Children of Immigrants

After Pearl Harbor

Navy Boot Camp

Naval Medical Center San Diego

Training and Life on Base

We Are All the Same

War's End and Postwar Careers

Thoughts on the War

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Amelia Taylor was born in December 1923 in Santa Monica, California. She grew up there during the Great Depression. There were nine in her family and they were very poor. Her parents came from Mexico, but all the children were born in Santa Monica. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] was the savior of the people and her father hung his picture next to one of Jesus. Her father worked for the WPA [Annotator's Note: Works Progress Administration, later renamed Works Projects Administration] and her mother worked in a sewing factory making clothes for children. Her brothers went to work in a program clearing brush in the mountains [Annotator's Note: likely the Civilian Conservation Corps or CCC]. They would send their pay home. Taylor worked in a flower shop after school. The boys had paper routes and cut lawns. They all worked together. The boys would go to trade schools in the afternoon. Taylor loved school. She remembers her teacher's name and the songs they sang. They had three classes in one room. Her parents did not speak English. Teachers would come to their homes and see that their parents could not help them with their studies. A librarian lived around the corner and helped them a lot. In the fifth grade, there was a contest to say the Gettysburg Address [Annotator's Note: speech by Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, on 19 November 1863]. It came down to her and a Jewish boy. She won and he did not speak to her again until they got to high school, when he admitted she said it better than he did. She and her siblings had to learn English in school. Sometimes her teachers would have her help clean their houses because they knew she was very poor.

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Amelia Taylor discussed the developments of the war while she was in high school. It was very real to them. They covered their windows at night because they lived close to the shore. There were submarines close, but they did not know that at the time. She was at home getting ready to go to church when she heard the news on the radio [Annotator's Note: of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Her brothers were service age. Four of them volunteered. The fifth brother was drafted but did not want to go. He just knew he was not going to come back. He was killed in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]. He drove a half-track [Annotator's Note: M3 half-track; a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] and they did not have protection for the drivers. The others returned. Taylor wanted to join, but her mother would not let her. One brother returned on leave, and she told him how badly she wanted to serve. Her mother thought that the girls were used for the boys. She finally let her join. Taylor had seen advertising about the WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women’s Reserve]. She liked the uniforms. She had to be an American citizen. After boot camp, she wanted to work at the White House [Annotator's Note: United States President's home in Washington, D.C.], but because her parents had been born in Mexico, they would not allow her. She went to Bethesda, Maryland [Annotator's Note: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center] to get medical training then she was stationed at the Naval Hospital in San Diego [Annotator's Note: Naval Medical Center San Diego, California] which allowed her to go home to Santa Monica [Annotator's Note: Santa Monica, California] when she wanted to. She had filled out an application to get in. After she got out of the service, she got married and went to work for General Dynamics [Annotator's Note: General Dynamics Corporation]. She was hired on the spot because she had been in the Navy and was cleared for Top Secret. That is how much things had changed. She worked for them for 31 years and retired from there.

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Amelia Taylor's father signed for her at the recruiting station [Annotator's Note: to join the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES)]. She had never seen her birth certificate. They had not given her a name when she was born because they did not expect a girl. The midwife wrote "female Diaz" instead of a name. She had to go get it changed. She went to boot camp by train from Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California]. They were told to get in alphabetical order. A girl in line gave her the nickname, "Millie". They became good friends and they were both assigned to San Diego [Annotator's Note: Naval Medical Center in San Diego, California]. Boot camp was a ladies outfit. They went to a store the first day with money to buy underwear. The other girl branches had to wear military issue underwear. They were at Hunter College [Annotator's Note: New York, New York], which was beautiful. They had rooms with six girls to each. They would get breakfast, march, and do exercises. They did not do the other things like the Army and Marine girls did. They had white glove inspections on Saturday mornings. It was not difficult for her. Some of the girls had never cleaned a bathroom before. Boot camp was easy. They had classes on Navy history, and different jobs for vocations. She always thought she would like to be in the medical field. She is compassionate. She had been a caretaker with her brothers and sisters.

