Morgan historical society

Not all who served in World War II were men. Reba Skinner was born in Arkansas on June 20, 1922. She was working in Hopkin’s Café when she said she heard that Pearl Harbor was attacked. In May 1942, she was working at an army depot when someone said she should join the Navy, and that’s exactly what she did. Reba enlisted in Salt Lake and was inducted into the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) program. The WAVES program was created for women to take the place of men who were formerly serving in shore positions. These women would work as secretaries, parachute riggers, machinists, or even radio operators. Reba and the other women she left with went to Hunter College in New York for training, after that, she went to business school in Cedar Falls at Iowa State College. “Life at ‘Hunter was quite stressful,” Reba writes, they had little time for meals, marched, drilled, and had “Too many” shots. When Reba completed her training, she was given the rank of Yeoman 3rd Class and assigned to the Armed Guard Center Pacific on Treasure Island in San Francisco California. The train ride from Iowa to California was memorable and less than comfortable for her, "There were five of us and we were put in the train smoker.” She loved San Francisco and remembered fondly the entertainers that came with the United Service Organization (USO). Celebrities like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were some of them. Reba remembers of her service “I’m proud of my time in the service. I feel I released a man for sea duty – a small step to winning the war.” When the war ended in 1945, roughly 90,000 women were in the Navy WAVES program. λ