Six young women pose for the camera at the April 1944 Spring Formal Dance at the Seattle Naval Air Station, Seattle, Washington.
Ruth contributed to the World War II homefront effort in a variety of ways. She recalls the time that she and the other young women of her church were asked to travel to Westover Field in order to dance with soldiers who were stationed there for a day or a week before being sent to the war. Ruth explains, “I remember the first time going with a group…about fifty girls from Springfield, and … we were just as bashful as those young men were. They were being awful careful.”
Ruth served as a Red Cross Senior Aide during World War II.
The Public Counsel Division of the Office of Civilian Defense published this photogram in 1943.
This family has made a significant commitment to the World War II home front effort. At least four of its six members are volunteers for their local Civilian Defense council. The man to the left wears the insignia of the Air Raid Wardens. He has been trained, in part, to help during community-wide blackouts. Blackout regulations were non-negotiable, and, once accomplished, hid or eliminated lights of a city or town thereby decreasing its nighttime vulnerability. The mother’s armband may contain an illustration of a coffee cup within a white triangle. This is the insignia of the Emergency Food and Housing Corps. She would provide emergency welfare services to the homeless and, in the event of an emergency, to the general public. The two young men are members of the Civilian Defense Auxiliary Group. During blackout conditions or an air raid, they would have assisted with one of a number of emergency services.
In addition to dancing with soldiers at Westover Field, during the war Ruth joined the Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps and was a Senior Aide for the Red Cross.
Members of the Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps wore a cap insignia that featured an interlocking M and W between the letters D and C below an eagle inspired by the Great Seal of the United States.
Ruth Loving enlisted in the Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps on August 13th, 1943, and she served in that trained state militia through the end of World War II. Although members of the Corps remained civilians, Ruth felt her training to be as rigorous as military training. She remembers practicing military drills, as well as watching her “Ps and Qs” around Master Sergeant Stella P. Thomas. The Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps was active between 1941 and 1946. It was originally aligned with the senior military officer of Massachusetts and in 1944 with the Massachusetts State Guard. The Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps personnel provided medical, firefighting, air raid alert, transportation, canteen, and communications services during World War II. In the year following the activation of the Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps, the nation established the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) later renamed the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). During World War II, over 150,000 WACs supported the American military at home and overseas. Ruth Loving was one of four African Americans serving in her integrated detachment of the Massachusetts Women’s Defense Corps. The Women’s Army Corps (the WAC), in contrast, was segregated.
Women’s Army Corps Private First Class Johnnie Mae Welton works in the Fort Jackson Station Hospital in Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
Women such as Ruth Loving as part of the Massachusetts Defense Corps, and Johnnie Mae Welton as part of the Women’s Army Corps, performed numerous necessary services in support of the national defense during the Second World War. Ruth and all other members of the Massachusetts Defense Corps served in the canteen unit. Ruth also served in the “field of communication[s],” for which she learned Morse Code and was trained as a radio operator.