangerous work was not a threatening one, but the idea
that women were taking men's jobs absolutely was. The media
and public opinion shifted against the WASP as well. On
June twenty one, ninety four, House Bill for nineteen was defeated,
(22:51):
and instead, the announcement that came on August fifth, ninety
four was that the training class that was currently in
session would be the last one for the WASP. That
class graduated on December seven, and the program ended on
December twenty. And now we are going to take another
quick break for a sponsor word before we get into
(23:13):
what happened after the WASP program was disbanded. So now
we'll get into what happened after the WASP program was
over and why. The idea of whether they should be
recognized as military veterans continued to be controversial for decades
(23:37):
after the end of World War Two. So once the
program was disbanded, it seems like the WASP were pretty
quickly forgotten, and forgotten so thoroughly that when the United
States Air Force announced that it would be training eighteen
women as pilots in nineteen seventy six, the announcement was
(23:58):
worded as though this was the first time ever history
that a woman had flown US military aircraft. What was
it that led the WOP to return to the public
eye after having been so thoroughly erased from it? I
think that's a great question, um, And they I don't
know if they were erased so much as they were
just forgotten, Uh, you know, the war ends, and they
(24:20):
just don't don't talk about their their experiences. You know,
all these combat pilots are coming home and they actually
flew combat and someone when they started to tell their
stories of their flying, were dismissed as oh yeah right.
You know, people just didn't believe them, so they didn't
talk about it, and that entire generation tried to move
(24:42):
on past the war. So skip forward to the nineties sixties,
and these women are starting to hit retirement. Uh. Those
who continued to serve in the military, which which some
of them did, they joined the reserves and they they're
facing retirement or from the civil service, and their points
(25:04):
from their time in the WASP aren't counting towards their retirement.
So you've got that practical reason of hey, we we
need our time and the wants who have been recognized
so it can help us with the retirement. Um. But
then you've got even more importantly, these women are are
hitting their late forties and their fifties and they're realizing
(25:25):
that they've been forgotten. And not only have they been forgotten,
but those thirty eight lost who died have been forgotten.
And they they just are hitting that point in life
where you know, their kids are grown and they're starting
to reflect on their own experiences and and then yeah,
the military is coming out saying, oh, look at all
(25:46):
these women for the first time, and they're saying, wait
a minute, we did this and it was important. Um
and and so it's it's it's timing as much as
anything else. But they just didn't want those thirty eight
who they have lost their lives and nobody remembered them,
so that was really important to them. President Jimmy Carter
(26:10):
did finally sign a law that gave the last veteran
status in ninety seven, and I found that consistently described
as being over strong objections. What were the objections in
place there? Well, there was the battle for recognition of
the nineties seventies was controversial and and some people say
(26:30):
that Jimmy Carter opposed it. I haven't found hard evidence
of that, so um, I'm not going to speak to that.
But there were groups that opposed the women gaining veteran status,
um who who argued that it would demean the word
veteran if these women who had served as civilians were
made veterans, and and uh that that they hadn't been military,
(26:53):
so they shouldn't be veterans and different things like that.
UM and a lot of people were worried about how
expensive it was going to be if you recognize the
women as veterans. So they were given veterans status, but
in a in a limited way. They you know, the
g I Bill was gone by the UM and they
(27:13):
were just given recognition for purposes of the Vestans administration,
so it wouldn't be too expensive, uh to take care
of them. So Holly and I joined this podcast in
and for the first two years after we did, we
got constant requests from people to talk about the Soviet
night bombing regiment that became known as the Night which
(27:36):
is like, it was the most requested thing we've ever had,
And once we actually did that episode, nothing else has
become nearly as as heavily requested. UH. The WASP, on
the other hand, we've only gotten a few requests to
talk about, and most of them have been in response
to recent news about Arlington National Cemetery. Do you have
any thoughts on why the Night Whiches have become so
(27:59):
much more fame us in the United States then the Wasps,
who actually have some pretty similar stories aside from the
fact that the Wasps were not flying in combat. Well,
I think the the Soviet women are pretty amazing. Uh.
