A moment later, General Danielson and another man strode in and the conversations ceased. Daisy felt jittery but also excited to finally learn what was in store.
Danielson made it a point to slowly look around, as though memorizing every face in the room. “As you already know, we are here to take over for the men who are needed on the front lines. Each and every one of you is going to be doing some of the most important work any woman in this nation has ever done. But before we go any further, I need you all to take an oath of secrecy. What you’ll be learning is highly confidential and should it fall into the wrong hands, devastating. This means no talking about what you do outside of this room. Not even to family. You are to tell anyone who asks that you are simply doing clerical work. Period.”
A lady in the front raised her hand. “Even our husbands?”
“Even your husbands. Does anyone have a problem with that?” he said.
No one uttered a word.
“Good, I thought so. As a few of you already know, you will be working in the Air Defense Command Center at Fort Shafter. For now, we’re calling it the Women’s Air Defense. You will be a detachment of Company A, Signal Aircraft Warning Regiment, Special by Executive Order 9063. This here is Major Hochman. He’ll be training you today on the plotting board.”
He gestured to the man next to him and then toward the large round table in the center of the room, with a map of the Hawaiian Islands painted across its surface. Daisy had been wondering about it and how it played into their work. So this was a plotting board. But what exactly were they plotting?
Major Hochman, a redhead with a smattering of freckles, greeted them in a Southern lilt, “Thank y’all for being here. I imagine you have a lot of questions, so bear with me. We’re going to get you up to speed on everything you never knew you needed to know about radar and keeping our skies and waters safe.” He laughed at himself. “That was a mouthful. But in all seriousness, your being here is essential to the war effort, so don’t you forget that.”
Being acknowledged as essential was a new feeling for Daisy. She liked this man. He was a different breed from many of the men she worked with, who saw her more as an ancillary being rather than of central importance. And Mr. Montgomery himself would not be caught dead calling her essential.
He went on, “You’ll be learning to take radar readings and keep close tabs on every moving object out there. Not even a mosquito is going to get past us this time. And don’t you worry, we know that none of you have experience with radar. Hell, we are still learning about it ourselves.”
That got a few sighs of relief. He then called on three women in the front row to stand. “Now, a few procedural things to get out of the way. These are your supervisors, Joyce Bird, Tippy Sondstrom and Vivian DuPont. They’ve had some forward training and will be assisting as you learn. Today they’ll be fitting you for your uniforms.”
Fluff said aloud what Daisy was thinking. “Why would they fit us before even testing us?”
“It seems backward,” Daisy said.
Lei shrugged. “I doubt they have a bunch of dresses lying around. Maybe they need time to sew them? They’re thinking ahead, at least.”
“Whatever the reason, I’m glad they have faith in us,” Daisy said.
The women were dressed sharply in navy blue dresses. As far as uniforms went, they looked like something Daisy wouldn’t mind wearing. They had plenty of pockets and a nice fitted waist. Not a whole lot of extra material and frills. There were all shapes and sizes here, though Daisy could already tell she was the tallest.
“You’re like a giraffe,” Tippy said cheerfully, as she wrapped a tape measure around Daisy’s bust, at her eye level.
Daisy gave her a wide smile and said, “And you’re like a pony.”
That shut her up fast. People always commented on Daisy’s height, as if they had a God-given right. But you never heard anyone saying, Why, look how short you are!
Next, they posed for photos for their identification badges. “You will wear your badge at all times while on duty, which commences now,” said General Danielson.
He then handed out civil service applications and pens. “You ladies will be considered officers.”
“How can we be officers without any military training?” a brunette with a neat bob asked.
Hochman glanced over at Danielson, who said, “Mainly for your safety. If captured by the enemy, they will have to treat you according to international prisoner of war standards.”
A few murmurs rose.
Hochman held his hand up. “Not that we expect that to happen. What we’re doing here will see to it. Next time those Japs come our way, we’ll be waiting. This new technology is going to help us win this war, my friends.”
He gave them time to fill out their applications.
What about the test? None of this mattered unless she could pass the test. Her palms began to heat up.
Instead of raising her hand, she asked Lei, “Do you know anything about this intelligence test they’re supposed to give us?”
“I know we have to pass an Intelligence background check, and an army physical. But no one said anything about a test.”
“Wait a minute, there’s no test?”
“These men are desperate for help, so I doubt it.”
Daisy could hardly believe her good fortune, but it sounded too good to be true. She raised her hand. “Excuse me, sir. Will we be taking an intelligence test?”
Everyone in the room, including Peg and Thelma Bird—whom Daisy had seen only in newspaper photographs—turned around to look at her. Peg whispered something to Thelma and they both laughed. Thelma was a curvy blonde who looked like she belonged in Hollywood. Her polka-dotted dress bunched around her bust and her rear end in a way that Daisy’s never would.
“You’ll be taking an exam tomorrow. But don’t you worry, we will be training y’all in everything you need to know. Some of you may find that you’re naturals at the plotting and filtering, and those who aren’t, well, there’s more than enough work to go around.”
Daisy could have sworn she heard Peg say, “Good luck.”
