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- Description:
- Lillian Kivela talks about her service in the United States Army Nurse Corps during World War Two including, why she enlisted in June 1943, nurse's training, basic Army training, housing, uniforms, and her duties at the Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa. She says that she was sent to New Jersey in preparation for being shipped to Europe and describes shipboard conditions and being seasick throughout the entire ten-day voyage. She talks about being housed in an unheated Welsh resort hotel, marching, walking a mile to the mess hall for meals, serving in the orthopedic ward at a hospital in Headington, a suburd of Oxford and experiencing an influx of patients following D-Day and the subsequent fighting, and the early use of penicillin to control infection. In her off-time, Kivela says that she often visited London for the theater, rode her bicycle around Oxford, became acquainted with British families and even met the Queen Mother and boxer Joe Louis when they visited the hospital. Back in the States, after the war, she says that she had a difficult time adjusting to civilian life and finally came to Michigan State College to finish her degree in microbiology. Kivela is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Date Issued:
- 1986-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- In a speech to the Women's Overseas Service League's Orange County California unit, Mary E. Price talks about her more than thirty-years as a U.S. Navy nurse and her service in three wars. Price says that she started nursing school at the Georgetown University Hospital in 1933, joined the Naval Reserves in 1938 and was first sent to the Panama Canal Zone in early 1940. She talks about her pay and her hospital duties in the Canal Zone and the great anxiety everyone felt after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Price says that she was next assigned to the Bethesda Naval Hospital for thirteen months and later to a hospital ship for the rest of the war. After the war, Price says, she returned to school on the G.I. Bill, but was reactivated for duty in Japan and the Philippines for almost two years during the Korean War. She says that she went back to school after Korea, earned her graduate degree in hospital administration and taught Navy corpsman during the Vietnam War. Price says that her last assignment was at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in California. Recorded by Mary Braumer. Vivian Peterson introduces and concludes the recording.
- Date Issued:
- 1990-09-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Retired U.S. Army Colonel Helen P. Onyett, the first Chinese American woman ever promoted to Colonel in the United States Army, talks about her youth and education in Connecticut and her service in the Army Nurse Corps during World War II. Oynett says she was encouraged by her teachers to become a nurse and talks about her training at the Waterbury Hospital School of Nursing and her later decision to join the Army. Onyett also talks about serving in a tent hospital in North Africa, caring for the wounded, using commandeered German wool blankets to keep warm, living on Army rations, and working long and brutal shifts. After leaving the Army at end of the war, Onyett says that she later joined the reserves and finally retired from the Army in 1978. Onyett is interviewed by Ruth Stewart F.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-08T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Ninety year old U.S. Army and Air Force veteran Mary Templeton Gates talks about her childhood, education and service career. Gates says that her decision to go into nursing was the result of her family's long history in medicine and that after graduating from nursing school in 1938, she worked in Georgia and New York City before deciding to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps to become a flight nurse. Gates says that she turned down a teaching position to become chief nurse in a squadron sent to the Pacific during the war and describes her career in the Army through service in hospitals in Guam, Hawaii and Bermuda. After the war, Gates says that she left the Army, but later enlisted for duty in the Air Force at the start of the Korean War. She says that she became a Lieutenant Colonel around 1960 and finally retired shortly after. Templeton is interviewed by Ruth F. Stewart.
- Date Issued:
- 2004-04-07T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project