You know, they did fly combat. They did fight and die,
and they did shoot down planes. And I think, um,
(28:21):
our modern times have women military aviators serving in combat.
And so maybe that connection between you know, we've got
women who are in combat, uh, ties directly to those
Soviet women who did it so long ago and under
such horrible conditions. And the Wasps were very humble. They
(28:45):
love these the Soviet women. They're they've had meetings. There
was a group of worlds who went to Russia, um
and then in the nine nineties, uh and and just
admire them so much for the things that they did.
And again, the Wasps are very humble about their actions
compared to the actions of the Soviet women. Um. You know,
(29:05):
why people wouldn't ask for more information about the loss,
I don't know, but but you know, I think I
think people keep forgetting them, you know. And uh, and
they didn't fly combat, so so I don't I don't know.
I I can't speculate on why people wouldn't wouldn't ask
about them, But but you know, we've we've got them
(29:27):
a lot of publicity they we had the Rose Barraide
float in I got you know, millions of people I
saw that, and of course they got the Congressional Gold
Medal in got a lot of great press coverage from that. So, um,
maybe maybe people are learning about them or they have
a complicated story, and I think it's been told quite simply,
(29:51):
quite quite beautifully. But but it really is a little
more complicated than and it seems on the surface. Um,
I don't know. I don't know. So, as I alluded
to earlier, most of the requests that we've gotten recently
have followed headlines about the WASP, whether people who have
passed away and we serve in the WASP, whether they
(30:13):
can be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Can you catch
us up on on exactly what's going on with that?
Where that whole debate has come from. Well, the distinction
about Arlington National Cemetery versus other veteran cemeteries is Arlington
is run by the Army, where other national other national cemeteries,
(30:36):
veterans cemeteries are read by the Veterans Administration. So the
Arlington National Cemetery, the Secretary of the Army has argued
that well, aren't eligible for Arlington's because the law that
gave them that veterans steps that recognized them as veterans
or two said that they were veterans for purposes of
(31:00):
the Veterans Administration. So this is this is quite the technicality. UM.
They have been brought in to Arlington. There are wasps
at Arlington National Cemetery. UH. In two thousand two, the
cemetery came out and said, not only should they be here,
but they should get status of honors, you know, they
(31:21):
should get taps, and they should get a flag, and
they should you be treated treated in this way. So
this is a reversal of what's what's been done for
the last you know, ten years for sure fifteen years.
But but they've ineligible to be there and they expecting
to be there for decades now. UM. So you know
(31:42):
this has caused quite the up for There've been two
lost uh who were turned down. One whose son fought
very hard with today who's just lovely and wanted to
be there so badly, UH, and her son just couldn't fight.
It was it was too much of a fight. He'd
tried very hard, UH, and then he lay in harmon
UH daughters uh and granddaughters have picked up the fight
(32:07):
for all of the law. Uh and and right now
there's a bill before Congress, but both the House and
the Senate to make the US was eligible, you know,
to to make them able to be in Arlington National
Cemetery and represented Martha McSally, who was among the first
female combat pilots in modern times. She is leading that
(32:30):
charge um to recognize these wass She's taken it very
personally that these women have been essentially uninvited. We will
be sure to update listeners when there's news on that.
As as a last note before we wrap up, I
met you at the American Historical Association Annual meeting earlier
(32:52):
this year, and it was on a panel that you
were on about why historians should write op eds and
in age the media about history. And a lot of
what you have to say really parallels a lot of
what's on Holly's in my mind when we talk about
things on the show sometimes. So I wondered if you
could take a minute to just talk about why you
think it's important for history for historians to talk to
(33:16):
the public about history. Well, this is something that I'm
fairly passionate about because I believe that historians know things.
We know stuff. We spend a lot of our lives,
all of our professional lives, learning about things and and
making connections. And if we only talk to each other,
(33:36):
it doesn't do a service, uh, to to our country
or to the world. I think, uh, we can help
people understand why today is the way it is by
helping them see those connections to the past and in reality.