Her cheeks burned and that old familiar feeling of failure lodged in her throat.
They wasted no time getting down to business, and Major Hochman arranged the women around the table alphabetically. There were twenty in all and they went around and introduced themselves, beginning with Jo Ann Abramson from Nu‘uanu, who’d hid out in her basement with her dog, Lucy, for two days before her husband finally returned, to Betty Yates from Louisiana, who lived in the navy yard. Some of the women were married to prominent businessmen, a few were military wives whose husbands had recently been deployed, and others were students at the University of Hawai‘i, like Fluff.
Betty ended the round of introductions by saying, “As soon as Indochina was seized, my husband, Chuck, and I knew this was coming. We got ready for it as best we could, collecting food and blankets, even whiskey. But I’ll tell you what. Nothing could have prepared me for seeing what I’ve seen in the past two weeks. That first day I followed a truck full of bodies stacked like logs. They had been burned to a crisp and smeared in oil. None of these boys deserved such a horrific death, and I will do whatever is asked of me to prevent another attack like this on our soil.” Tears streamed down her face.
Daisy fought back a sob. She had been spared from seeing much of the death and destruction, but that raw terror of the dogfight overhead, and of being within a stone’s throw of the fiery crash, had left her with a heavy feeling of unease that pressed in from all sides when she least expected it.
A few of the other women nodded and Libby Fontaine added, “A bomb went right through my neighbor’s roof, killing their son and taking the arm of their eleven-year-old daughter. This was in Mˉanoa, mind you, far from any military bases. You bet I will fight however I can.”
“M
e, too! I’m a crack shot with a rifle and I’ll take down as many of those bastards as I can,” said Rita with fire in her eyes.
The room buzzed. Their determination was catching and Daisy felt the stirrings of something like hope. These women meant business. The lives of their families were at stake. Major Hochman looked nervous to interrupt, but did so anyway. “Ladies, I like your gusto, but we need to get started. There’s a whole lotta information to impart.”
It took a little while, but the group settled.
“Now, how many of you know anything at all about radar, or have even heard of it?” he asked.
A few women raised their hands tentatively. Daisy was one of them. She had her fascination with Amelia Earhart to thank for that. Last year, she had hung on every word about how the Brits defeated the Luftwaffe by using this fancy new technology. They had known the Germans were coming, and that changed the course of everything. She also knew that the Hawker Hurricane and Spitfire took down a large number of Heinkels and Messerschmitts, but now was not the time to announce that.
Hochman continued. “For those of you who don’t know, RADAR stands for radio detection and ranging. This is revolutionary, gals. Using radio waves, we can detect aircraft in the sky and ships on the horizon and in general any moving object within a certain range. I’ll get into the technical details soon, but on O‘ahu alone, we have six stations set up around the island. These stations are sending us information and you are going to be using it to track any and all incoming aircraft.”
Thelma raised her hand. “What about ships? Will we be tracking ships, too? Seeing as it was the ships that brought the planes that attacked us.” She seemed very pleased with herself for asking such a smart question. Daisy knew it was unreasonable and premature, but she did not like the woman one bit.
“Our radar can detect ships and planes, both.” Just then, a tall, dark-haired officer came in and was introduced as Captain Tet Burgess, the man responsible for getting all the radar stations up and running on the island in record time. “He’ll be helping me get y’all oriented today.”
Captain Burgess was a bit standoffish and gave off a threatened scent. Maybe it was the ratio of women to men in the room. Daisy had a hard time focusing on anything other than his immense, hawk-like nose. Together, the two men went back and forth rattling off information about the radar stations and their locations—Kawailoa, Opana, Ka‘a‘awa, Koko Head, Wai‘anae and Fort Shafter, which would also be headquarters. They pointed these places out on the giant map on the table, which was overlaid with a large grid.
“The numbers on this vertical axis are your corridors and the coded names there on the horizontal axis are your latitude. When a plane is picked up by one of our receiving units, they will call it in and you will be placing an arrow on the table to mark its location using one of these,” Burgess said.
He picked up a metal pole with a rubber tip at the end of it. It reminded Daisy of a shuffleboard stick, not that she ever played, but she watched the men at the stables now and then. Mr. Montgomery loved shuffleboard, which meant everyone had to.
“Now, a few of you are sitting where there’s a headset. You ladies will go first. Who has one?”
Daisy looked down. Just her luck, there on the edge of the table was a headset with a mic attached, the kind Mrs. Freitas, the telephone operator, wore. “I do,” she said reluctantly.
“Good. Now, what’s your name?” he asked.
“Daisy Wilder, sir.”
“Miss Wilder, you will practice receiving a radio reading from an Oscar—which is code for the radar fellas at our stations—and you will be plotting it.”
“Do we have a code name?” Daisy asked.
Major Hochman, who was leaning against a pillar, said, “You ladies are Rascals. Code name, that is.”
Some of the women giggled. Peg and Thelma exchanged looks. “Perfect,” Thelma said.
Thelma was the kind of woman who had probably never gone without. The kind who grew up with a mom and a dad, most likely a houseful of siblings, with dogs and horses and peacocks running loose on their beachfront estate. Girls like that could afford to be rascals.
