The Radar Girls, aka the Women’s Air Raid Defense of the Hawaiian Islands
When I visited the Harold C. Deutsch World War II History Round Table in the Twin Cites back in March, one of the members introduced me to a women’s military auxiliary unit. I had never heard of the Women’s Air Raid Defense of the Hawaiian Islands (WARD). It was rabbit hole time!
WARD was formed soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Most of the existing staff of the Air Defense Command’s Information and Control Center (ICC) on Oahu were being reassigned throughout the Pacific. The Air Defense Commander, Brigadier General Howard C. Davidson decided the answer was to recruit women to staff the control center. He met with the first group of 20 women on December 26, the day after President Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing one hundred women to be recruited for a military auxiliary unit assigned to the 7th Fighter Wing of the UA Army Signal Corps. The young women had been through the trauma of Pearl Harbor and were eager to help defend their homes.
The first group of WARD recruits was inducted into the service on January 1st. Many of the volunteers were military spouses who had been scheduled to be evacuated to the mainland; Davidson was given the authority to remove those who wanted to become WARDs from the evacuation list. As the need for volunteers grew, women were recruited from the mainland, subject to FBI background checks and loyalty tests.
The WARDs’ job was to help defend the islands from further attack by coordinating and tracking airplane movements. They were given a ten-day crash course in in plotting airplane positions as they were reported from radar[1] units around the island. Training over, they went to work in a bomb-proof tunnel known as Lizard, which was located under Fort Shafter in Honolulu. Radar units throughout the islands, with the collectively code-name Oscar, sent reports to the ICC, code-named Rascal, giving the location, number, and speed of any aircraft that had been spotted. WARDs plotted the information on a huge table with a map of the islands superimposed with coded grids. Because the information was constantly changing, they marked the locations with colored markers topped with flags that noted identifying details, which could be moved as needed with plotting rake with similar to a shuffleboard stick.[2] (It was perhaps inevitable that they were given the nickname “Shuffleboard Pilots.” ) They compared the reported aircraft with the known flight schedules of military and civilian aviation in the islands. If they noted an anomaly, they passed it up the chain of command
ICC operated 24/7, with the “radar girls” working six hours on, six hours off, with a 32 hour break after eight days.
The Women’s Air Raid Defense unit was disbanded at the end of the war. Over the course of the war, more than 650 women had served as WARDs. Always a small, top secret unit, it was largely forgotten after the war. (Does this surprise anyone?)
[1] Radar was still experimental at the time. In fact it was so new that most people who used it knew the word was an acronym for Radio Air Detection and Ranging. Something I didn’t know until I got into this rabbit hole.
[2] The description of this work reminded me of the British Navy’s use of Wrens and a room-sized board game to created anti-U-boat tactics in the Battle of the Atlantic. More about that here.
Pure Invention
Those of you who also read my newsletter may remember that for the last few months I have been exploring the question of Japanese pop culture and the United States. It has been fascinating and frustrating. I know a lot more than I did when I began my quest in early February, but I still don’t feel like I have wrapped my brain around the particular question I’m trying to answer, or even the subject in general.
For anyone who might be interested in the subject, I recommend Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World[1] by Matt Alt, which is by far the best of the general books I’ve read, though not the most useful for my purposes[2]. As his title suggests, Alt argues that in the decades since World War II Japan’s “pop-cultural complex” has transformed “how we interact with the world, how we communicate with each other, how we spend time along with ourselves, how we shape our very identities.” I’m not sure I agree, but I found the discussion fascinating.
Alt sets the development of Japan’s pop culture creations solidly in the economic, cultural, and historical context in which they were created. He divides the book into two sections. The first deals with period from 1945 through the early 1980s, when Japan rebuilt itself from the literal ashes of World War II into an economic and technological powerhouse. The second deals with the so-called Lost Decades of the 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century that resulted from Japan’s economic crash in 1990. He tells the stories of innovators and designers[3] and the corporations they founded. He sets the rise of manga and anime in the context of Japan’s increasing disaffected youth culture, connects the development of the karaoke machine in a tradition of bar sing-a-longs, and demonstrates the unexpected (at least to me) influence of Japanese schoolgirls in pioneering the use of digital communications. At each step, he discusses the way in which individual creations made their way to the United States, and why they succeeded.
I will admit that I found the first section more interesting than the second, though that says more about me than Alt’s work. If I owned the book, I would have filled the margins with exclamation marks, the occasional interrobang,[4] and many questions and comments.[5] Instead I have stuffed my library copy with sticky tabs,[6] as is my wont.[7]
If you are interested in Japanese popular culture, or modern Japanese history, this one’s for you.
[1] The title refers to a quotation from Oscar Wilde: “In fact the whole of Japan is pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people…The Japanese people are, as I have said, simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.” The Decay of Lying. 1891.
[2] It’s amazing how often this turns out to be true when I’m in the initial stages of grappling with a question. It’s a puzzlement.
[3] None of whom I had heard of.
[4] A piece of punctuation that combines a question mark and an exclamation point into a single item:
It was invented in 1962 by American advertising executive Martin K. Speckter, who believed it would make a a cleaner page than ending a sentence with both pieces of punctuation when you want to write something like “Who ate my cheese?!”.
I’m not sure it’s actually a useful change, particularly since many computer fonts don’t support it. On the other hand, it seems to embody the appropriate response to much of the news today.
But I digress. As I so often do.
[5] Yes, I literally write history in the margins.
[6] I am fond of a brand produced by a company called Semikolon—appropriate given the above punctuation diversion.
[7] Pro tip: I also use 4 “ by 6” lined sticky notes to write thoughts in the moment and keep them with the relevant text. This is true even with books I own, because sometimes I have more to say than the margins allow.
In Celebration of Independent Bookstores
Here is my annual Public Service Announcement:
Today is Independent Bookstore Day in the United States, assuming you are reading this on the day it comes out. It’s a nationwide party for book lovers. Here in Chicago, local independent bookstores are once again hosting their bookstore crawl in celebration. I’m lucky enough to have three independent bookstores within walking distance: the fabulous Seminary Coop, its more commercial younger sister, 57th Street Books, and, just around the corner from our house) Call and Response Books, which specializes in books by and about people of color. In addition, Barnes and Noble just opened a store in the neighborhood. [1] So many choices. So little room on my bookshelves. [2]
A bookstore visit always leaves me feeling a little better. I browse. I scan the shelf readers—those cards on the shelves that tell you something about a book. I chat about books with the booksellers. I eavesdrop on other people’s bookish conversations. I check to see if my books are on the shelves. I check to see if my friends books are on the shelves. I sheepishly take photos to post on social media. I try to resist the temptation to buy books I don’t need. [3] I give in to temptation and buy some anyway, which I justify by reminding myself that it’s important to support independent bookstores.
If you’re lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you, stop by and show them some love. If not, you can adopt an independent bookstore somewhere else—most of them ship. Or you can buy your books through Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that supports independent bookstores.
[1] I must admit, I have mixed feelings about the new store. It is beautiful and well stocked, but I worry that my local indies will find it hard to compete.
[2] By which I mean no room on my bookshelves.
[3]I have enough unread books to keep me going for years, even without taking my habit of re-reading into account.