Ohio War Stories: Share Your Memories

Fresnan praised for WWII service

By Jeff St. John / The Fresno Bee

posted 03/02/08 23:48:58

It’s been 63 years since Ernestina Thoennes of Fresno wore the uniform of a Steno Yeoman 1st Class, and the stenography work she did for the U.S. Navy never earned her any medals.

But on Sunday, the 98-year-old veteran of the WAVES — quite likely the oldest surviving member of a group of women who broke new ground in the military during World War II — joined dignitaries and four generations of family members as she was honored for her service more than half a century ago.

“The WAVES weren’t a recognized group for a long time,” said Judy Jones, state of California chaplain for the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, one of the many groups that recognized Thoennes for her service at a ceremony at her Fresno retirement home. “This helps bring out exactly how important they were.”

Thoennes was one of thousands of women who volunteered to serve in the WAVES, an all-female U.S. Navy corps formed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drove the United States into World War II.

In the WAVES — Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service — women performed duties ranging from stenography and clerical duties to air traffic control and code-breaking. By the time Thoennes left the WAVES in 1945, the group included more than 80,000 women, among them the first female officers ever to serve in the U.S. Navy.

The pioneering work done by women in the WAVES, as well as the U.S. Army’s Women’s Army Corps, led the U.S. Congress to give women permanent status in the nation’s armed forces in 1948. Today, 212,000 women serve in the U.S. armed forces, about 15% of the nation’s 1.4 million in uniform, the U.S. Department of Defense reports.

“She just wanted to serve her country,” said Gloria Luzania, Thoennes’ niece.

Luzania, 75, was only a child living in Selma when her aunt, who graduated from Selma High School in 1929, joined the WAVES in 1943.

But Luzania remembers her aunt’s stories of traveling to New York City for training and then being shipped out to Key West, Fla.

“She said there was a lot of training, a lot of drilling,” during her first few months in the WAVES, Luzania said. But after Thoennes went to Key West to begin serving as a stenographer, the stories about her work for the Navy dried up, Luzania said.

“I don’t think she was allowed to say what she was doing,” Luzania recalled. “She just said it was regular office stenographer work, and that’s all we could get from her.”

While her aunt has told her stories of women she met in the service, as well as tales of the hurricane that swept over the Florida Keys during her time in the service, Thoennes has yet to reveal any details about the work she did, Luzania said.

But WAVES took part in many of the key struggles of World War II, including the Allies’ battle against the German U-boat, or submarine, “wolf packs” that sank hundreds of Allied transport and military ships through the early years of the war.

WAVES were among the personnel who worked on breaking the “Enigma” codes the German U-boat captains used to transmit information about their attacks on Allied convoys crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Hundreds of WAVES working with staff at the National Cash Register Co. in Dayton, Ohio, helped in the top-secret effort to design a machine capable of breaking the codes, for example.

Thoennes smiled as she received honors from Congress, Gov. Schwarzenegger, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, the Fresno City Council and Fresno Mayor Alan Autry.

“Thank you all for coming,” she told the crowd after joining them in singing “God Bless America.” “This is quite an honor.”

(full story can be found here)

And for more about the WAVES, you can listen to Mildred Weatherly Jones, who attended Hunter College, became part of the WAVES, and then was stationed at Sugar Camp in Dayton, Ohio.

Part of the ohiowarstories segments, where people talk about World War II experiences. This video was produced by the Think TV Network, WPTD, Dayton.

Here’s a bit of whimsy, the type of story that shows that amidst the chaos, little things meant a lot. The letter comes by way of Richard Drabik of Dayton, Ohio, through WPTD, ThinkTV.

This small event occurred only a day or so before the DE Deede was scheduled to steam out of Boston Harbor. My Dad, Robert Drabik, a life long Coca Cola fan, had determined to sneak aboard a case of Coke (of the five cent little bottles type) as his private cache for the trip to Pearl Harbor. He was Machinist Mate and thus was one of the few in charge of the large refrigerators the ship used for food preservation. Why, you ask, did he need a private cache of Coke? Didn’t the ship’s canteen carry an adequate supply? Well, yes, but they didn’t have the means to keep it cold. If you wanted a canteen Coke, you drank it warm or you went without. Dad was not going to go without!! Keep reading…