The mobilization of American women necessitated by the Korean War (1950-1953). In June 1950, when the Korean War began, 22,000 women were serving in the U.S. armed forces as a result of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act of 1948. Of this number, nurses comprised 7,000. The remainder served in the ranks of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES; or Navy Women’s Reserve), Women Marines, and Women in the Air Force (WAF). As the U.S. government moved more men to the front, women again assumed vacated clerical and administrative, engineering, and technical positions.
Before recruiting began in earnest, 1,600 ser-vicewomen of the Organized Reserve Corps (which in 1952 became known as the U.S. Army Reserve) returned to the Army Nurse Corps, Women’s Medical Specialist Corps, and the WAC. A total of 640 military nurses served in Korea (540 from the army, 50 from the navy, and 50 from the air force). Seventy percent of the army nurses were attached to Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) Units. In the United States, 120,000 military servicewomen served during the war, primarily as clerks and administrators.
Korean War (1950-1953)
American Army Nurses
"Army nurses were the first American women to be dispatched with the Armed Forces to the combat zone. A unit assigned to a mobile surgical hospital arrived here July 5 (1950), less than 10 days after hostilities began. Now with more than 300 nurses in the combat zone, they are providing expert surgical and bedside care in every hospital to which wounded are evacuated."
—John P Wooden, “Background on Army Nurses in Korea,”
Department of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General,
Technical Information Office, February 12, 1951, Record Group 112,
Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Medical Department (AMEDD) Records 1947–1961,
HD 211 (Nurses) Korea, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
"As in the case of other early acute military shortages, we didn’t have nearly enough nurses to go around. Anesthetists, like 1st Lieutenant Katherine Wilson, Wanesboroo, Va., were obliged to serve as many as six operating tables simultaneously and at times worked until they themselves were nearly anesthetized by the fumes." —SFC Doug Du Bois, “Angels of Mercy,” Stars and Stripes, October 14, 1950.
Margaret Zane’s Notebook
Zane, assistant chief nurse of the first MASH unit, had served in Europe during World War II and was then assistant operating room supervisor at the Walter Reed Hospital, Washington, D.C. In 1950, she was transferred overseas, assigned to a hospital in Korea.
" . . . based on World War II experience, [n]inety percent of fatal casualties occurred on the front line because the critically wounded could not receive immediate surgical treatment. Therefore it seemed logical to set up a hospital unit mobile enough to render this service on division level reasonably safe from the fighting. Some authorities debated sending female nurses with this type of unit on the grounds that it was a rough and rugged existence and the girls couldn’t take it."
October 1950
"They ran into their first brush with death at the hands of the enemy when their unit, attached to the 7th Division, was ordered to move to Pusan on October 7 by convoy. Twice during the 326-mile trip over rugged mountain roadways, the motorcade was attacked by North Koreans, who had been bypassed by American troops. At 3 a.m. in the pitch dark of a single-file mountain pass, a battalion of Reds opened up on the 1,000-yard-long line of vehicles composed of medics, signalmen and other service troops. The nurses scrambled into a roadside ditch, while the battle flared all about them. . . . All through the night they huddled together for warmth in the cold roadside pit as machine guns and rifles hammered. Tracers penciled lines in the night overhead and ricochets screamed from hillside rock. The siege lasted nearly 12 hours and then a mile further [the siege] reoccurred."
—Tom A. Hamrick,
“The Lucky 13: Army Nurses in Korea Bring Medical Aid and Morale to Frontlines,”
Pacific Stars and Stripes, clipping in Zane’s notebook.
November 1951
"Our hospital was the last to evacuate Hungnan. It was not a happy farewell when the soldiers escorted us to the beach. Just before our LCM pulled away, one dewy-eyed youth cried out, ‘Everything seemed all right as long as the nurses were here.’"
—Captain Margaret Zane (later Fleming), Report on Nursing Aspects in Korea,
Army Nurse Corps, November 1951, Collection no. 1925, Margaret (Zane) Fleming Collection,
Gift of Frances Zane, Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, Inc.
American Teacher Working for the U.S. Air Force
" . . . working in Korea with the fellows fighting there proved to be the ultimate experience of my lifetime. When I first arrived at Air Base K-13, four or five USO girls were also assigned there but, within 6 weeks, they were removed. . . . Then I was the only woman on a base of 5,000 men."
—Ann B. Zoss (later Roberts), teacher in the GED-Educational Center,
as told to Kathleen Vander-Boom, March 26, 2000,
Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation Archives.
In 1950, 629 WAC personnel served in the Far East Command (FEC) Headquarters. By 1951 their numbers had increased to 2,600. Women were able to rise in the ranks and to move into arenas formerly occupied only by men. Women were ward masters in military hospitals in Japan and senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) in motor pools, mess halls, and post offices. Women could be found in administration, in communications, and in intelligence. They worked as censors, interpreters, draftsmen, weather personnel, and even aides-decamp.
The Army Nurse Corps (ANC) numbered 3,450 in 1950. By 1951 it had grown to 5,397 women, the majority of these being World War II veterans. Five hundred and forty nurses volunteered to serve in Korea. One, Captain Viola McConnell of the U.S. Military Advisory Group/Republic of Korea (USMAG/ROK), assisted in the evacuation of 700 Americans from Seoul. For her actions, McConnell received a Bronze Star and the Oak Leaf Cluster.