Hochman emphasized. “Again, this stays in the room. Everything stays in the room. I know that women like to talk, but these are different times.”
Assent came from all corners of the room.
“Of course!”
“Our lips are sealed.”
“Never.”
Daisy surveyed the table. Running north to south, the areas between the gridlines were marked with a number, east to west a name. Martha, Nathan, Omega and so on. She wondered how they arrived at their code words. Any location in the whole island chain could be easily narrowed down to a position within the grid. She looked for her house in Waialua. It fell in the tiny square of 12 Martha, and here in Honolulu, they were 16 Nathan. Maybe she could do this after all.
“So here are the very basics. You will get a call from an Oscar telling you that an aircraft has been picked up, and its location.” He held up a small plastic green arrow. “This goes where the coordinates are. Green means you received the reading within five minutes. You’ll change the arrow to yellow at ten minutes and red at fifteen. Shall we try it?”
The phone in front of Daisy’s lap rang, causing her to jump. “Hello?” she said into the receiver.
The other women were watching her intently, as if their lives depended on what she did next. She had never been a big fan of speaking on the telephone, but that would have to change.
A deep voice said, “Rascal, this is Oscar at Koko Head. We have a bogey at 12 Clementine. Visual says it is a P-40 Warhawk, bearing southwest. Over.”
When Daisy went to speak, nothing came out. Her mind had gone dry.
“Do you read me, Rascal?” he said.
She looked to Hochman, who nodded encouragingly. How on earth was she supposed to respond? When her voice finally returned, she said, “Thank you, Oscar. Will that be all?”
Where had that come from? Was she taking lunch orders?
“Affirmative. Oscar out.”
She set a green arrow on the map and pushed it out with a poker to the grid that matched 12 Clementine, fiddling with it until it pointed southwest. Her hand shook slightly. “Here you go.”
Burgess sighed, as though she was a lost cause. “Remember to answer with, ‘Army, go ahead, please.’”
Give me a break, she wanted to say. “Yes, sir.”
“And if the response does not begin with the word flash, then you respond, ‘You have been connected with the wrong number. Please hang up and make your call again.’”
Hochman then took over. “Next we need to see if we can identify the aircraft. You will tell your shift supervisor, who will give the info to Major Oscar. Major Oscar oversees the whole room and he—or she—will consult with liaisons from the navy, marines, army and everyone else who has planes flying in these islands. If it can’t be positively identified, we sound the air-raid alarm and send out the fighters. Got that?”
Thelma went next, and didn’t fare much better. She answered fine, but kept saying the names and numbers backward. And when it came to Fluff’s turn, she threw in a little chitchat with the Oscar, to which Burgess said, “Business only.”
Afterward, Fluff looked around and said, “We’re off to a great start!” and Daisy realized she was serious.
And so it continued. More calls and plotting and practicing moving the pips. A pip consisted of a five-sided block marked with altitudes, a square block that indicated the aircraft type, and a green-and-red arrow on top that signaled whether the plane in question had been seen or heard, or both. They learned the exact locations of the radar stations, and about corridors where planes would likely be coming from, though that was tricky to predict. They were told that, with experience, many of them would move up in the ranks to a position known as filterer. Da
isy had no idea what a filterer was, but she decided then and there that she wanted to become one.
By the time afternoon rolled around, Daisy’s brain hurt from such intense concentration. That and being around so many people at once. Everyone was on their best behavior, but personalities were squeaking through. There was the one girl who could not refrain from raising her hand and asking question after question. Daisy wanted to strap her arm to the table. Another insisted on telling whoever had the poker stick where to place the arrow. She simply could not stand to watch anyone fumble. And then there was Thelma, who thought the whole room ought to know every minute detail of her life. That her Chihuahuas were named Snap, Crackle and Pop; that she was allergic to shellfish and had been covered in hives on the morning Pearl Harbor had been bombed; and especially that Walker Montgomery was soon to be her man.
Just before leaving, they were issued gas masks and helmets that should be carried with them and stored carefully while at work. The masks were uncomfortable contraptions that strapped onto your face and had a can dangling beneath them. Just looking at them made Daisy short of breath. They were also given badges—number twenty-two for Daisy—and an armband that said noncombatant.
General Danielson told them as they walked out the door, “Rest up, eat a healthy breakfast and be ready to take the test at 1000 hours.”
6
THE DRIVER
Outside the Palace, Daisy had to squint into the afternoon sun, which was blinding after being in a darkened room much of the day. The light slanted through a banyan tree and a troupe of mynah birds screeched and squawked, oblivious to the fact that their home was now a war-torn state. She wondered how many birds and fish and animals had been casualties of the attack. Nobody mentioned those in the papers.
Walker was waiting out front right where he had dropped them. He was staring straight ahead and unaware of all the women streaming around the car. Daisy trailed behind Thelma and Peg, enjoying the warm feeling of fresh air on her skin. When they reached the car, Peg went around to the passenger side, Daisy opened the back door and Thelma said, “Walker?”
Radar Girls Page 4
