Ruby Kim Tape, 1939. Berkeley Heritage

The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) recruited and welcomed Asian American women.  In 1943, the WAC recruited fifty women of both Chinese and Japanese ancestry to train at the army’s linguistic school for military intelligence work in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. About half of these women were then assigned to Camp Ritchie, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., where they translated captured Japanese documents. 

A second group of Chinese American women joined a special unit of the Army’s “Air WACs,” also created in 1943.  Its first two recruits were Asian Americans, Californians Hazel Toy Nakashima and Jit Wong, and the group became known “the Madame Chiang Kai-shek Air WACs.”  Like other such units, they specialized in plane maintenance and support for the Army Air Corps.

Ruby Kim Tape enlisted early in the WACs.  Born in Marysville, California, where, despite the Chinese Exclusion Acts, a thriving Chinese American community resided, Tape organized China-relief projects on the Pacific Coast.  When the war began Ruby Tape left for basic training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and was assigned to the School of Army Administration in Conway, Arkansas, where she served during the war. Tape described her military life to the local newspaper:

"I am so happy that I could join the WAC, and I have enjoyed every minute of my training.  I wouldn’t trade places with...even Madame Chiang Kai-Shek... Uncle Sam surely knows how to keep us fit and trim.  I have never felt better in my life.  We derive a great many benefits from the WAC – and get paid besides.  I am very grateful to the USA." 56

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Helen Pon Onyett. Courtesy of Women In Military Service For America Memorial Foundation, Inc.

Other Chinese American women joined the oldest of the military units for women, the Army Nurse Corps. Helen Pon Onyett earned the Legion of Merit for the dangerous work of caring for soldiers under fire on the coast of North Africa.  The war’s effect on careers for young Chinese American women is especially clear in the case of nurses: when Congress passed legislation that created the Cadet Nurse Corps in 1943, more than 200 Chinese American women signed up.