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[Annotator's Note: Amelia Taylor went through Navy boot camp at Hunter College in New York, New York then went into the medical field in San Diego, California.] At the hospital they worked with sick patients. It was a terrifying experience. Some of the patients who came from the South Pacific were burned. Those were the worst kind of cases. They were assigned certain wards to work on. The burn wards were the saddest. The medics did not have what they needed to do quick care [Annotator's Note: in the combat zones]. The odor was bad. Sometimes she would sit and write letters for them. San Diego and San Francisco [Annotator's Note: Naval Hospitals, California] took in most of the wounded from the Pacific. They would come in on the ships. A woman was not allowed aboard a warship because it was bad luck. They would go in the ambulances and they would wait for the patients there for transport to the hospital. Seeing her first wounded soldier, she could not believe that it could have happened. After a while you get used to it, but at first it was hard. She would go home at night and question a lot of things. The first ones she saw were burn wounds. She later worked in other wards. They had entertainment come in and had an outdoor theater too. Taylor got to be one of the hostesses for them, so she got to see a lot. About six of them would go sell War Bonds. Six officers and six girls. It was fun and people were very generous. The first night Taylor went home, she cried and cried [Annotator's Note: her first day on the job at a US Naval Hospital]. When she saw those young boys with their faces scorched, it was heartbreaking. They begin to make them feel better, they got used to it. Some of them had to stay there two to three years to get their skin grafts. There were orthopedic wards, rehab wards, throat injuries, eye injuries; all kinds. Taylor was bothered a lot by the throat ward. Some of them would never be able to talk again. Some would lose their voice boxes.

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Amelia Taylor had trained at Bethesda [Annotator's Note: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland]. Medical training there was quick. They learned how to clean wounds, the kinds of bandages and bandaging. They did not give medications. They learned to give sponge baths. Some had to be helped totally and others could do some things for themselves. She was scared at first, but the RNs [Annotator's Note: Registered Nurse] were helpful and would not scold them. Most of it was hands-on learning. School was mostly reading. At the hospital, they had to learn quickly. The RNs were older and had been to college. Some of the doctors were young and some were really old. Some of them were wounded, having been in the war too. The Navy took over Balboa Park in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California] and the whole park was full of wounded people. She had duty there and at the main hospital. She had a barracks near the hospital. The men's barracks were on the opposite side. They did not have clothes dryers. Sometimes the men would do panty raids and take their underwear off the clotheslines. The Marines were good to them. They were their guards, and some were good-looking. The Marines would drive them to their barracks at night. They were not supposed to out with officers, but sometimes they did. She worked in the officer's quarters for a time. They were recuperating before going back to duty. One was a tall, good-looking guy from North Carolina. She found out she had once taken care of his grandmother in Santa Monica [Annotator's Note: Santa Monica, California].

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Some of the wounded would talk to Amelia Taylor about their experiences, but some did not want to. They told her that they are patriotic, but they are really out there for each other. Some thought it was exciting and some were just sad. She did not treat anybody that suffered from shell-shock. She does not remember hearing as much about it as she does now. She thinks boys had to grow up sooner and become men then than they do now. A lot of them are immature and go in thinking it is going to be fun and then find out war is ugly. She did not have strong feelings about the Japanese at the time. She knew she was not supposed to like them. It was sad when they all disappeared and were taken away to camps [Annotator's Note: Japanese-Americans were taken to internment camps]. Taylor's son was killed in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War]. A couple of months afterwards, she was in the grocery store and saw a woman who asked her if she hated the Vietnamese. She told the woman that she knew that somewhere there was a Vietnamese mother weeping too. She cannot feel ugly about them. We bleed the same, we cry the same, we are all the same.

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At San Diego [Annotator's Note: Naval Medical Center San Diego, California], Amelia Taylor was out shopping when she heard the news of war's end. People were hugging and kissing. She will never forget it. It was like Christmas, birthdays, all rolled into one. Everybody loved everybody. Everybody was kissing everybody. They did not know them, and they did not care. Taylor looked forward to discharge. She stayed a month later to process out. After she went home, she stayed in the medical field and worked part-time. She got married about nine months later to someone she knew before he left for the war. He was stationed in Hawaii. She had gotten engaged to someone else, but broke off her engagement when she saw him again. She was a housewife for about five years. When her child went to school, General Dynamics [Annotator's Note: General Dynamics Corporation] had opened a plant in Pomona near where they lived. They needed a washing machine, so she wanted a job. She was hired on the spot because they needed a Top Secret clerk to run documentation. She worked there for 31 years and retired early. She then went to work for her church for 15 more years as a bilingual receptionist.

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The day the war was over is the most memorable for Amelia Taylor. She wanted to serve because her brothers were serving, and she wanted to go someplace she had never been. She is proud of her brothers and what they all did. Her father studied hard to learn English to become a citizen. She went with her father to be sworn in. He was having trouble with one of the questions when the judge asked him how many of his children had been in the service. He answered six and the judge smiled and told him he did not need to take the test. World War 2 made her more concerned, more compassionate, more loyal. She loves her country and her father taught her that this is her country. She appreciates things more, she's more grateful. She is very proud that she served her country. She is grateful that she lives here and that her parents came here. She is sad she lost her son [Annotator's Note:in the Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War]. She thinks America admires the ones who served. She is proud of the way the country all worked together. All of us were part of it. These other wars we just hear about. Children from school should visit [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and learn that someone did this for them. Only by seeing it, can they be impressed. She is proud that her family is a part of it. One was lost, but lots of mothers lose their sons. They are your children for a while, and then they have to go wherever they are sent.

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