Four days after U.S. troops joined United Nations forces, 57 female nurses arrived in Korea. Twelve army nurses in the first MASH unit moved out on July 8, 1950, to the front line at Taejon. One month later, over 100 army nurses were stationed near the front lines within Korea, positions they would occupy throughout the war. Three African American nurses served in Korea: Lt. Martha E. Cleveland and Lt. Nancy Greene Peace were posted at the 11th Evacuation Hospital, and Lt. Evelyn Decker served with the 8055th MASH. Still others served in hospitals in Japan and Hawaii.
MASH nurses also adopted the protective clothing of the male soldiers for whom they were caring. Combat boots, fatigues, and steel helmets replaced more traditional nursing uniforms, and the women lived in tents like other military personnel. Amazingly, despite their proximity to battles, not a single army nurse died in Korea.
At the beginning of the war, the navy’s WAVES hoped to enlist 1,000 officers and 10,000 servicewomen in their ranks. That initial goal was not met. To increase their numbers, Captain Joy Bright Hancock implemented a voluntary recall. When that failed to provide the desired numbers, an involuntary recall followed. It was the first time in American history that women, as well as their male counterparts, were called up, voluntarily or not. To further add to the ranks, unreasonable deterrents were eliminated. The ban against married women serving was dropped; additionally, the age of enlistment was lowered to eighteen, following the successful 1948 model of the army and air force. As a result, WAVES numbers went from 3,239 in 1950 to a high of 9,466 in November 1952.
Recruited WAVES were sent to a six-week training program, initially held at the Great Lakes Training Center; in October 1951, the program moved to the Naval Training Center in Bainbridge, Maryland. Petty officer leadership schools were established at San Diego and Bain-bridge, Georgia, in 1953, while officer candidates trained at Officer Indoctrination Unit (W) at Newport, Rhode Island. Finally, a Reserve Officer Candidate (ROC) Program began at the Great Lakes Training Center.
The Navy Nurse Corps consisted of 1,921 women when the Korean War broke out in June 1950. It peaked at 3,405 in November 1951, but only 2,600 remained at the end of the war. The growth included an involuntary recall of 926 navy nurses. The Navy Nurse Corps also recruited and commissioned civilian nurses. Captain Winnie Gibson oversaw the Nurse Corps, which served in 126 stations in the United States; at 25 foreign stations; on 8 Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS) ships; in 3 MSTS ports; in 15 civilian schools; and on 3 hospital ships. In fact, thirty-five percent of the U.S. battle casualties from the Korean War were evacuated directly to the USS Consolation, USS Haven, and USS Repose. In August 1950, a fourth ship, the USS Benevolence, was accidentally rammed and sank before leaving port. One nurse died as a result.
The women’s auxiliary unit of the U.S. Coast Guard, the SPARs (Semper Paratus—Always Ready), had been demobilized in 1946. The unit began recruiting again in late 1949, and by 1950 200 former SPARs had voluntarily reenlisted. They served mostly in U.S. territory. The Air Force Nurse Corps was involved in the evacuation of approximately 350,000 patients during the course of the war. Within the marines, many of the 2,787 women in the corps earned entry to a broader range of occupational specialties than did those in other branches of military service.
In all, the navy lost twelve nurses as well as eighteen enlisted WAVES. Eleven navy nurses were killed when their plane crashed on takeoff from Kwaejon Island, and another one died as a result of the sinking of the USS Benevolence. The deaths of the WAVES were also not combat related. Three nurses received the Bronze Star, six the Commendation Ribbon, and ninety the Navy Unit Commendation. In addition, U.S. Army Major Genevieve Smith died in a plane crash in transit to her post as chief nurse in Korea. Three air force nurses also died.
Prior to 1950 American women had a limited presence in Korea, primarily as missionaries. During the war, women were captured, marched, and treated as brutally as their male soldier counterparts. Nellie Dyer from North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Helen Rosser, from Atlanta, Georgia, were held as POWs along with members of the 24th Infantry Division.
While most servicewomen were confined to traditional or "female" jobs, the Korean War afforded a unique opportunity for a few civilian women to break the mold. Anna Rosenberg had been a political consultant and labor relations expert, working for President Roosevelt as his personal observer during World War II. Building on her career as one of the first women to hold various directorial posts in the U.S. government, Rosenberg was appointed assistant secretary of defense for manpower and personnel in 1950. During her tenure she oversaw all defense department policies and created the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DA-COWITS), a committee of fifty professional women (chaired by Mary Lord) that aggressively recruited women for military service. Rosenberg, a lifelong civil rights and women’s suffrage advocate, also effectively integrated formerly segregated African American and white troops into cohesive combat units. For her service, Anna Rosenberg received the Department of Defense’s Exceptional Civilian Award in 1953.
The war provided unique opportunities for both U.S. civilian women and women in the military, who were now an integral part of the armed forces. Marguerite "Maggie" Higgins, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, had the distinction of being the only female war correspondent during the Korean War. Margaret Bourke-White, a photographer with World War II experience, was sent by Life magazine in the spring of 1951 to photograph bomber planes belonging to the Strategic Air Command in Korea. Bourke-White was the first woman to fly in a B-47 jet, and she subsequently accompanied South Korean police as they moved against guerrilla fighters.