If we don't do it, you know, those of us
who really know the stuff and and have spent our
(33:58):
lives uh learning it and and thinking about it than
other people will uh, and they won't do as good
a job. You know. There there are a lot of
very good amateur historians out there, but there are a
lot of people who who studied history very shallowly and
and don't have the depth of understanding that that we
(34:18):
could share. UM. So I just think it's really important
for for historians to engage with the public and and
help the public understand because people love history. Right, you
talk to people, they're like, oh, I hated history in
high school, but look at your show. I mean, it's
so popular because people really do love history. They just
(34:39):
don't like the way they've been talked to about history
in the past, um, and so I think as professional
historians we need to engage with the public and and
help them see that they really do love history and
history really is important to understanding the world around them
each and every day. So I one agree with Kate's
(35:08):
statement that a lot of people think they don't like history,
but they really just don't like the way that history
has been presented to them. That completely mirrors my experience
with Kay through twelve. Yeah, We've talked about this a lot,
but I'll say it again. I think when you're doing
the here's a date, remember it, here's a date, remember it.
Even when they get into like the mechanics of what
(35:29):
caused things, it's usually pretty dry. But if you actually
dig in and see all of the influences that are
going into what creates those moments in those dates, then
it gets a lot juicier and more interesting, and you
find yourself really engaged. And I wish that there was
a setup in education that that could happen more regularly well,
(35:49):
And I also, to be fair, I know there are
people who do love the names and the dates and
like the the rote memorization that a lot of it
is involved with, Like, I know someone who is a forensic,
a countant who loves spreadsheets and numbers in a way
that I simply do not. But it would be cool
if history could, you know, school pot through both of
(36:09):
those approaches for the people who needed to learn them
in both of those two different ways. Well, And I
think for the people that do love the memorization part
and the dates and the names for them. And I'm
just speaking extemporaneously, so I could be completely off base,
but I think those people have this innate ability at
pattern recognition where they're able to kind of pease out
(36:30):
that juicy cause and effects stuff from looking at all
of those dates and places and names that is maybe
not always immediately apparent to other people. And that's part
of how they get engaged. It's like a puzzle game almost. Yeah,
I think you and I are maybe more big picture
recogn machine people and the like extrapolate the big picture
from a list of names and dates unless it involves
(36:51):
Star Wars, and then I like all the memorization of
nates and dates anyway, Yeah, to get back to get
back to the wasp. Kate also referenced a Rose Parade float.
This actually happened in twenty fourteen, and the float was
called Our Eyes Are on the Stars. It won a
National Trophy award, and it was created to both honor
(37:11):
and celebrate the WASP and to try to educate people
about their contributions to World War Two and to women
in aviation and armed forces and their legacy today. So
it was basically like a work of public history to
try to honor, honor people, and educate people as well.
Eight surviving Wasp wrote on the float. Fourteen people walked
along with it, including many women from the United States
(37:32):
Armed Forces who had been inspired by the WASP and
their story. So in our show notes for the episode,
we will include links to some pictures some more about
this float. It really is pretty astounding to look at.
Its beautiful. Also in the show notes is going to
be a link to the National WASP World War Two
Museum in Sweetwater, Texas and to the official archive of
the WASP, which is housed at Texas Women's University. Jacqueline
(37:57):
Cochrane's name came up a few times in these two
POT casts, and you can find more about her in
the episode four Flights of Female Aviators, which we will
also link to you in our show notes. And I
want to just thank Kate again so much for agreeing
to be on the show, for giving us so much
marvelous information. Uh, there were things that I asked her
that I sort of already knew the answers too, But
(38:19):
then there were so many things that her answers included,
nuances and details that not only had not occurred to me,
but they had not been present in any of the
work that I had read and reviewed and watched to
prepare for this interview. So thank you, Thank you so much.
It was such a pleasure to talk to you. Kate.
