Oral history interview with Ruth Bonner , 2007
Ruth Bonner (Interviewee), Terry MacDonald (Interviewer), Wisconsin Veterans Museum
Ruth Bonner, a Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin native, discusses her World War II service in the Navy WAVES. After graduating from high school, Bonner relates that she attended Northwest Institute of Medical Technology to become a registered x-ray technologist. She explains that, due to the war, all wages were frozen in the hospital where she was working. Unable to receive a raise, she and two other trained co-workers walked off the job to enlist in the service. Bonner explains that ten days after her enlistment in March of 1943, she was sent to do basic training at Hunter College (New York) and, because she was already trained as an x-ray technologist, she was immediately sent to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. While there, she met Eleanor Roosevelt and describes her as very tall with big feet, but also as a delightful person who expressed her appreciation of the women who entered military service. Bonner relates that after about four months, she was made Pharmacist's Mate Second Class and from there was sent to the Naval Air Station in Miami, Florida to oversee the x-ray department. Bonner describes that she was the first women to work in this medical center, and that some of the men on base had a hard time accepting a woman in charge of the entire department. She also comments that the pilots that were there were the "cream of the crop" and she broke up with her fiancee with the reasoning, "I can't be in love if all these guys look so good to me." Bonner describes the extent of her work and says the worst part of her job was x-raying pilots who were killed in action. She comments upon recreational activities including sand beaches, renting a car and driving to Key West, going to the horse races and supper clubs with the big bands, and getting autographs from such big names as Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. She expresses surprise at discovering that there was so much syphilis in the South and tells that they had an entire hospital unit for syphilis cases. Bonner met and married an Aviation Medicine Corpsman at the Naval Air Station and describes receiving a pregnancy discharge in October 1944. She was in New York with her husband and heard that the war had ended in Europe. Bonner conveys mixed emotions saying it was "kind of a somber thing"--She was happy, but also couldn't believe it had really ended. They celebrated V-E Day, but her husband was still going to the Pacific, on the USS Repose, to pick up the injured and bring them back to San Francisco. Bonner returned home to Sturgeon Bay and lived with her parents while her daughter was a baby. Then, her mother took care of the child so she could go back to work. She reasons that people in Sturgeon Bay took her military service casually, but thought it was "kind of dumb" because Sturgeon Bay was building ships for the war effort. She says she felt like a displaced person and resented the young men who stayed in Sturgeon Bay in the shipyard because she didn't believe that they took the war seriously. After her husband was discharged, the couple stayed in Sturgeon Bay for a time and then moved to his native State of Mississippi where she attended the University of Mississippi under the GI Bill. Returning to Green Bay in 1967, she read about the All-Women's Post of the American Legion and joined it that day
Archival Material, English, 2007