Do you have some listener mail to finish this one
out with? I do, and this is from Wendy, and
(38:43):
Wendy says, I just want to thank you for covering
the Vanport flood. We bought a house in the Kenton
neighborhood of Portland, and Vant Vanport would have been our
neighbor to the north, canon is located in the historic
al Buying a red line. I've obviously heard of the flood,
however I never can did the dots about the racial
undertones that led up to it, including the whipping laws
(39:04):
and black band written into the Oregon Constitution. I've shared
your podcast with my friends on Facebook and neighbors on
next door. Many have been surprised and intrigued to learn
these details about Oregon. As a white resident of historically
non slave state, I grew up feeling pride about my
state because we were never a slave state. I'm so
glad as an adult I have the opportunity to understand
(39:26):
and learn more about the history of my state. You're
right when you say it's not just an in the
South thing. The road into my southern Oregon hometown even
had a quote street patrolled by vigilantes for justice into
the early two thousands. Thanks again for opening our eyes
a little more every week. I love your podcast, Wendy.
Oh And then, coincidentally, when you talked about having to
(39:49):
having listened to the podcast while in the yard removing
river rocks from the dirt, you know, so you can
still see that this area was once a floodplain before
they you a walled off the water to let people
build stuff there. Thank you so much for writing, Wendy.
I wanted to read this for a couple reasons. One
is that I am glad that this experience on next
(40:11):
door posting the podcast was it seems like it came
off pretty positive. Yeah, I have not had that experience
in some of my next door conversations about things that
are related to racism in some way. And the other
thing that I wanted to to that made me want
(40:31):
to read this letter is that Wendy talks about um
about having felt pride that Oregon was never a slave state,
but sort of realizing that a lot of things that
went on the word in the South. This is something
that we've been talking about on the podcast lately pretty
much on purpose, and and we're we have I have
some upcoming episodes in the and the Pipeline that are
(40:51):
going to revisit the same territory, because I think the
the way a lot of people learn about slavery in
the United States, and a lot of ways that people
learned about the Civil War is really oversimplified. And there's
a sort of idea that the northern states were the
good guys because they had stopped allowing slavery and the
Southern states were the bad guys because they had to
be forced to stop allowing slavery at gunpoint, basically. But
(41:17):
that's not that glosses over a lot of Northern history
and a lot of history from other parts of the
United States where sure, slavery had been abolished prior to
the Civil War, but a lot of those places had
allowed slavery previously, and a lot of them still were
doing things that were not okay in terms of the
(41:39):
treatment of their own citizens. So, um, that's definitely something
that we have tried to address on the podcast to
give people a richer understanding and a more complete understanding
of like how you you don't get to say that
the North was blameless just because the North had already
abolished avery before the Civil War started, Like that's pretty
(42:03):
low bar. Yeah. I think there is sometimes a false
perception that there was never slavery in the North, and
it's like no, no, no, no, no, no no, uh,
which gets into some problems and people get kind of
a little bit twitchy about it, like they feel somehow
(42:28):
that they're being blamed a little bit. But we're just
trying to examine all of this because it's only in
really looking at the facts of how the past unfurled
that we're really going to have the clear picture. And
if it's rey to look at, there's probably even more
reason that we should be taking a gander. I agree
(42:49):
with you, so uh. Thank you again Kate for talking
to me on this podcast and for sharing so much wonderful,
wonderful information, than to Wendy for writing that wonderful email.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast where history podcasts at how stuff
Works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash missed in History and on Twitter at miss
(43:11):
in History or Tom blur is miss in Hisstory dot
tumbler dot com. We're also on Pinterest at pentriest dot
com slash missed in History. You come to our parent
company website, which is how stuff Works dot com. We
have all kinds of information about aircraft and airplanes and
military aircraft, all kinds of aviation history, lots of stuff
at our at our parent company's website. Also at our
website we will have shown for all of our podcast
(43:33):
people have lots of cool links to stuff about the
Washpeat can have more information about about Dr land x
work lots of cool stuff that we will have linked
from there. We also have an archive of all on
our old episodes on our website, so you can learn
all kinds of stuff at our parent company's website, which
is how stuff Works dot com, or our website which
is Missed in History dot com. For more on this
(43:58):
and thousands of other topics, is how stuff works dot com.
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Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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